Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [197]
‘You mean you put the fear of God into them,’ de Fleury said.
‘Naturally,’ the Patriarch answered. The mud was stiffening under the sun, and turning to grass. There was a resinous scent in the air. Spring had come, with summer burning behind.
AT FIRST SIGHT the dust haze was pink, dulling to violet; its mass against the blue of the sky was like that of a blanket cloud at sunset. Then, as it neared, there sparkled within it the motes which enlarged into helmet and chain mail and harness, while an apparent flurry of wind thickened into the sound of a murmurous trampling, overlaid by a shrilling like birdsong. Nearer yet, and the cloud yielded a swaying grove of thirty thousand caparisoned camels, and the same number of horses and mules, behind which trembled the hoops of six thousand carriages, frail as spectral silk flowers in the gloom. Positioned close to the servants and children, the women trotted in veils tall as stove-pipes, reins gathered high, finger-whips flicking, precious cradles fixed in the pommels before them. Then came the cattle, the sheep, the goats, the hunting dogs and the falcons and the supercilious leopards chained in their carts. The noise was furious, the stench was vile, the dust was half a day deep, which brought with it the approaching Court and army of Uzum Hasan, prince of Persia, ruler of Cappadocia, Armenia, Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, and sole power in the Levant capable of opposing the ambitions of Ottoman Turkey.
The place was two days’ journey south of Tabriz, the date was the second last day of May, and the papal, Burgundian and Imperial Legate was about to fulfil his mission at last.
THEY WERE RECEIVED the following morning since, after all, they were long expected. Efficiently attired from his own husbanded resources and a tailor of imagination in Tabriz, Nicholas de Fleury followed the Patriarch and Brother Orazio in silence as they were led through the lanes of a tented camp thirty miles in circumference, which would remain as long as the grazing allowed. Already the bazaars had been set up with their trestles of food, and the merchants, the armourers, the apothecaries were arranging their goods. The sun, not yet high, had yet to ripen the smells. The noise was already overwhelming.
The Patriarch said, ‘You are comparing this with the merchant caravans of the Sahel, or the Tartar yurts, or the military encampments you have known in Cyprus or the Somme? Will Neuss be like this?’
He disliked having his thoughts read. Nicholas said, ‘Neuss? That will be over by now.’ He thought it must be, for the last time he had tried to find her, Gelis had been in Bruges. After that, he had stopped divining for a while, in order not to frighten her any more. He didn’t know why he thought she was frightened, since she must know by now how well protected she was.
He was sorry, in a way, that this journey was over. It was easy to avoid major decisions when travelling demanded so many of the other kind. Now he would have to work, establishing trading connections which could be operated from the Baltic and Poland, assuming he stayed there, or Julius did. And if conditions — which he had yet to discover —precluded that, he could still make suggestions on behalf of the Bank, even though he no longer represented it. Some day, if a long war stretched ahead, Gelis or Diniz or Gregorio would be able to offer weapons and men to replace the cannon and trained gunners that Venice had dispatched, but then diverted to Crete.
He could have done with knowing more about this family rebellion and the course it was likely to take. It had begun, they said, with a Kurdish rumour to the effect that Uzum Hasan had died. He was in his seventies now and, given the existence of sons of all ages by four