The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [336]
For a moment, such was the pressure, he could not see. Then he raised a hand and lifted the latch. The dim light of dawn showed him the cell.
A small, simple room with a crucifix.
A cot, empty.
A screened hearth, with two fragrant logs burning: the only source of light inside the room. He stepped forward, closing the door.
The red, uncertain glimmer trembled over the floor. A piece of sacking lay heaped by the hearth, from within which struck a glint of soft colour.
He approached it slowly. A round, fair shape became apparent, and a tumble of gold, at rest in the glow of the firelight.
His eyes dazzled. He stood, afraid for a moment. Then he passed forward quietly and, kneeling, laid his palm on the mound of warm sacking. Under his hand nothing moved. Then he felt, probing, frightened, the dead, resisting outline of metal.
It made a whimper, falling apart; but the blocks, the pipes, the bags of bullion that made up the heap were incapable of protest or fear, and in no need of comfort, being lifeless.
The light swam in his eyes; the pounding leaped from the gold at his throat to the other that lay at his feet and shook him between them. There was nothing else in the room.
Like had locked into like. He had found his lost gold, not his son.
An hour later, as the sun rose and the litany of Prime floated through the warm air, the Patriarch of Antioch made one of his unexpected but not unwelcome descents upon the Convent of the Franciscans at Famagusta and, shaking the dust from his terrible habit, commanded a flask of good water and a few platters of whatever the Convent possessed that would relieve a traveller’s hunger. Then he sent someone to look for the sieur de Fleury.
He rather expected there would be no delay. When the door thundered back on the wall he looked up from his pigeon and said, ‘I tell you to wait, and instead you’re off, cito, cito, cito, like an underpaid courier. I hear you’ve been given a present.’
‘Do you want it?’ said Nicholas de Fleury. His voice said all that was necessary.
‘Regard it as a pourboire,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘Will you have some water? The child isn’t on Cyprus.’
‘Your little piece of frippery thought he was,’ said Nicholas. He pulled out the phial and let it swing from his neck. He ignored the water.
‘Only God is a lasting friend,’ remarked the Patriarch. ‘Or is it really the fault of the phial? It seems to have thought that you wanted the gold.’
‘You left the gold there?’ said the other.
The Patriarch stretched his hand for the honey. ‘No. Your wife, I assume. I don’t know how she managed to get some. Oh well, maybe I can guess.’ He lifted his bread. ‘She certainly knows how to rile you.’ He watched the other man’s fists begin to slacken, and took a large bite.
‘Well, look at it this way,’ said de Fleury. ‘It saves me having to help Uzum Hasan, once I’ve got my army together and managed to lay hands on the rest of the bullion. No gold, no child, didn’t she say?’
‘I got a better bargain than that,’ said the Patriarch. ‘I seem to have finished the pigeons.’
‘I am sure you will leave me the feathers,’ the other said. He sat down. His sword, when he came in, had been rammed not quite home in its sheath. ‘What bargain?’
‘That was what I was going to tell you. Do what we discussed. Let the fools have the rest of your gold: it’ll come back to you tenfold as their merchant. You’ll coin money, ha! Sit round the table with all these scared princes and show them how you can help them throw back the Turks. There’s no one better qualified. You might have trained for this moment – Trebizond, Cyprus, truck with