Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [157]
‘It would worry me,’ Nicholas said. ‘I was coming anyway, for the gold.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ the Patriarch said.
Hence Nicholas for several weeks had found an easy excuse to be absent, as Anna, too, was seldom at home, having occasion to visit Sinbaldo her agent, and cultivate those merchants and shippers she knew. Winter in the Crimea was normally sociable for, isolated by ice and by storms, the permanent groups within the colony took leisure to renew their communal bonds. The Christian lawyers and agents in Caffa were married members of a complex community, tracing their presence back for over three hundred years. The high officials were appointed, on the contrary, for a single short term, and seldom imported their families. As a result, the Caffa brothels were of exceptional quality, as were the courtesans who fulfilled the functions of wives. But to a man such as the Genoese consul, vanity required that he dazzle his guests with a truly blue-blooded hostess — no less than the gracious Contessa Anna von Hanseyck. Nor did Anna object. It led to introductions, and knowledge, and social credit which in due course she could transfer to Julius.
Once, escorting her home from the castle at night, her servants had led her past the quiet, discreet street of the baths, and their lantern had glanced on a face that she knew. Warm with wine and laughter and civilised company she had slid from her horse and, catching her veil, had called after him softly. But Nicholas turned on his heel, and had vanished before she could reach him.
The days passed. The Feast of St Nicholas came and went unremarked, for Mameluke servants did not celebrate such anniversaries. Nicholas was thirty-four years of age, and since the Feast of St Catherine, Kathi had been twenty-one. She was no longer in Bruges. Nicholas thought she and Robin had travelled to Scotland, but for some time was not perfectly sure, as he preferred to limit the hours of his divining.
He did not know if Kathi’s baby was born. He did know that Julius was still alive, and in Thorn. He knew all the time that Gelis and Jodi were well, through Mistress Clémence. It was through Mistress Clémence that he finally learned that Gelis had gone to Ghent, and that Jodi was travelling with Kathi and Robin to Scotland. Tobie and the nurse were going with them.
It meant that Clémence was no longer with Gelis, and that his bodyguards, from what she hinted, had been split. He did not know whether or not to be afraid, but forced himself not to misuse the pendulum, for Gelis had learned to tell when he was tracing her, and he did not want her to be troubled. Gelis, or anyone else. These people were nothing to do with him, now. He must not shackle them. And he had other things to think of soon enough, from the moment that the Khan’s secretary Karaï Mirza made his promised visit to Caffa.
Nicholas was playing argumentative chess with Dymitr in the Russian quarter when the man from Qirq-yer, heavily muffled, was ushered into the low-ceilinged room. There was a second man with him. Karaï Mirza threw off his cloak, and Nicholas leaped up, filled with unexpected pleasure at the sight of the broad Tartar face with its smiling cheekbones. They embraced, and Dymitr strode up to shake hands, while the stranger unfastened his great hooded cloak. Beneath it, he wore the robes and turban of an Islamic religious teacher, a jurist, an imam.
… As some visiting teacher from Cairo might commend you to those of Muslim faith.
Nicholas stood still while the Tartar, his smile deepening, introduced him. The man’s name was Ibrahiim. He bowed to Dymitr his host, but addressed Nicholas in Arabic. ‘Misra Niqula. The professors of al-Azhar know of you.’
Misra Niqula: Egyptian Niccolò. ‘You come from Cairo?’ Nicholas asked. The grave,