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Colà and reach an opinion. That it liked him was something quite separate.
    ‘In spring,’ said Benecke. ‘There’s to be a Burgundian mission passing through Poland in spring. Someone you know. The aristocratic uncle of your married, seraphic virgin, and a patriarch sent by the Pope.’
    Colà’s eyes were sharp as the cat’s, but bigger, and grey. ‘Why?’ he said. And then, ‘Because of what you did? Because you seized a Burgundian ship and its cargo?’
    ‘Among other things.’ Paúel Benecke gave a prosaic answer to a prosaic question. He was a pirate. That was his career. He was a sea-borne mercenary leader of skill and renown, whose highly paid interventions might change the fate of a crusade, or a duchy, or a group of powerful towns like the Hanse. He sailed under letters of marque, empowered by kings, and his booty paid for cropland, and castles, and villas.
    The coming summer might turn out to be different, for the Hanse war with England was ending. But there would be other quarrels; other vindictive men who wished to hire their own bullies. Next summer, unless some idiot babbled, this maniac Colà was going to agree to turn pirate and join him. Paúel said, ‘So keep clear of these envoys, I’d say. Or men will assume you are passing them secrets.’ He made a considering pause. ‘If you ask me nicely, I might even rescue you. You could come south in the spring, and help float my grain down to market. None of us conscious for weeks.’
    ‘Are you certain a mission is coming?’ Colà said. But he was surely convinced because, as he spoke, he gripped the rod like a whip and threw it, hard. It cartwheeled twice, giving tongue like a tocsin. The lynx, her pointed ears flat, ricocheted round her cage, squealing.
    Benecke said kindly, ‘You’ve undone all your good work. Go and croon to her.’
    The other man did not even glance over. He said, ‘No. You were right. Get some keeper to train her.’
    J INGLING ITS WAY ROUND the shores of the Baltic, the cut-price Mission to Persia intended to enter Danzig in March, having been entertained on its way by the civic leaders of Lübeck, Wisenar, Rostock and Stralsund, and survived the unstinted goodwill of their clubs.
    The two leaders were not, of course, unknown to their hosts. Every merchant who had conducted business in Bruges remembered the courtly Anselm Adorne, envoy now of the Duke who ruled Flanders. Others, wincing, had met Adorne’s unforgettable companion, the Papal and Imperial Legate. The Patriarch of Antioch had been this way before. Indeed, the unsavoury sandals of Father Ludovico da Bologna had tramped every byway in Europe, raising gold to fight Turkey. Between them, this powerful pair represented the three richest lords in the world, and their retinue, anywhere else, would have been gorgeous. But here, instead of silken banners and servants, soldiers and sumpter wagons of silver and mattresses, the train of the mission to Persia consisted of a number of packmules, eleven stoutly dressed men and, on sufferance, Anselm Adorne’s twenty-year-old niece and her bridegroom of three months.
    The presence of Katelijne Sersanders and her very young husband had not been part of Adorne’s plan. Barely married, newly settled into a delightful small house of her uncle’s, Katelijne herself had been equally far from contemplating an immediate journey. Then, on the eve of the mission’s departure, Ludovico da Bologna had trotted his mule into Bruges and, before so much as calling on Anselm Adorne, had banged on her door to congratulate her on her marriage.
    The Patriarch was over sixty years old, and he and Kathi Sersanders had known each other, off and on, for four years. Skipping out to receive him, Katelijne recognised in his manner the same sardonic detachment which had always coloured their dealings. To say she liked him meant nothing: she liked almost everyone. It was a pity that her uncle, tied to the Patriarch for the forthcoming mission,