Caprice and Rondo

  ‘You could say that,’ the Patriarch said.

  ‘What local politics?’

  ‘What? Oh, the Tartar Governor for Caffa has died. The Tartars are divided over which of two men should replace him, and the Genoese are in two camps as well, being well bribed for their support by each party. You could say the Russians are caught in the middle.’

  ‘And me. I want their money,’ said Anna. She was smiling. ‘I hope Nicholas can get it for me. Will you wait for him? I wish I knew where he went.’

  ‘To beg off the Russians, I imagine,’ the Patriarch said. ‘Earn their gratitude. Get their complicity. He wouldn’t want you to be there. You don’t want to hear the names he’ll be calling you.’

  ‘In the cause of business,’ said Anna rather blankly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Mahir, King of the Monkeys. You know the Abbot thinks you are called Countess Onna?’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ Anna said. ‘Wasn’t it?’ She watched the Patriarch preparing to laugh, and held her tongue. She was naturally patient, and had had practice, with Julius.

  NICHOLAS ARRIVED a good deal after that, and expressed no surprise at finding Anna retired, and the nuncio of the Pope and the Emperor Frederick still sitting at ease in the guest-parlour, the remains of a frumenty frosting his gown. Instead, he threw his satchel into a corner, poured and drank off some wine and, holding the half-empty cup, walked backwards and forwards, sipping occasionally. He looked like an actor conducting a mental rehearsal.

  ‘You are angry, I take it,’ said the Patriarch. ‘So sit down and tell me what you wish you had said. And make sure that door is closed. Mameluke stewards do not sit or drink in my presence. Nor do decent Christians, but you are never going to be that.’

  Nicholas was angry, largely because it had been impossible to say what he had wanted to say. Since it was reasonable, indeed essential, that the Patriarch should know, Nicholas delivered a curt résumé. Guided by one of the monks, he had reported, on behalf of his mistress, at Constantine’s Tower, where the Genoese consul was interviewing the would-be kidnappers. He had seen some of them dragged away.

  ‘Well beaten, I imagine?’ had said the Patriarch dryly.

  ‘Naturally. But alive, so far as I could see. A former guide of ours, Petru, was among them.’

  ‘A spy?’

  ‘A sympathiser, at least, with the Russians. The soldiers had broken both his arms. Then I was questioned over the complaint about the furs, and the credentials of the Gräfin, and they brought in the agent, Sinbaldo di Manfredo, who had imported the furs, and finally hauled back the leader of the Russians …’

  But he needed more wine while he considered that. The men who had tried to waylay Anna had not been a band of common thieves. He had the impression that they were not even permanent colleagues, although they lived in the same quarter. They were simply a group of small merchants and their servants; men who had contracted with a German-Polish company to buy a consignment of furs for them in Moscow. Then, when on their way to Caffa to deliver the goods, the pelts had been stolen and they were now being asked to refund their value.

  The case had been stated fairly enough by Sinbaldo the agent and by himself, and had been endorsed by the prisoner, through his swollen mouth and broken teeth. His name was Dymitr, and he was Ruthenian, his family being that of the Wiśniowiecki, the lords of Cherry Village. Mishandling could not disguise his athleticism: the man was long-limbed and chestnut-bearded, with glowing black eyes spitting fire. At present, he looked the way the captain of the San Matteo had probably looked, when Paúeli had finished with him. The load of ermines and sables had gone the way of the ‘Last Judgement,’ with Tommaso sitting contrite in his pan. It remained to be seen whether Julius would have better luck than Adorne had had.

  ‘Who was the leader? Dymitr? And who else was there, besides the agent?’ the Patriarch asked.

  The consul had been present, the sallow-faced man with the expensive clothes and superior manner: Antoniotto della Gabella. And another man, soft-voiced and lighter in colouring, who had said very little, but appeared to be Genoese too.

  ‘Oberto Squarciafico,’ the Patriarch said in a satisfied way. ‘One of the representatives of the Bank of St George. Indeed, the treasurer. Well, well, my boy — and you walked free, with an apology? You were lucky. The penalty for fire-raising is death.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I think the feeling was that they were happy to take it out of the Russians, so long as I could get the Countess to forget her furs and turn round and go home.’

