The Unicorn Hunt (97 page)

‘But Diniz and he are friends now,’ Katelijne said.

Tobie said nothing. He could see no grounds for friendship between Nicholas and her uncle. Nor could he point out that between
Diniz and Nicholas there was a kinship of marriage, and perhaps even of blood.

The girl said, ‘Where is she buried?’ When he looked startled she repeated impatiently. ‘Katelina van Borselen. Was she brought home and buried at Veere? Or at Kilmirren with her husband’s family?’ She had a picture, perhaps, of Henry visiting his mother’s grave.

Tobie said, ‘She died during the siege, so her funeral Mass was in Famagusta. She left a letter asking to remain there.’

‘Where?’ said the girl. She was frowning.

‘You were there,’ Tobie said. ‘The Cathedral next to the Archbishop’s Palace.’ He had stepped into it briefly himself. He had known where to look, but there were no coffins visible now in the aisles. He remembered the building during the siege. It was immense: golden and Gothic like Rheims: built for the coronation of Lusignan monarchs. The Cathedral of St Nicholas.

He waited for her to name it, but she didn’t. If she had noticed, Nicholas had only entered the central door for a moment and stood, looking in. Tobie wondered what else the old bitch had got her women to tell her. About St Hilarion, for instance. Naphtha and poison. And the truth about Tzani-bey al-Ablak.

He sat with her for a bit, sipping his drink; half expecting the door to open and Nicholas to come in, perhaps with the Patriarch with him, bickering expertly. After some time, it became apparent that she had been told nothing more, and that she now understood that she would learn no more from him. Her lids had started to droop.

It was a surprise therefore when she opened them and said, ‘Why does nobody stay with him?’

His own head had started to nod. He lifted it. ‘Who?’

‘M. de Fleury. You went off to be a camp doctor. Master Julius stays for a time, Master Gregorio stays for a time. The same with M. le Grant, Master Crackbene.’

Tobie sat up. ‘We must get some sleep. You ought to look at other companies. They switch their people about, to learn skills and use their experience. It isn’t a bad thing to let people go now and then, and get them back with more to offer.’

‘Tommaso Portinari’s been in Bruges since he was twelve,’ said Katelijne Sersanders. ‘The Medici family all live in one district in Florence. Can’t you keep up, or doesn’t he want you, or don’t you want him? I heard the Patriarch.’

Tobie tried to remember what the Patriarch had been saying. Something about failing to get Nicholas under control. One could
see the problem: it was nearly dawn now. On the other hand, he didn’t see why he should be blamed. He said, ‘I don’t think, Kathi, he’d take kindly to ephors. It probably works best as it is. We all take a share, and he doesn’t get tired of us, and vice versa.’

She didn’t reply. He said, ‘You don’t agree?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But there isn’t much point in saying so. I’m sure it’s what he thinks he wants, and maybe you think he wants. But this way, who will ever get to know him?’

‘I don’t know if I want to,’ said Tobie. He didn’t know what made him say it, except that he was tired.

‘I know you don’t. None of you do,’ said Katelijne. ‘Because you’re all afraid, in the end, of what you’d find.’

Chapter 46

I
T WAS STILL DARK
when Nicholas entered the land-gate of Famagusta.

He had stopped twice in the course of the long ride. A woman milking a goat by candlelight had given him some dates and a bowl of the milk, still warm; and he had picked up a handful of dried carob pods, wrinkled and sweet.

At the deep gate the sight of the King’s horse, its head hanging, had roused astonishment and alarm, but then one of the guards had recognised Nicholas despite the beard and the grimed tabby silks, and eagerly claimed him in talk. He parted as soon as he reasonably could, and made his way, pace upon pace, yard upon yard, through the narrow dirt-packed streets of the silent town. In the square, he stopped before the incense-breathing mass of the Cathedral, and looked up to where the night-burning lamps lit the carving within the three great porches, and defined the triangular gables above, created for the island of Venus more than a century before by French hands. By a craftsman versed, like ibn Hayy, in geometry and astronomy; and
formulating with passion various astronomical equations
. Oh, with passion.

It was between Matins and Prime: had there been any sound, he would not have entered. As it was, he tied the horse to a ring, and made his way slowly inside and knelt. The tiled floor was clean. The roof soared dark over his head; the altar was far away, crowded with paintings and statues.

