Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [123]
On their last night before Caffa, when it seemed they were safe, she asked him what he would have done if Turks had captured them, or someone who knew him of old.
They were in the forepart of her tent, under cover, for in public they maintained the fiction of harsh mistress and blundering dragoman. He had been striving, ever since Bielogrod, to improve his fluency in the tongue of the Tartars. Turkish coloured most of the languages round the Black Sea, including the Turcoman he had learned during and after his last visit here, which had been concerned with the south coast of the Euxine. She knew about that. She also knew about his other disguise, when he and Tobie had met Sultan Mehmet during his war against Trebizond. ‘But he wouldn’t know me again,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was thirteen years ago. Tobie was a dumb camel doctor, and I was his assistant. And it was a different Grand Vizier.’
He waited, prepared to be angry with Julius, but Julius seemed to have kept some of that incident at least to himself. Anna only said, ‘Dr Tobias? Why dumb?’
‘Because he didn’t know the language,’ Nicholas said. ‘We filled his mouth with raw liver and pretended his tongue was cut out. We had to talk to each other by sign. It wasn’t funny.’
‘I think it must have been,’ Anna said, spluttering a little. Then she said, ‘What? Is something wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said, a little blankly. He pulled himself together. ‘No, of course there isn’t. But perhaps we should rest. It will be a long day tomorrow.’
A month ago, she wouldn’t have asked. Now she said, ‘I shall go if you tell me what’s wrong. What happened in Trebizond? Or has something happened now? Nicholas, are you divining?’
Nicholas stared at her without answering. He didn’t need to divine. He hadn’t divined since the fiasco at Thorn. It was partly because he was trying to forget, and partly because he knew that if bad news were to come, it would come to him direct, rather like this, but much worse. Eventually he shook his head and said, ‘It was the pickled oysters, very likely.’
The dense blue eyes searched his. ‘A premonition? What? Has something happened to Gelis? Or to Jodi? Or is Kathi suffering because of the child? You aren’t divining, but perhaps you ought to be. Where is your pendulum?’
He schooled his breath, and his pulse. ‘Nothing has happened to Gelis or Jodi. It was something remote: a chance echo, perhaps a mistake. Don’t worry. I’m going to bed.’
She rose. ‘I don’t quite believe you. I’m going to bring you something to drink. And while we speak of it, I should like to apologise. I talked of Jodi in Thorn, and distressed you. I saw the burned letter.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
‘It does,’ Anna said. ‘He wrote it for you, and it’s gone.’
‘It really wasn’t a very good poem,’ Nicholas said. ‘But it hasn’t gone.’ And smiling a little, he repeated it.
At the end, she went to find the little wine they had left, and poured him some. Then she returned to her cushion and sat. ‘You have a good memory. It is not a bad poem, for a child. Would you let me set it to music?’
He looked at her in profound astonishment. A little thought told him that she was not offering a personal service: composition could be no less alien to her than any other branch of the art: he had never seen a musical instrument in Julius’s house. But the German states were full of ready-made folk tunes and glib Court composers: she would have her pick, he realised, of friends. Presumably she would send it by courier. He said, ‘I don’t know. You heard it. The beat is erratic, to say the least.’
‘There is paper. Write it all out,’ Anna said. ‘Then sleep. Jodi will know you are thinking of him.’
She hesitated, then left with a smile. Bel would have patted his shoulder. Kathi would have stayed and insisted on helping him. Gelis … He could not