Caprice and Rondo: Book Seven of the House of Niccolo (House of Niccolo Series, Band 7) - Softcover

Buch 7 von 8: House of Niccolo Series

Dunnett, Dorothy

 
9780375706127: Caprice and Rondo: Book Seven of the House of Niccolo (House of Niccolo Series, Band 7)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0375706127 ISBN 13: 9780375706127
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

With the bravura storytelling and pungent authenticity of detail she brought to her acclaimed Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett, grande dame of the historical novel, presents The House of Niccolò series. The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire.
Winter 1474 finds Nicholas exiled in the frozen port of Danzig, Poland. His Machiavellian exploits in Scotland have cost him friends and family--not to mention countless riches. As the ice melts, temptations arise. Will he assist the Muslim Prince Uzum Hasan against the Turks? Will he lose himself among the secret, scented gardens of the Crimea in the arms of a close friend's bride? As Nicholas pursues his future, his estranged wife, Gelis, seeks the truth about his past, only to discover the secret identity of his latest comrade in arms--a tantalizing ghost from the past poised to deal him the crowning death blow.
Shimmering with detail, alive with intrigue, Caprice and Rondo is Dorothy Dunnett's quicksilver evocation of a world where joy is fleeting, love is unexpected, and truth the rarest commodity of all.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dorothy Dunnett was born in 1923 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. Her time at Gillespie's High School for Girls overlapped with that of the novelist Muriel Spark. From 1940-1955, she worked for the Civil Service as a press officer. In 1946, she married Alastair Dunnett, later editor of The Scotsman.

Dunnett started writing in the late 1950s. Her first novel, The Game of Kings, was published in the United States in 1961, and in the United Kingdom the year after. She published 22 books in total, including the six-part Lymond Chronicles and the eight-part Niccolo Series, and co-authored another volume with her husband. Also an accomplished professional portrait painter, Dunnett exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy on many occasions and had portraits commissioned by a number of prominent public figures in Scotland.

She also led a busy life in public service, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, a Trustee of the Scottish National War Memorial, and Director of the Edinburgh Book Festival. She served on numerous cultural committees, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1992 she was awarded the Office of the British Empire for services to literature. She died on November 9, 2001, at the age of 78.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

With the bravura storytelling and pungent authenticity of detail she brought to her acclaimed Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett, grande dame of the historical novel, presents The House of Niccolo series. The time is the 15th century, when intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe. Among them, none is bolder or more cunning than Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, the good-natured dyer's apprentice who schemes and swashbuckles his way to the helm of a mercantile empire.
Winter 1474 finds Nicholas exiled in the frozen port of Danzig, Poland. His Machiavellian exploits in Scotland have cost him friends and family--not to mention countless riches. As the ice melts, temptations arise. Will he assist the Muslim Prince Uzum Hasan against the Turks? Will he lose himself among the secret, scented gardens of the Crimea in the arms of a close friend's bride? As Nicholas pursues his future, his estranged wife, Gelis, seeks the truth about his past, only to discover the secret identity of his latest comrade in arms--a tantalizing ghost from the past poised to deal him the crowning death blow.
Shimmering with detail, alive with intrigue, Caprice and Rondo is Dorothy Dunnett's quicksilver evocation of a world where joy is fleeting, love is unexpected, and truth the rarest commodity of all.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

THE WIND BLEW from the north, from Siberia, and the clatter of hail on his shutters woke the captain. He had only been in bed for an hour, but land noises disturbed him. He grunted, considered, then dragged on his robe and, without taking a lamp, made his way to the leeward side of the villa. He had built this one only last year, and put in a brick chimney-wall: warmth from the stove below mellowed the air and his mood, although his throat was wrung dry, and he was still wearing his wrinkled day shirt and hose, as when he had dropped-or been dropped-on his bed. The sleeping rooms creaked and groaned as he passed them: his house was always full. Only the single chamber, as he half expected, was empty; the door ajar, the window unshuttered. Through it he could see a paring of moon, coarse as pomegranate. He walked over and looked down below, at the blood on the snow. Then he looked beyond his gates, at the city in which his fine house was set. At the walls, the watchtowers and the icy huddle of dwellings, above which reared the stiff-necked herd of her churches, scanning the west. Danzig, at four hours after midnight in the deep cold of January, 1474.

There were others awake. Beneath the congealed thatches there glimmered jointed hair-lines of light, fine as lettering. A squat figure, forced by the wind, plunged across a cake of pink light and disappeared. Here, the alleys were snow-filled and crooked. In the New Town, there were more lamps than shrines. In the New Town, the streets built by the Knights drove across and down to the river like prison-grilles, their crowns rutted and black with wheeled traffic. The Knights, the bastards. He was still celebrating Danzig's victory over the Knights. Everyone was celebrating.

Within the room, the quality of the air underwent a change. He smiled. He said, his back to the door, 'So, how was she?'

'Whetting her claws,' Col? said. He was the only man known to the captain who could move as silently as himself, despite his height. They engaged in these exercises sometimes, stalking one another, testing, deceiving. It was part of the return the captain compelled from his guests. In winter, a seaman required to be entertained. Der harte Seevogel, Tough Seabird, they called him.

