Caprice and Rondo (46 page)

The men, distant silhouettes round the fire, paid no attention: they had heard the scream, but believed it due to a snake. Petru had joined them. Brygidy seated herself some distance away. The air was heavy and feathered with insects; the soil coughed and creaked and breathed out the heat of the day.

Anna stood by his side. He got up and stood looking penitential. It was an attitude the other men were accustomed to, and they could not hear what was said. She remarked, ‘What do you usually say when that happens?’ Her light cloak and gown were the serviceable ones she kept for the evenings, but she had turned back her hood. Her expression, dimly revealed, was not so much resolute as resigned.

‘It depends on what happens next,’ Nicholas said, his voice tentative. He could not quite gauge her mood.

‘But you rather assumed that I wouldn’t put your eyes out,’ Anna said. She sat down, pointing to the blanket before her. He knelt, then sat carefully back. She said, ‘But it
was
careless, wasn’t it? Or was it deliberate?’

He could feel his lips twitch. ‘I got a bigger shock than you did, I think. No, it wasn’t deliberate, but these things happen when travelling, Anna. I could go on apologising, or even rhapsodising if you like, except that it’s best to forget it. I saw nothing. It didn’t happen.’

She had unexpectedly flushed. But she did nothing but remark, ‘Then it didn’t happen. You are right.’ She paused. ‘Nicholas?’

Her cloak, sliding a little, had bared the neck of her gown. The flush still coloured her throat. He said, ‘Tell me.’

The large eyes studied him. ‘I think I shall tell you,’ she said. ‘With your sins fresh upon you, perhaps you will be kind enough to forgive mine. I brought you here with a lie.’

The men’s voices murmured. Remotely, a horse neighed, and the croaking of frogs filled the distance like a flotilla of ducks, like the frogs in the wetlands below Mewe. Her body breathed under its cloak. Nicholas said, ‘How was that?’

‘Julius made up the story,’ she said, ‘that a client was dying, and his business needed our help. It wasn’t true. The business in need of help is ours, Nicholas. I had to make this journey, or it would fail.’

He let her talk, bemused by her beauty, roused by her hardihood as Julius must have been from the day that he met her. The story was not unexpected. Establishing a separate business had not been easy for Julius. The company at Cologne did not possess the resources of Venice or Bruges, and all Anna’s own money was sunk in investments. They had no liquid resources. They were living on loans: she had borrowed the gold to pay for her share of the
Fleury
. Julius had considered it safe; they had successfully extended their business, and had laid out money in ermines and sables which were to be brought south to Sinbaldo, their agent in Caffa, to be resold at dazzling profit. But Kazaks, outlaws, had waylaid and stolen the furs, and the consul at Caffa could only attempt to demand reparation if she or Julius appeared there in person.

‘Reparation?’ Nicholas had queried, speaking for the first time.

‘Don’t you remember the practice from Bruges? If one merchant fails to deliver, then the goods of his fellow nationals are impounded until the loss is made good.’

‘So all the fur traders in Caffa are in prison?’ Nicholas said. ‘You are going to be popular. Or no, I see. I am.’

‘You needn’t concern yourself with it,’ she said. ‘Or you might think you owe it to Julius. If Julius had been here, he would have forced them to repay.’

There were circles under her eyes. He said, ‘How did this happen, Anna? He is a lawyer. He should be able to run a business without incurring this sort of debt.’

‘But he always had you to advise him,’ she said. Her voice sounded tired. She said, ‘We are even in your debt for your ship.’

He said, ‘It isn’t my ship, it’s the Bank’s. So why not tell me before? Because you thought I wouldn’t come?’

‘Because I didn’t know if I could trust you,’ she said. There was a gleam in her eye. He saw it.

‘And now you can?’ He sent his voice up just a trifle. ‘And now you can, because I didn’t leap over and ravish you?’

‘Because of your expression,’ she said. ‘You looked
petrified
.’

‘Surely not,’ Nicholas said. He was prepared to say more — he expected to be required to say more — but she rose calmly then and excused herself, saying that he must be tired and that he should have time to decide what he wanted to do.

He knew what he wanted to do.