  ‘Forget her furs?’

  ‘There aren’t any,’ said Nicholas. ‘So no one could impound them. And they haven’t any money to speak of in Caffa. It’ll have to be thrashed out by lawyers, and the compensation brought down from Moscow, which could take half the winter. Or, likelier, it won’t come at all. The difficulty is that she does need the money’

  ‘So you want to wait and negotiate? Or wait and open up some new trade for her?’

  ‘Both,’ Nicholas said. ‘It shouldn’t upset your own plans. Tabriz is humming with envoys, they tell me. Finish your business here and go on without me. I’ll come when I can.’

  ‘With or without the Gräfin?’ said the Patriarch, raising the hedge of his brows.

  ‘Julius is coming for her,’ Nicholas said irritably. ‘When he is well.’

  ‘It seems,’ the Patriarch said, ‘that you are about to have an interesting winter. May I make a suggestion? When this immediate business is over — when the consul is convinced that you are staying, and that an official complaint is being made, and compensation will be insisted on — you should take a little trip into the country. That is, since you have chosen to appear in the dress of a heretic, you might as well visit the chief of the heretics. I know him well. I shall give you a letter. You must ride to Baçi Saray, and climb to Qirq-yer, the mountain citadel of Mengli-Girey, the Khan of the Tartars.’

  ‘You know him well,’ Nicholas repeated.

  ‘Yes. Like his father, he is a dangerous man, but a shrewd one. He sides with the Genoese since it suits him. He may continue to side with them if western merchants such as yourself offer prospects of lucrative trade. Or one day, he may change his mind about all his alliances. You are not a Franciscan friar, for which we all thank God, but you have some native shrewdness. I should be interested to have your views on the Khan.’

  ‘You mean, spy on him?’ Nicholas said.

  Ludovico da Bologna favoured him with a pitying glare. ‘Do I have to spell out what is happening? Do you think the fortunes of a pretty woman and her unfortunate husband count beside this? This is not about furs. This is about a balance of power between factions which shifts from week to week, and which, out of greed, out of fear, out of petulance, can determine at least the fate of the Latins in my Patriarchate, at worst the future sovereignty and beliefs of the West. I hope to go to Tabriz, but I cannot leave while these puppies are quarrelling. Resign yourself. Julius cannot come before summer. You are going to know the Peninsula well before you depart. You may as well make yourself useful. Unless, of course, you wish to take the lady back empty-handed, and spend the winter frozen in Thorn at the bedside of the stricken Julius.’

  ‘That would seem a waste,’ Nicholas said.

  THUS HE CAME to spend the autumn in Caffa, and learned to know it as well as he knew Bruges or Nicosia or Venice, Cairo or Timbuktu. When he first came, in the summer, it had the look and smell of the rich emporia of Pera and Trebizond, with the stone stalls piled with scented exotica under the palms, the teeming streets with no two tongues or costumes the same, the silken awnings, the glittering churches, the dazzle of sails in the harbour. And outside, the wagons soft-piled with grapes swaying into the city, through air swimming with chaff and scored with the songs of the threshers. Later, when the violent ultramarine of the harbour had cooled to blue-grey, it reminded him unexpectedly of the estuary of Edinburgh, glimpsed through an arch from on high. Only here, the sounds were different from those of a Chri
stian town: the invocations of the muezzin throbbed through the gull cries and babble, and the clack of the conventual sounding-boards interrupted the carpenter’s mallet. Bells were not permitted in Caffa, where the mosques outnumbered the churches.

  He did not leave the city at all for some time, being closeted obsequiously with the consul in pursuit of Anna’s affairs, or attending Anna herself at the desks of her agent and lawyers. The German Contessa had her own house by then. Tartar and Circassian servants were common: every house had its Fatma. The identity of the Contessa’s Mameluke steward had never been questioned, although Sinbaldo, knowing Straube, had to be told. He appeared to be impressed by the stratagem, but Nicholas, when he wished to send letters, preferred to use other carriers.

