Caprice and Rondo (72 page)

For Nicholas, it was the laying to rest of a myth that had pursued him all his life. He had met the son of Sara Khatun for long enough to show that there was a career for him here, if only when Barbaro concluded his mission and left. In the event, Nicholas did not think that he would return so far south after Caffa. He had not rejected the Levant. It seemed to him that his future might well lie there, on one side of the Black Sea or the other. But not at Spaan or Shiraz or Tabriz. There was a tide running here which Venice might have changed once, but no longer would. And he could not dam it back, any more than could the Patriarch.

For both of them, the ride back towards Caffa covered much the same ground as before, but this time they travelled in the heat and the dust of high summer, and the cavalcade was very much bigger, for the routes of the Venetian and Russian envoys passed through Caffa as well.

It did not preserve them from trouble. The formidable personality of the Patriarch might wring hospitality, once again, from the scattered Christian communities, but the two envoys of Uzum Hasan turned out to be untravelled novices; they carried no weight once the Georgian frontier was crossed, and precious little before it. With sobering frequency, they lost horses, money and weapons to troops of soldiers, official and unofficial, or to the population of some village which took against them, or to the keepers of river crossings. Women were often the worst. In Mingrelia, King Bendian had just died, and it was safest to sleep in the forests.

Julius rode beside Nicholas, sometimes silent, sometimes passing time in irritable interrogation; Julius, who once enjoyed campaigning, now preferred comfort. He was quick, however, to lend his authority at moments of danger, and showed himself invaluable on occasions such as the woodland feast of bleeding beef and rivers of wine offered by the monarch of Georgia, where Julius held his own (as did Nicholas) in a testing debauch which continued all night. The Venetian ambassador excused himself almost before it began, and his pious entourage followed him.

The rest of the time, Julius showed a tendency to return, in a roundabout manner, to the topic of Anna, although in terms nothing like the abrasive ones of their quarrel at Tabriz. Even so, circumvention was difficult, even sickening. Unlike that of Barbaro, Julius’s conversation had always been personal, the hidden motives piercing the surface like rocks. When Julius riled him, travelling north, Nicholas frequently broke into song, forcing Julius to join him. He couldn’t sing, but some of the others could, and it stopped some of the questions. But not all.

‘What exactly did you promise the Khan to make him send for your furs? Anna said you
saved
her from the Russians.’ (Spoken with Rosso within earshot.)

‘What concessions should we extract from this new Tudun Karaï Mirza? If he ate off skins, Anna must have found him amusing.’

Then: ‘Who is this imam Ibrahiim you made Anna listen to: some black friend of Umar’s? What happened to Brother Lorenzo? How much gold exactly do you think there will be?’

And, as it finally occurred to him one day: ‘How do you propose to get into Caffa, considering that the Genoese threw you out?’

He could give Julius the answer to that one at least. If Contarini could get in, then he could. There was still a Venetian consul who would hide them until he could construct a new identity.

At some such point, tiring of the inquisition, Nicholas would ride off to the two Persian envoys, with whom he was attempting to make friends. They were both scared, and therefore defensive. One of them, on his way to Moscow with Rosso, he would never see again. Or so he prayed. The other was going to the Duke of Burgundy, and would meet at least someone Nicholas knew.

He had been waiting for Julius to mention Gelis and he did, the day before they were due to arrive on the shores of the Black Sea at last. It was four weeks to the day since they had left Barbaro and Uzum Hasan, and had plunged into a world of isolated monasteries and unfriendly alien towns. In Fasso, there would be shipping, and news.

There would also be Genoese. Coming south, Contarini’s small party had escaped notice by merging with the twilight Latin community: Venetians who had turned Muslim and Genoese who had made local marriages. He and Rosso proposed to perform the last stage of the journey
with their companions by boat, and make for Contarini’s last lodging, at the house of a Circassian called Marta. The Patriarch, Julius and Nicholas, unobtrusive in western dress, set off to the same destination with their guides and servants by horse. It was hotter, but offered some escape, it was said, from the gnats. Sheltering under a lone tree at noon, chewing crusts and spooning down millet paste in a vortex of feathery insects, the travellers were inclined to doubt this. Julius, whose growing cheerfulness nothing could shake, tended a choking smudge fire, and rallied Nicholas when they were alone. ‘Don’t complain. At least you’re not in the boat getting swamp fever. I don’t want you sick yet. Not until you’re made us all rich at Caffa.’

