‘They were both strange,’ Nicholas said. ‘I escaped and so did my little aunt. It’s a common enough sort of childhood, and did me no lasting harm, although there were some things my uncle did later that I couldn’t forgive him for. As for Adelina, I expect she went on to make a wise and good-hearted nun. Or perhaps she changed course and married, and is the matriarch of a brilliant, red-headed family. I wish I knew her. My wife — my first wife, Marian de Charetty — wanted to help her and was hurt, I know, to learn that she didn’t want to be found. But I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.’
‘And rich,’ Anna said glumly, and took her hand back in order to choose another couple of cherries. ‘While here we are, starving in penury.’ Her gentle mockery was for him, and herself.
His gaze had been on the cherries. She didn’t spit the stones out, just removed them in a practical way from her lips and laid them down. He said abruptly, ‘I haven’t made music since Trèves. Did you know that?’
‘It was a very small hurdle,’ she said.
‘Not to me. You have been very kind, and I want to repay you. Anna, I have found some good trading outlets for Julius, but they all need investment.’
‘I know you have no money either,’ she said. ‘Unless, of course, you are volunteering to put yourself up for auction?’
‘Goodness, I’ve already done that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Where do you think I go in the evenings? No. I, too, have a confession to make. I didn’t come here because of you or the Patriarch, but because of some gold that was stolen from me in Africa. My shipmaster is said to be somewhere here. If I find him, I may find the gold. Or he may have lost it, or spent it, or never really had it at all.’
‘But?’ she said steadily.
‘But if I find it, then it will be my investment in Julius’s company. If it is suitable. If you will allow me,’ Nicholas said.
She sat looking at him, her eyes bright. ‘Because of Julius?’ she said.
‘I have a chance to begin again,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is not a bad thing, to forget the past. This way, we shall all have some hope of recovering. As you say, I like dealing. In fact, the only loser will be the Patriarch, who can always find use for some gold. But I expect I can help him in other ways.’
Her gaze was still fixed on his, but her skin was illumined with colour. She said, as if at random, ‘I should have known you would have your own reasons for coming.’ She held out her hand, and he took it. She said, ‘Whether you find it or not, thank you for thinking of us, Nicholas.’ She stopped, before adding as if compelled, ‘I wish you’d told Julius.’
Continually, she surprised him. ‘I thought you were rich,’ Nicholas said. ‘I thought I needed the gold for myself. But you changed my mind. Or I grew wiser.’
She moved her fingers but, when he freed them at once, simply used them to trace the solid width of his palm, compellingly, over and over. She said, ‘I think you are wise. But don’t place yourself in danger, trying to look for this man.’
‘Oh, I expect he will find me,’ Nicholas said. ‘If he is alive. And meanwhile there is business to be arranged, and the Patriarch to keep satisfied. But don’t lose heart. Somehow, the rent will be paid.’
She smiled, and rose when he did, her hand falling free. But before they moved from the kiosk, she slipped it up to his shoulder and touched her lips, faintly sticky with juice, to his cheek. ‘From Julius,’ she said.
‘One of his better kisses,’ Nicholas answered. It sounded placid, which, considering his quickening senses, was a feat in itself. He removed himself while he could.
Soon after that, he went to Ludovico da Bologna and advised him that he was prepared to make the journey to the citadel of the Khan of the Crim Tartars at Baçi Saray.
‘Refused you, has she?’ said the Patriarch, who had just returned from a trip to the north. ‘Well, you’ll find plenty of both sexes at Qirq-yer. Do my business. Stay, if you’re asked. I’ll tell them to expect you.’
‘Will you?’ said Nicholas.
The Patriarch stared. ‘You can pass for a Mameluke with wandering tribesmen and foreigners, but Mengli-Girey isn’t going to be deceived. Unless, that is, you plan to do something your bedmates don’t know about.’
He was a fiendish old man for whom, recently, Nicholas had begun to form a grudging respect. ‘Had it done years ago,’ Nicholas said unconvincingly. ‘So what else do you want me to do? For you, anything.’
