The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [335]
Gelis knew about that. He could never tell her the rest. He could never say, Your sister was a sweet lover, and urgent as you are, and wilful as you are, but never, never with the glorious madness that you bring, that you brought …
He was in a church. Hunc praeclarum, this celestial chalice. His hands, and Godscalc’s, and those of his wife, making a promise. He had made no promises to Katelina, nor she to him. She has won the Truth; she is in Paradise, they had said. He prayed, kneeling, that it was true. Then his thoughts turned to the corn, the second fruits of the harvest.
The child was not here, within the precincts of the Cathedral. He had known that from the moment he passed them, arriving in Famagusta, just as he had also known that Gelis was not on the island. The summons he felt was not from this place: the beat in his heart and hand that had begun today like a pulse and was now like the dumm, the deep sound that came from the drumhead when it was struck in the centre. The phial from St Catherine’s tomb hung concealed from its cord round his neck but he did not need it here.
In some crypt, somewhere within the embrace of the Cathedral, Katelina van Borselen lay now. Tomorrow he would ask to be taken there. Tonight he knelt, thinking of her and her sister. Then he rose and walked out, to answer the summons.
The Cathedral servant, following him to the door, took his coin. The Archbishop’s men would look after the horse. Fabrice was the King’s man, after all. Above his head the rose window was dark, that had thrown a coverlet of jewelled light over the rows of cheap coffins. He hoped to find what he was here to find before sunrise. What would you give now to see him?
He knew Gelis, he thought. She had made a promise, upon a condition she knew couldn’t be met. The treasure was out of his reach; but the search for it would fetch him here, to Famagusta, the place where her sister had died. That had been her objective. But Ludovico da Bologna had also been involved: a priest who had helped her for his own ends, but who would surely see, also for his own ends, that Nicholas received the reward he was due, whether Gelis knew of it or not.
So his reasoning said. The pendulum made reasoning unnecessary, but still, he felt safer consulting with both. He was being induced to seek a place of past anguish, where a child of eighteen months could be reared unremarked until needed.
So, not the tomb, nor the Cathedral. Not the house, now nothing but rubble, where Katelina sank to her death: he had seen that on his way to Nicosia.
Not – as it turned out – the church of St Anna, where dead children were left.
Not the hospice of the Knights of the Order, where he had tended the dying, with brethren who did not agonise, then, over which Republic they came from.
That left the monastery of the Franciscans, where he had been cared for, after Tzani-bey al-Ablak had died.
The dumm took him there. There was never any doubt that it was right, although he stopped on the way and unlaced the little gold box, and let it drop from his fingers. And arrested it, flinching, as the skin was flayed from his flesh. Of course, Ludovico da Bologna was a Franciscan.
It was nearly dawn. The bell, when he pulled it, jangled slowly and the eyes of the porter were filled with sleep. When he said who he was they stretched open, and so did the door.
My lord was expected. My lord: the young man whom they had nursed with loving anxiety six years before. The Abbot, brought from his devotions, welcomed him and would have offered him refreshment. Nicholas did not know him but saw faces, peeping behind, that were familiar but no longer gaunt. He asked to join in their prayers and, kneeling before their well-kept altar, was sensible of the warmth of their approval and friendship. At the end, as light began to imprint each painted window, he asked if he might be allowed to see to the business he had come for.
Again, they patently knew what he meant. He followed