For a day he had talked of nothing but Caffa, questioning Nicholas again and again about details. He asked how Anna looked when Nicholas had seen her last: how she wore her hair, what gowns she had had made. It was as if the scene in Tabriz had never taken place, obliterated by the present prospect of joy. Caffa was there, within reach, a short journey over the sea, and all Julius’s hopes and desires leaped towards it. He smiled, and said, ‘You sneer at my singing, but now you know what Anna can do. She said she’d made some music for Jodi.’

Nicholas had already stopped trying to eat. He said, ‘It was charming. I remember.’ He started to rise.

Julius put a hand on his arm. ‘No. I want to say this. You know Gelis visited Bonne, and talked about Jodi and marriage? If she is happy, and you still agree, it would make the best of all we are doing. The Patriarch thinks so as well. And as for old Thibault, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Thibault?’ Nicholas said. He ceased to move.

‘Gelis went to see him in Montello, didn’t she? After Anna and Kathi suggested it. Anna wrote that you were upset, and I’m sorry. But I thought you wouldn’t mind knowing the truth.’

‘Do I know the truth?’ Nicholas said.

Another man would have looked embarrassed: Julius displayed impatience. ‘Well, you don’t seem to be legitimate; not unless the tale of twins can be proved. And the old man held out no hope of that, from what I hear. Who would have thought he was shamming, the devil?’

The gnats sang and buzzed round his head, high as reeds: like an organ, like bagpipes inflating, or deflating. (
De cop de cotel/Fu sa muse perchie
.)

‘I don’t think he was. Pretending,’ Nicholas said.

‘He let all that happen to you?’

‘He was ill, then. When he could, he tried to do something. He didn’t wish harm to me, or Adelina. I pity him. Fate was more cruel to him than to us.’

‘Fate was better to you than Adelina,’ Julius said. ‘Wherever she is, she suffered three years of hell.’

‘One,’ Nicholas said. ‘She went to a convent.’ The gnats wailed. He looked up.

‘You were told she went to a convent,’ Julius said. ‘I found out later. She went to a house Jaak had outside Geneva. He used to spend the night there.’

‘Until she was eight,’ Nicholas said very slowly. His grandfather’s letter had said so. He added, ‘I didn’t know’ That emerged slowly, too. The black oil of Baku: turgid; choking; inflammable.

‘Why should you?’ Julius said. ‘You were a boy. You knew nothing of that.’

He was waiting. Nicholas knew it; knew why; knew what he ought to say, but could not. He drew together all his forces, and spoke. ‘I don’t look back. All those people are dead, and those who are alive don’t deserve blame, or are not worth troubling over. You have a happy life now. So have I, near enough.’

‘I wonder if Adelina has,’ Julius said. ‘Gelis is trying to find her.’ He rose, and stretched, and stood smiling. ‘But what’s that to us? Are you going to sit there all day? We are going to Caffa!’

Cibalala du riaus du riaus

Cibalala durie
.

I
N
F
ASSO
, there was shipping, and news. The hibernation, the isolation, the incubation was over; the odyssey which had started in March was ending now, in the last days of July, its adventurers alive, unharmed, ready to take their place again in the busy highways washed by the sea.

Their guide discovered the Circassian’s house, but no one within it to greet them. Inside, they found familiar baggage. Contarini and Rosso had arrived, so it seemed, and gone out. Julius, too eager to wait, strode off to find them. The Patriarch, who was expected elsewhere, decided to linger. Brother Orazio and the servants went off, leaving Nicholas and Father Ludovico together. The Patriarch said, ‘Are you not eager, also, for news?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas.

‘Because you fear for your friends? The lord Uzum Hasan, if the Turkish fleet has passed down the coast and its armies are invading his country? Or Brother Lorenzo and his fellows on Crete, where the monks of Mount Sinai have a monastery? Or does everything seem uninteresting to you but the pleasures of returning to Caffa?’

‘You do not want to hear my troubles,’ Nicholas said.

‘I don’t ask to hear your troubles, you fool,’ the Patriarch said. ‘I ask about your hopes.’

‘They are the same thing,’ Nicholas said.

