Caprice and Rondo (47 page)

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘It does,’ Anna said. ‘He wrote it for you, and it’s gone.’

‘It really wasn’t a very good poem,’ Nicholas said. ‘But it hasn’t gone.’ And smiling a little, he repeated it.

At the end, she went to find the little wine they had left, and poured him some. Then she returned to her cushion and sat. ‘You have a good memory. It is not a bad poem, for a child. Would you let me set it to music?’

He looked at her in profound astonishment. A little thought told him
that she was not offering a personal service: composition could be no less alien to her than any other branch of the art: he had never seen a musical instrument in Julius’s house. But the German states were full of ready-made folk tunes and glib Court composers: she would have her pick, he realised, of friends. Presumably she would send it by courier. He said, ‘I don’t know. You heard it. The beat is erratic, to say the least.’

‘There is paper. Write it all out,’ Anna said. ‘Then sleep. Jodi will know you are thinking of him.’

She hesitated, then left with a smile. Bel would have patted his shoulder. Kathi would have stayed and insisted on helping him. Gelis … He could not imagine Gelis making a gesture of comfort or one — he tried not to remember the Play — that was not immediately cancelled. The sense of ancient desolation returned, and he had to concentrate to dispel it. He wondered, with harsh amusement, what Benecke would have made of him now — a grown man alone, wanting sympathy. He missed the masculine rivalry. He missed the cold in the sweet, sticky heat of this land. He missed the life he had nearly chosen, as Colà. But before he threw himself on his bed he did take his pen and write out the verses his small son had sent him, to be ready for Anna next morning. Then, against all expectations, he slept.

T
HEY
REACHED
C
AFFA
two hours after midday, when men of sense take to their beds in high summer, and even the din of the harbour is stilled. The Genoese wall with its towers encircled the high ground of the city, ending with a fort at the sea on each side. It was to be expected that the portal they approached should be manned at its upper windows, and that men in half-armour awaited them. Caffa was a fief of the Crim Tartar khanate, and a town as large and as rich as Seville. Outside its confines were ferocious hillmen, opportunist nomads and professional robbers. Far outside were the lands of the Turk. And crowded inside were the houses, warehouses and churches, the mosques and cathedrals, the markets, stables and orchards of close to a hundred thousand inhabitants of every colour and faith: Armenian and Tartar, Russian and Circassian and Georgian, Polish and Lithuanian, Moldavian and Gothian, Venetian and Genoese. The citadels, the arsenals and the prisons were Genoese.

Anna had sent word ahead of their coming: openly to the Protectors of the Bank of St George who represented Genoa, and to the Patriarch with more circumspection. Their arrival was therefore expected. The soldiers of the guardhouse were sluggish but civil, glancing at her letters and making cursory examination of their baggage, which included samples but no goods to sell. Then they were bidden to wait, while a detail was prepared to take them to the temporary shelter of the Franciscan
monastery. They now required not only a house, but servants and protection, for they had turned off their escort that morning with a settlement lavish enough to earn Nicholas some strong-smelling, matted embraces: he had proved a very bad gambler. Petru had received his last payment too, and although never given to hilarity, had allowed his gloom (encouraged by Nicholas) to lighten a trifle. Wishing to find new employment, he rode into the city ahead of his former employers, who were now reduced to a party of eight: the German lady, her maid, her Mameluke, and the five soldiers of the guard who presently joined them, yawning and with their straps half undone. They rode through the vault of the gate, the cart rumbling, and out into the sunlight of Caffa.

They were out of sight of the fortification when they were attacked. The four soldiers who rode two on each side of the packmules and wagon did not even notice at first, and their leader, deep in charmed conversation with the beautiful Contessa, was almost as slow to observe the carts drawn across the narrow road down which they were pacing, between two high walls broken only by the frontage of an old wooden house just ahead. Then, as the leader shouted and turned to his fellows, they saw that the same thing had happened in their rear. Their way was cut off, and from before and behind, twenty men were running towards them, shouting and brandishing staves. And curiously, there was no one but themselves to see them, for the road was empty but for a single rider who had left just before them, and who now flung himself from his horse and rushed to the one silent house, where he could be seen hammering frantically on a door. The door opened, and closed quickly behind him. Petru was safe.