H
IS
HAIR
DRIPPING
, his mighty cassock soaked from the climb, Ludovico da Bologna stood in the heat outside the Genoese citadel gazing north: surveying the white, hazy curve of the great bay of Caffa, and the city which spread itself on its near slopes.

He was not interested in the view. He knew all about it. The first Bishop of Caffa had been a Franciscan monk. He himself had been here three times in nine years, and it was a week since he sailed into that harbour, wide and sound enough to shelter two hundred ships, lying calm in the lee of the mountains. What he was looking at, what he had come to look at, was a situation.

He had explained the situation now to five Heirs of St Peter and countless thickheaded rulers. Popes and merchants generally knew their geography: you couldn’t rule a world business without it, and the Middle Sea (to date) was the hub of the world. You had to explain to some princes that the Middle Sea was joined by the Straits of Constantinople to the Black Sea, and that within the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula
jutted south like a misshapen diamond, with the bight of Caffa below its east point. The Genoese had held Caffa and most of the Crimean seaports for centuries, hanging on to their fabulous trade and paying tribute to the heirs of Ghengis Khan, whose massed Mongol tribes claimed the steppes.

What created the situation, and kept altering it, was that the Mongol-Tartar overlordship was breaking up. The Golden Horde, once the first khanate of them all, still sat on the banks of the Volga and held its neighbours in thrall, while shaking the occasional fist over Caffa. But a separate horde, the horde of Crim Tartars had settled into the Black Sea Peninsula and, finding the pickings rich and the traders nervous but willing, had reached an accommodation which would make them all wealthy. The Peninsula was ruled from his inland stronghold by the Khan of the Tartars. The Genoese ports might have local officials, but were managed from Caffa by a committee of Genoese bankers and a Tartar Tudun, a Governor picked by themselves and the Khan. By paying their taxes, Christians bought tolerance in a Muslim community: uneasy bedfellows, held together by the golden cord of trade. And laid upon them and dreaded by all, the considering eye of the Sultan of Turkey, who leaned now and then from his palace in Constantinople to remind the Khan of the Crim Tartars that Allah was Lord over them both, and that security did not come cheap.

These were serious matters: their significance to the world was surely plain. But by the time Ludovico da Bologna had arrived so far in his account, the ruler’s eyes would have flickered; his foot found occasion to tap; his throat subjected to clearing in order to break in and thank him. And the rest of the tale would be consigned to the ears of the princely advisers. All envoys suffered from lack of understanding, even those of the Pope. It gave rise, within the breed, to a strange and cynical friendship, even among those of wholly opposite camps. It gave rise also, of course, to venality.

Nicholas de Fleury had not arrived yet, but was on his way, so it seemed, dressed as a Mameluke. When Providence had found him a ship at Bielogrod, the Patriarch had considered it to be his duty to leave, not to wait. He had no positive proof that de Fleury was coming. If he had indeed set out with the woman, they possessed enough brains between them to manage. And so it had proved. The Patriarch held a coded message in his purse, telling him how they were coming, and asking his help to find them a house in the Christian quarter of Caffa. He had just arranged it with the Genoese consul, who knew about Straube’s client with the missing consignment of furs. He’d had the same experience on one occasion himself. It was time the Muscovites were given a lesson. There had been a time, too, when Ludovico da Bologna had despised
the machinations of trade. Latterly he had been forced to recognise, with angry reluctance, that the growing exchange of commodities was a weapon he could not afford to neglect. Like it or not, trade was a network that bound peoples together. Even while rulers fought, their merchants were agreeing in corners. Whether from good motives or bad, from personal greed, from a distaste for war and a benevolent wish for general prosperity or (as sordid a reason as any) for the sheer pleasure of intellectual exercise, nations of different faiths helped one another in the name of a flourishing commerce. And so he had renewed his interest in Nicholas, for the boy, half his age, was significant in his own field, and able to create from thin air, were he asked, a business opportunity which would bring Archimandrites and cannibals round the same table. And now that de Fleury had come, the Patriarch did not think he would go back. Not with that woman there.

His thoughts had travelled so far when a rattling made itself heard and he turned to see some of the Sicilian mercenaries run from the fort to the stables. The consul emerged strolling behind, adjusting his sword while a page came with his cuirass and helm. ‘Trouble?’ said Father Ludovico.