Soon after that, they heard the sound of running footsteps, and calling. The Venetian ambassador would never run, although they heard his shrill voice in the clamour; Rosso’s grating tones also. But it was Julius who burst in through the door and stood gasping against it, his high-boned face smeared with tears, and mucus, and sweat. And it was Julius who uttered the news.

‘We can’t join Anna in Caffa. There is no Caffa. There hasn’t been for seven weeks. The Turkish fleet wasn’t going to Crete; it was coming to the Crimea. It landed its guns, and its armies, and mastered it all. The Peninsula is a graveyard; every foreigner killed or enslaved; every town, every fortress demolished. And none of us was there.’

The Patriarch’s hand closed on his crucifix. He said, ‘Do you think we could have stopped it? Is there any news of your wife?’

Nicholas shut his eyes.

Julius said, ‘How could there be? At best, she’ll be in some — some Turkish hothouse.’ He choked.

‘Perhaps not,’ Nicholas said. He did not entirely believe what he was saying. Women generally received the fate Julius feared. He understood all Julius felt about Anna mainly because he felt it himself, about some stubborn Russians who would not heed advice, and a great Cairene teacher who, whatever threatened, would not abandon his flock. He said, ‘You might find her.’

Julius had become very still. He said, ‘Then I am going to Caffa.’

‘You can’t,’ said Rosso. It was contemptuous.

‘I can. I will,’ Julius said. He had quietened; looking at no one; preoccupied with his thoughts.

There was a space. The Patriarch looked at Nicholas, saying nothing.

Nicholas said, ‘Then I go with you. For if Anna has escaped, I know where to find her.’

Chapter 30

P
LUNGED
INTO
ITS
OWN
summer wars, the West did not hear of the shocking events in the Levant until the end of the season. When Venice relayed the warning that something nasty was brewing in retaliation for the Turkish defeat in Moldavia, Caffa had already fallen. No one knew it. The Black Sea, now a Turkish lake, let nothing leak out in summer but anchovies. And even if it had, nothing would have been done about it. Among the Christian nations that summer there were few issues as important — how could there be? — as the King of England’s invasion of France. The better-known pirates, in particular, were flocking to Gascony.

Gelis, now a military veteran, found a macabre enjoyment in sharing with John le Grant the army’s screaming exasperation with Charles of Burgundy: his addiction to Neuss and his escalating conflicts with the Swiss which continued even when the Emperor marched into Cologne in March, and young Duke René of Lorraine decided to change sides in May. That said, it all increased the Bank’s profit and kept Gelis occupied. Unlike others she could name, she and Diniz in Bruges kept strict control of the Bank’s response to its increasing opportunities. It was firmly in Burgundian favour, but not over-extended. The damage done by Nicholas was almost repaired.

She tried not to think of him, or of the letter he had promised to send about an enterprise of which she had heard nothing more. As far as she knew, Nicholas was still in Caffa with Anna and now, presumably, Julius. From Julius and Anna, returning, the Bank could no doubt expect some news; but not before the end of the summer. Then, of course, there would arise this proposed betrothal between Jodi and Bonne.

She still could not understand it. Nor, she knew, could John. He talked of Nicholas now and then, usually when reminded by some unfortunate event on the battlefield. She had not realised, until then, how much fighting the two men had seen together, dovetailing their skills: setting traps for the Turks at Trebizond; mining, tunnelling, designing,
casting cannon. Guns required numeracy; so did navigation, and hydraulics, and toys. She heard about their mechanical elephant, and the carnival at Florence where they met. Nicholas had come hunting for the engineer who had almost saved Constantinople, and John had been with him, more or less, ever since.

‘And come to regret it,’ Gelis said; and he had nodded.

‘He’s a wrecker. I told you. And an innocent at the same time, what’s worse.’

‘An
innocent
!’ Gelis had said; and he had looked at her, russet brows raised.

‘You didn’t see him at Trebizond. Not just in retrieving that silly wee bitch from Doria, but plunging into hopeless dilemmas. Which to rescue; which to kill; which to betray. Good and bad, right and wrong; duty; loyalty. In the Tyrol as well. And in Cyprus.’ He broke off and said, ‘I bubbled, myself, at Famagusta. You don’t know a man until you know what makes him greet. An innocent. No grasp of reality.’