Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [185]
‘You’d sell me your mother, and she would be a parrot,’ said Nicholas. And switching to Genoese: ‘Lord, it seems to be true. Ask this man anything about parrots, and he will tell you. What do they eat, when do they lay, how do you teach them to speak. His mother and his mother’s mother kept parrots. Ask anything.’
‘Bastard!’ said Ochoa. ‘My life hangs in the balance, and I am to talk about parrots?’
‘What does he say?’ said the Governor.
‘Alas!’ Nicholas said. ‘He mourns his dead birds, his camel. He says the Genoese may as well take his life. He wishes to leave his hats to his friends. They will be here in two weeks. The friends. If I may use my lord’s paper, I shall write down their names.’
Ochoa peered. ‘You have spelled that one wrongly,’ he said. For once, he looked impressed.
Nicholas glared at him and handed the names of the prisoner’s friends to the Governor. They were, so far as he could remember, those of two of the highest commanders in the Order of St John.
The Governor said, ‘A man who takes orders for parrots? How can he know people such as these?’
‘Did I say he only sells parrots, lord?’ Nicholas said. ‘He sells parrots. He travels. He spies for the Knights. I suppose they will not be happy to learn that he is here, a condemned prisoner.’
‘He is lying,’ said the Governor.
‘It is possible, my lord,’ Nicholas said. ‘In two weeks, one will know.’
He looked at Ochoa. The Governor, silent, was thinking. Ochoa’s lips, drawing back, revealed the smile he didn’t have. It reached to his ears. Then with the greatest delicacy, he spat. ‘That’s a promise,’ he said. ‘Get me out. Get yourself out. And then we’re going off together. You and me and Paúli — no one would touch us.’
‘No one would want to,’ said Nicholas with distaste, and watched the guards, summoned, come forward and propel Ochoa, with a blow, to the door. His voice, imitating a parrot, faded into the distance, syncopated by the cuffs of his handlers.
The imam said, ‘I am expected at the mosque. Will there be further interrogations? Do you wish this man to remain?’
They required Nicomack ibn Abdallah to remain. He was given a pallet, and found, to his embarrassment, that the jurist was to share the small chamber. Between then and nightfall, the hilarity of the episode faded. Once he and imam Ibrahiim were alone, Nicholas apologised. ‘You incurred danger, lending yourself to this scheme, and Ochoa and I acted like children.’
‘It is his nature, you can see that. It is perhaps why you are drawn to him. He behaved thus when you first met?’
‘Wilful, crazy, respectful of no one. He deserved to be caught by the Genoese.’
‘Well, you have bought him two weeks: the Governor will do nothing until these problematical great gentlemen arrive. Do they exist?’
‘Oh, yes. But so far as I know, they are in Rhodes,’ Nicholas said, ‘and have no intention of coming to the Crimea. I shall have got him out before then. With all that information, I can hardly fail. But you must leave first.’
‘Perhaps. You are not afraid for yourself?’ the imam said. ‘For you, as for Señor Ochoa, this is sport?’
‘I suppose it is,’ Nicholas said. He saw the imam was already in bed, and put his own candle out. Darkness fell.
‘You are not, then, afraid of death?’ continued the musical voice, in its courtly Arabic. ‘But only of discussing it. Yet it is a worthy thing, to contemplate one’s end with tranquillity; without recoil, and equally without pusillanimous eagerness. It is less meritorious to be unable to accept the dying of others. In that case, it is our own loss we dread, or we mourn.’
‘We may be so selfish,’ Nicholas said. ‘But may we not also mourn the loss to others — to friends, family, even the world, of someone cut off at the height of his powers?’
‘We may feel sorrow, of course,’ said the imam. ‘But there are many such, and we cannot spend our lives in impassioned grief for them all. Your St Bernard allowed human grief, but preached Christian forbearance. The