The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [364]
He prepared to move. As if she knew it, she spoke again. ‘Shall I tell you something else? Your charming, untroubled sleep at this juncture confirmed another idea of mine. You have some fears for the child, but not many. I think you know who took him. Should I be right?’
Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t know he was alive. I do now. I don’t know who has him.’ If he had been overcome by something other than sleep, he didn’t want her especially to know. It became important to leave before she began thinking of Margot. Turning at last, he jerked the door open.
Three men were standing outside. ‘My bodyguard,’ Gelis observed. ‘I thought your brains were going to revive some time. Now you know where to go, I really should prefer not to be left behind. Shall we leave?’
It was difficult to do anything else. He found he did not really care. He hadn’t been wrong. Something was going to succeed. And, of course, he was going to mislead them.
Unfortunately, she grasped his stick and threw it away, so that he was forced to resort to the flashing, eloquent whistle, which began to shudder as soon as he touched it. By then they had replaced his mask by a plain one. Gelis, too, had altered her cloak and her hood. This time, whatever he found, she wanted no witnesses. It should have troubled him. Instead the whistle throbbed, and his sense of elation kept growing even when the three soldiers manhandled him downstairs, and the crowds pressed about his senses again.
An hour before midnight, the mist dissolved to a haze and St Mark, had he looked down from his pickled pork, would have seen that his Republic’s prince, elders, and priests were assembling outside the Basilica in his Piazza; that the stages and scaffolding had all gone, and that the Carnival, in a last blaze of glory, was withdrawing its revellers to the tall wooden bridge at the Rialto.
Singing, eating, drinking, embracing, merry-makers and artists alike crowded on the streamer-hung bridge and occupied either bank of the Grand Canal, thick and lively as lobsters. The water was covered with gondolas, glowing like insects in amber, upon which lounged the nobility, the effigies whose beringed white-gloved hands were decked with real diamonds; whose extravagant headdresses and masks had been manufactured by goldsmiths.
The boats were carved and gilded and mounded with ivy and flowers. Dishes gleamed under candlelit awnings while servants stepped up and down, and musicians competed. The flotilla swayed, awaiting the signal to sail.
In the first rank was the beautiful twelve-oar bissona of the Banco di Niccolò, with its unicorn crest. To it, one by one through the evening, had come everyone but its master. Julius, exalted, dragging Cristoffels, who had been reluctant to leave. John le Grant, subdued, with Father Moriz. Tobie, bringing with him Gregorio, induced to walk the few steps from the Ca’ Niccolò by a combination of guarantees and assurances. The sail in procession down the Canal to the Basin would only take half an hour. Less, for everyone to be in position by midnight. And Nicholas would come to the boat.
So far he had not. Others were there, however, who could be recognised – by their coats of arms, by the liveries of their oarsmen and servants.
To the right, the flag of Corner and the lion banner of Lusignan stirred over the lantern-hung vessel of Marco Corner, his wife and his daughter Catherine, Queen Consort of Cyprus; and scent and music floated across from its cabin. The Canal was not very broad, and there was only one darkened boat between the gondola of the Queen and that of the Banco di Niccolò. Tobie, gazing across it, glimpsed Zacco’s stout little bride, and two exotic figures he thought might be the princesses of Naxos.
There was a third, remarkable for its beauty, which twice came to the rail