Caprice and Rondo (53 page)

The monk said, ‘They call Qirq-yer the fort of the Forty Fortifications, but I suspect they mean Martyrs. There were Christians here six hundred years ago. I am told you are destitute.’

‘Complaints are for martyrs,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am quite content. Why are you here?’

‘I travel, as do Latin monks and confessors,’ Lorenzo said. ‘The Patriarch of Antioch and I are both Christians, and concerned with halting the advance of the Ottoman Turks, to the extent of courting unorthodox allies — Uzum Hasan of Persia, the Sultan and jurists of Cairo, and even yourself.’

‘Thank you,’ Nicholas said.

‘Not at all. It seemed to the Patriarch and myself that, given some financial security, you might usefully be employed in these parts, and that I could, in passing, strengthen your credentials with the Greek community, as some visiting teacher from Cairo might commend you to those of the Muslim faith. Also, I would like both you and the Patriarch to know what Abdan Khan cannot or will not tell you about the Gothian strength at Mánkup.’

‘I should be interested in that,’ Nicholas said. ‘But am I worthy?’

‘It is a failing of Abdan Khan’s,’ said the monk, ‘that he resists advice. He is a first-class captain, who has grown up in awe of the heroes who trained him. Whereas you, I understand, have made your own mould. It is praiseworthy. The dangers are those of over-confidence, even of dogged entrenchment. You must work to avoid them. Now I shall give you some information which you will kindly pass to the Patriarch, and also ponder upon to the best of your ability’

Nicholas inhaled sharply, and then let it go. All right, he wasn’t a martyr. The monk gazed at him with a certain compassion, and then started to speak.

What he said was comprehensive, but of necessity brief: even if the Circassian had fallen asleep, the escort had not, and they had to reach their next station by nightfall. Having finished with Mánkup, Friar Lorenzo added his assessment of the wider campaigns against Turkey, as viewed from Cairo and Cyprus and Rhodes. When he ended, Nicholas found the grace to apologise, as well as to thank him.

The monk smiled, rising to his feet. ‘You are human. Wrong turnings may be beneficial. Tampering with magic is not. The Patriarch will be relieved to hear that you refused to divine.’

Nicholas smiled, but not very widely. His restraint was noted, he saw. He was over-confident enough, he wished to say, to change his mind and divine if he pleased, and to hell with the unintrenched Patriarch.

They passed a network of caves on the way from the chapel. The monk, holding a lantern, showed him one. ‘They run all through the hill. A man in trouble can live here a long time. The citadel knows when someone is present, but strangers would not notice the clues. There, if you look. The person who stayed here has gone, and someone will rub the mark out. One day, another will come. See. They can be made quite comfortable.’ And moving past the discreet mark on the wall, he raised the lamp.

It depended, of course, on what you called comfort. The movable furnishings had presumably gone, but a broken bucket remained, and a stone hearth and cistern, and a platform of flags with some straw. The walls were full of irregular holes, cut for storage, and in places the rock had been smoothed to receive imaginative charcoal drawings of saints mortifying the wives of deceived men, or men copulating without difficulty with well-drawn but unusual partners. ‘There is a well outside at the back,’ continued Friar Lorenzo. ‘And a fire gives light. There is plenty of fuel. And assuming the citadel approves, there will be a bag of meal from time to time, and some dried fish, perhaps. Their refugees rarely starve.’

‘No,’ Nicholas said. His attention was fixed on the back of the cavern where, taking shape in the brightening lamplight, there seemed to be —there were — some abandoned possessions, dumbly eloquent of the fugitive owner now gone. Fashioned from lambskin and straw, trimmed with feathers and velvet and ribbon, a row of hats clung to the wall, cocky as tarts at a hanging.

‘
Ochoa!
’ Nicholas said. He suffocated, and started again.
‘Ochoa de Marchena
was here?’

Brother Lorenzo’s gaze was quite placid. ‘The shipmaster who was lost with your gold? Yes. He has escaped from the Knights of St John. He wishes to meet you. He can tell you where your gold is.’

He waited, with tolerance, until Nicholas had ceased to wheeze. ‘The reward of virtue,’ observed Brother Lorenzo. ‘I brought some balm from the Mount. Give it, from me, to the friends whom I met there. And make wise use of your gold, when you find it.’

