Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [171]
Nicholas had been in Soldaia before. He had even climbed the landward slope to the separate city, the vast sea-cliff domain, encircled by towers and walls, which contained the Genoese garrison and their servants. But this time, he had come on purely family business: being invited to visit his cousin, who lived with his Egyptian wife in the leafy quarter of the Muslim slave-traders. He had no cousin, but it was still a clever device: Genoese merchants made half their profit from slaves, and the consul seldom troubled this district. It was why Ochoa had chosen it, and described it accurately in the message he sent.
Ochoa was not yet here. There was no trace in this simple white house, with its luxurious furnishings, of the Spanish pirate whom Nicholas had hired long ago to help him buy African gold, and who later had been waylaid by the Knights of St John and captured with all his precious cargo. The Knights, friends of Genoa, had forced Ochoa de Marchena to work for them in Rhodes, until he escaped. Venturing into Soldaia now, he risked recapture and hanging.
‘Yet, for Messer Niccolò of Bruges, he would do it,’ explained the unknown Circassian cousin, a handsome, well-nourished man in his forties. Reclining at ease on the floor, he waved Nicholas to another pile of deep cushions. ‘I am to hear as soon as he comes, upon which he desired me to call you from Caffa. But you say you suspect he is coming already?’ He accepted a cup from his wife, a dark-eyed nymph veiled like Salome, who came, stooping, to offer another to Nicholas. He smiled at her, answering.
‘I thought it best to come early in case. Since I had cause to visit the Khan, the Treasurer and his friends interest themselves in my movements.’
The girl, who had half risen, stopped, but composed herself when the Circassian spoke to her soothingly. After she had slipped from the room, he turned to Nicholas. ‘That strutting cock of a Squarciafico!’
Nicholas gazed at his cup. ‘It is an old family, as you know. They have administered Chios and Caffa as long as the Genoese ruled there.’
‘And think every native their whore! A Squarciafico calls with his friend on a Tartar and, drawing aside the man’s wife, he pulls out her breast for his companion to finger. Then, when her husband has gone, he sits himself down and bids the wife search his underlinen for lice, which, kneeling, she does, with all the respect she has been taught. It has happened. My wife knows of such a case.’
‘Franks bring wealth,’ Nicholas said.
‘So do the Circassian Mamelukes in Egypt,’ his host said. ‘And competent rule for a time. Then comes insolence, and its fellow, revolt, and next, a new master is welcomed, because he offers wealth with respect. For a time.’
‘Your imam does not preach revolt,’ Nicholas said. ‘In the medreses of Soldaia or Caffa.’
‘The scholar Ibrahiim? He says the same of your friend, the Frankish priest, the Pope’s envoy. He says he asks men to look for the truth, and what is best for their country as well as their souls. Otherwise you would not be here. Everyone with friends in the Maghgrib knows Ochoa, but we do not all do as he asks.’
‘I am beholden,’ said Nicholas.
Word came in two days. No shipmaster came to the house. Instead Nicholas, mildly resistant, was given into the hands of a servant and, blindfolded at night, was pulled up and down steep muddy alleys and finally thrust through a low doorway and left.
The atmosphere, warmly rank, was familiar and, when you thought of it, not so surprising: Ochoa de Marchena spent a long time at sea. Nicholas said aloud, ‘Well, have you got two for me? Or do we have to make do with each other?’ And the next moment his eyes had been freed and, embraced by his shipmaster, he was being led into an empty room in the best seafront brothel in Soldaia.
Nicholas had been almost twenty-four years of age when he had hired a Spanish pirate at Lagos in Portugal, and placed him in charge of the Ghost, one