Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [195]
He had a small amount of money, it seemed. Some of it was Signor Zeno’s; some was a portion from Qirq-yer. And, escaping south, he had obtained a commission from the new prince at Mánkup, before setting sail with some Greeks from Cembalo. He said, ‘You didn’t bring the Gräfin?’
‘She wouldn’t come,’ the Patriarch answered. He noted that, despite all that had happened, de Fleury was still bent on enlarging the extraordinary commercial empire he was creating for the man he had shot. The Patriarch added, ‘I warned her she’d be better travelling with me than waiting about for her husband. I reminded her you couldn’t set foot in Caffa again as a Mameluke.’
‘She’s an obstinate woman,’ said de Fleury.
‘So was Carlotta of Cyprus,’ said the Patriarch. ‘But she’s bested: given up all hope of Cyprus and gone crawling bankrupt to Rome. What is this one lingering for, apart from her man? Did you tell her to wait for your gold?’
‘Of course not,’ said de Fleury. ‘If she does, it’s her own idea entirely. In the end, it’s to help Julius’s business. They may both think it worth while.’
‘You don’t want the stuff?’ the Patriarch enquired.
‘Only as an investment,’ the other man said; and dismissed the subject. Within three days, they set off.
De Fleury had bought himself a serving-lad; the Patriarch had one already, as well as Brother Orazio, a guide, and two cheap Armenians to handle the horses and baggage. The Patriarch had covered this ground before, but routes changed, and so did local governors and the bribes they expected. Without gifts, no provincial governor or village headman would offer hospitality or even safe passage.
De Fleury, as anticipated, was an asset, as might be expected. He lost his temper quite often; but then so did the Patriarch. He also took charge of the valuables. Franciscans were known to carry no money. In Father Ludovico’s case, a spectacular representation of unsavoury poverty had been enough, in the past, to inhibit casual robbers, while the minor monasteries and Christian villages in the various small states which lay between the Black Sea and Persia could be depended on for a little salt fish and dried fruit, and even some bread. They knew him, in any case, from previous visits.
Despite the detours entailed, Father Ludovico visited a great many of these in the course of his journey, doubling the length of the odyssey which began, by boat and camel and horse, by the broad, ice-rimmed reaches of the Phasis and proceeded as week followed week between afforested mountains, through snow and then mud. This he did out of conscience and not to favour his belly, as de Fleury liked to profess.
Historically, a hundred villages in this area had once lain under the spiritual administration of Antioch, and he thought of it still as his parish. Sixty years ago, Franciscan missions had brought the Gospel, with loving care, to the infidels, and tended the flame of the Roman church among the Latin colonists in alien lands. Now (as de Fleury had commented), the primary task of an apostolic mission was not conversion, but diplomacy. The Patriarch of Antioch was known to most courts by now. (Even the Assassins were given a welcome, if they wanted Christian aid for a good enough cause.)
And Nicholas de Fleury was known in these parts as well, if not initially by so grand a name. It was fourteen years since that first meeting in Florence between the former Bruges apprentice, not yet de Fleury, and the Franciscan friar, not yet a Patriarch, who was leading to Europe the envoys of Georgia and Armenia and Trebizond to beg help against the Ottoman Turk. The backing of the Medici had brought de Fleury to Trebizond, and established his connections with Georgia and Persia. Since then, the channels of communication between the Banco di Niccolò and Uzum Hasan had remained open, and de Fleury’s potential, as a supplier of men, of arms, of new openings for trade was still perceived as worth exploring, whatever his new business arrangements might be. His was the secular side of the Apostolic Legate’s mission