Col? said, 'Is there some problem? You need a friend to help with your buttons?' He had picked up tinder, and was lighting the lamp by his bed. Pa?el closed the shutters and turned.

'I was contemplating the scene of the slaughter. You look as if the girl got to you first, then the father.'

Col? blinked. His eyes were like pewter platters, and his real name was not Col?. The captain knew what it was, and had called him by it throughout the campaign in the north, where they had met. Then, after the better part of two years, a merchant's train coming in from the west had insisted on bringing their friend to the guild hall, even though they had only just met him in L?beck two weeks ago-such a lively, remarkable fellow was he. Name of Col? z Brugge. A one-time merchant who had decided to let his business go hang and see the world. And Captain Pa?el Benecke, looking up at this bland, bristle-chinned figure, had said slowly, 'Oh, yes? Decided to give up your business?'

'Yes,' had said the newcomer meekly.

'And come to Poland?'

'Why not?' had said the big man in a reasonable voice. 'I could see, from the little experience I had, that its people needed advice. Some hints about etiquette. A touch of help as to manners and culture. A bit of-'

Here, he had been forced to desist by the pack of genial, hard-fisted arms that rose and fell on him: it had evidently happened often before, and he accepted it amiably. When, at last, the two were alone, the captain had set himself to pin the newcomer down in another way. 'So, what's the point of all this? Of course they will find out who you are. You have an agent here, haven't you?'

'Straube, yes. He's gone to Portugal for the winter. Oh, they'll find out,' said the man they called Col?. 'But they'll also know by the time he comes back that he isn't my agent any more. I've retired from my company.'

'Why?' had said Benecke. He remembered trying to kill this man once. He remembered that the first time they met, this man had broken his arm, and later his leg.

'Why do you think?' the newcomer had said.

Benecke considered. So far as he knew, the fellow had been good at his job. The business had prospered. If he'd cheated, he hadn't been found out. That left only women. There had been two: a harridan of a wife, so he'd heard, and a little virgin who thought she was a boy. That is, there had been a lot more than two, but none spoken of seriously. The captain said, 'I think you just wanted some fun. But since you ask, I'll guess you killed the wife and raped the little girl-brother Kathi. I liked her,' said the captain with a catch in his voice. 'If you've raped her, I'll kill you.' They were both, by this time, quite full of ale.

'You think you could?' Col? said; and ducked as the captain got out his knife. Someone took it from him quite soon, and they settled to drink again. Eventually Pa?el had to ask. 'So what happened?'

'You weren't far wrong,' Col? had said. 'The wife flung me out, and the girl married somebody else. So I thought I'd get out.'

'So why here?'

'I thought I'd get out to where somebody owed me a favour. Are you busy this winter?'

The captain sat up. 'You want a job?' There were no jobs in winter. Danzig was sealed in by ice. There would be no ships in the port until March.

'No,' said Col?. 'Or not until spring. Or not until I decide where I'm going'. I just want to pass an entertaining winter with my inferiors.'

Ten minutes later, picking themselves up from the snow outside the Artushof: 'They'll never let you back in,' Benecke said.

'Yes, they will. Anyway, you started the fight, and they'll forgive you. Do I get a bed?'

'No,' had said Pa?el Benecke. 'You'd spoil my winter complaining about your women.'

'I shouldn't,' said Col?.

'You'd get into bed with my women.'

'Of course,' had said Col?. 'You couldn't stop me. That's why you don't want me to come.'

That time, no one separated them, and it was three days before either of them could talk without lisping. Col? had been living in his house ever since, and Danzig would never forget him, nor would Pa?el Benecke. He would never have to forget him. He was going to keep him in Danzig for the rest of his life. Despite the blood on the snow.

Now he said, 'So where have you left her?'

'Never mind. Anyway, she's not yours, she's mine. I got a doctor to see to the boy.'

'I thought his arm was going to come off. You ought to be chained up and put in a lazar house.'

'Come on,' Col? said. 'I'm going to tame her. Then I'm going to sell her to you.'

'Before or after you pay me for your lodging?' Pa?el Benecke said. He gazed with fascination at the scratches all over the other man's neck and arms. He said, 'What if she's diseased?'

'You're worried?'

'No,' said Benecke. 'But I'm thirsty, and the look of you is spoiling my thirst. Good night, fool.'

He left, slamming the door. You found a man you could enjoy winters with, and he still behaved, at times, like an idiot. In their first weeks together, he had discovered it. Ingenuity, yes; lunacy even, to a degree-those were acceptable, those were what the merchants from L?beck had enjoyed. But these escapades led by Col? were suicidal.

Three weeks after he came, the situation had come to a head over the bison hunt. Then they had been out of the city, travelling over snow to the forests, with their dogs, their nets, their spears and arrows. Col? had learned, God knew from where, that the beasts were enraged by red cloth, and had brought some. It had...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375706127
ISBN 13 
9780375706127
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
576
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
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Deutschland

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