Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [131]
‘But?’ she said steadily.
‘But if I find it, then it will be my investment in Julius’s company. If it is suitable. If you will allow me,’ Nicholas said.
She sat looking at him, her eyes bright. ‘Because of Julius?’ she said.
‘I have a chance to begin again,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is not a bad thing, to forget the past. This way, we shall all have some hope of recovering. As you say, I like dealing. In fact, the only loser will be the Patriarch, who can always find use for some gold. But I expect I can help him in other ways.’
Her gaze was still fixed on his, but her skin was illumined with colour. She said, as if at random, ‘I should have known you would have your own reasons for coming.’ She held out her hand, and he took it. She said, ‘Whether you find it or not, thank you for thinking of us, Nicholas.’ She stopped, before adding as if compelled, ‘I wish you’d told Julius.’
Continually, she surprised him. ‘I thought you were rich,’ Nicholas said. ‘I thought I needed the gold for myself. But you changed my mind. Or I grew wiser.’
She moved her fingers but, when he freed them at once, simply used them to trace the solid width of his palm, compellingly, over and over. She said, ‘I think you are wise. But don’t place yourself in danger, trying to look for this man.’
‘Oh, I expect he will find me,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he is alive. And meanwhile there is business to be arranged, and the Patriarch to keep satisfied. But don’t lose heart. Somehow, the rent will be paid.’
She smiled, and rose when he did, her hand falling free. But before they moved from the kiosk, she slipped it up to his shoulder and touched her lips, faintly sticky with juice, to his cheek. ‘From Julius,’ she said.
‘One of his better kisses,’ Nicholas answered. It sounded placid, which, considering his quickening senses, was a feat in itself. He removed himself while he could.
Soon after that, he went to Ludovico da Bologna and advised him that he was prepared to make the journey to the citadel of the Khan of the Crim Tartars at Baçi Saray.
‘Refused you, has she?’ said the Patriarch, who had just returned from a trip to the north. ‘Well, you’ll find plenty of both sexes at Qirq-yer. Do my business. Stay, if you’re asked. I’ll tell them to expect you.’
‘Will you?’ said Nicholas.
The Patriarch stared. ‘You can pass for a Mameluke with wandering tribesmen and foreigners, but Mengli-Girey isn’t going to be deceived. Unless, that is, you plan to do something your bedmates don’t know about.’
He was a fiendish old man for whom, recently, Nicholas had begun to form a grudging respect. ‘Had it done years ago,’ Nicholas said unconvincingly. ‘So what else do you want me to do? For you, anything.’
Chapter 18
ONCE, THEY BLINDED those who might betray the approach to a Tartar khan’s fortress. Now, the Tartars who had accompanied him in relays throughout the strenuous journey southwest from Caffa merely blindfolded Nicholas as they began the long climb up the Mairam Dere ravine to the citadel of Qirq-yer, the Forty Fortifications.
The ride had taken the better part of a week, for their route lay through the range of weird limestone mountains, gnarled and battlemented, whose shelter fostered the apricots, the almonds, the vines of the fragrant south-eastern coast, and allowed the Genoese ships to lie calm in each harbour. Because, until he met the Khan, he was still the Contessa’s Mameluke factor, Nicholas rode short-stirruped in his tunic and leggings with his prayer-mat behind, and passed easily enough with his Arab-Egyptian accent; the more so that for the last stretch he was given a camel of evil disposition, and mastered its tantrums with ease. Then they got to Baçi Saray, a pleasant, well-watered plain to which the khanate of the Crim Tartars had moved since making their base in the north forty years before.
The multitude of their beasts, sheep and horses, goats and oxen and camels, could pasture here. The tented