The soldiers were armed with short swords, and carried maces and whips. There were only five of them, but there was a full body of troops in the garrison. The leader raised a trumpet to summon them, and had it struck from his face by a stone. The Mameluke, far from helping, jumped from his horse and began to haul the ladies out of their saddles, resisting all efforts to stop him. He was a very big man. The Genoese leader, holding his face, yelled at the fellow: ‘Get the ladies into that house for your lives! Leave the wagon! Let the bastards do what they like with your merchandise!’

‘That sounds like sense,’ said Anna in German. Her cloak and hat gone, she was in the grip of Nicholas, who was successfully propelling her towards her own wagon. She saw he had a grasp of Brygidy also. She heard him swearing, with some presence of mind, in the same language.

‘It’s you they want, not your spoons,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s a trap. The house belongs to the ambushers. Get into the wagon.’

‘Me?’ Anna said. She rose in the air and landed, hard, in the wagon. Brygidy also arrived, with a crash.

‘You,’ Nicholas said. He was lashing their horses and his own to the wagon. ‘Listen to the men at the barriers. They’re Russians.’ He made a grab for his bow.

‘Holy Mary!’ said Anna piously, and disappeared under the canopy.

‘And throw me a tinder-box,’ Nicholas added.

Afterwards, there was disagreement about what next happened. The ambushers, bearded men in tunics and trousers, raced up and encircled their victims but at first did nothing more than demand that the soldiers disarm and hand over the woman. When the soldiers refused, surrounding the little convoy with drawn swords, the leader of the ambushers, stepping forward, asked in a reasonable voice if they wanted to die, as they were five against twenty, and they couldn’t suppose their horses were immune to arrows? There followed some threats, which the soldiers appeared to understand, for one of them suddenly drew back his arm and threw a knife. There was a grating scream and a furious roar, followed by a squeal and a thud as the knife-thrower’s horse staggered and fell with a spear in its throat. The leading soldier yelled to the others. ‘That’s enough. Get the women across to that house and barricade it. Don’t let the Mameluke stop you. Where is he?’

No one replied, for just then the wooden house began to crackle and smoke at a place to one side of the door, where suddenly flames began to appear. A flare sailed through the sky, and another spot started to glow, then another. Shouting came from inside the house, and from outside, as the ambuscaders hurried towards it. Then the front barricade burst into flame and the smoke, rising into the shimmering sky, finally told the soldiers at the gate tower that something was wrong.

Bursting through the first barrier in their way, the men from the tower found themselves in a circle of fire within which a group of blistered, smoke-blackened Russians appeared to be trapped. They rounded them up, while the fire-drum hammered its warning. There was no sign of the German Contessa, or her servant, or her Mameluke. There was no sign, either, of her baggage-train. That, as it happened, had arrived already, seared and blackened, at the gates of the Franciscan monastery, where the Abbot, summoned at once, found a group of terrified animals and a lady in a still-smoking wagon whose driver, a bearded Egyptian, or perhaps Circassian, addressed him politely in French.

‘Lord, receive the peerless Gräfin Onna von Hanseyck,’ said the heathen humbly. ‘Esteemed friend of the lord Ludovico, prince of the Faithful, who, scattering joy, gifts and alms, will generously condescend to join us, I believe, almost at once, may Allah treasure him for his zeal.’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ said the Lady. ‘Father, may we come in?’

T
O
L
UDOVICO
DA
B
OLOGNA
, later, she said, ‘It was frightening at the time. Nicholas says that they wouldn’t have harmed me, only used me to bargain with. They haven’t much money, and they’re afraid the Genoese will ruin them over this claim for compensation unless I agree to give it up and go home. They come from the Russian states that Moscow claims sovereignty over, but Moscow changes its mind every week about whom it supports — Venice and the Golden Horde, or Genoa and the Crim Tartars. So they felt compelled to act for themselves.’

‘That is a fair assessment,’ said the Patriarch kindly. ‘But have no fear. They will be severely chastised for it.’

‘Will they?’ she said, rather pleased. They were sitting in a private room in the Abbot’s guest-quarters. The Patriarch, in appearance vaguely unwashed but perfectly vigorous, had made no apology whatever for having abandoned them on their way here. She said, ‘Nicholas believes it will adjust itself soon. Apparently the case is being affected by local politics.’

