Caprice and Rondo (45 page)

Not unaccustomed to travelling with piquant, competent women, Nicholas had still found the journey surprising. It had begun, for him, with a sense of turmoil: the parting with Julius and the proximity of Anna and the black confusion which obscured the future. He had not been present, of course, at the leave-taking between Anna and Julius, but his own had been relatively easy: Julius, weak but no longer voiceless, had given him the tongue-lashing he deserved and had informed him that if he laid a finger on Anna he would kill him. He had then given him an amiable farewell, in the expectation of following them, once he could travel. Julius, the survivor, had survived.

The subsequent journey across Greater Poland had been eventful and strenuous enough, but the heat of July had been tempered by the green shade of the forests they passed through, and they had travelled in convoy, picking up motley bands of churchmen and smiths, dish-sellers and traders and horse-dealers passing from one hamlet or town to the next and, armed with letters from Straube, unloading their wagon of mattresses at those houses where Julius’s agent was known. Once, led
astray, they all had to camp in the open, with guards to keep off wild beasts and marauders. And once they had lodged very grandly indeed, in the Archbishop’s palace at Dunajow, where Gregory of Sanok, professor of Italian literature and earliest patron in Poland of Filippo Buonaccorsi, sat surrounded by poets and scholars and exacted an intellectual fee for his hospitality.

Here, dressed as befitted her rank, Anna bestowed on the company all that store of wise charm which had smoothed their journey from Thorn, but had excused herself, with wicked modesty, from the cut and thrust of the debate. Nicholas, stranded, had hoped to do likewise: he had no wish to put up a performance for Anna or anyone else, and found the Archbishop’s insistence all the more tiresome since he suspected its source. So far as he remembered, indeed, he kept to platitudes until halfway through the evening, when the wine presumably loosened his tongue. Next day, he seemed to remember a great deal of argument, much of it on his own part and pointed if not impolite; there had also been some lurid gossip and one or two very good jokes.

Meeting, ruefully, Anna’s benign eye the following morning, he had temperately agreed to remain for a further night in the Archbishop’s company, and because he stayed sober this time, kept a very clear recollection of the discussion and the course it had taken. They had placed in his hands — he had turned the pages of — an exquisite copy of the
De Republica
; and for the first time in his life, he had desired to be rich in order to own such a thing. But, of course, it was not for sale, and he had nowhere to keep it, even if it had been. They embraced him when he and Anna departed, accompanied by a small escort to take them on the next stage of their journey. He felt a little dazed, a little silent and, had he been honest, even more deeply confused.

Anna had left him alone until the first rest for the horses, when the party settled under the trees, and she came to spread her skirts at his side and eat melon. Her eyes smiled above her wet chin. ‘So you have theories, but must be drunk to express them.’

‘Drunk, mad or stupid,’ Nicholas said. ‘I thought I’d grown out of all that.’

‘Of course,’ Anna said, ‘you may be above it. Or perhaps it’s really the opposite: you missed it all when you were young, and didn’t know how good you were. But now you do.’

‘That’s fine. So I’m happy,’ said Nicholas. ‘And I don’t need to do it again.’

Anna completed her pacific munching and wiped her chin. ‘You’re not happy,’ she said. ‘Because you have a picture of yourself and your life that doesn’t fit in with the world of ideas. You’re afraid of religion and music because you think you’d have to give up horseplay and plotting.’

‘Well, exactly. No contest,’ said Nicholas reasonably. He stood, and
leaned to help her to her feet. ‘So what would you do if I retired to my cave with a begging-bowl? You wouldn’t come to visit me.’

‘That would depend,’ Anna said, ‘on how full the begging-bowl was.’ But when he raised his eyebrows, she laughed. ‘You don’t understand? Never mind. I shall explain it all to you one day.’

She said no more after that, and they resumed riding very soon. Thinking about it, he recognised the truth in much of what she had said. However unregulated he might appear, he was not blind to the inconsistencies of his own character, or the circumstances which had created them. He did not, however, propose to offer himself for dissection, any more than he was anxious to offer his theories. It suited him that they rode in amicable silence from station to station of this journey, although she poured her energy, as he did, into all that was necessary for its success, and sustained without complaint the disappointments and hazards that did not fail to occur.