He had knelt here before, in physical pain which he had forgotten; in agony of another kind which he could never forget. Gelis had no need to remind him, over and over, of what had become of her sister. Katelina van Borselen of the long brown hair, the dark eyebrows, the round, small breasts … who had commanded him to her bed.
Gelis says that you’re the most passionate lover in Bruges
,
according to all the girls she’s been able to ask
. Then, unknown to him, had become pregnant with his son, and had married Simon to conceal it. Arigho. New corn, the first fruits of the harvest. And who had ended here, attempting to punish him, and herself, as now Gelis was … As he supposed Gelis was doing.

Except that in the end Katelina had forgiven him and, he thought, herself: the pain blotted out by the act which had caused it. Palpitating moths, and a waterfall, and Aphrodite. A sunlit vale in Rhodes where he had found her in terror, and had brought her joy, peace, release. Even though she was by then Simon’s, and he had been forced to pledge himself to someone else.

He could never tell Gelis that, although sometimes he made himself remember, before the memory was overwhelmed by what happened afterwards, when he found Katelina here, dying, in a starving city under a siege directed by himself.

Gelis knew about that. He could never tell her the rest. He could never say, Your sister was a sweet lover, and urgent as you are, and wilful as you are, but never, never with the glorious madness that you bring, that you brought …

He was in a church.
Hunc praeclarum
, this celestial chalice. His hands, and Godscalc’s, and those of his wife, making a promise. He had made no promises to Katelina, nor she to him.
She has won the Truth; she is in Paradise
, they had said. He prayed, kneeling, that it was true. Then his thoughts turned to the corn, the second fruits of the harvest.

The child was not here, within the precincts of the Cathedral. He had known that from the moment he passed them, arriving in Famagusta, just as he had also known that Gelis was not on the island. The summons he felt was not from this place: the beat in his heart and hand that had begun today like a pulse and was now like the
dumm
, the deep sound that came from the drumhead when it was struck in the centre. The phial from St Catherine’s tomb hung concealed from its cord round his neck but he did not need it here.

In some crypt, somewhere within the embrace of the Cathedral, Katelina van Borselen lay now. Tomorrow he would ask to be taken there. Tonight he knelt, thinking of her and her sister. Then he rose and walked out, to answer the summons.

The Cathedral servant, following him to the door, took his coin. The Archbishop’s men would look after the horse. Fabrice was the King’s man, after all. Above his head the rose window was dark, that had thrown a coverlet of jewelled light over the rows of cheap coffins. He hoped to find what he was here to find before sunrise.
What would you give now to see him
?

He knew Gelis, he thought. She had made a promise, upon a condition she knew couldn’t be met. The treasure was out of his reach; but the search for it would fetch him here, to Famagusta, the place where her sister had died. That had been her objective. But Ludovico da Bologna had also been involved: a priest who had helped her for his own ends, but who would surely see, also for his own ends, that Nicholas received the reward he was due, whether Gelis knew of it or not.

So his reasoning said. The pendulum made reasoning unnecessary, but still, he felt safer consulting with both. He was being induced to seek a place of past anguish, where a child of eighteen months could be reared unremarked until needed.

So, not the tomb, nor the Cathedral. Not the house, now nothing but rubble, where Katelina sank to her death: he had seen that on his way to Nicosia.

Not – as it turned out – the church of St Anna, where dead children were left.

Not the hospice of the Knights of the Order, where he had tended the dying, with brethren who did not agonise, then, over which Republic they came from.

That left the monastery of the Franciscans, where he had been cared for, after Tzani-bey al-Ablak had died.

The
dumm
took him there. There was never any doubt that it was right, although he stopped on the way and unlaced the little gold box, and let it drop from his fingers. And arrested it, flinching, as the skin was flayed from his flesh. Of course, Ludovico da Bologna was a Franciscan.

It was nearly dawn. The bell, when he pulled it, jangled slowly and the eyes of the porter were filled with sleep. When he said who he was they stretched open, and so did the door.