Chapter 20

F
OR
N
ICHOLAS
de Fleury, the journey home passed like a dream: he hardly remembered parting with the Circassian. In Caffa, paying off the last of his escort, he burst into Anna’s house and discovered that he had overtaken his own harbinger and that Brygidy, alarmed, was telling him that the Genoese Oberto Squarciafico was here, and M. de Fleury must revert, quickly, to his role as Mameluke servant.

He couldn’t pretend, now, that he hadn’t arrived, so he sent a servant, humbly, to tell his mistress that her servant Nicomack ibn Abdallah had returned from Qirq-yer. He still looked the part, but after weeks of autonomy, his manner required some adjusting.

He saw Squarciafico briefly, as the fiscal agent took his leave, and Anna called her steward for an exchange of courtesies. Nicholas answered questions politely: he had been amazed by the nature of the citadel; he had found the Khan gracious but prone to waste time on hunting and other pleasures, in which he had been compelled to take part; he had, in the end, been permitted to outline the Contessa’s hopes and plans, but it was by no means clear whether the Khan felt able to help him — he had been told simply to wait.

All the time he was speaking, half his gaze was on Anna’s brilliant face; on the violet eyes which had lit when she saw him but veiled when he spoke, and she had to believe that her business and her steward’s appeal had not prospered. The Genoese, taking his leave, had been consoling, and she had accepted his sympathy prettily. Then, leaving, he remembered Nicholas and said, ‘Come and see me tomorrow. The consul will have some questions about Mengli-Girey’

Nicholas was sure that he would. Reports from Caffa reached the citadel of Qirq-yer in a stream: compared with the lack-lustre Genoese, the Khan’s spies were infinitely superior. All the time he had stayed in the citadel, Nicholas had been assured, if indirectly, of the safety of
Anna, and the public movements, at least, of the Patriarch. He would have to go to Father Ludovico immediately and tell all that he had learned. He would have no trouble speaking tomorrow to the Bank and the consul, and was fully prepared for the tale he must tell Sinbaldo the agent. To all of them, the story would be the same. There was some hope for the Contessa’s trade, but the Khan would not commit himself until the new Tudun was in place to advise. And neither Nicomack ibn Abdallah nor Nicholas de Fleury knew (or cared) who the new Tudun would be.

But before that, he had the real news to give Anna.

She was so beautiful. He had forgotten the glow behind the self-possession, the glorious eyes, the smile, the hair like a houri’s, clinging unbound to her neck and her fine, narrow gown. He said, ‘Are you glad to see me?’

He had come into her parlour just as he was, without even supervising the six baskets now being unstrapped outside. He had the bag of coins in his hat.

Anna said, ‘I don’t think so. What have you been riding? A camel?’

‘It’s a healthy smell,’ Nicholas said. ‘Was he bothering you? Has anyone been bothering you?’

‘Apart from creditors?’ she said whimsically. ‘I wish I could say so, but it has been remarkably dull. No advance has been made with the Russians. The Genoese tend to call whenever they hear I’ve had letters, and they ask me how Julius is doing — to which the answer is well, Nicholas; he is walking again. They also want to know what I have been hearing from you, which I had to tell them was nothing: you really have been most extraordinarily lax. Were you truly dragooned into weeks of tedious hunting? And, I suppose, drinking. And dancing. And perhaps even distasteful exchanges with girls?’

Her voice was mocking, but the delicate glow was still there. He wondered what she would say if he admitted that, yes, there had been girls. It was part of the Khan’s hospitality. And even had it not been, he could not have refused when the rice wine had gone round, and the men had thrown off their coats and begun dancing the thudding, menacing dances that dated back to the times of the Polovtsy. Then the drums would double their beat, and the Circassian girls would slip into the light of the fire, slender and pliant as vines with their long pigtails swaying and their faces averted. At first, they linked arms as they danced, but not later. Then, as in the Tyrol, you waited, whatever your state, until the Khan had locked his girl to himself. And after that, you were free to prove, in the firelight, that you were a man. A man sometimes in despair, for the sake of a pact he had made with himself.

Anna said, ‘I daren’t ask what you are dreaming about. Nicholas? I
am sorry it didn’t go well, but I am glad that you tried. And look, there are letters for you, personal letters come through Sinbaldo: news, perhaps of Gelis and Jodi. He will have his music quite soon.’ She touched his hand. ‘You look well. I missed you. Was it a great wrench to come back?’

