Caprice and Rondo

  ‘Kathi?’ he said. ‘What is it? The reports about Anna? Is it so bad that Gelis can find out nothing about her from Germany? She married into high station, and if her origins were obscure, then she and her husband may have decided to leave them so. We know she did marry the Graf, and he never denied that Bonne was his child. She fell in love with Julius and made up a tale to impress him, but what of it? If she wasn’t wealthy, he was. She has all the Graf’s friends. And there is no doubt that it is a good marriage.’

  ‘No. I know,’ Kathi said. ‘And I know, I think, how Gelis feels. Nicholas has tried to make some amends, and it’s tempting to throw him a lifeline. Gelis wants to believe Anna can help him. His bastardy isn’t important, but you all want to attach him to some sort of substitute family. That was really why you went to Montello, after Anna told us about Thibault de Fleury.’

  She stopped.

  ‘So were we wrong?’ Tobie said. He thought that no one but Kathi, in all the discomfort and anguish of an over-long pregnancy, would be addressing herself to the emotional problems of a contrary bastard with a penchant for numbers.

  ‘No, you were right; but there were repercussions. While we were spying on Anna, she was experiencing them. Thibault sent a message to Caffa, to Nicholas. Anna has written to tell me what happened.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tobie. His mind performed a lightning review, partnered heavily by his stomach. He said, ‘It sounds as if we shouldn’t have gone to Montello. I thought it was harmless.’

  ‘Of course you had to go,’ Kathi said. ‘And Anna thought it was harmless, or she wouldn’t have told me in the first place. That’s why she’s upset about Nicholas. She doesn’t even say what his grandfather wrote. She just says it was all a mistake, and she wants Gelis to come. She sounds frightened.’

  ‘Of Nicholas?’ Tobie said. Damn the man. Damn the man and his immature appetites. One should settle down some time.

  Kathi looked at him. ‘You expect Nicholas to live like a monk? But no, not afraid of him, but for him. Whatever the letter said, Nicholas took it badly. Anna says he locked himself into his room.’

  ‘With a bottle,’ said Tobie uneasily.

  ‘She says she broke into his chamber, it worried her so. His brazier was reeking with drugs.’

  They looked at one another. Tobie swore, and forgot to apologise.

  Kathi said, ‘From all you say of the vicomte, I’m sure there was nothing unkind in his letter. It was just the fact that it had arrived, and too late.’

  ‘So should we tell Gelis?’ Tobie said. He didn’t suggest Gelis should join Anna and Julius and Nicholas and whatever Nicholas was burning on his brazier. He agreed, on the whole, that Nicholas should be expected to reconstitute himself without help. It didn’t rule out temporary help, unless it resigned.

  ‘No,’ said Kathi. ‘But I think we should tell Gelis not to try to investigate any more. No matter who Anna is, she is good for Nicholas, and we shouldn’t discredit her. And equally, Gelis should break off the search for this nun Thibault mentioned. The best news for Nicholas would be final proof that he was born outside marriage. It is virtually proved. We should leave it.’

  ‘I agree,’ Tobie said. He spoke slowly, for he was not sure if he meant it.

  She said suddenly, ‘But still, I don’t like it. Why isn’t the Patriarch helping? Why should Anna have to deal with all this alone?’

  Damn the man indeed. Tobie said carelessly, ‘No, I don’t like it either, but Anna’s better at this than the Patriarch. She can manage Nicholas. And it won’t be for long. Julius will be there in the spring. He and Anna will leave, and Nicholas will settle down and become Khan of Caffa. He might even discover his gold. No one mentions the gold?’

  ‘Don’t cheer me up,’ Kathi said.

  ‘All right, I won’t,’ Tobie said. ‘When are you planning to give birth? June’s a nice month.’

  DR ANDREAS OF VESALIA, arriving in the same month of January, hired some horses at Leith and, chatting all the way, as was his wont, presented himself at the Berecrofts house, once the Banco di Niccolò, in the Canongate. By then, he was not surprised to find the door at the stairhead wide open, and the inner rooms packed with the rosy faces and thick, fancy headgear of merchants, accompanied by their chirruping wives. Among the many faces he knew was that of the man of the house, Robin of Berecrofts, his fair hair dark with sweat, his eyes brilliant. He called Dr Andreas’s name, and lifted over a cup.