Chapter 18
ONCE, THEY BLINDED those who might betray the approach to a Tartar khan’s fortress. Now, the Tartars who had accompanied him in relays throughout the strenuous journey southwest from Caffa merely blindfolded Nicholas as they began the long climb up the Mairam Dere ravine to the citadel of Qirq-yer, the Forty Fortifications.
The ride had taken the better part of a week, for their route lay through the range of weird limestone mountains, gnarled and battlemented, whose shelter fostered the apricots, the almonds, the vines of the fragrant south-eastern coast, and allowed the Genoese ships to lie calm in each harbour. Because, until he met the Khan, he was still the Contessa’s Mameluke factor, Nicholas rode short-stirruped in his tunic and leggings with his prayer-mat behind, and passed easily enough with his Arab-Egyptian accent; the more so that for the last stretch he was given a camel of evil disposition, and mastered its tantrums with ease. Then they got to Baçi Saray, a pleasant, well-watered plain to which the khanate of the Crim Tartars had moved since making their base in the north forty years before.
The multitude of their beasts, sheep and horses, goats and oxen and camels, could pasture here. The tented wagons with the women and children of these descendants of the great Mongol hordes could plant their woven homes in these meadows, where the tomb of their last khan had been raised. The summer palace of the ruler was here. But his permanent home, their refuge in war, the forty acres of honeycombed rock which was the heartland of their tribe, was half an hour’s steep climb from this place. Before they blindfolded Nicholas, his companions searched for and took his short sword and his knife, and even the scissors he used for his beard. They themselves were well armed. Weapons were forbidden to Tartars in Caffa, but once outside the town, it was different.
There was no escape therefore, by the time the climb levelled off, and the modest heat of the sun was cut off by a gateway and a wall, and what seemed like a line of irregular buildings, which gave off echoes and voices and the smells that Anna disliked and which Nicholas was not fastidious enough to find objectionable — the Tartar smells of horseflesh and goat and rancid fat and (he rather thought) cannabis seeds heating on stones. When, eventually, he was brought to enter a building and his bandage was removed, it was to find himself alone in a small, whitewashed room containing little more than the means of ablution and a change of dress, superior in fabric to his own. His own baggage was missing. He knew better than to complain, or to knock on the door when he found they had locked it, but sat down, with apparent patience, to wait. A strand of music entered his mind, and he annihilated it. He set himself to compile, from the recollection of his unfettered senses, a rutter of the ascent he had just made, and was dwelling, with interest, on the one smell he had found quite astonishing, when the door rattled and opened. The prince had sent for him.
Two centuries and more after Ghengis Khan and a hundred years after Kublai, the high-boned Mongol face, broad and gold-brown and seamed, with its almond eyes forever narrowed against the winds of the steppes, remained true to its blood, as did the fashions of hair and of dress: the long limp moustaches and beard, and the sashed robe over tunic, trousers and boots. In winter, the Khan’s robe would have been lined with sables, and his conical hat trimmed with deep fur which would cover his ears. In autumn, the same dress was made of light-quilted damask, but the bulky squat outline was the same, here displayed as he sat in his hall of state.
It was a plain enough chamber, except that its walls were lined with decorative bricks and ceramics, and the bed-like throne it contained, with its footstool, was
fenced with a gilded tracery of finely carved wood, and its base chased with gold leaf. Beside Mengli-Girey sat his favoured wife, while others sat to his left, on folding stools. Several richly dressed men stood on the other, the west side. The servants stood by the door, close to the bench on which rested skins of liquor, a covered ewer on a stand, and several cups. The floor was laid with hexagonal blue and white tiles, and the contents of his luggage lay in a neat pile upon it. It included, along with his personal possessions, two bales of Genoese velvet, and a small bag of silver. Ludovico da Bologna’s letter, already opened, lay at the Tartar Khan’s side. Nicholas walked a few paces, and sank on both knees.
‘This is the man? He has no interpreter?’ the Khan said.
‘One claims he speaks Arabic,’ someone observed. Lifting his head, Nicholas saw a heavily built man of about his own age wearing the turbaned helm of a professional soldier. His tone was one of contemptuous dislike, but his accent was Cairene: from that, and his size and his good looks, he was probably a genuine Circassian. If he had read the Patriarch’s letter, then he had some education as well.
