The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [285]
He had not been locked into a prison. He had been trapped in the cisterns of Cairo. And what he heard was hound music.
Chapter 39
TO DAVID DE SALMETON, hastening through the crowds in his embroidered headcloth and exquisite galabiyya, every moment drew him nearer to the consummation of his magnificent plan. With the disappearance of the only two men he need fear, he could devote his attention to outpacing the water; to traversing those few souks and alleys which would take him back to the warehouse below which some malevolent person – the sister, was it, of the late emir Tzani-bey al-Ablak? – was wreaking her vengeance on this meddling Flemish merchant.
He anticipated only the most minor delays. The crowd was nothing; mostly women and children bent on merry-making and easily made to give way. He found a group of pedlars more obstinate, strolling before him arm linked to arm, their laden platters roofing their caps. Accosted, these were at first deaf, and then astonished, and finally anxious to make him a customer. It cost him some moments.
It was stupidity that confronted him next with a basket, pulleyed down from an upper mashrabiyya to be packed from a portable cook-shop. The oven stood smoking beside it; none could pass and the cooks paid no heed to the crowd dammed up behind them. Accosted, they invited him to jump over the oven, stirring up the flames with some glee for that purpose. A distended dog, stepping out of the basket, began relieving itself over the stew and then, taking more time for technique, over him. Losing patience he forced his way on, kicking over the basket. He turned a corner and broke into a run.
The sound of water was audible now. It came from under his feet and from behind walls and echoed gurgling from the green of small parks and the courtyards of mosques; in the deepest wells it groaned like a mandrake. It would be approaching the warehouse. He would be too late to see the shock of its entry. He would be in plenty of time to witness the rest. He wanted to be sure, that was all.
He was in the final stretch when he was brought to a halt by the camel and the crowds penned behind it. It was a large, indolent camel accompanied, it would seem, by a boy with a scoop in his hand. He pushed his way to the front, thinking that one man could pass. People laughed, and someone crowed like a cock. They didn’t know, the fools, who he was. He walked into the road.
At first, he didn’t believe what he saw, for he left matters of provender to his cooks; had never heard the dawn calls, and had never troubled to visit a hatchery, where six hundred eggs would give birth in a day; from which six hundred chickens in due course would emerge to be led through the souks to the poultry market.
Lacking a mother, the chicks adopted the boy whose broom swept their yard, and when the same boy swept them out of the yard, they followed him as they would a mother – and this despite the truth that many were no longer chickens. Hence the precaution – the camel – to tend the fruit of such accouchements as the journey might hasten. Its panniers were full of warm eggs.
David de Salmeton had made no study of poultry. He observed, beyond the ship of the desert, a broad river of prickling movement from which floated a vocal floss of thin cheeping. He saw ahead a carved cedarwood doorway, but before he could pass, it was silted with chickens. A mosque presented itself, its doors prudently closed; a chirping drinking-trough offered no foothold; a stucco-grilled window was already crowded with daffodil feathers.
They were only chickens. He stepped out, his resolve made, and saw the man ahead lift his broom in defence, and the boy run to the camel’s pannier.
He could arrive late, or pelted with eggs. He dropped back. After all, de Fleury would wait.
Nicholas met the water face to face at the grille, and held on long enough not to be hurled against brick by the first, towering crash of its fall. When he did lose his grip and drop under, he became part of a swirl that surged and sucked him back through the passage, bumping