The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [236]
He was not permitted a horse, but the mule he was given was exceptionally fine, and he used his own silver harness lined with red velvet and studded with immodest jewels. He wore, too, a merchant’s robe of full-length brocade, not this time in black, but of cloth of silver and crimson, and his cap, although plain in shape as a pillbox, was adorned after the fashion of the Emir’s own wives with pearls and Indian rubies, cunningly set. Across his shoulders he wore the chain of his Order, with the unicorn gleaming white in the Alexandria sun.
Pilgrims were harshly treated in Alexandria. Pilgrims paid tax after tax, impost after impost; were kept incarcerated on arrival; were forbidden to leave without permits; were harried, made to walk everywhere, charged impossible prices for the simplest of services; even forced to adopt heathen robes, for otherwise the unruly, the uneducated among Alexandria’s natives would stone them. They stoned them, none the less.
But merchants – even though Christians, even though blameworthy, too, for the terrible massacre perpetrated by Peter of Lusignan and his crew – merchants were the lifeblood of Egypt, and treated honourably. The Emir, instructed from Cairo, welcomed Western merchants to Alexandria, taxed them circumspectly, and allowed them wine and such other luxuries of the flesh as they might require. And if it so happened, one day, that the actions of Venice or Genoa or Catalonia did not agree with the Sultan’s expectations, he could always hold their merchants as hostage.
The fountain in front of the palace was working, although blown in the wind like the tattered palms that stood on either side. It still pleased Nicholas how green Alexandria was. He had stepped ashore expecting sand. He walked forward, composed rather than braced.
The steps of the palace were of marble and the floors inside made of mosaic. The pillars and wall-linings were marble as well. It reminded one of Trebizond, if anything. There was no stucco, no honeycomb arches anywhere. The hall of audience was well kept also, and the Emir in his white five-horned turban seemed affable. Nicholas began the long walk to the dais. John le Grant followed him. Nicholas had been offered, and had refused an interpreter.
It was still a shock, a little, to see so many robed figures about him, and to accept that none of the faces was black. Nicholas approached, said what he should, and delivered his letters of credence and his gift, which was not essence of violet but a cloth-of-gold robe twice as costly as the one he was wearing. This man was not the Sultan but he was important: an Emir of many thousands of lances; the military governor of the second city of Egypt, which provided a great deal of the Sultanate’s wealth. The men around him were Mamelukes, officers of the administration and the army; and civilians who were Muslim merchant princes themselves, inhabitants of the great marble mansions that still stood, here and there.
They were here to assess him. The meeting was purely formal: the talks he had asked for would begin in private, and later. He did not have to think very much, kneeling, bowing, taking his seat for the prescribed glass of sherbet. He knew the etiquette. He knew even what they were thinking. He had lived and thought as they did for a long time. And he wished them to know it. It was why, from the beginning, he had used his Arabic.
He knew already, as he sat, that their curiosity had been roused, and that they would, by now, know something about him. He answered what questions they put; mentioned names; quoted once, briefly, from Abu al-Faraj. John, silent beside him, would follow some of it, and would know he was speaking of Timbuktu. He didn’t know what John made of that, and didn’t much care. He praised Alexandria, and said it would please him to pass his life there.
The Emir liked that. Further meetings were touched upon. Nicholas and John rose, retreated and left. A box of quails