Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [167]
She was not sorry, however, when the fishing expedition was mooted, although she was amazed (although not quite as transfixed as Nicholas) when the Patriarch of Antioch elected to join it. There was some sense in the casual exodus. The dispute over the next Tartar Governor of Caffa was becoming daily more serious and, having done what they could, outsiders should now stand aside. As for the gold, nothing could happen until Ochoa’s ship came in the spring. And if by any chance, said Nicholas smiling, Ochoa managed to sail under the ice into Caffa, he knew he could depend upon Anna to act for them both.
She had returned the smile with a freedom never seen by her noble Hanseyck kinsmen, who thought it ill-bred to show any emotion, far less happiness. Now, she took pleasure in observing her moods reflected in Nicholas’s pensive grey eyes. This winter, she had set herself to know him, and every day taught her more of the cast of his mind, at once bright and dark, and never simple. The eloquent voice of the imam, the harmonious chant of the Koran readers, had meant little to her compared with the physical profile of Nicholas listening: the heavy, black-bearded heel of his jaw; the substantial cheek; the thin, contradictory nose with its quaintly fastidious nostril; the rounded lips sheltering one another; the stark, unwavering gaze. She remembered the same open gaze resting on her. But then the lips had parted a little, as he drew breath.
When, leaving the medrese, he had talked to her of what they had heard, she had at first fallen silent, rather than confess that it was not the teaching that had absorbed her, but his interest in the imam, connected as it must be with his past in West Africa, and Umar, the jurist and friend who had died there. Yet when, at length, she asked him frankly about it, he had not mentioned Timbuktu in his answer, although he hesitated a moment, as if examining the question in his own mind. ‘Why should I concern myself with Muslim philosophy? Do you never wonder why you choose one course of action in place of another? My divining seems to tell me that however much I strive, the future cannot be altered. And I don’t wish to believe that.’
And ‘Why not?’ she had said. ‘If it is true, it relieves us of great responsibilities. But do we not always follow our desires, whatever punishment threatens in this world or the next?’
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘Surely, one learns from one’s errors. One learns, whether from fear or from conscience, that there are other people in the world who deserve to live out their lives, whatever their failings.’
‘Such as the people of Scotland?’ she had dared to say, softly. And when he bent his head, she had added, ‘And do you need an imam, Nicholas, to tell you how to make peace with yourself? To remind you what part of your boyhood your mistakes, your agonising, your conscience all spring from? Nicholas, how did your mother die?’
He had risen, and she had thought for a moment that he might reply. But he had said only, ‘Not today. But the next time you ask, I shall tell you.’ Then, a few days after that, he had left.
For Nicholas himself, the expedition that took him from Caffa was a strange adventure: an interregnum quite different from the hearty, drunken escapades with Paúel Benecke, although he was not always sober, and often quite as close to risking his life. It had more in common with Iceland, but with no shuddering springs,