The Unicorn Hunt (89 page)

She turned along to the neighbouring dormitory and scratched at the door. Her uncle’s voice spoke from inside. He was alone, lying hollow-cheeked and calm on his pillows. ‘I am better,’ he said. ‘They are in the Latin church. You and I will go there tomorrow.’ She kissed him, crying from simple happiness.

Because she was young, they let her wander. Jan had given her the boy’s name of Stephen, which had something to do with Ekaterina. She couldn’t pretend to be Greek, but she had enough of the tongue to speak, shyly, to the monks she met, and was ashamed when, taking her for a boy, they made her a friend.

The Rule of St Basil enjoined poverty. They had no suppers of duck and red wine, no flattering habits of luxurious fabrics, no music, no dancing, no opportunities to entertain the great of the land, or exchange with well-bred avidity the gossip of court. Their robes were patched and any shade, coarse as sacking. They ate once a day, alone in their cells after evening prayers. Eschewing meat, their fare consisted of rice and peas, soup from their own lentils, with the fruit from their orchards, and water from their two deep, sweet wells. They pressed their grapes and their olives and sold them, keeping only the oil for their lamps, and a little wine for half a glass on a feast day. The grain for their bread came, once a year, across the desert from Cairo.

They worked, priest and monk, from the Abbot himself down to the least of them. They had servants – the Bedouin who prayed in the mosque – but they themselves ordered everything. She stopped by the well Moses used and helped to fetch two buckets of water: one was holed, and she carried it to someone’s bench to be mended. She sat under a tattered awning cleaning lamps, and went down to the tables where they were sieving grit out of grain, and further down to the bakehouse, where they were loading loaf-pats on to racks and rolling dough into batons. A corn-mill grumbled, and someone was washing bread-stamps. When they were used, the Burning Bush would decorate every crust.

The oven was the biggest she’d ever seen, and they timed the batches by chanting. She mumbled Hail Marys through a generous dole of figs and soft bread, and produced a solo for biscuits. She peeped into chapels and found a scriptorium, full of ferocious
smells, where two monks were painting and one was mixing colours. She stayed a long time, with her tongue out.

She went to look at her uncle, and found him tucked on a wooden bench outside his room, with a glass of milk and a platter empty but for some egg crumbs. He was asleep. Inside, Dr Tobias was also asleep, stretched on a mattress with his mouth open.

She went out to the gardens, and found John there, supervising a correction to one of the water-wheels. Caterina delle Ruote, patroness of wheelwrights and mechanics. There were vegetable beds and orchards and pasture, each section rooted in earth brought by camel-trains, and watered from channels led from wells, and from cisterns filled by precipitous snow-streams. The fruit trees were in parturition of small, rotund apples and pears, plums and pomegranates, each tree demure in a circle of water. There were almonds, and olives, and a small, fine fruit she had seen pickled in Alexandria.

One of the brethren plucked one for her to eat. ‘You may never again taste it fresh, they have such a brief season. The Arab does not like to say, Never. He says, Tomorrow, when the apricots are here.’ He smiled, watching her pleasure. His Arabic was as fluent as Brother Lorenzo’s. Without Friar Lorenzo to deal with the Bedouin, they would never have reached here from Cairo.

She walked on, attended by flies. There were bees. She found a keeper lifting combs, his netted beard a-glitter with wings. There were donkeys and one or two cows. She fed the chickens.

She watched a man repairing a wall.

She addressed a caged songbird in Greek.

She explored the northern wall-walk from one shaky end to the other.

When the rings finished chiming for Nones, she extended her interest to empty mud cabins.

And found him.

He was writing. She had gone to the Library first, being sure of success for some reason, but had only found a place of crowded disorder and dust, which made her long to rearrange it.

Now she saw that he had been there, for there was a manuscript laid on the matting beside him; and he had a board on his knees with some paper on it. The ink and penbox before him were his own.

She said, ‘Jan’s going to need some of that. Paper for his terrible book.’ She smiled and disposed herself crosslegged on the dirt, the way M. de Fleury was sitting. He always looked right, as the Arabs did, although his feet weren’t bare as hers were. Hers were filthy.

He considered her. She reciprocated. She assumed he knew how he looked, and didn’t need to be told. The beard, dark at the tip and yellow next to his skin, drew his face into unaccustomed lines continued by the loose open fall of his upper robe. Underneath were scars and contusions and lice bites. She said, consumed with discovery, ‘It’s the robes and beards. We all look Byzantine. Look at you. Jesus Pantocrator.’