‘You could say that,’ the Patriarch said.

‘What local politics?’

‘What? Oh, the Tartar Governor for Caffa has died. The Tartars are divided over which of two men should replace him, and the Genoese are in two camps as well, being well bribed for their support by each party. You could say the Russians are caught in the middle.’

‘And me. I want their money,’ said Anna. She was smiling. ‘I hope Nicholas can get it for me. Will you wait for him? I wish I knew where he went.’

‘To beg off the Russians, I imagine,’ the Patriarch said. ‘Earn their gratitude. Get their complicity. He wouldn’t want you to be there. You don’t want to hear the names he’ll be calling you.’

‘In the cause of business,’ said Anna rather blankly.

‘Oh, yes. Mahir, King of the Monkeys. You know the Abbot thinks you are called Countess Onna?’

‘It was a mistake,’ Anna said. ‘Wasn’t it?’ She watched the Patriarch preparing to laugh, and held her tongue. She was naturally patient, and had had practice, with Julius.

N
ICHOLAS
ARRIVED
a good deal after that, and expressed no surprise at finding Anna retired, and the nuncio of the Pope and the Emperor Frederick still sitting at ease in the guest-parlour, the remains of a frumenty frosting his gown. Instead, he threw his satchel into a corner, poured and drank off some wine and, holding the half-empty cup, walked backwards and forwards, sipping occasionally. He looked like an actor conducting a mental rehearsal.

‘You are angry, I take it,’ said the Patriarch. ‘So sit down and tell me what you wish you had said. And make sure that door is closed. Mameluke stewards do not sit or drink in my presence. Nor do decent Christians, but you are never going to be that.’

Nicholas was angry, largely because it had been impossible to say what he had wanted to say. Since it was reasonable, indeed essential, that the Patriarch should know, Nicholas delivered a curt résumé. Guided by one of the monks, he had reported, on behalf of his mistress, at Constantine’s Tower, where the Genoese consul was interviewing the would-be kidnappers. He had seen some of them dragged away.

‘Well beaten, I imagine?’ had said the Patriarch dryly.

‘Naturally. But alive, so far as I could see. A former guide of ours, Petru, was among them.’

‘A spy?’

‘A sympathiser, at least, with the Russians. The soldiers had broken both his arms. Then I was questioned over the complaint about the furs, and the credentials of the Gräfin, and they brought in the agent, Sinbaldo di Manfredo, who had imported the furs, and finally hauled back the leader of the Russians …’

But he needed more wine while he considered that. The men who had tried to waylay Anna had not been a band of common thieves. He had the impression that they were not even permanent colleagues, although they lived in the same quarter. They were simply a group of small merchants and their servants; men who had contracted with a German-Polish company to buy a consignment of furs for them in Moscow. Then, when on their way to Caffa to deliver the goods, the pelts had been stolen and they were now being asked to refund their value.

The case had been stated fairly enough by Sinbaldo the agent and by himself, and had been endorsed by the prisoner, through his swollen mouth and broken teeth. His name was Dymitr, and he was Ruthenian, his family being that of the Wiśniowiecki, the lords of Cherry Village. Mishandling could not disguise his athleticism: the man was long-limbed and chestnut-bearded, with glowing black eyes spitting fire. At present, he looked the way the captain of the
San Matteo
had probably looked, when Paúeli had finished with him. The load of ermines and sables had gone the way of the ‘Last Judgement,’ with Tommaso sitting contrite in his pan. It remained to be seen whether Julius would have better luck than Adorne had had.

‘Who was the leader? Dymitr? And who else was there, besides the agent?’ the Patriarch asked.

The consul had been present, the sallow-faced man with the expensive clothes and superior manner: Antoniotto della Gabella. And another man, soft-voiced and lighter in colouring, who had said very little, but appeared to be Genoese too.

‘Oberto Squarciafico,’ the Patriarch said in a satisfied way. ‘One of the representatives of the Bank of St George. Indeed, the treasurer. Well, well, my boy — and you walked free, with an apology? You were lucky. The penalty for fire-raising is death.’