The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [282]
The Ceremony of the Abundance was one which greatly moved al-Ashraf Qayt Bey, for all the many times he had attended it in his sixty-odd years, although only two of them as Sultan. His predecessor, that model of vanity Khushcadam, had much preferred the second ceremony, the flamboyant Act, which he was now embarking to perform. It was, as usual, difficult to clear space for his barque, even though the Mamelukes did their best. He saw, but tried not to let it disturb him, that alcohol had been circulating once more, and the soldiers just out of his sight were becoming rowdy and careless in the use of their whips.
He stepped aboard, his emirs and judges about him, and the glare of gold from the sail struck through the gathered silk roof of the cabin. Behind, the vast wooden carpet of boats changed pattern and raised their sails to steer close to the wind: quills of silk, quills of exquisite linen, quills of commonplace sacking. Music made itself heard. His barque, borne by the stream, proceeded half the length of the island before leaning gracefully to the turn which would carry it to his own Cairene shore and the Khalig. The crowds on the bank, garbed for holiday, looked like a ribbon of flowers; the trills of the women flocked over the river like swallows. He smiled, and turned to where the silk handkerchief lay.
A communication was taking place between one of his ulama and a boy in the water. It ended. He saw the boy depart at great speed, dipping, scrambling to the shore, half by boat, half by swimming. On the way he flung an arm over the boatbuilders’ vessel, and seemed to call with some urgency.
The alim was a professor he revered. He scorned to question him. Just before they touched the Khalig bank, the Sultan glanced behind and noted that the boatbuilders’ vessel had lost two of its passengers; and that the Frankish merchant he had recently favoured was nowhere to be seen. His professor of law, on the other hand, was firmly seated, a priestly hand on the shoulder of one of his flock. On the shoulder of the Chief Dragoman, who had been attempting to rise.
Then the barque touched the bank and was secured, and amid a din that made his ears ring the prince Qayt Bey stepped ashore to the earthen mound that plugged the throat of the Khalig and called for prayer, and then for trumpets, and finally threw aloft the silk kerchief that signified the Act of the Breach; that signalled to the wielders of the scores of raised mattocks that the dam between the great canal and the Nile should be levelled, and the glorious Abundance permitted to surge into the cisterns, the gardens, the viaducts of this his city of Cairo.
Jan Adorne said, ‘You’re crying! What are you crying for? I think it’s exciting!’
John le Grant said, ‘He’s following. God damn him, he’s following. You go. I’ll stay and stop him.’
‘There isn’t time,’ Tobie said.
The dam being earth, the trench that breached it, attacked by hundreds of mattocks, widened, deepened, and finally broke its way to the river. The onslaught of water, tossing high as a tree, horrified the Sultan’s white horse, and they had to calm it before he put his foot in the stirrup and prepared to ride back to the Citadel. Around him, the faces of his people shone like newly plucked dates.
Some stayed to scream in the spray and plunge their hands in the volleying water. Some began to race the flow as it travelled, swift as translucent lava, furred with dust. Some ran to watch where the wheels, dragged into motion, had begun to heave the water up to the viaduct and the viaduct itself began to weep threads of moisture. Some ran to the thundering mouths, hazed with mist, where this branch or that tumbled into the underground cisterns,