Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
For Nicholas, it was the laying to rest of a myth that had pursued him all his life. He had met the son of Sara Khatun for long enough to show that there was a career for him here, if only when Barbaro concluded his mission and left. In the event, Nicholas did not think that he would return so far south after Caffa. He had not rejected the Levant. It seemed to him that his future might well lie there, on one side of the Black Sea or the other. But not at Spaan or Shiraz or Tabriz. There was a tide running here which Venice might have changed once, but no longer would. And he could not dam it back, any more than could the Patriarch.
For both of them, the ride back towards Caffa covered much the same ground as before, but this time they travelled in the heat and the dust of high summer, and the cavalcade was very much bigger, for the routes of the Venetian and Russian envoys passed through Caffa as well.
It did not preserve them from trouble. The formidable personality of the Patriarch might wring hospitality, once again, from the scattered Christian communities, but the two envoys of Uzum Hasan turned out to be untravelled novices; they carried no weight once the Georgian frontier was crossed, and precious little before it. With sobering frequency, they lost horses, money and weapons to troops of soldiers, official and unofficial, or to the population of some village which took against them, or to the keepers of river crossings. Women were often the worst. In Mingrelia, King Bendian had just died, and it was safest to sleep in the forests.
Julius rode beside Nicholas, sometimes silent, sometimes passing time in irritable interrogation; Julius, who once enjoyed campaigning, now preferred comfort. He was quick, however, to lend his authority at moments of danger, and showed himself invaluable on occasions such as the woodland feast of bleeding beef and rivers of wine offered by the monarch of Georgia, where Julius held his own (as did Nicholas) in a testing debauch which continued all night. The Venetian ambassador excused himself almost before it began, and his pious entourage followed him.
The rest of the time, Julius showed a tendency to return, in a roundabout manner, to the topic of Anna, although in terms nothing like the abrasive ones of their quarrel at Tabriz. Even so, circumvention was difficult, even sickening. Unlike that of Barbaro, Julius’s conversation had always been personal, the hidden motives piercing the surface like rocks. When Julius riled him, travelling north, Nicholas frequently broke into song, forcing Julius to join him. He couldn’t sing, but some of the others could, and it stopped some of the questions. But not all.
‘What exactly did you promise the Khan to make him send for your furs? Anna said you saved her from the Russians.’ (Spoken with Rosso within earshot.)
‘What concessions should we extract from this new Tudun Karaï Mirza? If he ate off skins, Anna must have found him amusing.’
Then: ‘Who is this imam Ibrahiim you made Anna listen to: some black friend of Umar’s? What happened to Brother Lorenzo? How much gold exactly do you think there will be?’
And, as it finally occurred to him one day: ‘How do you propose to get into Caffa, considering that the Genoese threw you out?’
He could give Julius the answer to that one at least. If Contarini could get in, then he could. There was still a Venetian consul who would hide them until he could construct a new identity.
At some such point, tiring of the inquisition, Nicholas would ride off to the two Persian envoys, with whom he was attempting to make friends. They were both scared, and therefore defensive. One of them, on his way to Moscow with Rosso, he would never see again.