A long time later she began to translate, bit by bit, the reply which Nicholas had added; simple in content; ornamental only in its execution.
I shall keep your work for my son, who will pass it to his: yours is an evergreen flourish.
I have no daughter; I can make no comparisons; I cannot forgive.
We shall never know how our own lives, yours and mine, might have touched. But now my love has looked on your face, and in meeting her, you have met me, or part of the core of me that does not seem to alter. The rest is a bruised thing which passes from person to person, and which never seems whole. But perhaps time will cure that.
May your journey, when it comes, be a swift one, with happiness waiting, and friends.
It had reached Thibault, that letter, in the last days of his life. And deciphering the words of his grandson, the vicomte had given the order which had consigned all his possessions to Gelis … including that private note added by Nicholas, that steadfast declaration in cipher for which no translation was sent.
An exchange of messages between Nicholas and the grandfather he had never met, so he had told her, save as a child brought to a darkened sickroom, to kiss the motionless hand of a man whose face he could not see.
Complex minds; complex hearts.
Encoded messages.
Encoded love.
Then Gelis, mistress of self-control, put down her pen and broke into desperate tears, tears for herself, and for Nicholas, and for the chain which, unknown to her, had always been there.
Part III
POLOVTSIAN DANCES
Chapter 27
BEING ENTIRELY SURE of the powers of Providence, and reasonably sure of those of Nicholas de Fleury, the papal envoy to the ruler of Persia was unsurprised, after a stormy crossing of the Black Sea, to discover de Fleury waiting for him on the south shore, at a Christian house in the seaport of Fasso (Phasis, the ancients had called it). Sent for, he turned up at the religious establishment upon which the Patriarch had bestowed his temporary patronage. He was wearing a thick cloak against the searing chill winds, and below that, a quilted pourpoint and doublet instead of the dress of a Mameluke steward. Otherwise he seemed much as before, if less good-humoured. ‘How shouldn’t we meet? I left messages all round the coast. But the seamen said this was the port that you’d make for.’
He had a small amount of money, it seemed. Some of it was Signor Zeno’s; some was a portion from Qirq-yer. And, escaping south, he had obtained a commission from the new prince at Mánkup, before setting sail with some Greeks from Cembalo. He said, ‘You didn’t bring the Gräfin?’
‘She wouldn’t come,’ the Patriarch answered. He noted that, despite all that had happened, de Fleury was still bent on enlarging the extraordinary commercial empire he was creating for the man he had shot. The Patriarch added, ‘I warned her she’d be better travelling with me than waiting about for her husband. I reminded her you couldn’t set foot in Caffa again as a Mameluke.’
‘She’s an obstinate woman,’ said de Fleury.
‘So was Carlotta of Cyprus,’ said the Patriarch. ‘But she’s bested: given up all hope of Cyprus and gone crawling bankrupt to Rome. What is this one lingering for, apart from her man? Did you tell her to wait for your gold?’
‘Of course not,’ said de Fleury. ‘If she does, it’s her own idea entirely. In the end, it’s to help Julius’s business. They may both think it worth while.’
‘You don’t want the stuff?’ the Patriarch enquired.
‘Only as an investment,’ the other man said; and dismissed the subject. Within three days, they set off.
De Fleury had bought himself a serving-lad; the Patriarch had one already, as well as Brother Orazio, a guide, and two cheap Armenians to handle the horses and baggage. The Patriarch had covered this ground before, but routes changed, and so did local governors and the bribes they expected. Without gifts, no provincial governor or village headman would offer hospitality or even safe passage.
De Fleury, as anticipated, was an asset, as might be expected. He lost his temper quite often; but then so did the Patriarch. He also took charge of the valuables. Franciscans were known to carry no money. In Father Ludovico’s case, a spectacular representation of unsavoury poverty had been enough, in the past, to inhibit casual robbers, while the minor monasteries and Christian villages in the various small states which lay between the Black Sea and Persia could be depended on for a little salt fish and dried fruit, and even some bread. They knew him, in any case, from previous visits.
Despite the detours entailed, Father Ludovico visited a great many of these in the course of his journey, doubling the length of the odyssey which began, by boat and camel and horse, by the broad, ice-rimmed reaches of the Phasis and proceeded as week followed week between afforested mountains, through snow and then mud. This he did out of conscience and not to favour his belly, as de Fleury liked to profess.
Historically, a hundred villages in this area had once lain under the spiritual administration of Antioch, and he thought of it still as his parish. Sixty years ago, Franciscan missions had brought the Gospel, with loving care, to the infidels, and tended the flame of the Roman church among the Latin colonists in alien lands. Now (as de Fleury had commented), the primary task of an apostolic mission was not conversion, but diplomacy. The Patriarch of Antioch was known to most courts by now. (Even the Assassins were given a welcome, if they wanted Christian aid for a good enough cause.)
And Nicholas de Fleury was known in these parts as well, if not initially by so grand a name. It was fourteen years since that first meeting in Florence between the former Bruges apprentice, not yet de Fleury, and the Franciscan friar, not yet a Patriarch, who was leading to Europe the envoys of Georgia and Armenia and Trebizond to beg help against the Ottoman Turk. The backing of the Medici had brought de Fleury to Trebizond, and established his connections with Georgia and Persia. Since then, the channels of communication between the Banco di Niccolò and Uzum Hasan had remained open, and de Fleury’s potential, as a supplier of men, of arms, of new openings for trade was still perceived as worth exploring, whatever his new business arrangements might be. His was the secular side of the Apostolic Legate’s mission to incite the ruler of Persia to war.
