The Unicorn Hunt (84 page)

Seated, his hands light on crossed knees, the merchant Niccolò bent his head. ‘I am humble. Yet is not my empty wallet worth more than that of some ambassador dispatched before Negroponte, whose remit has fallen to ashes, and who speaks with the tongue of dead men? I have a Bank. I offer its resources and wisdom against the Ottoman Turk. Its resources, as thou knowest, are founded on gold. Its wisdom consists in belonging to no prince, but knowing the hearts and intentions of many.’

‘Thou? A merchant?’ Yachbak mentioned. He leaned back.

The other remained, his hands lax, his broad shoulders still. ‘Where will the spices go, that travel from Tor this coming month, and what will they bring in return? Who will handle the silks of Uzum Hasan? Who will provide the copper cauldrons for sugar; the round ships full of wood for fine artefacts? Who can supply gold, from which dinars (or ducats) are minted? Who can sometimes say, to this country or that, “Thy desires are indeed great but these are thy debts, and where is the remedy?” ’

There was a silence. ‘One spoke of timber,’ said the Grand Emir at length.

Two hours later, at the seventh hour after midday, the Emir Dawadar used his judgement to call the interview to a halt. The scribes wrote on, scratching the paper in their desperation. So much. So much had been discussed, hinted, touched upon.

Cyprus. How had this man guessed so much of Cyprus? This time Qayt Bey had hesitated to increase the tribute again: this man had shown how it should be done.

He knew the bey Ferrante of Naples, and was already engaged in the fine cross-negotiation concerning the marriage of his daughter. He could not know – could he? – that a son of Ferrante’s was here, in the Citadel, freely serving as a Christian Mameluke?

This man, this merchant Niccolò, exchanged messages with Uzum Hasan, the greatest opponent in Asia of the Ottoman Turk. He knew the inner workings of the Knights of Rhodes, and the subtle strife over alum. He knew where timber was to be had, while of course observing the laws which forbade – pronouncements
of infidels and idolators! – the release of ship-timber to Egypt. The man had leased two ships to Venice for Negroponte, and when the merchant Niccolò spoke, the bey of Venice often listened. This Frank owned an army. And he – pleasing to Allah – was a man who had wished to save Sankore, and all in the city, and whom the Qadi Musa esteemed not as a son, for such would have been foolish, but as a man of singular strength, for whom a master had yet to be found.

Towards the end, when the tray of cold carob drinks had arrived, the Dawadar had drawn attention to the importance of the matters raised, and lamented the lack of opportunity to continue their discussion next day. He had been informed, of course, of the lord Niccolò’s plans. He held them in reverence. Nevertheless, despite the apparent delay, he would swear that the lord Niccolò’s journey to Sinai would prove even more swift since, given time, it was in his own power to provide mounts, provisions, guides, protection and permits, as a result of which the flight of a bird would seem slow.

He did not say, for it was not his place to mention it, that a rival party of Franks had already set out for Mount Sinai, and were presently lodged at Birkat al-Hadjd, for what length of time he had not yet quite decided. He merely assumed that speed had a value, and was unsurprised when the merchant agreed to his suggestion. He had been certain, in any case, of the other two.

Soon after, being of good breeding, he left the pavilion, his companions following, and without exacting a ritual withdrawal by his guests. They stood none the less, including the merchant Niccolò, to whom the Qadi spoke a few words, receiving and giving the Muslim kiss on the shoulder before turning away. Glancing back from the door, the Grand Emir saw that the sledge had been brought, which would take the man to where he would sleep until he left Cairo. For a few hours at least, his safety depended on being thought to be dead.

The sledge, hung with awnings and deep in tasselled silk cushions, was heavily scented. Dropped there, experiencing every after-effect of shock, pain and exhaustion, Nicholas alternately shivered and showed a disastrous inclination to laugh. Tobie said, ‘For God’s sake, give him some air. I’ll stay. You go back to the house. De Salmeton’s got to think we don’t know where he is, and don’t much care. He’ll assume we’re both after the gold.’

‘He’ll assume you’re after it,’ Nicholas said. ‘You look like an alchemist.’ He breathed quickly a few times and came out with another whole sentence. ‘We did it.’

