by Clio Gray
A loud singing match was going on as Hendrik, Greta and Ruan got to the door, the tables outside filled with carousers; it soon became apparent that to find one black haired foreigner amongst the many was not going to be an easy task. Nevertheless, they forced their way in, Ruan taking charge because he knew the place and knew the manager, got him buttonholed in a corner. Once Ruan had introduced Hendrik the man apologised profusely.
‘It’s all rather got out of hand, Mijnheer,’ the manager said, his face red and sweaty, clothes a little awry, it being the first time in several years he’d had to help out manually at the bar alongside his usual staff, so great was the surge of customers hoping for free drink. The tab, he told them, had only just closed, so generous had been not only the Mijnheer but the Board and the Council and many others sad for his loss, the revellers staying on anyway to blow what little money they had on what had become for them all an unexpected holiday.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated several times, ‘that such a sad occasion has become a rumpus, but we can’t turn away trade. You know how it is, Mijnheer, you know how it is.’
Hendrik did know, although he despised every person in the tavern at that moment, was focussed on his goal.
‘It’s no matter,’ he told the manager. ‘No matter at all. I’m happy my wife’s death has occasioned such gaiety.’
The manager of the Golden Globe cringed, pronounced himself ready to do whatever Grimalkin asked.
‘We’re looking for a man, maybe of Italian extraction,’ put in Ruan. ‘Dark hair, bad pox scars on his cheeks, kind of foreign looking.’
It wasn’t a great description but, despite the crush of men about the bar and the swamp of all the others about the tables, the manager drew his staff together and asked them of such a man.
‘I think you must mean one of the Ducetti brothers,’ piped up one of his helpers, a girl so young it seemed to Hendrik barely decent she worked in a place like this.
‘Where are they?’ he asked. The girl waved a hand.
‘Often in,’ she said, ‘this past while anyways. Sometimes together, most often not, and sometimes with their uncle who ate about the most I’ve ever seen one man eat.’
‘But are they here now?’ Hendrik persisted, a note of desperation to his voice, the singing of the men outside on the plaza almost drowning out his words. The girl didn’t answer straightaway, instead sent her eyes roving over the crowd.
‘Don’t see ‘em,’ she said. ‘And now you mention it, ain’t seen neither hide nor hair of either for a good half hour since.’
Isaac was feeling good, in fact was feeling grand. He had the perpetrator of the Singel fire – the killer of Louisa Grimalkin – right here and now in his library and no way for him to escape, the only thing to do being to prevent Caro from finishing the man off before the others got back.
‘So,’ he said to his captive, feeling like he thought he always would have if he’d ever caught up with the Prussian officer responsible for annihilating his family and village. No sympathy, no care that his blood was seeping into the green sofa, even if it would be Isaac’s duty to clean it later on. Isaac had a few words ready, when Joachim appeared by his side causing Luigi to shrivel involuntarily as the blood drained from every extremity, a feverish jumble of whispered words falling from his lips as he attempted to cross himself.
‘Oh my Christ, my Saviour…Lord, deliver me in my hour of need. Please don’t send me to the dark place or consign me to the flames…’
Isaac and Caro were mighty puzzled; Brother Joachim, seeing the awful fear in Luigi’s eyes, put two and two together.
‘You didn’t kill me, son,’ Joachim said quietly. ‘You may have tried but you didn’t succeed, for here I am. Flesh and blood, just like you.’
Luigi gawked, then began to stutter out a few words over and over.
‘I..I..didn’t…know…I didn’t know. P…please don’t j…judge me, Brother, please don’t judge me…’
Joachim’s turn to be bewildered, recognising genuine confession and terror when he heard it; logic dictated this was the man who’d shot at him and presumably, therefore, had attempted to murder a houseful of people in the Singel fire. But how could a man so loaded with guilt, so abjectly pathetic, have come to do such things? Something was wrong, something badly out of kilter. He knelt down next to Luigi.
‘Tell me everything. Forgiveness is only be a breath away.’
Ruan, Hendrik and Greta began to push their way back out of the tavern, but not before a couple of hot-blooded apprentices noticed one of their number was a girl, and stood up to block their path.
