The Unicorn Hunt (79 page)

It was quiet. Men came and went noiselessly on the carpets. The buzz of prayer was thin and homely, and quite unlike the thrilling resonances from the Jingerebir. His thoughts began to assemble again, doubtfully, as if afraid of abuse. He did not at once remember the dangerous talent he had found in the Tyrol: the gift he had already employed on this journey before arresting its tortuous, finely judged progress. When he did, he drew a short breath. Then he closed his eyes, and concentrated his thoughts on one thing.

Presently he rose, having performed, deep in thought, the rite he knew so well, and went out through the school. On the way he capped a delighted child with his headscarf, and bought another, chaffing the vendor, from among those that hung for sale on the wall. Then he set off towards the Khan el Kalili bazaar.

He remembered where he had been sitting, the day the eunuch had leaned, scented, beside him and whispered an outrageous invitation from his mistress. He remembered where he had been trading verses and music when the other, more courteous approach had been made; and the house he had been taken to.

It was not hard to find it again: a merchant’s home, rising two timber-built storeys above the shop-arches below, with its windows projecting over the alley. Fear of Adorne was not in his mind, nor even concealment. He stood looking up at the worked wooden mashrabiyya, behind which anyone might be watching. So hidden, the merchant’s concubines had witnessed his entertainment that day. He had felt invaded by their desires, their agitation as he sang. It had disturbed him. He had not asked himself why.

No one stirred, or came out. But no one barred his way when he
climbed the steps and, passing an unguarded door, entered the same room as before. Inside, someone was sitting alone, a fan languidly stirring. Nicholas stopped. The person spoke without turning. ‘Dear me, Nicholas. You are becoming predictable. She said you would come.’

The voice was that of a man. Recognising it, Nicholas felt little surprise. Equally, he was half prepared for the rush of bare feet which immediately followed; but although his knife was in his hand, he had little chance to wield it before he was knocked down.

He was aware, between the second-last blow and the last, that the fan was waving thoughtfully over him, and the same voice had made a remark. ‘She said you would do that, as well.’

The speaker’s face, the beautiful face, was that of David de Salmeton.

When Nicholas did not return, John le Grant hired a number of burly men who had occasionally served him before, and presented himself at the Second Dragoman’s house. The Baron Cortachy, descending immediately, eyed the escort and said, ‘Your companions are welcome, but might prefer to wait in the courtyard. If you have come to enquire after your friend, all I can say is that he came, and left very soon after. Pray search if you wish. He is not here.’

John le Grant, whose nature was admirably practical, took the invitation at its face value and searched. He ended in Anselm Adorne’s parlour. Adorne and four others were there. Le Grant said, ‘Where did he go?’

‘To prison, I trust,’ said a young man.

Adorne’s son. John had never seen him before, but nothing was surer, from the fair looks to the French inflection of his schooling in Paris. Le Grant said, ‘Do I gather that you denounced him to the authorities?’

‘As he denounced us.’ That came from the chaplain, a spare little man with crossed teeth. They were all speaking, as strangers did, in mongrel Latin. This man’s accent was Scots. John stared at him. He said, ‘Cyprus. John de Kinloch of the Order. I heard you were here.’

Anselm Adorne cut in abruptly. ‘Father John is my chaplain and chamberlain. Believe him, if not me. Nicholas de Fleury has injured us; injured me, personally. I offered him justice in Bruges, and he fled. Where he is, we do not know.’

John le Grant gazed at them all, and finally at the priest. He said, ‘So it’s a proud day for God’s Church, and for Scotland. You know what the Mamelukes do to men they take to be spies?’

‘The choice was his,’ said Adorne. His voice was deliberate. ‘In his place, I should have agreed to return quietly to Bruges; especially as his wife might be there.’

‘You told him that?’ John le Grant said. Then he added, consciously moderating, ‘You have proof?’

Adorne looked at him. ‘Evidence of a possible error, that is all. I should have fabricated a better story, I assure you, had I wished to. I shall tell you what I told him. Strangely, he seemed to find it more conclusive than I did.’