Nicholas said, ‘Lord, I have Arabic, and some of your tongue.’ The unknown man stared at him.
‘Then we shall proceed. My lord Abdan Khan will help at need, I am sure. Your name is Niccolò, and you are from Venice, that female Pope among cities?’
There was no time to blink. If the quote was unexpected, so was the presence of the Circassian, if the Circassian was really Abdan Khan, the commander of the Gothian stronghold of Mánkup, that crowned another cliff-top like this, to the south. Yet, of course, Christian and Tartar were in alliance against their common predator, the Ottoman Turk. Nicholas kept his eyes on the Crim Khan. ‘I founded a Bank, lord, which I have now given up. I have come to trade on behalf of a friend, and to assist the great Patriarch in his efforts for peace, which must assure all supplicants their station in Heaven.’
‘The Great Patriarch has been here,’ said Mengli-Girey. ‘My father — O blessed and exalted is he! — my father received him.’
Nicholas knew that. They hadn’t dared blindfold Father Ludovico, nor had they required him to kneel. All priests were thought to be lucky. The Genoese had been lucky for the khanate as well, managing their commerce and making them wealthy. When Mengli-Girey’s father had died, the Genoese had enabled this shrewd man to succeed him, although he was not the eldest son, and two of his brothers had to be locked up with Genoese connivance. They were still in prison in Soldaia. In return, Mengli-Girey had reduced the amount of the Genoese tribute and would certainly (they believed) help them resist any onslaught by the Turks.
Nicholas said, ‘You have the Patriarch’s letter. He asks your help. And I, in my turn, have to offer you what aid is in my power.’
‘You lead armies?’ It was the Circassian, sneering.
Nicholas looked at him. ‘I used to own one. It fought in Cyprus, as you probably know.’
‘Against the Genoese. Against a Mameluke company.’
‘It ended a war. The truth about the Mamelukes you probably know. And the Sultan Qayt Bey was able, as a result, to increase the sum of his tribute from Cyprus. Certainly, he has continued to favour my Bank, both when I was concerned with it, and since.’
The Circassian looked at the Khan. ‘For what it is worth, this is the man, lord,’ he said.
There was a silence. One of the women, who had been playing with her delicate hands, gave a pretty cough. The Khan’s black eyes gleamed between their pursed lids. He said, ‘We are sure it is. We beg him to rise and be seated, that we may learn what we have done to deserve such generosity. Only a colleague of the Great Patriarch would bring us coffers so delightfully filled. Unless you mean their contents for some other potentate?’
‘No, indeed. All that is there was intended for you, lord,’ Nicholas said. It was true of the velvet, at least. His eye rested, with some regret, on his excellent razor and a sash he had found rather useful. He supposed his weapons were already impounded.
‘We receive them with gratitude. You will take some refreshment?’ said the Khan. ‘Later, you will be shown to your lodging. And in the days to come, we shall talk.’
There was a choice of rice wine, or the fermented liquors of millet, mare’s milk, or honey. He took rice wine because he felt like it, and not because it would make very much difference. Drink, to a Tartar, was in its excess a measure of friendship as well as virility, although they would not (they said) drink themselves senseless like animals, but would achieve it like men, to the sound of the harp, or a boy singing, or a bard reciting a poem.
After the women had gone, the Khan left his seat of state and sat with the men, while stories were exchanged and jokes told. As the singers exhausted their repertoire or were dismissed, the Khan would call on one of the company for a song. Once, the choice fell upon a snub-nosed Tartar of middle years whose quick reactions Nicholas had already marked out. He looked as if he would be better pleased solving problems than sitting at drink. He was named as Karaï Mirza, and he sang, without overmuch tune, a ditty so long and so hilarious that he was clearly famous for it. Then, when they had finished hammering him on the shoulders, the Circassian suggested that Niccolò, the non-Venetian, should favour them with a song.
He had been considering, since it began, what to do. Fermented liquor was not unknown in the orthodox Muslim communities he was accustomed to, and he had heard some of the bawdier songs. Even so, he would not presume to follow Karaï Mirza, or spoil what he had done. Instead, therefore, he asked for a flute, and after playing absently for a moment or two, ventured upon something whose effect he could not predict: a song from a man to a woman which he had sung once in Cairo.
