The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [275]
It was Tobie who said, ‘John, sit down. Kathi – come, sit, we are sorry. You say Sir Anselm has done nothing so far as you know, but Nicholas has disappeared, and you suspect the Vatachino and David? Is your uncle anxious about him?’
‘About M. de Fleury?’ she said.
‘No. Obviously not. But you are?’
She sighed. ‘Shall I go home? He’s a man. He has friends. He’s in trouble. And I don’t want my uncle blamed.’
‘Ah,’ said John le Grant.
‘Tell me, Kathi,’ said Tobie.
She held out something white. A small packet, sealed with waxed string, upon which an address had been written in an inept and straggling hand. She said, ‘I promised to have it delivered.’
‘Yes?’ said Tobie.
She said, ‘From the Pisan Consul’s wife. A lock of her hair.’
Tobie sat up. The girl said, ‘It is one step, that is all. If M. de Fleury has been trapped by a rival, you will have to find him. If he is being secretly held by the Mamelukes, that is more difficult. They won’t give him up to you, to a Frank. You would need help. Cairenes who are not Mamelukes. Do you know any? Does he?’
‘None we could trust,’ said John bluntly. It was true. Here, the Bank did business in limbo with the Sultan and his Mameluke emirs – when it did business at all. The Muslim traders did not like it. Even his boatbuilder would admit all he knew, were he asked.
‘Wait,’ said Tobie. ‘Nicholas may. John, you told me the open risks he was taking. Didn’t he mix with the doctors and the students?’
The girl said, ‘From the University? You mean from al-Azhar?’ Her eyes had opened: pools bottomed with gravel; the irises specked with sharp colour.
Tobie said, ‘Yes.’
The word struck John with its baldness. He looked at the girl. She had flushed. She said, ‘So.’
There was a silence, which seemingly impelled her at length to jump to her feet. She said, ‘I mustn’t keep you. I suppose you are leaving? My uncle means to set out for Sinai immediately after the Ceremony. Do you think it will be soon? The river rose thirteen more qirats last night.’
John’s eyes met those of Tobie. John said, ‘Are you bidden?’
Her teeth gleamed. ‘To Sultan Qayt Bey’s flotilla? Oh, no. We are pilgrims, taking our humble place in small skiffs and not required at the Nilometer, the banquet or even the Act of the Breach. But all of consequence in Cairo will be there.’
Her clear eyes studied John, and returned to search Tobie’s face. Tobie said, ‘Kathi –’
She was at the door. She moved as quicksilver moves. ‘No. He is my uncle,’ she said.
The nature of the fourth interrogation was such that Nicholas knew there would not be a fifth. For one thing, the Chief Dragoman had attended uncovered. And the questions, which had always been cursory, were now vacuous. They had always known who he was. It would have been convenient, no more, had he confessed to being an Ottoman spy, permitting them promptly to put him to death, publicly impaled by the al-Wazir Gate. Since he had not, they would dispose of him in secret, and John would not suffer.
There was no redress, for he had come to Cairo disguised and without sanction. No diplomatic crisis would follow his non-reappearance in Venice or Flanders. His would be one more unexplained disappearance of the many which occurred in the souks and alleys of Cairo; his body left stripped, his flesh masticated by curs.
He was being prepared for a second terminus, a mandatory departure; something he had never been disposed to arrange for himself but might be content to accept. (Gladly? Meekly? Infested by fatigue and stupidity, Bel would say. Bel …) Which he might or might not be content to accept, living as he did in a welter of pain, the focal point of hatred such as he had never imagined.
He had been incalculably wrong: all his senses, all his instincts proved worthless. (An arrow shot across the wilderness within the wilderness must fall.) Of course there was no child: he had lived in a fog of illusion. He lay as the Dragoman spoke and so distant had he become in his banishment from all that