John le Grant listened. As Adorne couldn’t do, he understood.
To mislead me
, Nicholas had said. If he believed that of Gelis, he would have grounds for thinking she was alive. If a man could divine anything, he could divine his bride’s ring. And if Nicholas thought her so wayward, perhaps he did not want a reunion with her in Bruges – the tempting exit from the Levant that the Baron Cortachy so much desired. Yet surely, all these weeks, the attachment between man and girl had been patent. With the loss of Gelis, it had been as if Nicholas himself had mislaid his purpose in life.

Adorne was still talking. Suddenly, it seemed to John that he had heard enough. He got up. He said, ‘I think I want other company. The dung-cake makers would do. Whether Gelis is living or not, Nicholas believes that she is. You told him that, and then set the Mamelukes after him.’ He looked round them all. ‘The Vatachino and you. Do you think you have only Nicholas to contend with? I advise you to watch out during the rest of your travels – and when you go back to Bruges – and to Scotland. Today you have started a war. And I have to tell you that the devices of war are my business.’

He left, without being halted. Once at home, he gave certain detailed instructions to his staff and, leaving circumspectly, made his way to the house of a boatbuilder who was entirely willing, for a consideration, to lease him a room a safe distance from the river at Bulaq. From there, he sent a messenger north bearing a message, written in Flemish, for Tobie. Tobie received it.

At the same time, Anselm Adorne, Baron Cortachy, far from dwelling on the splenetic threats of young Niccolò’s red-headed friend, had become deeply embroiled in the frustrating and troublesome arrangements for his imminent departure from Cairo. It was with some alarm, therefore, that he found himself called to receive, unannounced, the minute, repressive figure of Katelijne Sersanders his niece. She looked well, which allayed some of his fears. Nevertheless, he hastened towards her. At her expression, he stopped.

She said, ‘Didn’t you expect me? If you threatened M. de Fleury, Dr Tobias was bound to change sides.’

‘Change sides?’ said her uncle, smiling. ‘You make it sound like a battle. I doubt if Nicholas de Fleury is in any danger, but if Dr Tobias wants to join him, he is welcome. I have no quarrel with him. I look at you, and you are blooming.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ said his niece Katelijne. ‘So you have no objection if I come with you to Mount Sinai, to St Catherine’s monastery? I felt she spoke to me in Alexandria. I felt the Blessed Saint wanted me there.’

‘My dear!’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘Hardened sinner that you are, your devotion needs no further proof. Indeed, I am sure you misheard. Catherine of Alexandria would be the last to exact a month in the wilderness from any young maiden. Heat; thirst; the dangerous traverse of mountains; the presence of merciless Bedouin? Believe me, such is not in her mind. Of course, you will stay for the Abundance. We leave immediately it is over. You too will leave – I shall find you an escort – to return to the fresh air of Alexandria until I can come back to take you to Bruges.’

His mind on camels, he touched her hair, smiling. His wife Margriet could have warned him. He was familiar with motherly wives and the skittish ways of other men’s mistresses. For the rest of womankind, he drew on his knowledge of poetry. It was not a very safe guide.

It might have interested Nicholas, had he been sufficiently detached, to discover that French was the language in which he responded to the white extremes of physical pain. His tormentors, noting the emerging lapses from Arabic, professed to detect in such wilful incoherence yet another ruse to conceal the prisoner’s true identity as an Ottoman spy. After the third interrogation, the muffled figure of the Chief Dragoman himself descended the steps and condescended to turn over the wily French-speaker with the toe of his slipper. The act released a discernible odour: he had come, indolently dressed, from his wives’ deep and various carpets.

‘Know that God hateth impudence,’ was all he said. The trap-door closed, and presently his minions returned with their orders. ‘For this, more salt. After that, thou wilt speak thine own tongue, or pay a forfeit. A forfeit for every word. A little beating, of the kind thou knowest well: nothing that scars. Dost thou hear?’

Nicholas answered. Whatever he said, it must have been Arabic, for they did no more than empty the salt-bag and leave, plunging him once more into darkness. The salt was forced into his mouth,
not applied to his skin. His skin was unbroken. When he had finished retching – a profitless exercise – he lay on the dried filth of the floor and waited for the haze of agony to disperse.

Servants being accustomed to blows, he had in recent years gained an undeserved reputation for stoicism. It did not mean that he was impervious to pain. It meant that he was not affronted by it, and could even agree, sometimes, that it was merited. More important than that, he had learned that bodily pain was less to be feared than the other kind. His lack of tolerance now could be traced to the fact that his present condition combined both.

