The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [300]
He blessed them, and wished them repose, ordering a tray of fruit and some bread to be sent to their chamber. They were asleep before it arrived.
Later, Tobie woke and stumbled out, his eyes swollen, to find the latrines. A lamp hung among vines showed him the steps. The air, innocent of wind, was fresh and scented, but with the warmth of the evening still lingering: the night was not more than half spent, he imagined. Comforted by the silence, he looked about.
Within the black mass of the walls, the monastery had withdrawn into the secrecies of private vigil. Lamps flickered, masked by the leaves of a tree, or glimmered through trellises, or touched the white shell of a dome. There was a light, far below, under the northeastern wall that came, he thought, from the roof of the church. When he held his breath, he thought he could hear the murmur of chanting, or the whisper of someone in prayer. Far away outside the walls, he heard a thin, grisly wail that he knew for the call of a jackal. He stopped again, coming back, but could hear nothing, the lamps hanging in silence. He supposed they were extinguished at dawn.
He left the chamber door open, so that he could take a moment to locate his mattress in the dim light. John was sleeping. Nicholas was not there at all.
John, when he shook him, was at first angry. ‘You know what he’s like. He wakes, and can’t get back to sleep.’
By then, Tobie had lit their own lamp. ‘So he dressed? Robe, cloak, boots? Satchel?’
‘Satchel?’
‘And stave,’ said Tobie, suddenly breathless. He sat down. ‘I thought at first he had some crazy idea about the gold. Then that he meant to find and break in on Gelis. Maybe –’ He broke off.
John said, ‘I don’t see it. He knew he was meeting Gelis tomorrow.’
‘Did he? That was what Ludovico da Bologna said. Do you trust Ludovico da Bologna?’
‘No. Nor would Nicholas. But he doesn’t tell absolute lies. He said tomorrow.’
Tobie said, ‘But today is tomorrow. The new day starts at sunset. It’s tomorrow.’
John gazed at him. He said, ‘So what else did he say? A place? Where you will not be disturbed.’
‘In a monastery?’ Tobie was thinking aloud. ‘She’ll be dressed as a man, it goes without saying; but hardly with a room of her own. Perhaps sharing one with the Patriarch, discreetly divided? Da Bologna could move out and let them meet there.’
‘But he didn’t say so,’ said John. Then he said, ‘He looked up. Tobie, da Bologna looked up. And Nicholas has taken a stave.’
They found Ludovico da Bologna in the Latin chapel, reading to himself by candlelight from a sheaf of cut, unbound vellum. Pinned to the coloured mats on the walls were papers of perhaps lesser authority: amateur poems to St Catherine, left by her visiting pilgrims. The door opened so violently that mats and poems fluttered and flapped.
The Patriarch said, ‘Shut the door, man. There’s wax everywhere.’ He turned round, keeping his place in the papers.
‘Where is she?’ said Tobie.
‘Where you think. Unlikely, isn’t it?’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘But if she was fool enough to climb, and he to follow, it’s their business, not yours.’
‘In the dark?’ John said.
‘It’ll be dawn before you could get there. Pilgrims climb in the dark. They sometimes stick. They sometimes lose heart halfway up and come back. They rarely fall off. Whatever was going to happen,’ said the Patriarch of Antioch, ‘will already have happened. Why not stay here, and I’ll put up a nice prayer?’
Chapter 41
ONCE UP IN the wind it was bitterly cold, and the chipped stars and faded moonlight chilled the spirit. She had been cold long before she set out.
She had climbed Gebel Musa twice already, in daylight. She knew the slow way, the path that camels and asses could take. She knew the direct, punishing way, the Sikket Sayidna Musa, the path of Moses