The Unicorn Hunt (93 page)

She said something, very low. Then, as if too tired to move, she released her grip and, rising slowly, turned back and walked into the monastery.

Tobie stared after her. John said, ‘Well, you’re the doctor. You don’t expect wives to soil their hands on sick husbands, do you? What did she say? It wasn’t thank you for bringing him back, by any chance?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tobie had said. But he did.

Wearily, sardonically, inexplicably, she had said,
Walk over with me
.

John had not climbed the mountain again. Tobie had. So had Adorne, with some pains, and for no reason but to offer homage to God at the portals of Heaven. About his faith, at least, Anselm Adorne was not cynical. Unlike Nicholas, who, whatever penalty he had paid, had used the place as a circus. Exasperated, Tobie had caught himself saying as much. He said, ‘You don’t have much reverence, do you?’

That had been after the descent from St Marina, when Nicholas had begun to revive and Gelis, impervious, had left. ‘How do you know what happened?’ Nicholas had said. ‘Intercessory prayers; a solemn renewal of the nuptial pledge. The oil of pardon, the oil of prayer. For every woman who makes herself a man shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. We believe, we confess, we give glory.’

‘Don’t,’ said Tobie.

‘Eve,’ continued Nicholas, ‘should display a body like unto his, but of marvellous diversity. I do endorse that. By sexual intercourse the world had its beginning, and by continence, it will receive its end. There is something to be said for that, too.’

Tobie said, ‘I’m not asking what happened. I told you.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Nicholas said. ‘Everybody comes down with something. Seven years of indulgences and seven quarantines, several times over. I get a bonus for St Marina.’

It came from fever and weakness, but it was time it was stopped. Tobie said, ‘You make it sound paltry. If there is anything paltry on that mountain-top, Nicholas, by God you and she took it with you.’

‘I expect we did,’ Nicholas had said. ‘And we brought it down again with us in sackfuls. And a couple of old tablets we found. Honour thy father and mother. They were cracked.’

‘They are not cracked for Jan Adorne,’ had said Tobie in sudden anger. ‘He has not always enjoyed this journey, or his father’s tongue, but he has taken care for him. He slept in a leaking skiff one whole night on the Nile, to give his father some rest. Does he write like a man full of spleen?
Tant que je vivrai –
’

‘
Tant que je vive
,’ Nicholas had contradicted. He had moved restlessly, the bitterness gone.

It had puzzled Tobie. ‘Have you read it? Jan’s tribute in his book to his father? “
Ipse ego
dum vivam
et post
dura
fata sepultus
,
Serviet officio spiritus ipse
tuo
.”
Tant que je
vivrai
, I’d have said, was the better –’

He broke off the argument, for Nicholas had simply continued to speak. Although the first words were the same, it was not a translation of Jan Adorne’s work and it was not, of a certainty, the sentiments of a son to a father:

‘
Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera … Mon chois est fait, aultre ne se fera …
’

Nicholas stopped.

‘Where did that come from?’ said Tobie. ‘That isn’t Jan’s.’

‘No. I don’t know,’ had said Nicholas. ‘It came into my head. Setting aside our fathers and uncles, could we get on with my feet?’

It had been the end of that exchange. Whatever had transpired on the mountain, Tobie was told no more of it then. Nor did he ever find out, in that place hallowed of God, whether Adorne’s reading was true and Nicholas had neither sought spiritual healing nor been able to find it. But whether or not they had left their mark on the mountain, it seemed to Tobie that none of them was likely to leave unmarked himself.

Chapter 44

K
ATELIJNE
S
ERSANDERS
never afterwards recalled much of her journey to Gaza, which occupied more than a week of her life. She had come to Sinai.

She had come through a land of drought and of the shadow of death; a land that no man passed through, and where no person dwelt. She understood the words of Jerome: ‘To me the city is a prison, the wilderness is paradise.’ She understood, but did not agree.

She remembered taking painful farewell of the Abbot and of the monks who had befriended her, and whom she felt she had deceived. She clung to Brother Lorenzo, who was coming with them. So, she learned, weeping, was Dr Tobias, who had rescued her once before from this limbo of weakness and confusion. John le Grant, whom she also knew and trusted, had come with him.

