The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [291]
The profile of the Maqattam hills – robbed, they said, to clothe Pharaoh’s granaries – must still be as always it had been; and the sky above it as always tinged rose and lilac and a clear, high, turquoise blue. A muslin moon had appeared beside the towers and domes of the Citadel, now prickled with light, and the viaduct arches descended, as they always had, from there to the river, as if scrawled in thin chalk.
Behind them and about them were the domes and towers of Cairo; fig and pomegranate, tulip and iris; a Persian garden in mosaic and gilding. Sprays of jewelled glass bloomed, taper by taper, among the great houses, throwing rainbows up into the stucco, blushing upon marble, striking sparks from a fountain, or the silver and bronze of a door. In the last of the sun, carved in stucco, in sycamore, the outlines of chevrons, of stars, of the Name of God in all its forms flowed across the city as if blotted upon it.
Thus Cairo as he had seen it, alone, in the days of his wandering. Tonight the river and city were one. Tonight, the shore gardens and fields were outlined in silver tinged with the red of the sunset. Date palms rose from arabesques of sparkling water; thickets of herbs stood between silver grids; mosques lay in roseate pools and water moved like an arrow from lake to widening lake, flashing, searing the eye.
Because of the dazzle, he did not at first notice the boats. He heard them first: a shiver of bells, then the rise and slur of the flute, the finger-drum’s hiccough, the eerie drawl of a fiddle. His eye and ear attuning, he presently saw the vessels themselves, glinting with the jewels of their passengers; the wings of their sails set with lights and with bells. He watched them until, the light fading, they changed into streams of glowing dragonflies mounting the brimming veins of the city; fanning the air with slight music. Fires of joy rose silent over the Citadel and burst like pollen in the last of the sun.
The flood of the Joliba, the Nile. Rejoicing, placating, the Bucentaur in Venice with its five thousand escorting vessels attending the Doge and his solemn Espousal. God be praised, the ocean has opened again. Those who dived got to keep what they found, and were assured of good fortune.
God be praised; God is great.
Kiss any arm you cannot break, and pray that someone else breaks it.
Tobie’s step. Nicholas unclosed his fist, releasing what hung at his throat, although Tobie must surely have noticed: had even possibly knotted it there. Its shape was imprinted in blood on his palm: they must have had to break it out after he surfaced.
This ring. This circle of hatred.
This milestone which signalled: The hunt is resumed.
Part IV
THE WHIPPING-IN
Chapter 40
THE ESSENCE OF the problem, if you were to ask Jan Adorne, had little to do with the dangerous journey itself: with the heat, the sandstorms, the cold, the trackless wilderness of barren grit, the precipitous mountains, the circling Bedouin, the treacherous guides, the stinking food and dried wells, the wild beasts and the vermin, the horror of picked corpses of men and of camels. He was prepared for all that. He had been prepared for Alexandria, for Cairo.
That was the trouble. Here he was, a man on the greatest adventure of his life; and his father was with him.
He loved his father, of course. But other people made their way on their own, or with friends their own age, not with little girls and old men. He might not have minded had they gone straight from the Nile to the Holy Land, where you were herded about by the Muslims, and no one had any initiative. But outside the Holy Land, his father – it was now clear – was always going to take command. And even more so on this expedition.
Not many pilgrims came this way, and a lot of them died. The Sinai peninsula was a wilderness. It was where Moses did all his wandering, and heard the voice of the Lord coming out of the Bush that burned but was not consumed, and