Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [196]
Nevertheless, on the road, it paid to escape attention. Mingrelian marauders and the many impatient toll-keepers and customs officials in the rough region between the Black Sea and Persia had, fortunately, never heard of the Bishop of Rome and, viewing the Patriarch’s modest retinue and shabby appearance, received little presents of biscuit with no more than an outburst of routine resentment. When it came to the lofty timber citadels of provincial governors, the Patriarch found a clean gown, had his brasses rubbed up, and brought himself and his lordly sponsors forcefully to the memory of the magnate in question. This produced a roof, a pallet and a better class of food, which in turn had to be paid for by the superior presents which de Fleury was currently carrying and which, occasionally, he made some pretence of having lost. He was an ingenious fellow, but required to learn respect for authority.
This, Father Ludovico did his best to instil as they made their way from Kutaisi to Gori, from Tiflis to the mountains of Ayrarat (which they did not trouble to scale, in order to bring down a plank of the Ark), and south towards Tabriz. Accustomed to solitary travel with the silent Orazio, the Patriarch enjoyed his wrangles with his younger companion, which strictly excluded all matters of serious content. De Fleury was useful. He hunted and brought in fresh meat. He knew how to make horsehair foot-mats for the snow. Although strange to this part of the country, he had experienced the interior as far south as Erzerum, and was unalarmed by confrontations with stave-carrying bullies with shaved heads and trailing moustaches. He sensed when to call the bluff of petty tax collectors come to demand everything they possessed down to the clothes off their backs. Equally, and as important, he sensed when to give in.
To sustain them, they savoured the legendary tales, picked up every few days, of their predecessor the Venetian envoy who had passed the same way the previous summer. After a week spent in hiding in Caffa, Ambrogio Contarini, bearer of the most reviled name in the colony, had been bled dry of money and dignity from the moment he crossed the Black Sea (at an enhanced price of one hundred ducats) till the time he arrived in Tabriz and found no one there.
Humble interpreters, tears in their eyes, described how the Venetian thought that Bendian, lord of Mingrelia, was mad, because he sent him a pig’s head, and received him sitting under a tree. He seemingly considered the Georgians equally crazed, although the castellan of Kutaisi had invited him to a good supper of turnip and bread, properly served on a skin on the ground. (And while there might have been grease on the skin, it was a lie to suggest that it was thick enough to boil up a cauldron of cabbages.) Next, it was the King of Georgia’s fault that the Venetian had to wait hungry all night in the open, and after being received, had to beg for guides and safe conducts (for which he was not at all willing to pay), while the royal clerks naturally examined his possessions and took what was due to the King. Then, at the halt after that, he would hardly believe that it was customary to pay his guide and his host all over again, and objected when he had to buy his own food. As for drink (the interpreters said), the offence was the opposite: when hospitably invited to carouse at no cost to himself, the contemptible Venetian would always refuse.
‘Why?’ de Fleury had asked when told that. ‘It sounds as if he’d have been happier drunk.’
‘Not everyone is happier drunk,’ said the Patriarch. ‘I heard in Caffa that Signor Ambrogio has a weak stomach and never indulged, even in hiding. I salute him.’
‘You’re not travelling with him,’ de Fleury said. ‘Is he weak mentally, too?’
‘He is used to what he considers to be civilised practices,’ the Patriarch said, ‘and thinks himself slighted when others fail to observe them. The lords he meets are, of course, aware of this, and take pleasure in treating him as a caravan. We are known. Our behaviour