They were following in the footsteps of Ludovico da Bologna and his party, but so far had not overtaken them. The organisation of the expedition fell to Nicholas, but it owed much to Anna as well that a demanding company and its servants would arrive in good heart at the end of a stressful day’s journey. It was not surprising, therefore, that she chose to spend the evenings of such days in well-earned seclusion, with only Brygidy her maid to be soothed and encouraged. Intentionally or not, it freed Nicholas to spend those leisure hours as he wished, carousing of course, with his fellow merchants in this tavern or that, but also straying to where his curiosity led him, from the booths of the Armenian artisans in Lemberg to the rocky fortifications of Kamenets.

He fell into conversation, too, with families taking the air and men playing at board games or arguing over their ale; and he compared what they said with the gossip he absorbed every day from his fellow travellers. Also, he stopped whenever he found someone at work in the mellow sunlight of evening, and sat beside them and talked. Often, weavers set up their looms in the open, as he remembered them in another place, mirrored — white cotton, black arms — in the water. The clack of the shuttle would draw him like rope to a capstan, although the sound appeared thin to his ears, accustomed to the lively retort of brick walls. The weavers, especially, talked.

It was not, however, because of what he learned that he changed his plans at Bielogrod, where the power of their safe conducts ended. Here, on the estuary of the Dniester, was the furthermost frontier of Greater Poland, which ran from gale-beaten Danzig to this, the balmy west shore of the Black Sea. And here they would receive the protection at last of the Papal and Imperial Legate, whose privileged company they would join, to wait for a ship to the land of the Crim Tartars.

Except that they arrived in Bielogrod to discover that the Papal and Imperial Legate was not there, and had not been there for a week. Directed by God to the harbour, Ludovico da Bologna had found an empty grain ship bound for Caffa, and left.

Setting aside the consequence to themselves, it was a bold move, as Anna remarked. The south coast of the Black Sea was wholly Turkish these days, and so of course was the Sultan’s city of Constantinople at its south-western corner, a position it shared with the entire Turkish fleet. If the notorious Pontic storms didn’t sink it, the Patriarch’s ship would have to run the gamut of Turks and of pirates before it found a safe harbour in the Crimean Peninsula. The rashness of the voyage, indeed, was of a piece with the lunacy of the whole expedition, which, to Ludovico da Bologna, was no more than routine. He had been in Caffa before. Nicholas had not.

‘So?’ had said Anna, inviting suggestions.

‘So,’ had said Nicholas, ‘we shan’t get a ship, so we may as well set off round the coast. You can learn to charm Tartars. We’ll hire a guard, or attach ourselves to a party of Genoese.’

‘We won’t,’ she said. ‘Or not until you have acquired a new history and a new name. Do you think I haven’t heard what you’ve heard? I wish I had never let you come.’

‘You couldn’t have stopped me,’ said Nicholas. He spoke gently enough, for he wanted to reassure her. It had always been obvious that, while he could expect to proceed unmolested to Tabriz, he could not pass through a Genoese colony as Nicholas de Fleury, former banker of Venice. Venice, it was now clear to everyone, was showering weapons, money and envoys at the feet of Uzum Hasan, the Turk’s wiliest enemy. To favour a Venetian in these parts was tantamount to inviting the wrath of Sultan Mehmet of Turkey himself, and neither the Tartars nor the Genoese wanted that. Then, of course, there was the other complication which she might not know about, and which he had not hurried to tell her.

Hence Nicholas de Fleury was completing the journey to Caffa in the person of Nicomack ibn Abdallah of Cairo, downtrodden steward and secretary to the lady Anna, here to trade for her husband. He had made the transformation before. It was simple to dye his hair black, including the nascent beard he had left unshaven since Thorn. With his red cap and high-buttoned galabiyya over linen trousers and shirt he was the envy of Anna for coolness, as well as an object of curiosity and astonishment. But for him it was a familiar disguise: he had used it in Egypt and Africa, where the Arab tongue had become as familiar to him as his own. Black-haired Circassian slaves reared as Mamelukes had his height and build; he had met them. Some of them, trained as scholars, had Greek and
Latin as he did, and were conversant with Italian tongues. In Caffa, Anna would need an interpreter.