‘Now what’s a pretty young slip like you doing here?’ one asked, puffing out his chest, adjusting his hat to what he thought was its best advantage.
‘Come to give the boys a treat?’ his companion slurred, the leer in his voice turning Greta’s stomach.
‘Out of my way,’ Greta said, trying to push past him, but the first man caught her about the neck and slobbered a great kiss on her cheek and before Ruan knew what he was about he lifted his fist and smacked it hard into the side of the man’s head, grabbing at Greta’s arm as he did so, manhandling her through the throng, the closest of whom were beginning to stand at the spectacle and starting to cheer. The struck man staggered back a step before being shoved forwards again by his outraged companions so he stumbled directly into Greta’s back, Greta spinning on her heels, eyes flashing.
‘You will all desist!’ Hendrik shouted. ‘It was my wife who was buried today, and she whose life you are supposed to be celebrating, and you repay her by what? By all this?’
The manager noticed the commotion and was terrified. One word from Hendrik to the Council and he would be shut down the very next day. He rushed forward and took the young drunkard in an arm-lock he’d not had to perform for years.
‘I’m so sorry, Mijnheer,’ he said, shoving the miscreant hard onto the floor, cracking his cheekbone as he went down. But Hendrik wasn’t listening. Hendrik came up on Greta’s other side and together he and Ruan marched her through the crowd without further incident, the three of them spilling outside and past the tables before Ruan let her go.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.
‘No thanks to you,’ Greta said, brushing hard at her sleeve as if Ruan’s hand had defiled it. The shaky tone of her voice belied her words, and Ruan knew it the moment she swivelled her eyes towards his. ‘Was just about to flatten him myself,’ she said, some of her usual defiance creeping back in.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Ruan replied. ‘We should’ve drawn up fighting plans before we went in there.’
Greta snorted and let out a brief laugh. ‘You and who’s army?’
‘Don’t think I’d need any more than you,’ Ruan gave his riposte and then immediately turned the colour of a ripe cherry to have given her such a compliment and couldn’t get out another word.
Ricardo moved swift and silent as a stoat in the night, keeping to the darker edges of the library far beyond the small circle of light. He could hear his brother talking – always the weak one. They looked alike, did Ricardo and Luigi, always had, especially at a place like the Servants, wearing habit and cowl, none of the Brothers paying much attention to their floating population of travellers and lay helpers.
Easy then for Luigi to accompany Caro back from Middleburg – their prearranged meeting place – at his uncle’s behest, keep tabs on Ruan Peat, trailing him and Caro to Deventer, volunteering a bit of useful information when it turned out the threat wasn’t coming from Ruan Peat but the man he’d been sent to for help.
‘He’s Brother Joachim’s son,’ Luigi had faltered, at which news Ricardo ground his teeth, gathered Luigi up and off they went for Walcheren, new plan in place, Luigi slipping back into his previous role with no one any the wiser that he’d ever left. Ricardo took over every now and then to study Joachim and his habits, taking his chance, taking his shot, sending out a letter to tell Hendrik
his father was dying. He had presumed Hendrik Grimalkin would come running from the protection of his library to his father’s side, when Ricardo would pick him off like a crow silhouetted against the sun, Luigi stopping at the Servants so no one would suspect; several days of Ricardo twiddling his thumbs, avoiding George Gwilt’s savage interrogation of anyone and everyone he could find, and no evidence yet of Grimalkin rushing to his father’s deathbed; not that Joachim had actually died, at least not yet.
Good plan, bad result; Ricardo back to Deventer quick as he could, leaving Luigi to inform him immediately Hendrik got there or Joachim actually croaked. But the blasted Joachim hadn’t croaked, and the news of his near death hadn’t even slowed Grimalkin down, and time was running out. Loads of it back in Scotland, but not now, the old stick of a scunnered Pope keeping on inconveniently reviving.
Two weeks delay is all we’ll need, Federigo had said at the start; two weeks turning into three and then four and now six, and all the while the danger to their family growing.