‘
We
did it,’ said John. ‘You’d have been floating about that precious cistern wrapped up in asps if Tobie hadn’t battered his way round all the pastry-shops and the riwaqs turning out students. Or come to that, Katelijne did it. It was her suggestion.’

Tobie said, ‘Aren’t you going? You can talk about all that tomorrow.’

‘Katelijne?’ said Nicholas.

‘Suggested the University. Well, kind of. You know her. She wouldn’t let down her uncle. But Tobie had told her about Timbuktu, and she must have seen the connection. So did you, of course, you bastard, but you weren’t proposing to use it. Well I hope,’ said John, who was apparently drunk on carob juice, ‘that you’ve learned your stupid lesson.’

Nicholas lay breathing. Tobie got rid of John, who could be heard accosting high officials on the subject of boats. The noise over the river was ear-splitting. Tobie returning, said, ‘This is the place. It’s just a pleasure-pavilion for the number three wife. Or something similar.’

Nicholas laughed, and regretted it, and was got indoors and amazingly, upstairs, where it was cooler. He said, from the mattress, ‘Does Katelijne know?’

‘Know what?’ said Tobie, exploring shelves. ‘Water. Sherbet. I asked for some – yes. Here it is. Know we found you? No, she’ll have left Cairo by now. They all left immediately after the Abundance. Should I send and tell her?’ He turned.

Nicholas said, ‘Adorne may be head of the Vatachino.’

‘Oh,’ said Tobie. Then he said, ‘You were tortured. He wouldn’t do that.’

‘No. That was a mistake,’ Nicholas said. There was another silence.

Tobie said, ‘I don’t think she’d tell him.’

‘It depends,’ Nicholas said. ‘In any case, I’m not sure it matters. When they drain the cistern, they’ll know.’

‘I wish you’d killed him,’ Tobie said.

‘Adorne?’

‘Christ, no. At least – no. I meant David de Salmeton,’ said Tobie. ‘Look, it’s cooler outside. I’ll pull you out to the balcony. Anyway, everyone ought to see it once. Egypt
en fête
. Cairo celebrating its bloody Abundance.’

After a while, when Tobie had got tired of fussing and had gone off to find something to eat, Nicholas hauled himself up from his couch and, piling cushions, made himself a nest from which,
between the folded-back screens of the mashrabiyya, he could survey Cairo over the water.

He rested his chin on his arms. He hadn’t yet slept, but the shrieking nerves of his feet had calmed down; and the pain and sickness were beginning to cede to a promising languor. His mind, deadened by the effort of the latter few hours, had begun to stir idly again.

Behind him, the desert sky had turned red: it was within a half-hour of sundown. Across the narrow skein of river that separated Roda from the city he gazed on a scene hardly changed down the centuries: the people of Egypt thanking their God for the Nile.

The profile of the Maqattam hills – robbed, they said, to clothe Pharaoh’s granaries – must still be as always it had been; and the sky above it as always tinged rose and lilac and a clear, high, turquoise blue. A muslin moon had appeared beside the towers and domes of the Citadel, now prickled with light, and the viaduct arches descended, as they always had, from there to the river, as if scrawled in thin chalk.

Behind them and about them were the domes and towers of Cairo; fig and pomegranate, tulip and iris; a Persian garden in mosaic and gilding. Sprays of jewelled glass bloomed, taper by taper, among the great houses, throwing rainbows up into the stucco, blushing upon marble, striking sparks from a fountain, or the silver and bronze of a door. In the last of the sun, carved in stucco, in sycamore, the outlines of chevrons, of stars, of the Name of God in all its forms flowed across the city as if blotted upon it.

Thus Cairo as he had seen it, alone, in the days of his wandering. Tonight the river and city were one. Tonight, the shore gardens and fields were outlined in silver tinged with the red of the sunset. Date palms rose from arabesques of sparkling water; thickets of herbs stood between silver grids; mosques lay in roseate pools and water moved like an arrow from lake to widening lake, flashing, searing the eye.

Because of the dazzle, he did not at first notice the boats. He heard them first: a shiver of bells, then the rise and slur of the flute, the finger-drum’s hiccough, the eerie drawl of a fiddle. His eye and ear attuning, he presently saw the vessels themselves, glinting with the jewels of their passengers; the wings of their sails set with lights and with bells. He watched them until, the light fading, they changed into streams of glowing dragonflies mounting the brimming veins of the city; fanning the air with slight music. Fires of joy rose silent over the Citadel and burst like pollen in the last of the sun.