He looked down in a speculative way, then lifted and joined his third finger and thumb. There was a graze on his forefinger. He said, ‘I’ll admit it, provided you’ll have a look at Bacchos and Sergios on horseback. Sergios especially. What book is he writing?’ It came close, in a cursory manner, to the banter of the black knight in Scotland.

She said carefully, ‘Jan? Uncle Anselm offered this trip on condition Jan writes an account of it all for King James. King James of Scotland. In Latin.’

‘That helps,’ said M. de Fleury. ‘Will it be actionable? Among those who can read it?’

‘You aren’t in it,’ she said. She drew a light breath. ‘It’s just a travel book, but it’s a strain, and Jan isn’t himself. And my uncle’s been very ill. And M. le Grant blames him for whatever happened in Cairo. I don’t think he should.’

‘You don’t?’ he said.

She shook her head, then stopped abruptly. The loss of her hair was still strange. She said, ‘He may take steps against you in Bruges. He didn’t harm you in Cairo. Although, I’m sorry, I see someone did.’ She didn’t ask what had happened. It would only risk reviving the grievance.

He said, ‘If he did, you did much to repair it. No one has a quarrel with you.’

She said, ‘But my uncle, and Jan, and the others?’

He still had his pen in his fingers and an air that wasn’t even impatience. He said, ‘My friends are very set in their prejudices but, you know, the confrontation won’t last very long. The man who first discovers the gold will leave promptly.’

She felt herself flush.

He said, ‘You wouldn’t be here if you had found it. You may tell your uncle that I haven’t found it either. Was there anything else?’

She said, ‘You wouldn’t be here but for my kite, and the parrot.’

His eyes were grey, his manner dry as ashes. ‘Of course. But the gold is mine, as it happens.’ After a moment he said, ‘You are tired. Ask Dr Tobias to give you something.’

She said, ‘Ask him to give you something. And my uncle. How can you come here, and think about gold?’

‘There is a good precedent,’ he said. Where the Golden Calf had been worshipped, there was an oratory down in the valley. The paper under his hand was a diagram, not a manuscript. And the paperweight lying upon it was a pebble, knotted into a cord.

She said, ‘There are twenty chapels with altar gold in them, and possible hiding places by the hundred. You will lose your mind, and not trace it. Talk to the Abbot. Talk to Brother Lorenzo. He comes from Crete. Tomorrow we’re going to pray in the church, and see the holy tomb and touch the relics. Then we climb Mount Sinai at night after Mass, and after dawn, we’re going on to the top of St Catherine’s. Will you come with us?’

‘Why?’ he said.

She unfolded her dirty feet and stood. She said, ‘Because you are a stupid man and so is my uncle, and I don’t want to see you smite one another from now till the Day of Resurrection. I can’t cure you. The Lord might.’

He gazed at her, or through her. ‘Then why not leave it to the two of us?’ he suggested. ‘Or theologically, is it a quorum?’

The Arabs arrived as he spoke, thundering up on their horses outside, thirty feet under the delivery gable, to get their dole of bread loaves lowered by windlass. It was why they left the Christians unmolested. She looked, hoping to see him startled, but he remained where he was.

He said, ‘The monks are generous. They send fruit and gums to the Sultan. The Emir of Tor is partial to Sinai water and grapes, and remits to Sinai a modicum of the Tor customs. The King of France has offered an annuity of two thousand ducats. A magnate of Crete has made a princely donation of twice that amount. The demon gold has its uses.’

‘I know what you are saying,’ she said. ‘But still, it is for the Convent. And some think that the purity and prayers of the Convent may balance the sins of the world. So, if you find the gold, what will you use it for?’

‘Trade,’ he said. ‘As your uncle would do. It is our métier. And you might say that, without it, there would be no world to save.’

When she turned to leave, he made no effort to keep her.

In fact, he remained where he was, rolling up the plans before the monks filtered back from their service. When Tobie came to see to the dressings, he was already standing bent under the ceiling, apparently prepared to make his way back to the guest-quarters.

‘We’ve put the girl in your room,’ objected Tobie.

‘Then get her out,’ Nicholas said.