Just get rid, Federigo had sighed eventually, leaving the details up to Ricardo, Ricardo happy to obey. Fire on the Singel and all that. Another good plan, more bad luck. All resulting in Ricardo being here in the Athenaeum, his brother caught banged to rights, about to squeal out everything.
But sentimentality be damned; brother or no brother, if push came to shove Ricardo was the cuckoo in the nest who chucked the other siblings over the edge in order to survive. No accident that Ricardo had signed himself in as his brother in the Guildsman’s book; no accident either that he’d sent Luigi in with the first barrel, astonished Luigi got as far as he did, not so astonished when Luigi was stuck by the kid with his knife.
All good for Ricardo, giving him the distraction he needed to slip in like an eel, only thing perplexing him was where all the main protagonists had got to. Hendrik’s words at the graveside – the ones Luigi had been maundering about – could only have meant they’d all come rushing straight back to the library. Ricardo presumed they were either down in the stacks or up in their beds, for where else could they be?
Either way, the bolts were drawn, the library locked down. Luigi was obviously not going to get out of this, but hey ho. He’d always been expendable. All the more profit for Ricardo and Federigo, the Ducetti name about to fly high across Europe and in the South Americas, anywhere the Catholic root had taken hold: Eduardo Ducetti soon the new Pope who would maybe take the name of Urban, like they’d joked about, just to chuck all that long-forgotten Lynx crap right back in its face where it belonged.
40
CONFESSION AND CONFUSION
‘At least we know there’s two of them, and the uncle too,’ Greta said, once they’d extricated themselves from the Golden Globe and all the grabbing hands it had contained. She glanced over at Ruan, her feelings of his intervention on her behalf decidedly mixed.
It wasn’t the first time she’d ever been accosted, not by a long chalk, and she was thinking back to that time just before she’d got to Peter’s when she’d got so angry afterwards with that beggaring flea. If Ruan had been there then she’d have been glad of it, although undoubtedly if he’d intervened then he’d have been strung up from the nearest tree or sliced in two by a sword. She’d no great liking for the man but she had to admit he had a fine looking head, and it would have been a shame for him to have lost it.
‘And presumably they’re still in Deventer, or were a half hour since,’ Ruan added, as they made their way towards the fountain at the centre of the Brink to wash their faces, sit down to regroup despite the drizzle the previously beating rain had shrugged itself into.
‘Except they might not be,’ Hendrik said, dejection in every syllable. ‘If they’ve got on one of the barges they could be up or downstream several miles by now, and we’ve no idea where they might be heading.’
The incidents at the Golden Globe had depressed him deeply, and he couldn’t think straight. ‘Half an hour is a long time,’ he added. ‘They could be anywhere.’
‘But they’ve no idea we’re onto them,’ Greta countered brightly, ‘so why on earth would they be running?’
‘She’s right, Hendrik,’ Ruan said, smiling briefly at Greta above Hendrik’s bowed head, a smile not returned. Jesus, but the girl was infuriating and yet, annoyingly, he found himself thinking about her fingers and as he did so his own fingertips brushed against the small crumpled piece of paper he’d found in the haversack’s pocket back at the Guildsman’s hostel. He brought it out, fixed his attention on it so he did not have to think about Greta.
The paper was worn and torn by being folded over on itself numerous times but there, in one corner, he saw a barely visible impress looking very like the crest of the Cesi Family Estate. It didn’t mean much. It certainly wasn’t the proof Hendrik had hoped to find, but it was a connection and connections, Ruan was dimly beginning to understand from this whole fiasco, were what mattered.
‘We should take what we’ve learned back to the library,’ he said, neglecting to mention his small discovery, not wanting to get anyone worked up about it, especially not Hendrik.
Ruan was ravenous, needed to get some food down his gullet before lying down and getting some proper sleep, preferably with Greta by his side – a random thought that came out of nowhere, but so strong in its conviction that he went a merry pink, shocking himself – making him bluster on about not leaving poor Caro alone; Caro, of all people, and a trite sentiment that nonetheless both Greta and Hendrik agreed with, all three peeling themselves from the fountain’s steps and heading away from the Brink.
