Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [209]
They were dismissed. His eye had lingered on Nicholas’s earring. He wore two himself, each with a large pendant pearl.
In one of the pavilions, a further array of light silken gowns had been prepared, two for each of them. The Patriarch, as was his custom, took all he was given. Then they entered the gardens to sup.
Under any other circumstances, the Eighth Heaven would have borne out its name. Paradise, to a Persian, was a garden. Enclosed, the piercing green of washed leaves, the unwavering fountains amid the pools and channels of water shut out the shaly waterless desert of rubble and sand, grey and dun with its grey and dun villages; the densely ordered massed flowers with their heady scent stopped the senses: shock set its foot on the throat and then released it, to admit desire.
Not to Nicholas. The ’ud played; slender girls danced barefoot under the fruit trees and between the tall cypresses; dark-eyed pages stood, stirring the air with long-stemmed peacock fans. The sunlight moved through pierced marble screens and damascened the carpets on which the silver dishes were set and the goblets of wine, replenished over and over. Dim through the silks of the awnings the banks of blossom — pale narcissus, languid jonquils and lilies — swayed and lay still like indolent houris scarved in anemones. Nicholas picked up his bowl, which was inscribed with a legend in Kufic: Deliberation before Action Protects against Regret. His lip twitched.
‘Mine is even more succinct,’ said Josaphat Barbaro at his side. ‘He who talks a lot, spills a lot. I see you admiring the irrigation. They bring in qanat builders from Yazd who alone, they say, have the courage to crawl under the soil and stone to lead the pipes where they should go. You must have hoped, being knowledgeable about such things, that the prince would ask you to stay. He might have done, for he likes you. But I have had the advantage of living at Court through the winter.’
‘The boon companion,’ Nicholas said. Beyond the Patriarch on his other side, Julius was displaying all the gloomy discomfort of a civilised man compelled to eat on the ground with his shins crossed. Or the cramps might derive from his wound.
Barbaro wiped mutton grease from his fingers and watched a fresh procession of platters approach. They contained fantasies moulded from sugar, with sweet confections arranged all around them. The Venetian remarked, choosing one, ‘You refer to the Book of Government, the primer of Sultans. Myself, I would make it required reading for every ambassador who comes to this country, believing the prince does not dream what the secret duties of an ambassador are: how we are expected to report on every idiosyncrasy of the land that we visit, down to the ability of the prince to hold his drink. But the boon companion is different. He is assumed to be of the prince’s own race.’
‘Does the Book say so?’ Nicholas said. He drew on his memory.
‘The common society of nobles leads to an assumption of arrogance, and tends to diminish the majesty of a king. A king cannot reign who has not found boon companions with whom he can enjoy absolute freedom and intimacy. Those who are accepted for companionship should occupy no public office. Men of position require to hold the King in perpetual fear, whereas boon companions should be familiar, so that the King may say to them a thousand things, serious and frivolous, which would not befit the ears of his nobles. The boon companion must be well bred and accomplished, with an ample fund of astonishing anecdotes. He must be a pleasant partner for back-gammon and chess; a musician perhaps; certainly a good conversationalist. But as to everything to do with the country and its cultivation, warfare, journeys and honours, the King should consult with his ministers, for that business is theirs.’
He paused and smiled.