He had an exceptional voice: it was the Circassian’s bad luck that he would not appear a fool for that reason, at least. It was his own good fortune that the tune he had chosen to sing coincided with the maudlin humour of his half-comatose audience. It coincided too with his own, for although he had a very hard head, he was less than sober by then. Indeed, when thickly pressed to continue, he was sufficiently out of himself to sing something quite out of place; something of a connotation so wounding, so terrifying, so destructive that for seven years he had not allowed himself to think of it, or of the place called Taghaza with which it was linked. Taghaza, where he had parted with the African scholar, the ex-slave and dear friend called Loppe, or Lopez, or Umar, who had shared that music with him before leaving to go to his death, Nicholas supposed, with blurred surprise, that he had Anna to thank for crossing this hurdle, too.
And he had crossed it, he believed. The music which might have been insupportable was not. Here, surrounded by Arab voices, Muslim practices, it seemed just and true, its meaning common to all. His hearers, clasping him in drunken embrace at the end, were moved by the nobility of the cadences and not by the words, for the liturgy of the Latin church was foreign to them. Or to all but one of them. Mengli-Girey, wet-eyed, took him by the hand, but he saw the Circassian staring.
In the end, uncertainly upright and fondly accompanied, he was introduced to the house he was to have, and dropped to his mattress as he was, waking to find the place attended by soft-footed servants, all at his personal disposal. Despite the tenderness in his skull, he was reasonably pleased. The Patriarch had said it would be simple. It was not. But at least he was here. All he had to do was leave as successfully, when his task was done. And since he did not intend to stay long, he reviewed his objectives and set out to achieve them. It took him two weeks.
The business for Anna was easiest. Julius had never been an innovator, and Anna, though wiser and subtler by far, lacked experience. Posing as her representative in Caffa, Nicholas had found little trouble in identifying the merchandise which would fit into a trade such as theirs, and the conditions required to make it profitable. Here, he found his counterpart in the Tartar secretary of the Khan: the monosyllabic, quizzical Karaï Mirza whose magical ability to emerge unimpaired from the most catastrophic night of
heavy drinking impressed Nicholas hardly less than his grasp of the hard facts of trade. From the moment that his trials of initiation ceased, which was not at once, Nicholas was careful to cultivate the man. Then, when the time seemed right, he made his wants known.
The interview took place in one of the other buildings in that part of the citadel where the Khan held audiences, and where his palace and harem were situated, together with his kennels and mews and the offices of his scribes and chief secretary. Nicholas had never penetrated beyond the high walls which cut it off from the rest of the fortress, but he had climbed unimpeded to the roof of his lodging and had seen, as he was meant to see, the sheer plunge on each side; the impregnability of the eyrie of the Crim Tartar Horde. But of the garrison, the stables, the arsenal, the stores of food and of water, the accommodation for people and beasts, he knew nothing as yet. The answers lay beyond the high walls. Hence, when his talk with Karaï Mirza, succinct, business-like, came to a halt, he expected the other man to say, as he did, ‘I can see that the trade you propose will produce revenue, but to us, not to you. All your profit depends, it seems to me, on our willingness to reconsider our tax. But where, then, would be the advantage to us?’
‘There are invisible taxes, and invisible payments,’ Nicholas said. He sat cross-legged as the other man did, his skirts spread about him, a cup of qumiz in his hands. The mare’s milk was fermented here, but the cup was Syrian-made, its lotus motifs from Cathay. He continued without haste. ‘The Genoese contracted Michelozzi to work on their fortifications in the island of Chios. The Grand Duke of Moscow has bought the military engineer Fioravanti, they say, and the Italian who rebuilt the defences of Caffa no doubt contributed to these walls.’
‘You are an engineer, an architect?’ the Tartar said. His tone was polite.
‘I have access to such,’ Nicholas said. ‘I know the worth of the mercenaries who were once in my employ, and their guns. I have had some success, myself, in the field of infiltration and battle strategy. On the other hand, the Khan’s present dispositions may be more than adequate. I have no means of judging.’