The flood of the Joliba, the Nile. Rejoicing, placating, the Bucentaur in Venice with its five thousand escorting vessels attending the Doge and his solemn Espousal.
God be praised, the ocean has opened again
. Those who dived got to keep what they found, and were assured of good fortune.

God be praised; God is great.

Kiss any arm you cannot break, and pray that someone else breaks it
.

Tobie’s step. Nicholas unclosed his fist, releasing what hung at his throat, although Tobie must surely have noticed: had even possibly knotted it there. Its shape was imprinted in blood on his palm: they must have had to break it out after he surfaced.

This ring. This circle of hatred.

This milestone which signalled: The hunt is resumed.

Part IV

THE WHIPPING-IN

Chapter 40

T
HE ESSENCE OF
the problem, if you were to ask Jan Adorne, had little to do with the dangerous journey itself: with the heat, the sandstorms, the cold, the trackless wilderness of barren grit, the precipitous mountains, the circling Bedouin, the treacherous guides, the stinking food and dried wells, the wild beasts and the vermin, the horror of picked corpses of men and of camels. He was prepared for all that. He had been prepared for Alexandria, for Cairo.

That was the trouble. Here he was, a man on the greatest adventure of his life; and his father was with him.

He loved his father, of course. But other people made their way on their own, or with friends their own age, not with little girls and old men. He might not have minded had they gone straight from the Nile to the Holy Land, where you were herded about by the Muslims, and no one had any initiative. But outside the Holy Land, his father – it was now clear – was always going to take command. And even more so on this expedition.

Not many pilgrims came this way, and a lot of them died. The Sinai peninsula was a wilderness. It was where Moses did all his wandering, and heard the voice of the Lord coming out of the Bush that burned but was not consumed, and received the Tablets of the Law from the top of Mount Sinai. Naturally, Christian hermits had been drawn to the site; had come to live by the score in huts and caves until, in the fifth century after Christ, the Emperor Justinian of the Eastern Christian Church had had a fortified monastery built at the Bush. And after the body of St Catherine had been carried by angels from Alexandria into the mountains, the monks had found it and taken it into their church.

The monastery was still there, alone in the wilderness; a vestigial fortified city, containing the smallest and richest independent
church in the world, protected by all those to whom it was useful: the Western Church of Rome, the Eastern Church, Greek descendant of Byzantium, and the authority of Mohammed, as expressed through the imams of the Sultan of Cairo. It had a mosque inside, as well as St Catherine.

Jan Adorne did not know why his father proposed going there. It was not for the sake of Katelijne – he had not offered to take her, originally. Of course he himself was devout. There were Crusaders and Knights of St John in his ancestry; the family had always been concerned with the Levant; their private church reproduced the Holy Sepulchre. He came to gain merit, and from piety.

He came also, Jan took for granted, to settle some matters of trade and to exchange information, not necessarily on his own behalf, with other lords and informants. The Duke of Milan and the Duke of Burgundy had each, in the past, sponsored the tour of a noble pilgrim whose duty was not simply to report on the marvels of travel. It was possible that his own grandfather and great-uncle had combined patriotism with pilgrimage. It was remotely possible that James, Lord Hamilton had made his tour of the sainted shrines for the same purpose, and that Father was performing the identical office for the present Scots King. A waste of time, in Jan Adorne’s view. He had a low opinion, at the moment, of Scotland.

All right, the Adornes were great men: Doges, ducal Receivers; their homes used by princes. Everyone knew Anselm Adorne was pernickety:
para tutum
was the family motto. He had been a kind enough father, and generous. He was used to organising. He was not accustomed to being crossed. When, as became clear, stout Reyphin, however jolly a drinking companion, couldn’t hold his wine or his water or keep his head in an emergency, his father had gritted his teeth and given him the clerking to do.

When, as he might have expected, he grew thoroughly sick of long-faced Kinloch and his complaints and his sermons, he had set him to compile a Flemish-Arabic dictionary to supplement the one they already had (which had included, before his father had vandalised it, the words ‘Woman, will you sleep with me?’ in thirteen dialects). When Lambert and Jan himself became too noisy, his father became at first sardonic and then, as his temper worsened, issued penalties.