The Unicorn Hunt (105 page)

‘No,’ she said.

‘Or walk away?’

‘I am fresher than you are. I am not offering you my bed or my sympathy,’ Gelis said. ‘Only the opportunity to recover so that you can do what I want you to do.’

‘And after that?’ Nicholas said. He merely wished to hear what she would say.

‘According to my information, you did not keep your part of the bargain,’ she said. ‘The child is still mine.’

He wondered what made her think that. Being the devil, he was equipped with a dagger. It was a real one. It occurred to him that he wouldn’t mind if David de Salmeton were in Gelis’s house.

In fact he was not. The rooms he climbed to were empty. She went to fetch him some wine, and he pulled off his hat and the mask, and pushed back the cowl. His hair clung wet round his neck. He let his lids close, because it was quiet and he felt rather ill, and he knew that whatever occurred, for a while he was perfectly safe.

Down below in the alley, a page in a moretta mask and striped hose occupied the grand doorway he had just left and began, absently, to play with a jew’s trump.

Chapter 49

G
REGORIO SAID, ‘THERE’S
going to be fog. We’ll never find them. We ought to go back to the Casa.’ They had been back twice already, in case Margot had sent a message or come.

It was an hour to sunset and mist, like white smoke, had already drifted in from the sea and was filling the Piazzetta, so that the stalls of the butchers and the salami-sellers started to vanish, and the Doge’s Palace dimmed, arch by arch. The haze searched through the Piazza until only the bell-tower soared clear, a finger of rose against the fading Basilica. The final wan rays of the sun lit the Lion of St Mark, and the angels’ wings, and rested on the dull gold below, and then were extinguished.

Tobie said, ‘I think the crowds are causing the trouble. No one can move. And Nicholas can’t fine tune unless he has peace. I hope to God that girl keeps her head.’

The latter part of the pronouncement represented his doubts about Gelis. The first was, as ever, to keep Gregorio calm.

What Tobie could not understand, himself, was how the first, violent intimation had managed to penetrate to Nicholas through crowds just as great. It had seemed to come, he remembered, most clearly from Gelis; and had registered, perhaps, the height of her despair.

He had found it hard, himself, to keep his equanimity in this harsh, brilliant atmosphere of festival, sliding now, as the light waned, towards something darker, less innocent. Now the prostitutes were coming out in greater numbers, men as women, women as men; nursemaids with broad shoulders and thick calves pushing carts loaded with full-grown, lumbering babies, drooling, chanting, clawing at skirts with both hands as they passed. Every dark archway and porch seemed to be filling with rustling figures.

The real children had gone; or he thought so until, his breath caught in his throat, he saw an imploring masked figure before him, a limp child in her arms, its golden hair lifelessly drifting.

Tobie blundered towards her: she turned. He saw that the mask was two-faced; the figure that of a man; and the child in its grasp an effigy fixed to the stuff of his costume. Sickened, Tobie had hurried past.

He got Gregorio to agree to go back to the Casa, and to meet him later at the Rialto. Their boat would be there. He counted on Nicholas to remember that, if all else failed.

Nicholas woke up in darkness, suddenly. He had been asleep in a chair whose high back was comfortably padded, and which faced a small window whose panes glimmered white. He rose abruptly.

A voice said, ‘The mist came down, but it is still very crowded.’

Gelis. He could make out the outline of a bed, and then her shape, lying watching him. He wondered how visible he had been against the light, and if she had or had not guessed what wakened him. He said, ‘Do you have any particular resources for casual visitors?’

There was a stand of candles by the bed. She struck tinder and started to light them. Her fingers were steady. Without moving, he saw that his dagger had gone. She said, ‘Through that door. There is no other way out: you will have to come back here.’

She had been watching him, then. He departed in any case, and found her standing when he came back, combing and pinning her hair. The line of her body had not changed. She said, ‘It shook you awake. A real sign this time. So where did it come from?’

He walked into the room and stood looking at her. Behind his back was the other door which led outwards. He said, ‘Somewhere in Venice. This time, that is all I can tell you.’

She finished what she was doing and sat down. She had regained all her composure. She said, ‘You mean that is all you will tell me. I offended you. I remember.’

‘In what way?’ he said. He stood, no less at ease, his back to the door. ‘My various mishaps in Cairo were not your doing. You even sent me your ring. As for Mount Sinai – I have to thank you, I gather, for rescuing me. That is, Father Ludovico did that, but you and he, I now see, are interchangeable.’