‘I needed the rest,’ Nicholas said. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t have kept me away. And that’s true, although you know how I lie. Don’t you know how I lie? I was lying to Squarciafico just now. And you had better polish up your duplicity, because you are going to have to be very mendacious as well.’

Her face had become grave, and even a little frightened. She said, ‘What have you done?’

He looked at her, arrested in the midst of euphoria. Then he put his calming hand over hers. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I haven’t hurt, or planned to hurt, anyone.’

‘But?’ she said. The blood pulsed in her skin, intensifying the scent she always wore. He cleared his throat.

‘But I lied when I said it wasn’t successful. If the Khan gets the Tudun he wants, Julius can depend on trading in Caffa at a profit. I think the right Governor will come, provided the Genoese are handled with care, and provided that they don’t think we are involved in a conspiracy. They must believe that you have been promised nothing, and have no stake in Tartar appointments. Hence you, too, must prevaricate: that is all.’

She said, ‘But we do have a stake. You have a promise from the Khan’s candidate. Who is he? Eminek, the old brother?’

‘It’s better you shouldn’t know. We don’t need to help him: he’ll be promoted very efficiently by the Tartar community. And at worst,’ Nicholas added, ‘we shan’t be in a debtors’ prison. The Khan paid for the velvet.’ And he placed the bag of coins in her hands.

It was heavy. She looked up, astonished. ‘It was a gift! And worth less than this.’

‘He decided to buy it. It should clear off all the immediate debts. And there is something else,’ Nicholas said. ‘But really, it should be done in a fur hat and boots. And with clapping.’

‘I can clap,’ Anna said. Her eyes were brilliant.

‘No, you’ve got to stand and hold this,’ Nicholas said, presenting her with the end of his sash. ‘It’s a reversal of genders. I spin and you reap.’

He began, languidly, to revolve. The sash, unravelling, drooped in her unready grasp until, with a snort of laughter, she clawed in the slack with both hands, and settled to draw at the pace of his turning. Evidently finding this slow, she began sedately to accelerate matters by pulling a little. Very soon, she was hauling with joyous ferocity while Nicholas obliged like a Polovtsian dancer, stamping, shouting and snapping his fingers
over his head as he whirled. He was at the top of his spin, arms outstretched, when the sash flew to its end and they both crashed to the floor, yelping and breathless. The sash stood all over the room like a caterpillar.

‘Twenty yards,’ said Nicholas groggily. ‘Twenty yards of silver coins, enough to see us through the winter. Are you glad I came back?’ And grinned as she flung her arms round him and kissed him.

‘I think we should do it again,’ Anna said, sitting back. ‘But I expect the servants would worry. Now what’s all this about
money
? Show me.’

Snug in their long, narrow channels, the coins made no sound as they issued. He unpicked only a corner to show her. They were of silver, the same as the coins in the bag: Karaï Mirza had been thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose,’ Anna said, ‘that we could be wholly improvident and invest them? If we really are allowed to establish our trade, we’d need something to start with.’

‘As it happens,’ Nicholas said, ‘that has been taken care of as well. I didn’t want to excite you too much at once. But, Anna … you remember my African gold? I think I might be going to find it.’

She blinked; then tilted her head, leaning back on her hands. ‘Well, of course. I thought your boots seemed too heavy.’ But she had turned pale.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. After all the bad luck, it sounds mad, but it’s true. Sit. I’ll fold this out of the way. Then I’ll tell you everything that happened at Qirq-yer.’

He made it brief, because it was mid-afternoon and the household would wonder, although it was natural enough that he should be giving her his accounting. Throughout, she sat very still. He left out the name of Karaï Mirza, but told her most of what he had done to earn that sash full of silver. He tried to explain. ‘The Khan understands his people, understands the country, understands the enemy a hundred times better than I do. But I know what the western world, and not only the Genoese, can supply him with. And I can let it be known what he needs.’

They were sitting on separate chairs, and her face was in shadow. She said, ‘And you did all this, for Ludovico da Bologna, and Julius.’

‘And for you,’ Nicholas said. Their eyes held.

At some point, she said, her voice low, ‘And the man in the cave, Friar Lorenzo. He will not give you away? He knows who you are.’