  ‘Your heir is born?’ Dr Andreas cried. Across the room, he glimpsed the scarlet face, matching his robe, of his fellow physician Tobias. Tobie waved. From the insouciant nature of the wave, Dr Andreas deduced that the mother was well, and that the child was born, separated, bathed, swaddled and fed, and probably at least a day old. Following the father out of the room, Dr Andreas treated himself to an impolite sigh. Horoscopes required to be exact, and wine-clouded memories seldom yielded the desirable details. But he was an ex-royal physician, a (reasonably) responsible doctor of Bruges, who had long performed services for the family of Anselm Adorne, and he had a very warm spot indeed for the young niece, Adorne’s pleasingly quick-witted Kathi.

  Dr Andreas stepped into the maternal chamber and viewed with interest the large, expensive draped bed, rosily illuminated by the flames from an even more expensive stone hearth installed by the previous owner, whose recipe for fertility, as it happened, had been presented to his wife in this very same room, in unfortunate circumstances.

  Within the bed, staring eye to eye with a baby, was the diminutive form of Katelijne Sersanders, her hair brushed neatly over her temporary bosom and her forearms supporting the child. Below its clothes, the infant’s legs hung like short tallow candles, and the back of its cranium resembled a bun. The girl’s expression was thoughtful.

  Robin said, ‘Here is Dr Andreas.’ His wife’s eyes turned, and she smiled. A six-year-old boy turned as well and, jumping down from the bed-step, ran to Robin while shouting to Dr Andreas, whom he knew. Robin swung him up in his arms.

  ‘It didn’t come!’ screamed Jodi de Fleury, red with pleasure. ‘The boy she was expecting didn’t come! Look! They sent a girl-baby instead!’

  ‘Jodi,’ said Robin.

  ‘Well, he’s right,’ Kathi said. ‘You can’t deny that he hasn’t got it just right. But all the same …’ Reversing her hands, she turned the morsel in a satisfied way to face outwards. ‘All the same, I don’t think it’s a bad try for beginners. What do you think, Dr Andreas?’

  Its legs, pigeon-toed, still hung like short tallow candles. Its face resembled a fig. ‘Delightful,’ he said. ‘Truly delightful.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t go as far as that,’ Kathi said; and she and her husband hooted with laughter while the six-year-old kicked to be put down.

  A nurse arrived, and Dr Andreas laid forth his gifts and retreated. The door closed on the parents. Behind it, although it was hard to be certain, they seemed to be arguing over the pitch of the child’s cry at birth.

  Later, Dr Tobie worked his way to his side. ‘Childish, were they? It’s just relief. Adorne lost a son. Those two wouldn’t admit it, but it was a girl they both hoped for. It’s to be called after Adorne’s wife. Must you do them a horoscope?’

  ‘Why not?’ the astrologer asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tobie said. ‘But they seem to have had bad luck enough, all of them. I’d like Fate to forget them for a while. I’d like that little maid Margaret of Berecrofts to lay her own mark on the future.’

  ‘As she will. As we all do,’ Andreas said.

  Chapter 25

  PRISONERS IN THE Genoese citadel of Soldaia were normally kept in the Governor’s castle, a group of lofty, rectangular buildings, segregated by walls, that cut the sky at the upper edge of the vast, sprawling arena — a second town — which accommodated the garrison. The crag upon which all this was built plummeted sheer to the sea on the Governor’s side, and on the other descended towards town and river in a series of precipitous humps and steep channels. r />
  The view from the keep was dramatic. Provided you were unbruised and unbound and fully in your right senses, you could survey the entire sweep of the dark, sandy bay with its crowded jetties, and the civilian town lying inland, and the low ranges of hills, with strange schisty outcrops further off. Between houses and hills lay a broad, fertile expanse, currently covered with slush, but yielding in summer wheat and grapes and grazing aplenty. A paradise in summer, was the Crimea — and even in winter, in a normal year.

  To Nicholas de Fleury, who was not having a normal year, the view was not visible, although he knew that it was there: that if he stood in the free air on the battlements he would see the whole garrison town laid out sloping before him, with its barracks and workshops and market, its churches and mosque, its cisterns and storehouses and armoury, and the circuit of its great striding walls with their massive towers, one for each Governor whose pleasure and duty it was, in the year of his office, to build one. One such bulwark, not far from the great drawbridge entrance, bore the arms of Prosper Adorno, Doge of the city of Genoa. Kinsman, naturally, of Anselm Adorne. There was no escape from one’s friends.

