Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [208]
It was, indeed, quick and deft. As he covered his shoulder, Abul Ismail said, ‘Such excellent suturing deserves better care than you have given it. You have been told, I am sure, how lucky you were. Also, you have escaped your marsh fever so far? This is an island that breeds these sad fits of palsy.’
‘I seem to bear a charmed life,’ Nicholas said. Now the King had gone, there was silence beyond the curtain, save for the steamy breathing of seething water, and the whisper of a brazier, heating irons. He said, ‘And now I must go.’
‘Without discussing what lies between us?’ said Abul Ismail. He turned from washing his hands and picked up a towel. His box stood beyond with trays of instruments in it: probes and tweezers, needles, syringes and scalpels. Beyond that stood a table like a refiner’s, pierced to hold slotted bowls. Except that the bowls contained blood and not sugar. Abul Ismail gathered his robes and sat down. He said, ‘I observe you. You owe your success to many things, but mostly to your gift for examining the thoughts of your fellow men. I spoke just now of books, and you were familiar with them. Master Tobie, before our estrangement, told of the manuscripts you brought from Trebizond, enshrining Arab science in the words of the Greeks. Here, I cure Muslim and Christian. At St Hilarion, I performed an action for the sake of the greater good of my nation, and this island and, indeed, the particular salvation of Master Tobie and yourself. I am not afraid to discuss these things. We are civilised. An interchange of views need not lead to abuse, mental or bodily.’
‘You could conceive that I might persuade you that your viewpoint is wrong?’ Nicholas said.
The Arab smiled. ‘You know well that we shall not change our stance by an iota. But I shall understand you, and you me. Will this not serve well for the future? We must live side by side for so long as the war lasts: perhaps longer, if you have your way. You have told no one, for example, that your sugar-master came from that great Turcoman prince, the lord Uzum Hasan?’
Nicholas heard the silence develop and let it; for this needed thought. He said eventually, ‘You have friends in Damascus?’
Equally without haste, the Arab took his time to reply. ‘And Cairo. And Kharput.’ He waited again.
‘But you have not yet told Tzani-bey,’ Nicholas said thoughtfully. He sat very still, crosslegged on the mattress with his hands between his knees as he had learned to do in the camp of the Ottoman Sultan to which he had come, in the dying days of the Empire of Trebizond, to assist at the fate of its Emperor.
‘No,’ said Abul Ismail. ‘Or your King James, who equally would have to kill you if he knew. Or Venice would abandon him.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Nicholas said.
The brown-smudged eyes were heavy and still as a Persian painting. The Arab said, ‘Because you think the princesses stronger than their husbands? Or …’ He inhaled and said, ‘I see.’
‘Perhaps you do,’ Nicholas said. ‘So why have you told me?’
The man raised his thick brows and tilted his head. ‘Is it not self-evident? Sooner or later, you would hear that I knew. You have established a strange web of communications, my lord Niccolò, with your humble travelling friars. Then I might have suffered some accident before I could say, as I say now, that this matter does not concern me. I do not propose, now or at any time, to reveal it. In pledge of which, I have placed my life in your hands, as you have proof of my good intentions. I could have poisoned you many times over.’ He did not glance at the knives, or the irons, or the bowls of thick liquid.
Nicholas again let silence fall. Presently he said, ‘It was unlikely I should discover such a thing. You have told me for some other purpose?’
‘Indeed,’ said Abul Ismail. ‘A purpose divined by an accident of the soul. In medicine one learns, one talks, one teaches. In life, too, this is necessary. I would