  The Russians, heavily penalised, had been freed, and were allowed to drag their aching bodies back to their quarter, but forbidden to leave until the dispute was settled. Since then, by amazing coincidence, Nicholas had bumped into their leader, Dymitr, at the fish-market, and after a single tense moment, had abruptly made a remark which resulted, presently, in the two men leaving the market together.

  Returning, Nicholas reported to Anna.

  ‘Father Ludovico said you’d do that,’ she said, viewing him. Although he had left his baskets in the care of the cook, an odour of fish clung to his clothes and would adhere, no doubt, to the plain plaster walls and timber ceilings of the house the Patriarch had borrowed for her, and for which she could not pay. She had also made him take off his slippers. His feet, muscular, clean and well-shaped, were not the offence they might have been in Cologne, for example. Men with bare feet were professionally used to tread grapes, or press caviare into the barrel. Nicholas said that for caviare, they got very small men, with dimpled toes.

  He had been increasingly cheerful since they settled in Caffa. He was cheerful now, smiling at her above the black rim of beard and sporting a sashed tunic dripping with shellfish. He looked, in a terrible way, like the Patriarch. ‘I’ve just spent an hour with the Russians. Petru included.’

  She was still taken aback, despite the Patriarch’s surmise. ‘They might have killed you, or held you to ransom.’ She paused. ‘They didn’t. They fed you with oysters. You promised to help them against me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nicholas said. ‘Even Petru remembered what a heartless mistress you were, although they understand I have to stay for the wages. It doesn’t immediately help, because they don’t have any money, and it may not come even after they’ve sent for it. But I get all the gossip. And anyone with a good intelligence service can make money in trade, if they’re quick.’

  ‘Can you make me rich by next week?’ Anna said.

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I still have some of the money Zeno gave me.’ A ripple of joy crossed his face. ‘D’you know Zeno auctioned off his own Venetian clerk to square his debts and free himself to go home? Martin. He’s scrubbing latrines in the Armenian monastery. Zeno told him he’d get him a pension provided he swears he volunteered to be sold. They won’t put up with Venetian envoys. Two others came through in June and had to hide in the church. It’s a threat, see, to the deals that the Genoese and the Russians are possibly doing with the Golden Horde and the Crim Tartars and Poland. And Hungary. And Uzum Hasan.’

  ‘You love this,’ said Anna, astonished.

  Below the trousers, his naked feet were crossed in a parody of coy submission. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like. What are you writing? Something for me to copy?’

  ‘Something for you to play. Music for Jodi.’

  His feet returned flat to floor, and his palms to his knees. Then he said, ‘I didn’t know you made music. Who taught you? Your parents?’

  ‘My parents died before I grew up,’ Anna said. Then she said, ‘Have I said something?’

  Nicholas smiled at her. ‘No. I misunderstood. I thought Julius had said that he met them.’

  ‘He sometimes said that,’ Anna said. ‘Just as he liked to say that I was wealthy. I was, of course, once. If Julius cares too much about show, it is only because he himself was a foundling. The Church paid for his legal course at Bologna. He was better off, I think, than he knew. No one sent you to be educated, except as an apprentice. And look how far you have come.’

  ‘Penniless to Caffa, disguised as a Mameluke servant. But see what company I can boast,’ Nicholas said. He looked down at the paper she had given him: his son’s verses with musical notes written above them. They sang themselves in his head, the words he had committed to memory, like a crime, in his room in Thorn. The tune was simple and charming and clever, and he couldn’t speak.

  Then he said, ‘I’m sorry. It took me by surprise. I’m sentimental about Jodi. You may have noticed.’

  She said, ‘If you hadn’t cared, I wouldn’t have troubled. Do you want to talk about him?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘But you can hear the tune? You know what it is?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is perfect. It should be sung with a flute.’

  ‘Or another voice,’ Anna said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He got up slowly. ‘May I have it? We could talk of it later?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Anna said.

  HE KNEW, naturally, that he should have stayed. But music — his greatest skill, his deepest pleasure — was the last of the possessions which he had set out to jettison, and he had not faced that yet. It struck him that his record so far was not especially impressive. He had believed, quite some time ago, that he had reduced all his relationships to manageable ciphers, and then had found that Jodi escaped him. Now he had a chance to excise two weaknesses at the same time, through a child’s terrible verse and a jingle.

