The Unicorn Hunt (75 page)

He made his decision. He put out the guttering candle, changed his creased clothes and, returning, summoned Achille while he began to write letters. One of these he sent by hand to Tobie. Before noon, Tobie had arrived and was announced. He was not alone. Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, had come also, with Katelijne his niece.

It was an example, there was no doubt, of Tobie’s authority, not his lack of it. He had not promised, in so many words, not to bring them. Both Adorne and the girl had been primed: he wore a look that was grave as well as friendly; she gazed at Nicholas with simple compassion but not with surprise. He knew how he looked. He had seen it reflected in the eyes of his servants, of Achille. Adorne, plainly dressed without any outward manifestation of his new honours, took his hand and said, ‘We have a reason for coming, otherwise we should not have intruded. Nicholas, we are so sorry. We pray for you, and for her.’

It looked almost genuine. He was a handsome man, fine-featured even when tired, and he sounded sincere. Katelijne also came forward and, seating herself, shoved back the veil she had worn for the streets. She said, ‘I’m sorry. Dr Tobias brought us.’ She paused and added, ‘You always said he had too many patients.’

It meant something. He suspected vaguely what it was. He said to Adorne – to the Baron Cortachy – ‘It was good of you to come. I trust your pilgrimage has fulfilled so far all you expected of it.’ His mind was far from clear. He did not want it clear.

Adorne said, ‘Our journey is of no matter. It is yours that concerns us. Nicholas, we hear you are leaving Alexandria?’

Tobie, without speaking, had carefully removed his straw hat and was mopping the shining bits of his scalp. His eyes, when he looked up, were round, blue and threatening.

Nicholas said, ‘Yes. I’m going to join John le Grant. My agent.’ He had sent for a merchant’s pass for Damietta. From Damietta, if you had money, you could disappear anywhere. You could disappear before that, if you had the right dress and spoke native Arabic and had the friendship of Abderrahman ibn Said, who happened to be going to Cairo.

Adorne said, ‘That was what I understood. It is what I plan to do too, but not for several weeks. Nicholas … I have a great favour to ask you. Would you take my niece and Dr Tobias with you? To Damietta?’

‘Now?’ Nicholas said.

Adorne smiled. For the sake of his niece, perhaps, there was only a hint of anxiety in his face. He said, ‘Of course, if she waited for me, she would have my interpreter. But Dr Tobias thinks she should seek treatment now. You have heard of Matariya, the place of the Garden of Balm and the Well of the Virgin? It is reached by sail up the Nile from Damietta. It means hiring a boat, and although Dr Tobias speaks well, his Arabic is not as fluent as yours. Would you help them?’

‘Or perhaps John might, if you can’t,’ Tobie said. His tone, like his gaze, was intimidating.

Tobie had guessed, of course, that John hadn’t stayed in Damietta. He had probably guessed that Nicholas planned to meet him in Cairo. He certainly suspected the discomfort and worse that Nicholas had prepared here for Adorne.

True to his code, Tobie had kept all this from Adorne but he was here, wordlessly staring, to intimate that there was a price for his silence. Katelijne was to leave Alexandria with Tobie before the unpleasantness began. And Nicholas was to accompany them.

Nicholas attempted, from the profligate store of his masks, to select one that was deprecating. He said, ‘You surely can manage without my help, or John’s.’

He had addressed the remark to Adorne. But Katelijne, as he ought to know, was never greatly interested in pretence. She said,
‘We were only being polite. You’d be better for a little while with Dr Tobias, and I’m willing to share him with you. I had a cousin who drank for six years when his father died.’

Adorne said, ‘Katelijne!’ Below his tan, he had flushed a little. Then he laughed.

Nicholas said, ‘That’s quite an analogy.’ His head swam and he sat down.

‘Not from sorrow: he found his father had two previous wives and a lot of legitimate sons. It was the shock. It will wear off.’

‘Kathi is an expert,’ said Tobie. ‘But it is true. We are travelling in the same direction; we would welcome your help. And perhaps you would welcome our company.’ He was glaring again.

Nicholas said, ‘In that case, what can I do but offer it gladly? Will Tobie make the arrangements?’

