Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [144]
‘He wished to come,’ said the Circassian curtly. ‘Before this man arrived, the lord Khan had satisfied himself as to your good intentions. You bear the proof in your luggage.’
He did, in a way. But as had been pointed out, caves made very good prisons, and gifts could be recovered. He was carrying away a great many secrets.
He was presently carrying them, Abdan Khan at his side, up the long, stone staircase to the monastery. The baggage-train and its men had disappeared. The smell of incense grew stronger. Pausing by the crumbling shell of a bell tower, you could see again how wild the place was. The striated crags that bulged over his head were duplicated on the opposite side of the ravine, where they sprawled, irregular as a crouched animal, above the steep grassy slopes where goats grazed. Far below him, a solitary thorn tree stood in a perennial crimping of fine cotton twists: knotted prayers for good fortune. No one had built a church round it. A voice over his head rebuked his thoughts, or at least interrupted them. It spoke in Greek.
‘Greetings, my lord Abdan Khan. Pray ascend. And yes, the man with you is M. de Fleury. He visited the tomb of St Catherine four years ago. He may even remember my name.’
‘Of course, Friar Lorenzo,’ said Nicholas.
The monk had not changed. Seated presently in a small, dank room with leprous frescoes, Nicholas studied the spare, familiar figure, attired in the tall hat and flowing black robes of the Greek Orthodox Church. The uncompromising eyes and decisive manner reminded him of Karaï Mirza. A comparison between Cretan and Tartar was not as ludicrous as it might seem. Friar Lorenzo was the treasurer and steward of the church and convent of St Catherine’s, Mount Sinai, to which he had conducted Anselm Adorne and his niece Katelijne four years ago, when Nicholas … and some others … had been lodged there. Nicholas had been staying there for a purpose, and he and Adorne had fallen out. Adorne was Genoese. It had, perhaps, appeared unduly sinister. But if, as he hoped, the Khan was satisfied that he was not primarily a Genoa-hater, Nicholas must have been conducted here for another reason, of which Abdan Khan was unaware.
He was alert, therefore, for the implications of the manoeuvre when, laying aside the Candian wine and fresh cakes, the monk requested Abdan Khan’s leave to borrow his Christian companion for a brief, seemly prayer before travel. The Circassian, lulled by wine, had agreed peacefully. His apprehension had been, Nicholas saw, that Mengli-Girey was not as well-intentioned as he appeared. It might still be so. But the conversation so far, though beginning with Gothia, had also touched on the Sultan Qayt Bey of Cairo, on the friendly relations between the Christian monastery and its Muslim neighbours, and, reassuringly, on the good reputation of Nicholas in both quarters. To anyone stationed in Mánkup, there was nothing unusual about this mutual support between faiths. There was a mosque inside the monastery of St Catherine’s, built for the use of its Bedouin servants. There was an empty monastery here, where Christian friends of the Khan might come to practise their religion. Tolerance was a powerful weapon, as the Turks also knew.
Entering the chapel to which he was taken, Nicholas thought at first that he was mistaken, and he was here for the good of his soul. The candles guttered on the small marble altar with its woven cloth, newly unfolded, and sparkling with red and gold thread. There was a lectern with a painted Gospel laid on it, and clean cushions on the newly swept floor. Brother Lorenzo had brought his own necessities with him from wherever he had been summoned — Sinai or Cairo or Crete, or Cyprus, or Mánkup. He might