  At that point, lying on a hard pallet with his limbs aching and his eyes stuck shut with blood, Nicholas remembered what he was here for, and laughed.

  ‘Ah. Misra Niqula,’ remarked someone in the smooth, mellifluous Arabic of the schools. ‘Allah has been pleased to wake thee at last. Give thanks to the Lord, and Mohammed His Prophet.’

  Imam Ibrahiim. Nicholas opened his eyes.

  The room was small, but it was not precisely a cell. It was furnished. The imam, seated bearded and grave on his cushions, was indeed the man he had first met at the Russians’ in the company of Karaï Mirza. The man who had brought him a missive from Brother Lorenzo, and to whom he had listened many times since; once, with Anna. There was, however, a guard, standing inside the door.

  The imam continued, this time using passable Italian. ‘I am glad, of course, that you came, for I have only Maghgribian Spanish, and cannot always comprehend Señor Ochoa. But it was stupid of you not to explain, and they were quite within their rights to beat you. Wash yourself. It is nearly the hour for prayer. Then I shall take you to the Governor, who wishes to interrogate the prisoner. You will interpret.’

  ‘I am ashamed, lord. I value your advice,’ Nicholas said. There was a place to wash; he found a decent tunic from his pack, and he was given a prayer-mat. His pack, of course, had been searched. Pressing his brow to the ground made his head and eyes throb, but he had done this a thousand times, and no one could fault his performance. His mind, now working again, told him that he was witnessing some form of collusion between the imam and Ludovico da Bologna. In his disguise as a Mameluke, Nicholas had no claim on the time of a Latin Patriarch. The imam, on the other hand, was already holding classes in the medrese, and had every excuse to call on the faithful in the little mosque that served the garrison servants. His Spanish, limited though it was, would ensure that he was sought out. And from there, it was a simple step to suggest Donna Anna’s Mameluke steward, who spoke such excellent Catalan from his days of North African trading, and could even translate into the everyday language of Genoa.

  It was a pity that no one had had time to tell him before he arrived. It was even more of a pity that no one had informed the guard at the gates, who seemed to have been carrying out quite contrary orders. It seemed to Nicholas that Anna had been right; that the Genoese, made increasingly suspicious by his visit to Qirq-yer, his familiarity with the Russians and the arrival of the furs, had issued orders to arrest him if he returned to Soldaia. And that someone else, or even two people, had belatedly convinced the commander that his credentials were better than they seemed, and that he held some sort of brief as an interpreter. Which meant he would gain access to Ochoa. Which meant, with any luck, that he could help Ochoa to escape. He had to.

  The imam said, ‘Such devotion deserves its rewards but I think, my son, that the Governor awaits us.’ And Nicholas rose creakily from his knees and followed him out of the room.

  Ochoa, when he limped into the commander’s office, looked the way Nicholas felt, with a suffused eye and a lot of rags here and there with dried blood on them. He was not wearing one of his hats, but a common seaman’s woollen cap, jammed on, nevertheless, with panache. His lips were pursed, stretching his rubbery skin into chasms and awnings between the short bones of his face. At sight of Nicholas, his gums made a hole.

  Nicholas muttered. The imam, hearing him, replied sharply in Arabic. The Governor, a youngish man in a smart feathered hat and engraved cuirass, said, ‘What? You will kindly speak Genoese in this room.’

  The imam bowed. ‘Lord, excuse us. The man Nicomack was complaining that the size of his fee had not been discussed. I have told him that it is sufficient for him, a Mameluke servant, to do his utmost to please you. I have said that, if he interprets with skill, I am sure your lordship will be liberal.’

  ‘And if he does not, he will suffer for it,’ said the Governor. He looked at Nicholas. ‘I want you to question this dog. Ask him whether he is not Ochoa de Marchena, former seamaster and pirate, escaped from lifetime service to the Knights Hospitaller of St John at Rhodes. Ask, if he denies it, what is his business in Soldaia, and why was he hiding. Ask who helped him come to Soldaia. Ask the name of his master.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well?’ said the Governor.

