The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [262]
‘You want marriage?’ he said.
She looked surprised, and then laughed. ‘I don’t want a convent. Yes, of course. I’m fortunate. We can afford a good dowry: my family know all the men of my age who would suit. We are all linked together already.’
Heel naturlijk. She spoke with her usual candour. There was wisdom behind it. She was, he saw, one of the few in whom the intellectual passions far outweighed any other; who, health allowing, would accept what her family proffered and become – on her own vivid terms – a fulfilled wife and mother. He envied her, for a moment, what he had never possessed. Then he said, ‘Christ, Thundering Poison is coming. Hurry, hurry. Hide it.’
In Cairo, John le Grant, who had his own means of receiving news from Damietta, heard with some disquiet that Nicholas, instead of travelling alone, had left Alexandria with Tobie and Adorne’s own niece, Katelijne Sersanders, passing as their interpreter. He next heard, even more inexplicably, that the party had stopped at the Garden of Balm, and that Nicholas was still there. He learned the reason that evening, when entertaining some Maghgribian friends who had called to take the air in the small belvedere of the house he always leased, well north of the Citadel, between the University and the Turkish and Syrian and Turcoman khans.
His guests brought with them a stranger, but one whose name he had cause to know: Abderrahman ibn Said, a trader who did business between Timbuktu and Tlemcen. When the others left, ibn Said remained behind. Then he spoke in Italian.
By now, everyone knew that the Medici were trading with the Sahara, and that the ibn Said brothers were part of the chain. This man knew both Nicholas and his wife, whom he called the madonna Gelissa. He had shared Adorne’s ship to Alexandria, and he had spoken to Nicholas, who had entrusted him with His Excellency’s address.
John said, ‘I am sure he can rely on your discretion. Western traders, as you know, are not permitted in Cairo.’
‘But you pass for a man from Tunisia: this is known, of course. One would not dream of betraying it, and Your Excellency’s beard is growing already. No,’ said Abderrahman ibn Said, stroking his own very fine whiskers, ‘your noble padrone confided in me because, then, it was agreed we should travel together. But alas, it was not to be so. You have heard the sad news of Negroponte?’
It had reached Cairo by pigeon two weeks ago. John le Grant nodded.
‘Such a disaster for Venice. Florence weeps for her. Alexandria, you may imagine, was in a clamour. And then I had to impart to Ser Niccolò my information about his very dear friend Umar ibn Muhammed al-Kaburi. So piteous.’
He was not an unfeeling man, ibn Said, and the terms he used, talking of the massacres at Timbuktu, were discreetly muted. But what he was relating was the manner of Loppe’s death. Loppe whom John le Grant, too, had known in Cyprus and Trebizond. All the perpetrators, of course, had been crazy for gold, and it was known that rich men often swallowed their jewels, or forced their children to eat them. They had found the last of Umar’s babies, in the end.
He stopped speaking, Silence enveloped them. Then John said, ‘Forgive me,’ and rose and crossed to a table where the flagon of fenugreek stood. There he hesitated.
The turbanned head turned. Ibn Said said, ‘When Florentines visit, I keep Florentine habits. If you have wine, I shall share it. I have more to tell you.’
And so he heard about Gelis.
He saw the man out himself and came back alone and sat at his darkened windows, looking down on the crowded souks of the city; the jostling turbans, white, blue and yellow; the hoods, the headcloths, the veils, the caps of children, random as fish-scales; the baskets, bundles, trays carried head-high like capitals in a river of text. The swifter passage of a mounted Mameluke, mace on shoulder, whip hand held high. The call as the Criers of the Nile began to approach, borne on horseback from distant souks: People of Misr! People of Misr! Praise Allah! Rejoice! The river has risen six marks since last