Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
He had been waiting for Julius to mention Gelis and he did, the day before they were due to arrive on the shores of the Black Sea at last. It was four weeks to the day since they had left Barbaro and Uzum Hasan, and had plunged into a world of isolated monasteries and unfriendly alien towns. In Fasso, there would be shipping, and news.
There would also be Genoese. Coming south, Contarini’s small party had escaped notice by merging with the twilight Latin community: Venetians who had turned Muslim and Genoese who had made local marriages. He and Rosso proposed to perform the last stage of the journey with their companions by boat, and make for Contarini’s last lodging, at the house of a Circassian called Marta. The Patriarch, Julius and Nicholas, unobtrusive in western dress, set off to the same destination with their guides and servants by horse. It was hotter, but offered some escape, it was said, from the gnats. Sheltering under a lone tree at noon, chewing crusts and spooning down millet paste in a vortex of feathery insects, the travellers were inclined to doubt this. Julius, whose growing cheerfulness nothing could shake, tended a choking smudge fire, and rallied Nicholas when they were alone. ‘Don’t complain. At least you’re not in the boat getting swamp fever. I don’t want you sick yet. Not until you’re made us all rich at Caffa.’
For a day he had talked of nothing but Caffa, questioning Nicholas again and again about details. He asked how Anna looked when Nicholas had seen her last: how she wore her hair, what gowns she had had made. It was as if the scene in Tabriz had never taken place, obliterated by the present prospect of joy. Caffa was there, within reach, a short journey over the sea, and all Julius’s hopes and desires leaped towards it. He smiled, and said, ‘You sneer at my singing, but now you know what Anna can do. She said she’d made some music for Jodi.’
Nicholas had already stopped trying to eat. He said, ‘It was charming. I remember.’ He started to rise.
Julius put a hand on his arm. ‘No. I want to say this. You know Gelis visited Bonne, and talked about Jodi and marriage? If she is happy, and you still agree, it would make the best of all we are doing. The Patriarch thinks so as well. And as for old Thibault, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Thibault?’ Nicholas said. He ceased to move.
‘Gelis went to see him in Montello, didn’t she? After Anna and Kathi suggested it. Anna wrote that you were upset, and I’m sorry. But I thought you wouldn’t mind knowing the truth.’
‘Do I know the truth?’ Nicholas said.
Another man would have looked embarrassed: Julius displayed impatience. ‘Well, you don’t seem to be legitimate; not unless the tale of twins can be proved. And the old man held out no hope of that, from what I hear. Who would have thought he was shamming, the devil?’
The gnats sang and buzzed round his head, high as reeds: like an organ, like bagpipes inflating, or deflating. (De cop de cotel/Fu sa muse perchie.)
‘I don’t think he was. Pretending,’ Nicholas said.
‘He let all that happen to you?’
‘He was ill, then. When he could, he tried to do something. He didn’t wish harm to me, or Adelina. I pity him. Fate was more cruel to him than to us.’
‘Fate was better to you than Adelina,’ Julius said. ‘Wherever she is, she suffered three years of hell.’
‘One,’ Nicholas said. ‘She went to a convent.’ The gnats wailed. He looked up.
‘You were told she went to a convent,’ Julius said. ‘I found out later. She went to a house Jaak had outside Geneva. He used to spend the night there.’
‘Until she was eight,’ Nicholas said very slowly. His grandfather’s letter had said so. He added, ‘I didn’t know’ That emerged slowly, too. The black oil of Baku: turgid; choking; inflammable.
‘Why should you?’ Julius said. ‘You were a boy. You knew nothing of that.’
He was waiting. Nicholas knew it; knew why; knew what he ought to say, but could not. He drew together all his forces, and spoke. ‘I don’t look back. All