  ‘Lord. I am sorry, lord. But I cannot remember so many questions,’ said Nicholas piteously; and jumped as the Governor brought his stick down with a crack.

  ‘Why am I surrounded by idiots? An interpreter who is a fool, and a criminal who cannot understand simple Italian. How did the Knights communicate with you?’ demanded the Commander.

  Ochoa de Marchena, who spoke seven languages, gazed at him helplessly. Nicholas, ranging himself hurriedly on the side of authority, translated the question into Catalan and repeated it loudly in faithful copy of the commander’s bullying tone. It contained a little addendum in the same language. ‘You stupid bastard, how did they trace you? How do you suppose we can get you out?’

  Ochoa glared at him. The volley of Catalan, when it came, nearly overturned his own vocabulary. Nicholas turned to the Governor. ‘There is a Spanish Langue, and Spanish sailors on Rhodes. He asks how many tongues the Governor has.’

  ‘He asks for a flogging,’ said the Governor. ‘Put the questions.’

  What followed represented, in its macabre way, the funniest piece of theatre for which Nicholas had ever invented a script, with Ochoa de Marchena, of the scowling, toothless face and ferocious invention, as his unreliable partner. The Governor, slightly pink, put the questions.

  Nicholas, having no need to translate them, put a number of questions of his own in convoluted Spanish to Ochoa, adding, as the fancy took him, some convenient insults. Ochoa replied with equally unseemly comments about Nicholas, about the Governor, and about the individual soldiers of the garrison who had incurred his displeasure. He dispensed, at intervals, nuggets of information about the routine of the garrison and the exact disposition of his cell. He expressed the opinion that Nicholas would have made a mess of lifting Moses out of his basket, and might as well go back to his pretty woman and leave Ochoa to escape on his own, which he could in the blink of an eye if someone would slip him a knife. Nicholas said irritably that he didn’t have a knife, and Ochoa was to do nothing at all until he heard from him.

  To the Governor, who was understandably keen to take some share in this torrent of Spanish, Nicholas reported that the man said he was not Ochoa de Marchena but a man who took orders for parrots; that he had just crossed the Straits of Kerch on a camel, but the camel had died, and so had his parrots, and he had been forced to conceal himself from his creditors. As soon as spring came, he would travel back to Seville and return with a fresh batch of birds.

  ‘And if he has no money, how does he pay for this travel?’ asked the Governor.

  ‘He aw
aits friends,’ Nicholas explained, at the end of a tirade. He hoped Ochoa was listening. ‘He has two friends arriving soon in Soldaia. They will vouch for him, and they bring money, he says. He says he has committed no crime, but would be prepared to give you or your family a free parrot, when he returns.’

  ‘Is this true?’ the Governor said.

  The imam said nothing. Ochoa said (in Catalan), ‘Is the poor man expected to believe this? Could you not have invented something more likely? Parrots! My darling Nicholas, I would sell you a slave, but a parrot?’

  ‘You’d sell me your mother, and she would be a parrot,’ said Nicholas. And switching to Genoese: ‘Lord, it seems to be true. Ask this man anything about parrots, and he will tell you. What do they eat, when do they lay, how do you teach them to speak. His mother and his mother’s mother kept parrots. Ask anything.’

  ‘Bastard!’ said Ochoa. ‘My life hangs in the balance, and I am to talk about parrots?’

  ‘What does he say?’ said the Governor.

  ‘Alas!’ Nicholas said. ‘He mourns his dead birds, his camel. He says the Genoese may as well take his life. He wishes to leave his hats to his friends. They will be here in two weeks. The friends. If I may use my lord’s paper, I shall write down their names.’

  Ochoa peered. ‘You have spelled that one wrongly,’ he said. For once, he looked impressed.

  Nicholas glared at him and handed the names of the prisoner’s friends to the Governor. They were, so far as he could remember, those of two of the highest commanders in the Order of St John.

  The Governor said, ‘A man who takes orders for parrots? How can he know people such as these?’

  ‘Did I say he only sells parrots, lord?’ Nicholas said. ‘He sells parrots. He travels. He spies for the Knights. I suppose they will not be happy to learn that he is here, a condemned prisoner.’

  ‘He is lying,’ said the Governor.