The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [280]
Alexandria. The two men were well hooded and robed, but he placed them at once. He said, in a quiet voice, ‘You see them, Messer David? Ser Niccolò’s agent, le Grant; and beside him the doctor, Tobias.’
‘I see them,’ said de Salmeton. He spoke slowly.
A thought struck the Maghgribian, and he turned back to the boat with the Copts. Of course. He knew this party too. They were protégés of the Chief Dragoman in the next vessel. He began, ‘Why, that is –’
The other, interrupting, finished his thought. ‘Sir Anselm Adorne and his friends, enjoying their fill of Cairene curiosities. Their last opportunity, I believe. They leave for Mount Sinai tonight. Do you envy them?’
Ibn Said gave a delicate shudder. ‘I say he is a brave man. Moreover, not one I should like for an enemy.’
‘You are thinking of what he was made to endure in Alexandria?’ de Salmeton said. ‘Don’t you think M. de Fleury deserved whatever reprimand he has received?’
‘It depends,’ said Abderrahman ibn Said, looking once more, with curiosity, at the boat which flew the guild flag. ‘He is not there. They have expelled him from Cairo, perhaps. They have warned his friends to have nothing to do with him.’
‘Perhaps,’ said David de Salmeton. ‘Perhaps his friends also long to go to Mount Sinai, and are content to leave him behind. Perhaps he wearies them.’
He had never experienced blindness, but he had worked on night campaigns many times and, provided he could concentrate his attention, could measure time as if by the hour-glass. By the end of one such invisible span he had progressed through two cellars. It did not sound much, but it included a disastrous ascent of the steps by which David de Salmeton had left, and a final determined attempt to force the trap-door.
For a moment it had given way, and he had caught his breath as light appeared. Then, tearing itself from his grasp, the hatch had been flung back by strong hands from above, and against the square of terrifying light had loomed an unknown head and shoulders, and a pair of powerful hands, and a stick. The first blow struck him aside; then the man, jumping down, beat him to the bottom of the steps and, grunting, left him. He himself had, by that time, made a great many offers and tried, weakly, a great many memorable tricks, none of which had any effect. From the floor, he saw the fan of light shrink as the trap was shut and locked once again, and he was in darkness. All he had gained was the knowledge that upstairs, in the real world, it was daylight.
After a bit, he had reached an agreement with himself to abandon that room, and see what he could discover elsewhere. The answer so far was nothing; not even a ladder. Nevertheless he intended to proceed to the end, for the lack of draught denoted an end. Then he would return, and try the passage. Lastly, he would attempt to dismantle the steps. It would have been quicker to walk, but the only time he had tried that, he had fainted.
He began, like a child receiving a rusk, to contemplate anger.
Only the great emirs, the imams and the Mamelukes disembarked with the Sultan on the island of Roda (where, the Rumi pretended, Pharaoh’s daughter had found some child of their faith in the rushes). Two miles long, riding the Nile like a galley close to the shore of Old Cairo, Roda had once housed the Mameluke army. Its southern half still erupted, here and there, with the remains of the towers that had once surrounded its barracks, but most of the brick had been cleared for the summer palace and garden to which, duty over, the Sultan would repair for his feast. His first