Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [134]
He had an exceptional voice: it was the Circassian’s bad luck that he would not appear a fool for that reason, at least. It was his own good fortune that the tune he had chosen to sing coincided with the maudlin humour of his half-comatose audience. It coincided too with his own, for although he had a very hard head, he was less than sober by then. Indeed, when thickly pressed to continue, he was sufficiently out of himself to sing something quite out of place; something of a connotation so wounding, so terrifying, so destructive that for seven years he had not allowed himself to think of it, or of the place called Taghaza with which it was linked. Taghaza, where he had parted with the African scholar, the ex-slave and dear friend called Loppe, or Lopez, or Umar, who had shared that music with him before leaving to go to his death, Nicholas supposed, with blurred surprise, that he had Anna to thank for crossing this hurdle, too.
And he had crossed it, he believed. The music which might have been insupportable was not. Here, surrounded by Arab voices, Muslim practices, it seemed just and true, its meaning common to all. His hearers, clasping him in drunken embrace at the end, were moved by the nobility of the cadences and not by the words, for the liturgy of the Latin church was foreign to them. Or to all but one of them. Mengli-Girey, wet-eyed, took him by the hand, but he saw the Circassian staring.
In the end, uncertainly upright and fondly accompanied, he was introduced to the house he was to have, and dropped to his mattress as he was, waking to find the place attended by soft-footed servants, all at his personal disposal. Despite the tenderness in his skull, he was reasonably pleased. The Patriarch had said it would be simple. It was not. But at least he was here. All he had to do was leave as successfully, when his task was done. And since he did not intend to stay long, he reviewed his objectives and set out to achieve them. It took him two weeks.
The business for Anna was easiest. Julius had never been an innovator, and Anna, though wiser and subtler by far, lacked experience. Posing as her representative in Caffa, Nicholas had found little trouble in identifying the merchandise which would fit into a trade such as theirs, and the conditions required to make it profitable. Here, he found his counterpart in the Tartar secretary of the Khan: the monosyllabic, quizzical Karaï Mirza whose magical ability to emerge unimpaired from the most catastrophic night of heavy drinking impressed Nicholas hardly less than his grasp of the hard facts of trade. From the moment that his trials of initiation ceased, which was not at once, Nicholas was careful to cultivate the man. Then, when the time seemed right, he made his wants known.
The interview took place in one of the other buildings in that part of the citadel where the Khan held audiences, and where his palace and harem were situated, together with his kennels and mews and the offices of his scribes and chief secretary. Nicholas had never penetrated beyond the high walls which cut it off from the rest of the fortress, but he had climbed unimpeded to the roof of his lodging and had seen, as he was meant to see, the sheer plunge on each side; the impregnability of the eyrie of the Crim Tartar Horde. But of the garrison, the stables, the arsenal, the stores of food and of water, the accommodation for people and beasts, he knew nothing as yet. The answers lay beyond the high walls. Hence, when his talk with Karaï Mirza, succinct, business-like, came to a halt, he expected the other man to say, as he did, ‘I can see that the trade you propose will produce