Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [191]
Then Nicholas, pulling himself together, said, ‘Of course we must talk. I didn’t intend to go into retreat. Ochoa was scarcely a soul-mate, but I felt responsible for him; and it left me a good deal to think about.’
‘And reach certain conclusions?’ Anna asked.
She was dressed in the same gown she had worn to outface Squarciafico in the citadel. Only tonight, being private, she had set aside the stiff, jewelled headdress and allowed her hair to flow over her breast, while the heavy swathes at either temple were drawn back and united within a jewelled clasp. She had removed, too, the voile that had covered her throat and softened the neck of her gown. Now he could see the small pearls with which the neckline was sewn; and her breathing.
It was quiet. The candles flickered on the cloth, the dishes, the wooden trenchers, the good pewter cups filled with Chios wine. Nicholas felt both disembodied and its opposite — his head appeared light, but his senses were disrupted by the change in his dress: the thin lawn of the shirt; the velvet case of the doublet, wide at shoulder, narrow at waist; the libidinous freedom of untrammelled limbs, naked from ankle to thigh save for close-fitting hose. The contours of his face seemed to him untrammelled too; the play of muscle no longer stiffened with hair. Quite suddenly he began to feel, not a stranger, but his own person again.
Anna was watching him. She added, ‘Do the bruises hurt?’
He had forgotten his beating. He and Ochoa had both received a blow to the eye. Ochoa’s was cured.
Nicholas said, ‘Nothing hurts, when the alternative would have been death. Yes, I have reached some conclusions. Perhaps I should tell you tomorrow.’
‘Because I shall dislike them?’ she said. ‘Tell me tonight. And put down your knife. You are not eating.’
‘Very well,’ Nicholas said. He put down the knife and looked up. ‘I can’t stay on here. The Franciscans are being too generous. I can dress as a monk or a groom and escape detection, I suppose, for a while. But if I’m found out, they will pay for it, and so will the Patriarch. I shall need a day or two to prepare, but after that I shall start making my own way to the south. When spring comes, I shall be part of the way to Tabriz, and you and Julius will join me.’
Her eyes were black in the uncertain light. She said, ‘You would take such care for the monks? I am not surprised.’ Then she said, steadily, ‘So you will give up the gold? Without you, no one can trace it.’
‘Yes, they can,’ Nicholas said. ‘You can. I have the name of the ship it is coming by, and the name of the captain, and the password which will identify the lawful recipient. Ochoa wished me to have sole control, through use of the pendulum. I asked him to give me these facts to pass on to my heirs, who could not divine. He agreed. You and Julius are my heirs.’
Now all her face appeared shadowed. ‘Along with you. I do not want the gold if you are not there to share it. I don’t want you to travel alone, when you could remain here, safe with us until it comes. Nicholas, no. Stay with us here. Watch for the ship. Use your pendulum. Discover the gold in any way that you want, or let it go. But don’t disappear into the Crimea alone.’ And when he was obdurate: ‘Decide in the morning,’ Anna said. ‘You are tired, and mourning your friend. Make no decisions tonight.’
He was tired. He agreed, with a half-smile. ‘I see you are depending on the persuasive powers of the Patriarch.’
‘Or of mine,’ Anna said. She rose, lifting the flask ready to refill his cup, but stood instead, the metal gripped with both hands. She said, ‘If you go, this may be our last night in the same rooms, alone.’
‘You will have other company,’ Nicholas said. He sat very still.
‘But no one who owes me what you do,’ she said. ‘What value, Nicholas, do you set on your life? Is its redemption worth a kiss?’
Nicholas rose,