Antoniotto della Gabella looked down his long, sun-bronzed nose. ‘Nothing that a whipping won’t cure. Some mannerless louts from the north are mobbing an incoming caravan. The gatehouse guard have it in hand. Tonight at the Bishop’s?’

‘Tonight at the Bishop’s,’ the Patriarch agreed, to his back. He unhitched his mule and, straddling it, gave it a kick. He thought he knew whose the caravan was, and even who the assailants might be. His crucifix bucked as he rode and, lifting his voice, he banged out psalms at the heretic skies until fragmented Allahs fell down, and the ruts of the road filled with peeled ululations.

Chapter 17

I
F
THERE
WAS
a reward for good conduct, Nicholas received it then, on the last stretch of the journey to Caffa. There were several reasons. The pretence at wealth, for sure, had not been of Anna’s choosing, and she was relieved at its end. Also, she was reassured, in a curious way, by his handling of the recent embarrassment. The easy rapport between them had returned. He had also taken care to put matters right with her servant Brygidy, going to find her the day after the mishap, as soon as they made camp.

He did not make a long speech, merely apologised for the fright he had given her, and assured her that there would be no repetition. She already realised, he thought, that it was accidental, and now said as much, briefly. He had caught her at work: kneeling beside a small stream with soap and a pile of Anna’s fine linen. It was not, to be fair, a seemly place for a man, and he apologised a second time, later. Cornered, however, he would have had to confess to a startled fascination at his first glimpse of those thin embroidered chemises, reeking of horse, soiled exactly like his by the grime of travel and the all-pervasive soot from the cooking. Her undergarments were too fine for this trip, yet she had brought them, and worn them. Now he could imagine, as Julius could, the bridal lawns beneath the plain gowns. As to what would be revealed, drawing asunder the lawn, he had no need to imagine: he knew. But not, of course, as Julius did.

On their last night before Caffa, when it seemed they were safe, she asked him what he would have done if Turks had captured them, or someone who knew him of old.

They were in the forepart of her tent, under cover, for in public they maintained the fiction of harsh mistress and blundering dragoman. He had been striving, ever since Bielogrod, to improve his fluency in the tongue of the Tartars. Turkish coloured most of the languages round the Black Sea, including the Turcoman he had learned during and after his last visit here, which had been concerned with the south coast of the
Euxine. She knew about that. She also knew about his other disguise, when he and Tobie had met Sultan Mehmet during his war against Trebizond. ‘But he wouldn’t know me again,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was thirteen years ago. Tobie was a dumb camel doctor, and I was his assistant. And it was a different Grand Vizier.’

He waited, prepared to be angry with Julius, but Julius seemed to have kept some of that incident at least to himself. Anna only said, ‘Dr Tobias? Why dumb?’

‘Because he didn’t know the language,’ Nicholas said. ‘We filled his mouth with raw liver and pretended his tongue was cut out. We had to talk to each other by sign. It wasn’t funny.’

‘I think it must have been,’ Anna said, spluttering a little. Then she said, ‘What? Is something wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said, a little blankly. He pulled himself together. ‘No, of course there isn’t. But perhaps we should rest. It will be a long day tomorrow.’

A month ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Now she said, ‘I shall go if you tell me what’s wrong. What happened in Trebizond? Or has something happened now? Nicholas, are you divining?’

Nicholas stared at her without answering. He didn’t need to divine. He hadn’t divined since the fiasco at Thorn. It was partly because he was trying to forget, and partly because he knew that if bad news were to come, it would come to him direct, rather like this, but much worse. Eventually he shook his head and said, ‘It was the pickled oysters, very likely.’

The dense blue eyes searched his. ‘A premonition? What? Has something happened to Gelis? Or to Jodi? Or is Kathi suffering because of the child? You aren’t divining, but perhaps you ought to be. Where is your pendulum?’

He schooled his breath, and his pulse. ‘Nothing has happened to Gelis or Jodi. It was something remote: a chance echo, perhaps a mistake. Don’t worry. I’m going to bed.’

She rose. ‘I don’t quite believe you. I’m going to bring you something to drink. And while we speak of it, I should like to apologise. I talked of Jodi in Thorn, and distressed you. I saw the burned letter.’