And, mysteriously, Nicholas de Fleury. The man with keys in his head, the horseman and swimmer of Leith, the singer, the owner of parrots and impresario of tournaments, of secret torments, of strange and terrible death in the snow. The man who could cause a princess to disappear, and laugh like a girl over a frog, and weep – so she had been told – at the feet of a wise man of another race, another religion. And weep and laugh for other causes as well, including near-death at the hand of a child. A man in whom she took a great interest.

She was ill, but not too ill to be gripped once again, as she was carried away, by the wonder of Sinai: by the stillness, the peace, the limitless silence. The awning swayed, and her eyes were drawn to the sky which hung, pellucid blue, from horizon to horizon; to the stacked, melting shapes of the mountains framing the tilting plain of Raha; the broad valley that led to the towering range of St Catherine; and then, as she lifted herself a little, to the sloping
gulley of Wadi al Deir, the valley of the monastery she had left, whose walls were the incandescent face of Sinai and its opposite sisters, and where reposed – a dark pocket of green, a slip of red – the monastery of the Blessed St Catherine, to whom one brought one’s griefs and from which one departed with nothing so facile as perfect health or perfect contentment, for a scream in such space was a whisper. From which one departed perhaps with an infinitesimal portion of wisdom, and some understanding.

She thought, from something Dr Tobias had said, that the desert north of Timbuktu must have provided something like that. She thought of her uncle and M. de Fleury. You could complain, if you were talking to God, that it was hard to win to such peace and then find it ruined by anger and bitterness. God, who had probably been to Pavia, would simply retort that had they all collided anywhere else they would have not only quarrelled but killed one another. She lay discussing the matter with God.

For many hours; for a day and the better part of the next, the stillness remained with them; the majesty, the silence, the space; and the tamarisk sweetened the air. Then they were among the steep defiles, the dusty mountains, and drawing their weapons at the sight of a file of small horses racing towards them, or giving soft answers to the snarling men from a Bedouin encampment, or wakening by night, tent and clothes sodden with dew, to hear the jackal packs howl, and wonder if the guides had abandoned them.

She slept, and woke, and slept, and tossed in her fever of unrest over Jan and Lambert and poor Meester Pieter and Father John, whom she ought not to dislike. She thought her uncle sat and spoke, and then saw it was Dr Tobias sitting beside her, opening her shirt with practical fingers; clearing the parasites; scouring the bites with fresh lemon; combing her hair; feeding her with bread dipped in warm milk. And that the man he was chatting to was M. de Fleury, sitting on her other side tearing salt meat and producing a solemn and studied rendering of the conversation of the three monks who cleaned the latrines while reciting their daily offices which caused even Brother Lorenzo to choke.

She laughed too, and sometimes cried. No one seemed to mind.

The sea at Gaza was blue, the date palms green, and the magical pass Nicholas carried brought him the finest rooms in the khan and the assiduous attention of the Emir and all his Mamelukes. He accepted it all as quite natural. Just at that time, he was like a man drunk on
kif
. For the sake of the girl, he made some effort to ensure that Adorne and his party of pilgrims were well housed and
treated, although it was difficult. For two days, Tobie commuted between the two sets of lodgings. It was the second week in September, and Nicholas knew how to find what he wanted. Everything else would have to wait.

For a seigneur such as Nicholas de Fleury, advice in Gaza was there for the asking. Fishing vessels of many kinds plied between ports. Galleys and roundships abounded elsewhere, and passages could be bought for any destination my lord had in mind. There were maps, yes, of course. If my lord possessed a little silver, some coins, there were drawings to be found of all the islands, the coast, the land of the Grand Turks himself. My lord had only to ask.

The local agent, a Syrian, called the first morning, bringing packets from Damascus, and from Achille in Alexandria. All of them contained coded letters from Gregorio and Julius, duplicated to every factor on the African coast.

Nicholas handed them to John and to Tobie to read, gave the agent a number of fairly obvious instructions, and returned to what he was doing. John, as the Alexandria manager, read them through, made some notes, and then locked himself in a storeroom with Tobie. The place smelled of carobs. Tobie sneezed. John said, ‘You’ve seen all the dispatches. I’m going to Alexandria. Now. If Nicholas doesn’t follow, I’ll have to leave there and go back to Venice.’