David de Salmeton and Gelis. Two years ago, they had been in Scotland together; they had sailed to Flanders in the same ship. He hadn’t believed – still did not believe – Simon de St Pol’s suggestion that de Salmeton and she had been closer than that. But, adroit and subtle officer of the Vatachino, de Salmeton had shown himself an exceptional adversary ever since their first meeting in Cyprus. His company had lost face in Africa, and had been intent on mastery ever since – in Scotland, in the Tyrol, in the Levant. They had ousted John here in Cairo. They had not, so far, offered physical violence at first hand, although he himself had not always been so particular. Annihilation in the business field had been their preferred and most evident aim.

Until now. Until Adorne had been injured; forced to harbour the Boyds; exposed to ignominy and expense in Alexandria. Then David de Salmeton had set the trap and, knowing he would not fail to come, had delivered him not to the Sultan or the great emirs to whom official complaint might be made, but to some underling, whom even the Chief Dragoman could disown.

The cellar in which Nicholas lay was not one of the well-equipped prisons which occupied the basement of any official large house. It was empty, communicating by trap-door to the upper floor, and by locked doors to other cellars or passages on either side from which no sound emerged. When they had learned all they wanted to know, they could bury him here, and deny all knowledge of him. And if he were found, there would be no mark on his skin.

So de Salmeton and Adorne must have planned. And Gelis had helped them.

The veiled woman whose eunuch had conveyed that lewd invitation – that had been Gelis, testing, taunting. She had been there, on his first visit to the merchant’s house belonging to David de Salmeton. For his second, she had constituted herself the bait in the trap – she who had sent her wedding ring on a pilgrim galley to Jaffa so that her real whereabouts would remain undivined.

He wondered by what means she had sailed from Venice, and where she had landed. With de Salmeton’s help, it would not be difficult to find a berth and travel swiftly, reaching Jaffa, Damietta, Cairo ahead of them all. She knew, or David de Salmeton must know of the gold. From Katelijne to Adorne to de Salmeton. It had been a simple chain.

Knowing his gift of divining, she had used it against him, as she had sent Margot home; as she had stopped him – stopped the hound music, the child’s music with fire. And now she had made her own kill.

He had thought her dead.
How was it for her?
Cool and careful and sly, it had been for her: a chain of elegant links smoothly fitted together and leading him here, as he had dispatched her to Florence. They played games, and she had won by choosing a short game in the end, against all he expected. While Umar, who might have forgiven her, was horribly dead.

He found himself hoarse, as happened at times when the pain remained at its height for too long. No one could hear him, but he set himself to prove, as he must, that he could exert his will and be silent. After a while, the glare receded and he made one anchor, then two; then wove between them a chain, a net, a mail-coat of numbers.

When Tobie presented himself at his door, John le Grant, Aberdonian, engineer, maker of mines, stood with his white eyelashes wet and gripped his shoulders. When, some time later, Katelijne Sersanders was announced, the engineer told his servant to say that he was out.

‘No,’ rescinded Tobias. Made aware of firm opposition, he amplified. ‘She’s not just Adorne’s niece, she’s intelligent. See her. She may have something to tell you.’

After the kite episode, privately, he had known as much. But Adorne was her uncle, and he, John, had declared open war on the man. Also, she was a child. He said, ‘Is it fair?’

‘Let her be the judge of that,’ Tobie answered. If he had fallen in love, it was not obvious.

Entering, small as a robin, Katelijne Sersanders made her mind known at once. ‘Do you know where M. de Fleury is? Do you know?’

‘No,’ said Tobie. ‘Ask your uncle.’

She tore off her cloak and sat down. She said, ‘I was right. Someone’s got him. So, who?’

John le Grant said, ‘Your uncle denounced him. Try the Mamelukes.’

She said, ‘We should have heard. And you would know if he was hiding. I think something is wrong.’

‘Your uncle doesn’t have him?’ said Tobie.

The girl looked at him with something kinder than contempt. ‘He offered him justice in Bruges. He isn’t vindictive. But, escaping, M. de Fleury may have fled into trouble. That is all I came to say.’