He lifted his brows. She said, ‘He would never have forgiven me if you had died.’

Her voice was calm. The pulse that had wakened him beat. He could find the child. It didn’t matter, now, what she said, except
that the calmness in itself was an affront. He said, ‘Remind me. In Africa, when you thought Father Godscalc and I were both lost, did you feel nothing?’

There was a little silence. Then she said, ‘Recently, you had cause to think me dead. I felt what you felt.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Certainly, it was annoying. All those plans gone to waste. Why did you go to wait for me at St Catherine’s? There was no gold. Or perhaps you didn’t know that?’

‘Does it make any difference?’ she said. ‘I wanted to see what you would do. So did the Patriarch. And he didn’t want you on Cyprus too early. On the other hand, I didn’t mind when you went. Did you go to Katelina’s tomb? I hope you did that much, at least.’

Your sister was a sweet lover, and urgent as you are, and wilful as you are, but never, never …

Nicholas said, ‘Shall I please you? For whatever rage, whatever hatred you feel against Katelina or me, you obtained revenge in full measure on Cyprus. Nothing would have taken me there but the hope of my son, and you and Father Ludovico between you saw that I had it. Yes, I prayed in the Cathedral. Yes, I left the Cathedral and went to the Franciscans’, and yes, I found there what you left for me. You are avenged. But in return, you cannot expect me to lead you to the child. And possessing the child, I shall need no others.’

She had grown very pale. She said, ‘That will suit the Greek.’ It sounded sardonic.

‘The Greek?’ he said, but she didn’t reply, shaking her head with impatience.

Then she said, ‘I suppose, then, I am pleased, to a degree. Better pleased than the Patriarch, who hoped to see you face East. We are not, perhaps, as interchangeable as you think. He may even expect us to part, honour satisfied.’

‘
Honour!
’ Nicholas said.

She jumped to her feet. ‘A meaningless word, isn’t it, between you and me? I use the same tricks that you do. We both cheat. I believed, finally, that Katelina came to you, and that you were kind to her, and that it was her own will to marry Simon and claim your child as his. I knew what she was like. But it wasn’t like that, was it?’

Because of the fog, it was very quiet. Or perhaps it was quiet for other reasons. His heart beat, and the other pulse, and he felt shaken again between the two, as he had, looking down on the gold. He said, ‘It
was
like that.’

‘Not under the waterfall,’ she said. And as he did not answer, she went on. ‘Your words in Africa. You were so amused: had you forgotten?
I took her under a waterfall, as I remember
.’

He had forgotten. It had been idiotic of him to say it. Gelis had desired him to make love to her, as he had to her sister. And eventually, it had happened. And yet –

He said, ‘How can it matter so much?’

She stared at him. Then she said, ‘How can I explain it? One might forgive a passing affair, with sad consequences. But to commit the act twice: to take the same woman, now a mother, now married, and make her your lover – that is not ignorance. Not on your part or hers.’

He stood, shaken by pressures and tried to think. He said, ‘There are different kinds of love, Gelis.’

‘I am eager to learn,’ Gelis said. ‘So what kind of love seduced the wife of Simon de St Pol? Was it guilt that made you try to kill him in Scotland? What kind of love made you marry a courtesan and turn your back on Katelina? And what kind of love did she have, that she died in Famagusta when there was no need for her to have gone there at all? Did you never ask yourself that?’

She was not composed now. Her eyes shone as if full of tears, and her lips set hard as she ended. He felt suddenly incapable of going on. He said, ‘I hardly need to. I’m sure you have all the answers. Just now, I think that is sufficient.’

He watched her collect herself. A tear had escaped. He watched it run over her cheekbone and down to her lips. She said, ‘You don’t want to know, do you? You really don’t want to know. I wonder what instinct you are going by, and what you will do when the day comes when you are forced to hear it all, Nicholas. But not today, you are right.’

He prepared to move. As if she knew it, she spoke again. ‘Shall I tell you something else? Your charming, untroubled sleep at this juncture confirmed another idea of mine. You have some fears for the child, but not many. I think you know who took him. Should I be right?’

Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t know he was alive. I do now. I don’t know who has him.’ If he had been overcome by something other than sleep, he didn’t want her especially to know. It became important to leave before she began thinking of Margot. Turning at last, he jerked the door open.