My lord was expected. My lord: the young man whom they had nursed with loving anxiety six years before. The Abbot, brought from his devotions, welcomed him and would have offered him refreshment. Nicholas did not know him but saw faces, peeping behind, that were familiar but no longer gaunt. He asked to join in their prayers and, kneeling before their well-kept altar, was sensible of the warmth of their approval and friendship. At the end, as light began to imprint each painted window, he asked if he might be allowed to see to the business he had come for.

Again, they patently knew what he meant. He followed them to their guest-quarters, recognising every corner, every passage, and returning their gentle enquiries, although the blood beat through his heart like a river-drum, and trilled through his head like the
zaghruda
of fear, or rejoicing. At a simple door, they stopped, smiling. They produced keys and turned back the lock. Then, with an air of teasing benignity, they retreated and left him alone. A bird burst into song, and the cloister garden exhaled august scents.

For a moment, such was the pressure, he could not see. Then he raised a hand and lifted the latch. The dim light of dawn showed him the cell.

A small, simple room with a crucifix.

A cot, empty.

A screened hearth, with two fragrant logs burning: the only source of light inside the room. He stepped forward, closing the door.

The red, uncertain glimmer trembled over the floor. A piece of sacking lay heaped by the hearth, from within which struck a glint of soft colour.

He approached it slowly. A round, fair shape became apparent, and a tumble of gold, at rest in the glow of the firelight.

His eyes dazzled. He stood, afraid for a moment. Then he passed forward quietly and, kneeling, laid his palm on the mound of warm sacking. Under his hand nothing moved. Then he felt, probing, frightened, the dead, resisting outline of metal.

It made a whimper, falling apart; but the blocks, the pipes, the bags of bullion that made up the heap were incapable of protest or fear, and in no need of comfort, being lifeless.

The light swam in his eyes; the pounding leaped from the gold at his throat to the other that lay at his feet and shook him between them. There was nothing else in the room.

Like had locked into like. He had found his lost gold, not his son.

An hour later, as the sun rose and the litany of Prime floated through the warm air, the Patriarch of Antioch made one of his unexpected but not unwelcome descents upon the Convent of the Franciscans at Famagusta and, shaking the dust from his terrible habit, commanded a flask of good water and a few platters of whatever the Convent possessed that would relieve a traveller’s hunger. Then he sent someone to look for the sieur de Fleury.

He rather expected there would be no delay. When the door thundered back on the wall he looked up from his pigeon and said, ‘I tell you to wait, and instead you’re off,
cito, cito, cito
, like an underpaid courier. I hear you’ve been given a present.’

‘Do you want it?’ said Nicholas de Fleury. His voice said all that was necessary.

‘Regard it as a pourboire,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘Will you have some water? The child isn’t on Cyprus.’

‘Your little piece of frippery thought he was,’ said Nicholas. He pulled out the phial and let it swing from his neck. He ignored the water.

‘Only God is a lasting friend,’ remarked the Patriarch. ‘Or is it really the fault of the phial? It seems to have thought that you wanted the gold.’

‘You left the gold there?’ said the other.

The Patriarch stretched his hand for the honey. ‘No. Your wife, I assume. I don’t know how she managed to get some. Oh well, maybe I can guess.’ He lifted his bread. ‘She certainly knows how to rile you.’ He watched the other man’s fists begin to slacken, and took a large bite.

‘Well, look at it this way,’ said de Fleury. ‘It saves me having to help Uzum Hasan, once I’ve got my army together and managed to lay hands on the rest of the bullion. No gold, no child, didn’t she say?’

‘I got a better bargain than that,’ said the Patriarch. ‘I seem to have finished the pigeons.’

‘I am sure you will leave me the feathers,’ the other said. He sat down. His sword, when he came in, had been rammed not quite home in its sheath. ‘What bargain?’

‘That was what I was going to tell you. Do what we discussed. Let the fools have the rest of your gold: it’ll come back to you tenfold as their merchant. You’ll coin money, ha! Sit round the table with all these scared princes and show them how you can help them throw back the Turks. There’s no one better qualified. You might have trained for this moment – Trebizond, Cyprus, truck with blackamoors, Muslims with rings in their noses. They’re the rulers, but chance has made you the man they require. So throw your weight about now. Convince them an alliance will work. Help me bring them to Venice this winter, ready to plan and ready to fight, and you’ll get your reward.’