Tobie said, ‘You should probably go.’

He looked profoundly uneasy. Amidst his own annoyance, John felt sympathy for him. He had never envied the other man the half-intimacy which had always existed between the doctor and Nicholas. He had seen how one could find oneself drawn into the complexities that lay beneath the composure. He said, ‘I’ve heard the fairytale of the gold. Can’t you tell me anything?’

Tobie said, ‘Not much. Nicholas has something he has to do on one of the islands. After that, he’ll probably come.’ He scratched his nose and turned over a paper. ‘These results are all right. The Bank isn’t in trouble.’

‘It isn’t. But Nicholas specifically planned a short absence. He’ll have been away for four months. And we were cut off in the Tyrol last winter.’

‘Well,’ said Tobie. ‘He had the opportunity to exploit the Tyrol. Then Adorne threatened to usurp us in Cairo. And there was the chance of the gold.’

John said, ‘I’m not disputing the reasons. Meeting his wife at Sinai was another. But look at all this. Scotland ought to have proper attention: that estate is built, and needs to be run. If he’d
installed me as he promised, they’d have engineers by now, trained in simple irrigation and drainage at least. What’s that expensive goldsmith up to? And how are they getting on in the Tyrol, with Moriz stuck in Venice because Nicholas isn’t there? And what’s worse, if they are managing to dig silver, what are they spending it on? If the Tyrol blows up in the Duke of Burgundy’s face because of Nicholas, what will happen to Diniz in Bruges?’ He paused and said, ‘That bloody parrot,’ in a voice he realised was fretful.

Tobie looked at him. He said, ‘He would only come back here as soon as he could. Best get it over with.’

His guess was right, then. John said, ‘Zacco. It has been Zacco behind it, all along?’

‘I think,’ said Tobie, ‘that Zacco is the least of it. But yes, I think Nicholas has always known he was being coaxed, from point to point, towards Cyprus.’ He broke off and said, ‘He may not go, even yet. Not unless it coincides with his other reasons for being here. After what happened, would you go back to Cyprus?’

‘I don’t know,’ said John le Grant. ‘But whatever he’s doing, you’d better go with him and sober him up. There is still a real world out here, even though he’s forgotten it.’

No, he didn’t envy Tobie.

By then, Katelijne Sersanders was beginning to feel herself once again. Sitting on her balcony, the sea sparkling below, she was surprised when Dr Tobias, on the second day, mentioned that John le Grant was departing to Alexandria alone. He also intimated that her uncle and Brother Lorenzo were anxious to speak to her.

They were admitted. Her uncle looked disturbed and unhappy; the Cretan was calm. She gathered – from Brother Lorenzo rather than from her uncle – that the scheme to send her to Crete was defunct. Since the disaster at Negroponte, the monks of St Catherine could neither send a vessel for her nor receive her. On the other hand, there was a convent of Clares in Nicosia on the island of Cyprus. Cyprus, birthplace of St Catherine.

Katelijne thought of Cyprus and St Catherine. Her mind travelled beyond St Catherine to Venus, who seemed preferable to what she knew of the Minotaur. Cyprus was on her uncle’s itinerary for November. He could call for her when he had been to the Holy Land. It transpired that an important caravan was just about to leave for the Holy Land, and it was desirable that the Baron Cortachy should travel with it. And Jan, and Lambert, and the other two. And Brother Lorenzo.

Kathi said, ‘So who would take me to Cyprus?’

‘Why, Dr Tobias,’ said her uncle quickly. ‘Otherwise I should never have suggested it. Dr Tobias is also going to Cyprus. Until we come, he will look after you.’

Kathi gazed at him and he flushed. It was Brother Lorenzo who said in his collected, soft Tuscan, ‘It seems that M. de Fleury has found occasion to travel to Cyprus and has commandeered a ship. Your uncle is concerned, but I have told him that he has a niece of good sense, who will take no harm. The Signor de Fleury has been asked not to trouble you, and Dr Tobias will remain with you until you are settled. What do you say?’

She agreed, in a subdued voice, and remained looking subdued until they left her.

When Nicholas de Fleury called to see her, as he did shortly after everyone else had departed, she treated him to the same forlorn gaze. She said, ‘They’ve made you take me, I’m sorry. Because you can’t leave me here.’