Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [204]
Godscalc, accompanying him, saw that Umar was unsurprised, and berated himself for his lack of insight. He had seen the treasures Nicholas had brought with him from Trezibond: the manuscripts he had bought, such as the one Umar had later possessed. Nicholas always knew what was valuable. Having a busy, inquisitive mind, he had taught himself Greek to that end, and some Arabic, and learned something, obviously, of ancient scholarship. Until now Godscalc had had no idea of the extent of his learning.
He realised that Nicholas had been privy, as he had not, to the talk of the Emperor’s philosophers; that in Venice he had listened to Bessarion, and to the priesthood in Cyprus; that on his travels alone he had used his connections to join, for a night or two, the company in more than one private studio school. He had never heard Nicholas dispute any subject in his own field and now grew cold, wondering what he really felt – had all along felt about this broken-backed mission; this illusion that, single-handed, Godscalc would bring Christ to the end of the world, and embrace the Church that lay over the mountains. At nights he lay awake, anxious.
His conscience began to trouble him, too, on his own behalf. His fingers itched to touch the vellum he saw in the hands of the Timbuktu-Koy’s scribes; to pick up a brush and indulge in the luxury he had forbidden himself, because it brought him too much delight. He groaned when taken first to a place where books were copied and lent – a bookseller’s as thronged, as invigorating, as that of Vespasiano da Bisticci in Florence, although situated under heavy arcades of clay, with the beat of drums perpetually throbbing.
He felt here a hunger for books as great as he had heard to be the hunger for salt, when a man rotting and lost in the rainforest would eat his own arm for the life in it. He saw his first library in the home of the imam, and trod in silence through its chains of rooms, lined with crumbling wood shelves, upon which rested copies of the Chemail of Termedi, the Djana of Essoyouti, the Risala of Abou-Zaid of Kairwan, the Hariri, the Hamadani. He counted two thousand volumes in all.
Returning, he described it to Nicholas. ‘Some damp, some covered with mould, some eaten by insects. The roofs leak, and the air itself weeps, they say, when the summer rains come. How can they be protected? There are books there that I swear have never been read since they were written: that are unique in the world.’
‘Umar showed me,’ said Nicholas. ‘The Qadi’s library is the same. The city is an emporium of knowledge, Greek and Arabic and Hebrew, and unless it is copied it will dissolve as the city dissolves every summer. But it can’t be renewed.’
‘How would you protect it?’ said Godscalc.
He spoke without thinking; and only realised his mistake when Nicholas replied coolly, ‘Do you really want me to tell you?’
Gelis, encouraged by the gentle invitation of Zuhra, ventured to return to the harem at the palace. The attraction, as the deadly heat grew and grew, was the fresh, scented opulence of the baths, now efficiently operational at the expense of her ankles. She said, lying back in their waters, ‘You have so many learned men. Why are there none to care for the city?’
Zuhra, naked, was like an ebony houri from Paradise, with minute pointed breasts and a spine shaped like a lyre. She had just attained her fifteenth birthday. She said, ‘Because they talk of the meaning of life and only slaves care for pumps.’ She broke off. ‘I have spoken unwisely. Your lover is a great man, and powerful. He is as big as my Umar.’
Gelis swallowed water, and returned to the surface coughing. It was not worth correcting. She said, ‘Umar will make a fine husband. You were young when he was captured?’
‘Yes. No one else,’ Zuhra said, ‘has a husband who has travelled so far, and has such powerful friends, and speaks languages. And I shall be his first wife. I shall give him twenty sons: he will hardly need to take others. Does your lover have wives?’
‘Two,’ Gelis said. She was beginning to enjoy