For the Turkish-Mongol languages they had hired a guide, Petru, to attend them. Of the servants who had come with them from Thorn they had retained none but Anna’s maid Brygidy, who would have gone to considerable lengths, including her own, rather than betray any friend of her Lady. Nicholas, having left the inquisitive Jelita in Thorn, had only a hireling to shed: as a servant himself he could not replace him. Finally, they acquired local men for the packmules and wagon and purchased food and tents. Then they set off.

The experience this time was different. The difficult, swampy terrain and the lack of villages meant that seclusion was no longer possible. They shared their evening meal; their tents were close, for security. And during the day, instead of the voluble company they were used to, there was none but their grumbling, half-Tartar escort and the silent figures of Petru and Brygidy, one sullen, one grim.

That at least, could be repaired. Without being told, Anna invited the two to sit with her in the evening, and chatted to them both through the day. Nicholas made the escort his business, employing a ragbag of languages, but principally his talent for coarse visual jokes eked out with mime. They always ended by gambling, and he always lost. It reminded him of his first ship, the
San Niccolò
, but he dismissed the African trip from his mind. He did not propose to resurrect his first months with Gelis. He had a feeling that Anna was one day going to mention her.

About his own relations with Anna, he had made up his mind from his departure from Thorn, in a way that would have staggered some of his friends — his former friends — and aroused the derision of others. She was sympathetic, intelligent, beautiful, and he had half killed her husband. To a contrite man, despite the absence of the Patriarch, she would clearly be sacrosanct. To Nicholas, the happy predator, the juvenile libertine, she would obviously fall prey within hours.

All that and more, Nicholas recognised. Inescapably, she was desirable. By the edicts of a greater compulsion, however hungry, however desolate, he had vowed this time to deny himself.

It was a matter of management. Everything was. During this long, awkward journey he had seen displayed, without ostentation, all her grace, all her skills, all that had first drawn him to her, and more. He dealt with it. He dealt with her effect upon others. He had long known that she was also an excellent horsewoman and an accurate shot: the men of the escort ate better because of it, and had begun to admire her. It was to keep the admiration in its place that he suggested, when the third night approached, that he should sleep, as her servant, in the forepart of the small pavilion that Anna shared with her maid. After a moment’s thought, Anna agreed. There would be a curtain between them. In any
case, she had never been coy; her attitude to himself, or to Julius for that matter, was one of mild, faintly mocking affection: she was one of the most self-possessed women he had ever known.

He had not probed beneath the control. He had seen it slip, once, when she thought Julius dead and had screamed at him. She had taken time, after the shock, to soften what she had said, and now did him the courtesy of speaking freely of Julius; she had done so, with a touch of rueful tenderness, only today. Nicholas wondered again why they had no children, and this led his thoughts to Kathi’s coming child and prompted him, in unwise and contrary mood, to speculate on where and how Robin sired it. In a gentlemanly way, he was sure. Not like his. Not like his with Gelis in Africa.

It was, perhaps, because he had let his guard down that he made his mistake, entering his tent in a hurry; sore with himself, dismayed by his lack of control. It was the time — he had forgotten — when Brygidy brought in the buckets for Anna’s primitive shower. Water was scarce and he kept none for himself, being able to splash with the men in some stream where their nakedness would not offend. It was by accident therefore that he came in before the curtain was drawn, and saw Anna facing him as once he had dreamed. Or more divine than his dream: her dark-centred breasts and belly and thighs glistening in hazy sunlight; her wet black hair clinging like leaves. The badge between her thighs was night-black as well.

He looked there first, and then the shock hit him physically. It seized her as well: with shame and alarm that caused her to drop where she stood, kneeling in the wet tub, her head bowed, the cloak of hair screening her body. Then the maid came up, shouting, and ripped the screen closed.

He had been offered women — children — in some of the yurts they had passed, but had so far refused. There were no women where they were now. It was as well.

That evening, having absented himself from the meal, he asked Brygidy if her Lady would join him outside. The broad, middle-aged face, half-German, half-Polish, showed neither fright nor distaste: she had come with Straube’s highest recommendation and had proved solidly loyal. Although far from frivolous, Brygidy had many good qualities: her fortitude in the face of men’s stupidity reminded Nicholas of some aspects of Bel. Bel from Scotland, another forbidden subject. Then Anna came out.