Adorne rose. ‘He will stay with you now. You have relieved my mind enormously. I hope perhaps in return you will draw some comfort from the arrangement. Although, God knows, the loss of a wife and a lover is something that no man can suffer lightly. I will not attempt to tell you what we feel for we, too, have lost our companions. Friend, I confide my niece to your care.’

Nicholas stood. He said something. Adorne left, and the girl, who looked over her shoulder, a tooth sunk in her lip. The door closed. Tobie said, ‘Sit down. Don’t bother saying it. I’m going off to pack, then I’ll come back to help you. In the meantime, take this. You’ll get a few hours of sleep, and then we’ll all get some good out of you. And I’ll look after that.’

He had picked up the jewel. Nicholas roused himself. He remarked, ‘A nut, a ring, a pebble – anything on a string would do just as well.’

‘Then get one,’ Tobie said. ‘But don’t get attached to it. It’s the mystique that does all the harm.’ His gaze dropped to the maps and the candle grease on them, but he said nothing further. He put some pills on the table and left.

Nicholas lifted a pill and examined it inconsequentially. He might take it. He had come to Egypt for a brief season, expecting to rouse some new game and lay a few snares for the old. He had time to fill in.

But although he was leaving Alexandria, this time it wasn’t the end of a stage, a phase completed, a milestone satisfactorily passed.

You couldn’t reach or pass milestones when the travellers had failed; when the journey had come to a halt.

Part III

Close Season:
THE EMPTY FIELD

Chapter 36

T
HE WAY TO
THE
Garden of Balm is by water, sailing blown by the wind between sweet-smelling shores rich with cane sugar and vineyards, date palms and orchards, floating not in a bath but a cradle, to the music the Nile makes.

Many months later, Nicholas came to recognise the drugs Tobie had given him. At the time, he was hazily aware of the long day and night ride to Damietta; the absence of any effort on Tobie’s part to find the departed John le Grant; and the relative ease with which Tobie produced sufficient ungrammatical Arabic to obtain a boat capable of sailing upriver.

The fiction that Nicholas intended to stay at Damietta seemed to have dissolved. The fact that he was on his way to Cairo appeared to be taken for granted. Since no one could now transmit the information to Adorne, he supposed it didn’t matter. The Garden of Balm being located at Matariya just short of Cairo, itself six days away, he assumed that he would part company there with the rest.

The days of the journey flowed past and were lost in much the same way that time, numbers, calculation sank from consciousness after his son – his son Henry – had tried to knife him to death. The presence of the girl Katelijne perhaps enhanced the illusion.

It all seemed remarkably simple. Tobie, the girl and their servants were dressed in the coarse robes of pilgrims; Nicholas, in a last flash of commonsense, as their dragoman, in the Arab clothes he had worn in Alexandria. He had not shaved since they left. He was not hungry, but the girl had brought baskets of delicacies: figs and melons, grapes and dates, and Tobie bartered for rice and plump quails, eggs and fish on the way. It was like the Joliba, except that Bel was not there.

The consonances were perpetually soothing. The honey-smell of bubbling sugar swam over the water so that he thought they were passing Episkopi, and he was charmed to notice sea-lizards stir by the shore, disturbed by the boatmen’s small tapping drums. On the Gambia, they rapped the wood of their boats with their oars. Gelis had done it for hours until she was exhausted. He wondered, drowsily, if there would be any orgies. Katelijne said, ‘What are you smiling about?’

He smiled back but did not, then, reply. On the shore were camels, buffalo, water-wheels. Because the water was low, the boat kept in mid-stream: once they were stuck on a shoal, and he wakened to find they were all being compelled to slide overboard and wade through the water. Katelijne was supporting his arm. He said, ‘What are you holding over your head?’

‘You’ve wakened!’ she said. She had become very brown, except over her chin where the veil went.

He said, ‘Well, it seems to be daylight. It’s an ’ud.’

‘I told you he’d know it,’ said Tobie. ‘The prince of enchantment. She wants to teach herself, but she didn’t want to disturb you.’

Then he looked about him: at the boat, at the river, at Tobie, and said, ‘What has happened?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tobie. ‘What you needed to happen. There is Matariya. You can’t go to Cairo without calling there. So you might as well come.’

It wasn’t quite true that he had no other means of getting to Cairo, but he was well enough pleased to remain. Tobie, he realised, had withdrawn whatever treatment he had been receiving. As the hours passed, Nicholas de Fleury came to himself.