‘It started about eighteen months back,’ Luigi was saying through clenched teeth, eyes fixed on Joachim, at that gentle face, the one who had forgiven him the deed he hadn’t done, but had undoubtedly precipitated. ‘We were in the shop in Amsterdam when our uncle came in, said your Golo Eck was going to start the up Lynx again.’
He twisted his head to sip at the glass of grappa Isaac had given him. A couple of sips wasn’t going to make everything go away, but it kept at bay Luigi’s almost uncontrollable impulse to weep.
‘And?’ Isaac prompted, refilling the glass. He didn’t think the man had any fight in him, but a man filled with strong drink would be far less of an opponent than one without. Luigi swallowed, and went on.
‘Uncle Federigo had been sent a letter by his cousin with some paper or other from the Cesi Estate, and he was spitting mad because of it. He’s always had a temper. Whipped us black and blue when we were kids and got even the tiniest thing wrong. Anyway, he said that no way was he going to let the Lynx start up again, not now, because if it did it was going to cause trouble.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ Isaac pushed him on, filling up the glass again, the man having drained the previous one in a single, grimacing gulp.
‘I don’t really know,’ Luigi said quietly. ‘Just that it was going to cast our family in a bad light and that if that happened the Cardinal wouldn’t stand a cat’s chance of getting elected Pope because of it, or even be given one of the more important posts in the Vatican if someone else was elected instead of him.’
Isaac sucked air in through his teeth and looked at Joachim kneeling beside Luigi, mopping away some of the blood with a cloth he’d fetched from the kitchen. He had the notion he was witnessing the physical manifestation of a biblical parable: the way Joachim was tending to the man who, by all accounts, had tried to kill him. He wished he had the same capacity to forgive with such grace and ease instead of having lived a life with bitterness at its core.
He glanced over towards Caro, who was staring intently at their prisoner, hand hovering over the knife lying idle on the table beside him, ready to take it up again if he detected the slightest subterfuge or lie. Isaac moved his head, narrowed his eyes, looked beyond the small circle of light that encapsulated them all, certain he’d detected a small twitching in the shadows.
But surely no one else could be here with them.
Isaac’s thought was subs
umed immediately by the enormity of his neglect as he realised in that split second that yes, yes there could be, because although he’d shut the door behind this interloper he hadn’t bolted it, and hadn’t turned the key.
‘The door!’ Isaac shouted, standing up, dropping the grappa in his haste, Caro springing up as the glass bottle shattered, reaching for his knife, aghast to see a hand other than his own getting there first. Next thing he knew the blade was up against his throat, slicing through a couple of millimetres of skin, deep enough to draw blood, sharp enough to make Caro gasp and stand as still as he could, the knife’s keen point a whisper away from the vein pulsing in his neck.
‘No need to worry, folks,’ said the man who had Caro pinioned against his chest. ‘The door is locked and bolted. No one in, no one out, not unless he has the key, and I’m the man who has it.’
Isaac was horrified. How could he not have done such a simple thing as securing the doors the moment the object of his and Caro’s plan came into the library? Almost more shocking was how similar the man holding the knife to Caro’s throat was to the one on the sofa. Brothers without a doubt, two halves of the same nut. Maybe even twins of the sort who aren’t quite identical, but identical enough.
Isaac’s old body sagged with self-recrimination and anger at his own neglect. This library was his life and now both it, and Caro with it, were in danger because he hadn’t had the nous to turn a single key in its lock and secure it back into his pouch.
‘Get up the way,’ the man holding Caro commanded Isaac. ‘Roll down the other barrel. It’s by the top end near the doors, and no point doing anything other or this young lad here will no longer have a throat through which he can breathe.’
Isaac was sweating profusely. He cast a quick glance at the sofa but couldn’t see Joachim, and if he couldn’t see Joachim then maybe this new attacker couldn’t see him either, so some hope yet, enough to propel him forward on shaking legs, appalled at the awful panic in Caro’s wide eyes as he passed him by, a thin-beaded necklace of blood beginning to encircle his throat from that single point of contact with the blade, Caro’s eyes following Isaac as he went.