Three men were standing outside. ‘My bodyguard,’ Gelis observed. ‘I thought your brains were going to revive some time. Now you know where to go, I really should prefer not to be left behind. Shall we leave?’

It was difficult to do anything else. He found he did not really care. He hadn’t been wrong. Something was going to succeed. And, of course, he was going to mislead them.

Unfortunately, she grasped his stick and threw it away, so that he was forced to resort to the flashing, eloquent whistle, which began to shudder as soon as he touched it. By then they had replaced his mask by a plain one. Gelis, too, had altered her cloak and her hood. This time, whatever he found, she wanted no witnesses. It should have troubled him. Instead the whistle throbbed, and his sense of elation kept growing even when the three soldiers manhandled him downstairs, and the crowds pressed about his senses again.

An hour before midnight, the mist dissolved to a haze and St Mark, had he looked down from his pickled pork, would have seen that his Republic’s prince, elders, and priests were assembling outside the Basilica in his Piazza; that the stages and scaffolding had all gone, and that the Carnival, in a last blaze of glory, was withdrawing its revellers to the tall wooden bridge at the Rialto.

Singing, eating, drinking, embracing, merry-makers and artists alike crowded on the streamer-hung bridge and occupied either bank of the Grand Canal, thick and lively as lobsters. The water was covered with gondolas, glowing like insects in amber, upon which lounged the nobility, the effigies whose beringed white-gloved hands were decked with real diamonds; whose extravagant headdresses and masks had been manufactured by goldsmiths.

The boats were carved and gilded and mounded with ivy and flowers. Dishes gleamed under candlelit awnings while servants stepped up and down, and musicians competed. The flotilla swayed, awaiting the signal to sail.

In the first rank was the beautiful twelve-oar
bissona
of the Banco di Niccolò, with its unicorn crest. To it, one by one through the evening, had come everyone but its master. Julius, exalted, dragging Cristoffels, who had been reluctant to leave. John le Grant, subdued, with Father Moriz. Tobie, bringing with him Gregorio, induced to walk the few steps from the Ca’ Niccolò by a combination of guarantees and assurances. The sail in procession down the Canal to the Basin would only take half an hour. Less, for everyone to be in position by midnight. And Nicholas would come to the boat.

So far he had not. Others were there, however, who could be recognised – by their coats of arms, by the liveries of their oarsmen and servants.

To the right, the flag of Corner and the lion banner of Lusignan stirred over the lantern-hung vessel of Marco Corner, his wife and his daughter Catherine, Queen Consort of Cyprus; and scent and music floated across from its cabin. The Canal was not very broad, and there was only one darkened boat between the gondola of the Queen and that of the Banco di Niccolò. Tobie, gazing across it, glimpsed Zacco’s stout little bride, and two exotic figures he thought might be the princesses of Naxos.

There was a third, remarkable for its beauty, which twice came to the rail to survey the boats pressed flank to flank all about her. Black within its black cowl, her satin mask was edged with diamanté, and the parted, sensual lips were thickset with diamonds. Below one almond eye was sewn a single, sparkling tear. Over it all she bore a coronet of silver roses from which soared a spray of five black and white plumes. In time, she observed Tobie watching her, and vanished below.

No Nicholas. Behind the grand boats of ceremony, the flotilla of gondolas had lengthened, jostling seven, eight, nine abreast under the shadows of the Rialto and far beyond the curve of the Canal. Not all were occupied. Turning his back on Marco Corner and his neighbour, Tobie was met by the dazzle of lamps as the splendid boat on their other side roused to life and welcomed its owners. A moment later, the flag of the Knights of St John broke out aloft.

Tobie drew back to the shadows, and watched. The Knights’ guests were all there, as he hoped. Anselm Adorne, emerging smiling from the splendid deck-cabin to stand at talk with his hosts, surveying the gaiety on the banks and the bridge. And – he sighed – a glimpse of Katelijne, unmasked, in a red gown with a garland and veil to conceal her cropped hair. He perceived, lurking beside her, a bundle of cock’s feathers which he guessed, without difficulty, to be Jan Adorne. The youth seemed, from his movements, to be tipsy. Tobie was sorry, for a moment, for his father the Baron Cortachy, but the moment soon passed.