He had thought, once, to find truth in the desert, in that world of infinite space, of stark and painful simplicity that leads the mind and soul inwards.

He had failed in that, and had found the failure terrible. Now, brought here by others, he was a convalescent in a different place. The scented gardens of Matariya – the airy pavilions, the profusion of sweet spring water sparkling in the hot sun, brimming in the wide, shady hall with its painted arcades where flowers and swimmers floated together – these healed not through the mind, but through the senses. Truth had been withheld, but he had been deemed worthy of comfort.

The gardens belonged to the Sultan. Its custodians were well accustomed to the pilgrims who came to drink at the white marble
basin from the well-spring touched into being by the Holy Family, fleeing from Herod. The distressed of all races came to the baths for relief. And in the innermost garden, the garden most jealously guarded, grew the vine-like balsam plants which the Queen of Sheba, it was said, had brought and given to Solomon. Their oils, envied by kings from their anointing to their entombment, were prepared in the Sultan’s own palace at Cairo and became gifts of diplomacy, or were sold in their ivory phials to the rich. Here, the breaking blossom soaked the air with its scent; and hair, skin, clothes were perfumed for nothing; for love.

Katelijne bathed every day. He did not see her, nor wanted to. It was far from the Timbuktu-Koy’s palace, and the innocence of Umar’s wife Zuhra and the courage – or he had then thought it courage – of Gelis. Pictures entered his mind, now and then, of these moments which he had long driven out. They did not disturb him, or not in a way he was yet aware of. They fed a softer puzzlement that was now taking its place beside the anger and the misery. The haunting sense of bewilderment would, he supposed, never leave.

To his surprise, he did not have much time to think. Tobie came with him when he swam, and challenged him to fierce races which upset the other bathers and did nothing to reduce the endearing slight pot of Tobie’s stomach. Then, girdled into damp robes, they would rejoin Kathi in their pavilion, with its open terrace full of fluttering birds. She was taming a crested bird with barred wings called an upapa. She was also making friends, in a determined way, with the water-wheel oxen. She was always doing something.

They spoke Arabic a lot, because he was supposed to be their interpreter, and they both wanted to learn. Sometimes, when Tobie and the girl were together, he would hear them going over their lessons. It amused him to have Tobie, in this at least, as his pupil. It was he who suggested that the girl might also like to extend her Greek. It helped restore his own fluency. He was not sure if he was going to need it. Whatever plan he had conceived now seemed to have lost much of its point. If there was gold in Sinai, John could fetch it.

For the rest, the daylight hours passed, all of them filled; all of them marked by the tread of the oxen and the creak and splash of the wheels, turning, turning, up-ending the cycle of water-jars to fill the veins, the canals that watered the balm-garden. Just as distantly on the Nile the river was beginning to rise, a foot every day as the sweet, life-giving water, sent by God, moved into Egypt on its sacred, annual journey. The blessings of water, which could give, and take away.

Nicholas had never played the ’ud, the little lute she’d saved from the water, but he had seen it done, and he knew how the five courses should be tuned. He sat adjusting them before Tobie’s astonished gaze, announcing each one as it was done. By the time he got to the third, Tobie said, ‘How do you know that’s a D?’

‘He carries keys in his head,’ the girl said. ‘Didn’t you know?’ And to him, ‘Don’t you wish Whistle Willie were here?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t want him interfering: I want to set a Koranic chant in antiphony with a Gregorian one, and add in some tritones. Who would martyr us first?’

‘There are two wheels in the garden,’ said Kathi. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s a salamiyya. I bought it from a man at the baths. You blow into it.’

‘You surprise me,’ said Kathi. ‘Now tell me you don’t have a drum.’ She turned to Tobie. ‘He had to leave Scotland because of the way he beat drums. Did you have them in Africa?’

The first direct question. Until later, he didn’t notice it. He said, ‘I’ve seen them used for sending messages. I could make one if you could saw me a log. We shouldn’t be popular. It can speak for forty miles from a river.’

‘You could send a message to John,’ said Tobie blandly.

Nicholas said, ‘I could send one to you, if I thought you’d understand it. What’s all that?’ Within half a day, the girl had become surrounded by litter.