Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [183]
At that point, lying on a hard pallet with his limbs aching and his eyes stuck shut with blood, Nicholas remembered what he was here for, and laughed.
‘Ah. Misra Niqula,’ remarked someone in the smooth, mellifluous Arabic of the schools. ‘Allah has been pleased to wake thee at last. Give thanks to the Lord, and Mohammed His Prophet.’
Imam Ibrahiim. Nicholas opened his eyes.
The room was small, but it was not precisely a cell. It was furnished. The imam, seated bearded and grave on his cushions, was indeed the man he had first met at the Russians’ in the company of Karaï Mirza. The man who had brought him a missive from Brother Lorenzo, and to whom he had listened many times since; once, with Anna. There was, however, a guard, standing inside the door.
The imam continued, this time using passable Italian. ‘I am glad, of course, that you came, for I have only Maghgribian Spanish, and cannot always comprehend Señor Ochoa. But it was stupid of you not to explain, and they were quite within their rights to beat you. Wash yourself. It is nearly the hour for prayer. Then I shall take you to the Governor, who wishes to interrogate the prisoner. You will interpret.’
‘I am ashamed, lord. I value your advice,’ Nicholas said. There was a place to wash; he found a decent tunic from his pack, and he was given a prayer-mat. His pack, of course, had been searched. Pressing his brow to the ground made his head and eyes throb, but he had done this a thousand times, and no one could fault his performance. His mind, now working again, told him that he was witnessing some form of collusion between the imam and Ludovico da Bologna. In his disguise as a Mameluke, Nicholas had no claim on the time of a Latin Patriarch. The imam, on the other hand, was already holding classes in the medrese, and had every excuse to call on the faithful in the little mosque that served the garrison servants. His Spanish, limited though it was, would ensure that he was sought out. And from there, it was a simple step to suggest Donna Anna’s Mameluke steward, who spoke such excellent Catalan from his days of North African trading, and could even translate into the everyday language of Genoa.
It was a pity that no one had had time to tell him before he arrived. It was even more of a pity that no one had informed the guard at the gates, who seemed to have been carrying out quite contrary orders. It seemed to Nicholas that Anna had been right; that the Genoese, made increasingly suspicious by his visit to Qirq-yer, his familiarity with the Russians and the arrival of the furs, had issued orders to arrest him if he returned to Soldaia. And that someone else, or even two people, had belatedly convinced the commander that his credentials were better than they seemed, and that he held some sort of brief as an interpreter. Which meant he would gain access to Ochoa. Which meant, with any luck, that he could help Ochoa to escape. He had to.
The imam said, ‘Such devotion deserves its rewards but I think, my son, that the Governor awaits us.’ And Nicholas rose creakily from his knees and followed him out of the room.
Ochoa, when he limped into the commander’s office, looked the way Nicholas felt, with a suffused eye and a lot of rags here and there with dried blood on them. He was not wearing one of his hats, but a common seaman’s woollen cap, jammed on, nevertheless, with panache. His lips were pursed, stretching his rubbery skin into chasms and awnings between the short bones of his face. At sight of Nicholas, his gums made a hole.