  So the diviner’s will, at least, had it. The diviner’s spirit, as before, contradicted. The verse, however childish, however broken, was still endearing, even enchanting. The music matched it exactly.

  He hadn’t known of this gift. His image of Anna had been incomplete; the burning image he had carried ever since he first saw her, and every step of the long journey here. He had never touched her, so far. He had not wooed her, except by being different from Julius. He had taken great care.

  And now, this.

  But when, later, she tapped on his door, he rose at once and opened it and said, ‘Of course, the time has come for a performance. You have a flute?’

  And Anna said, ‘Is the voice not enough, or are you too grand?’ Then, because this was hardly an occupation for a Saracen servant, she led him outside, to the kiosk under the fig trees. The house and small garden were empty: Brygidy had gone to church, and they would be unheard; or so she said. She had a dish of cherries, and her hair, loosely knotted, drifted in wisps at her ears above her usual plain, high-necked gown. She set the cherries down, placed him on a bench by the thin, woven wall and, seating herself, took the paper from his hand and studied it, smiling.

  Her voice was so soft that he did not immediately realise that she was not speaking, but was singing the words of his son, to her music. It unfolded; he sat in silence, watching and listening. Feeling his attention, she crinkled her eyes and allowed her voice to expand. It was as smooth as syrup, and dark, and flowed from one register to the next without flaw. Primaflora had had a schooled voice like this, and a young woman called Phemie in Scotland. Kathi’s voice, high and free, was a freak of nature as was his own, recently given some semblance of art by a man in Scotland who thought he loved them both, and was right to love Kathi.

  Music and Willie Roger. Nicholas de Fleury had had ten months to notice that they were not precisely man-eating dragons. One could conjure with them, and live. At the end of this song, Nicholas said lightly, ‘Now you have surprised me. Shall we try that together?’ And watched her eyes, her full-lidded violet eyes, as, sharing the bench and the page, he and she repeated the little performance, at first muted, in unison, and then with her voice moving in harmony above and below, until they ended together. Then she looked at him, her colour high.


  He said, ‘Do I thank Kathi for this? You and I have never spoken of music. I didn’t know you could sing.’

  ‘But everyone knows of your voice,’ she said. ‘There was a famous motet someone made for you in Edinburgh. Lord Cortachy used to say that he wept.’

  ‘It was probably tedious enough to deserve it,’ Nicholas said. She had remained at his side, the paper loose in one hand. When he leaned to offer her fruit, she lifted twin cherries, and tilted her head to admire them. ‘We spoke of my parents,’ she said. ‘But where did that voice come from? Or don’t you know?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘My mother’s side, at a guess. She died when I was quite young.’

  Anna looked at him. ‘Were you sad?’

  ‘I thought the sun would never shine again.’

  ‘You were an only child? My sisters died.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I wasn’t brought up alone. I had an aunt two years younger than I was. Adelina. A red-headed spitfire.’

  Anna laid down the stalks. ‘She was in Geneva. Julius told me. When your mother died, Adelina went to Jaak de Fleury at the same time as you did? So you would comfort each other?’

  ‘We might have, but they kept us apart. Didn’t Julius hear about that?’ Nicholas said.

  ‘He doesn’t speak about her. After all, he didn’t come to Geneva until you and she had both gone. What happened, Nicholas?’ Anna said. The plate of cherries lay between them. She leaned across it and laid her hand on his arm. ‘What happened? Your great-uncle beat you. Did he beat the little girl, too?’

  ‘I saw him beat her. I saw him kiss her,’ Nicholas said. ‘Then she went to a convent. She was too young to know what was happening.’

  The hand on his arm was steady and cool. ‘But you were not. Did he beat and kiss you?’ Anna said.

  Nicholas gave a grimace. ‘He beat me. Better men have managed to do it as well, and I deserved some of it, I expect. I didn’t like him, but not simply for that.’

  ‘And the wife, Jaak’s wife Esota? Julius didn’t like either of them,’ Anna said.