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By Root 2169 0

wagons with the women and children of these descendants of the great Mongol hordes could plant their woven homes in these meadows, where the tomb of their last khan had been raised. The summer palace of the ruler was here. But his permanent home, their refuge in war, the forty acres of honeycombed rock which was the heartland of their tribe, was half an hour’s steep climb from this place. Before they blindfolded Nicholas, his companions searched for and took his short sword and his knife, and even the scissors he used for his beard. They themselves were well armed. Weapons were forbidden to Tartars in Caffa, but once outside the town, it was different.

There was no escape therefore, by the time the climb levelled off, and the modest heat of the sun was cut off by a gateway and a wall, and what seemed like a line of irregular buildings, which gave off echoes and voices and the smells that Anna disliked and which Nicholas was not fastidious enough to find objectionable — the Tartar smells of horseflesh and goat and rancid fat and (he rather thought) cannabis seeds heating on stones. When, eventually, he was brought to enter a building and his bandage was removed, it was to find himself alone in a small, whitewashed room containing little more than the means of ablution and a change of dress, superior in fabric to his own. His own baggage was missing. He knew better than to complain, or to knock on the door when he found they had locked it, but sat down, with apparent patience, to wait. A strand of music entered his mind, and he annihilated it. He set himself to compile, from the recollection of his unfettered senses, a rutter of the ascent he had just made, and was dwelling, with interest, on the one smell he had found quite astonishing, when the door rattled and opened. The prince had sent for him.

Two centuries and more after Ghengis Khan and a hundred years after Kublai, the high-boned Mongol face, broad and gold-brown and seamed, with its almond eyes forever narrowed against the winds of the steppes, remained true to its blood, as did the fashions of hair and of dress: the long limp moustaches and beard, and the sashed robe over tunic, trousers and boots. In winter, the Khan’s robe would have been lined with sables, and his conical hat trimmed with deep fur which would cover his ears. In autumn, the same dress was made of light-quilted damask, but the bulky squat outline was the same, here displayed as he sat in his hall of state.

It was a plain enough chamber, except that its walls were lined with decorative bricks and ceramics, and the bed-like throne it contained, with its footstool, was fenced with a gilded tracery of finely carved wood, and its base chased with gold leaf. Beside Mengli-Girey sat his favoured wife, while others sat to his left, on folding stools. Several richly dressed men stood on the other, the west side. The servants stood by the door, close to the bench on which rested skins of liquor, a covered ewer on a stand, and several cups. The floor was laid with hexagonal blue and white tiles, and the contents of his luggage lay in a neat pile upon it. It included, along with his personal possessions, two bales of Genoese velvet, and a small bag of silver. Ludovico da Bologna’s letter, already opened, lay at the Tartar Khan’s side. Nicholas walked a few paces, and sank on both knees.

‘This is the man? He has no interpreter?’ the Khan said.

‘One claims he speaks Arabic,’ someone observed. Lifting his head, Nicholas saw a heavily built man of about his own age wearing the turbaned helm of a professional soldier. His tone was one of contemptuous dislike, but his accent was Cairene: from that, and his size and his good looks, he was probably a genuine Circassian. If he had read the Patriarch’s letter, then he had some education as well.

Nicholas said, ‘Lord, I have Arabic, and some of your tongue.’ The unknown man stared at him.

‘Then we shall proceed. My lord Abdan Khan will help at need, I am sure. Your name is Niccolò, and you are from Venice, that female Pope among cities?’

There was no time to