‘Adorne and the rest are next door. They’ll have you flung out for witchcraft.’ He sounded furious.

‘They will anyway. Katelijne has seen it,’ said Nicholas. He had the scroll under his arm.

‘She found you?’

‘She was looking chiefly, I think, for the gold. I’m not sure it’s here.’

‘What?’ said Tobie. Since the desert, his face seemed to wear permanent lines.

‘The only place left is the church. Do you think he could have hidden it in the church? The saint’s bones? The Bush? A Godfearing pirate like Ochoa?’

‘If he didn’t, he went to some lengths to get us here.’

‘Oh, a lot of people did,’ Nicholas said.

Tobie was silent. Then he said, ‘Is that what you’re looking for? Gold?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘I know what you are asking. I saw Gelis. She has gone with da Bologna. I’m not following her. She didn’t, I think, have anything directly to do with what happened in Cairo. She doesn’t want me dead – or not yet. Sometime I shall tell you what happened, or part of it. But first, I want to settle this matter of gold. If it isn’t here, we can leave.’

‘And go home?’ Tobie said.

‘This isn’t home?’ Nicholas said.

It had been a stupid question.

The Abbot, leading the procession into the basilica, was alert to the enmity of the two sets of Franks walking behind his Council of Fathers. He had been warned of it by Lorenzo; and, of course, the two chief protagonists had each come, if briefly, to see him. The Flemish-Genoese nobleman on holy pilgrimage for whom Brother Lorenzo had formed a respect; and the Flemish banker with Venetian affiliations who had arrived with the Sultan’s recommendation.

He knew, as it happened, what they both wanted. Westerner fell out with Westerner; Bedouin with Bedouin: it was the nature of man. A bishop as well as an abbot, he ruled his communities of Sinai, Pharan and Tor with considerable intellectual vigour, and had so far resisted the pressure to alter the habit of centuries and divide Greek from Frank. Both had faults. The proverbial vulgarity of the Franks; the subtlety and guile –
Graecae blanditiae ac fraudes –
of the Greeks. He knew some Latin. The Flemish banker spoke Greek.

Justinian’s doors, twelve feet tall, folded open before him.
This gate of the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter
. Carved out of cypress nine hundred years since, they were deeply scored with the names and arms of Crusaders. He hoped his guests, walking behind him, would notice. A special Sinaitic company of the Crusaders had protected the monastery. The effect of the basilica and its history was one of the stronger spiritual weapons in his armoury. The mountain was the other.

The church being built on the site of the Sacred Bush, at the lowest level of the convent, newcomers were always awed by the height of the roof-timbers, and by the double column of red granite pillars whose arches separated the nave from the aisles. The first impression, though, was of the blinding dazzle of light upon gold. The Abbot was proud – sinfully vain – of the multiplicity of his lamps, fed by their own olives, grown in God’s sunlight. The convent was continually blessed by gifts of fine lamps.

He led the way down the nave, noting the February ikon askew, and the exquisite smell of the Sultan’s new incense. The Franks behind him were wealthy. One of them had brought a girl. He was worldly enough to know when it happened; his monks were naïve and noticed little, and he used his own discretion, provided proper conduct was observed. He did not propose to emulate the brotherhood which had protested that its well, unless specially tended, had the misfortune to turn men into women.

The Franciscan, Ludovico da Bologna, had brought a woman as well, and had taken her away. But he had confessed, and explained, and left an offering.

The Abbot, reaching the end of the nave, passed beyond the low marble balustrade into the chancel and turned. His vestments rustled. He supposed they had only seen him before in patched black, or in his floured bakehouse apron. Soaring behind him in the vault of the apse was one of the glories of Christendom: the mosaic of the Transfiguration, old as the church. He saw the light from above it fall on the upturned faces before him. The singing began, and he took up his candle.

Saint Ekaterina would forgive him if he pondered now and then, through the ritual. They prayed. He led them from altar to altar over white marble and blue, while they marvelled at the holy legends set like damask under their feet, and the holy pictures thick with gold all about them. In the Burning Bush chapel, where it was forbidden to enter with shoes, he saw that the Venetian Fleming had made use of his indulgence, and walked on woollen hose. His manner was reverent. The attitude of both parties had been grave
and tense, rather than elevated. The girl who called herself Stephen knelt by the marble under which the Roots still reposed, and stared at the Venetian’s feet.