Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [231]
‘But you still think you can find Anna?’
He had been plain, offering facts rather than hopes. ‘I have Circassian friends in Soldaia. If they are still there, they may know what has happened. If she’s alive, if she hasn’t been caught, she’ll have gone to the hills where I found Father Lorenzo. The Greeks would know of it, and the Franciscans, if they got out. It’s a chance.’ He thought Julius looked sick. It was the way he felt himself. He felt so ill sometimes, it made him afraid.
They landed quietly by night at Soldaia, the heights above them darkening the stars, which winked instead through the ragged holes in the crenellated walls that still crowned them. Below the mount, everything was wrecked. The slave-traders’ quarter was a mess of buckled rubbish, where porcelain crackled under the feet, and scarf-ends fluttered, and the broken neck of the pipe which once linked the hill springs with the citadel was jammed with the buzzing carcass of a dog, its stench at one with the sweet smell of decay that hung everywhere. The house of Nicholas’s Circassian cousin did not exist, except as a heap of black stone and burnt wood. Of all the Genoese towns, Soldaia had withstood the Turks longest. After all the rest had surrendered, Soldaia had fought on for a month, and had been punished for it.
All the same, the town was not empty. Specks of light glinted in other quarters, among what had been the massed houses of the port, now sparsely occupied by reliable citizens, or new settlers perhaps. The artisan districts appeared as an irregular stain, lightless and silent, where wooden workshops once stood. Here and there, voices thinly echoed, either in pairs, or in faint bursts of sociable dispute, or raucous singing. He guessed there was some sort of a garrison, although there must be little to guard and nowhere to house them: the citadel showed a sprinkling of lights, but was mostly in darkness. It was only a few weeks since the conquest. The flies, leaving the dog, fussed about him.
There was no point in risking both their lives. In the shell of this quarter, Julius was safe. Nicholas left him there, and went on his errand.
For a big man, he moved very quietly, as a Danziger pirate had once observed, and his shabby robe and dark cap discouraged notice. Slipping through broken spaces and along shadowed walls, he made his way down to the seafront, and found the one establishment which, although damaged, could be counted on to have survived the invasion. The music and laughter within were enough to cover his movements, although it was some time before he managed to attract the attention of the particular girl he was hoping for. His transaction with her took place in the dark and was quick, but less expensive than usual, since all he wanted was information and she happened to remember and like Ochoa de Marchena. ‘The devil!’ she said, her voice fond. ‘That soft mouth he had, and what he could do with it!’
After that, instead of returning to Julius, he made his way, sinuous as a cat, through the hacked piles of carved stone and painted plaster, the wrack of gilt wood and cracked marble, until he came to the lower reaches of the vast, irregular crag upon which the citadel had been built. Then he began, in silence, to climb.
Julius was asleep when he found him again, and would have cried out, if Nicholas had not sealed his mouth with his palm. His peace offering was a napkin of food and a bottle of exceptional wine. ‘The Turks didn’t want it,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’ve bought two mules for us. We get out of town now, and they bring them to a rendezvous tomorrow. Come on. We can’t talk here. We’ll eat once we’re safe.’
‘Tell me now,’ Julius said. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘I’m sorry. I should have told you at once. She did get out, Julius. The Turks found the house empty. She apparently didn’t go north, so they think she went inland and south.’
‘To the caves?’
‘To the caves,’ Nicholas said. ‘At least, that is where we are going.’
‘And what about the