Nevertheless, on the road, it paid to escape attention. Mingrelian marauders and the many impatient toll-keepers and customs officials in the rough region between the Black Sea and Persia had, fortunately, never heard of the Bishop of Rome and, viewing the Patriarch’s modest retinue and shabby appearance, received little presents of biscuit with no more than an outburst of routine resentment. When it came to the lofty timber citadels of provincial governors, the Patriarch found a clean gown, had his brasses rubbed up, and brought himself and his lordly sponsors forcefully to the memory of the magnate in question. This produced a roof, a pallet and a better class of food, which in turn had to be paid for by the superior presents which de Fleury was currently carrying and which, occasionally, he made some pretence of having lost. He was an ingenious fellow, but required to learn respect for authority.
This, Father Ludovico did his best to instil as they made their way from Kutaisi to Gori, from Tiflis to the mountains of Ayrarat (which they did not trouble to scale, in order to bring down a plank of the Ark), and south towards Tabriz. Accustomed to solitary travel with the silent Orazio, the Patriarch enjoyed his wrangles with his younger companion, which strictly excluded all matters of serious content. De Fleury was useful. He hunted and brought in fresh meat. He knew how to make horsehair foot-mats for the snow. Although strange to this part of the country, he had experienced the interior as far south as Erzerum, and was unalarmed by confrontations with stave-carrying bullies with shaved heads and trailing moustaches. He sensed when to call the bluff of petty tax collectors come to demand everything they possessed down to the clothes off their backs. Equally, and as important, he sensed when to give in.
To sustain them, they savoured the legendary tales, picked up every few days, of thei
r predecessor the Venetian envoy who had passed the same way the previous summer. After a week spent in hiding in Caffa, Ambrogio Contarini, bearer of the most reviled name in the colony, had been bled dry of money and dignity from the moment he crossed the Black Sea (at an enhanced price of one hundred ducats) till the time he arrived in Tabriz and found no one there.
Humble interpreters, tears in their eyes, described how the Venetian thought that Bendian, lord of Mingrelia, was mad, because he sent him a pig’s head, and received him sitting under a tree. He seemingly considered the Georgians equally crazed, although the castellan of Kutaisi had invited him to a good supper of turnip and bread, properly served on a skin on the ground. (And while there might have been grease on the skin, it was a lie to suggest that it was thick enough to boil up a cauldron of cabbages.) Next, it was the King of Georgia’s fault that the Venetian had to wait hungry all night in the open, and after being received, had to beg for guides and safe conducts (for which he was not at all willing to pay), while the royal clerks naturally examined his possessions and took what was due to the King. Then, at the halt after that, he would hardly believe that it was customary to pay his guide and his host all over again, and objected when he had to buy his own food. As for drink (the interpreters said), the offence was the opposite: when hospitably invited to carouse at no cost to himself, the contemptible Venetian would always refuse.
‘Why?’ de Fleury had asked when told that. ‘It sounds as if he’d have been happier drunk.’
‘Not everyone is happier drunk,’ said the Patriarch. ‘I heard in Caffa that Signor Ambrogio has a weak stomach and never indulged, even in hiding. I salute him.’
‘You’re not travelling with him,’ de Fleury said. ‘Is he weak mentally, too?’
‘He is used to what he considers to be civilised practices,’ the Patriarch said, ‘and thinks himself slighted when others fail to observe them. The lords he meets are, of course, aware of this, and take pleasure in treating him as a caravan. We are known. Our behaviour is different and so, therefore, is their attitude to us.’ He used the plural, as a concession. The King of Georgia had cause to remember how Trebizond fell, and the ship that the man John le Grant had sailed to Batum with the Empress Helen aboard. The Empress Helen whose predecessor had been sister to the princes of Gothia.
‘You mean you put the fear of God into them,’ de Fleury said.
‘Naturally,’ the Patriarch answered. The mud was stiffening under the sun, and turning to grass. There was a resinous scent in the air. Spring had come, with summer burning behind.
AT FIRST SIGHT the dust haze was pink, dulling to violet; its mass against the blue of the sky was like that of a blanket cloud at sunset. Then, as it neared, there sparkled within it the motes which enlarged into helmet and chain mail and harness, while an apparent flurry of wind thickened into the sound of a murmurous trampling, overlaid by a shrilling like birdsong. Nearer yet, and the cloud yielded a swaying grove of thirty thousand caparisoned camels, and the same number of horses and mules, behind which trembled the hoops of six thousand carriages, frail as spectral silk flowers in the gloom. Positioned close to the servants and children, the women trotted in veils tall as stove-pipes, reins gathered high, finger-whips flicking, precious cradles fixed in the pommels before them. Then came the cattle, the sheep, the goats, the hunting dogs and the falcons and the supercilious leopards chained in their carts. The noise was furious, the stench was vile, the dust was half a day deep, which brought with it the approaching Court and army of Uzum Hasan, prince of Persia, ruler of Cappadocia, Armenia, Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, and sole power in the Levant capable of opposing the ambitions of Ottoman Turkey.
The place was two days’ journey south of Tabriz, the date was the second last day of May, and the papal, Burgundian and Imperial Legate was about to fulfil his mission at last.
THEY WERE RECEIVED the following morning since, after all, they were long expected. Efficiently attired from his own husbanded resources and a tailor of imagination in Tabriz, Nicholas de Fleury followed the Patriarch and Brother Orazio in silence as they were led through the lanes of a tented camp thirty miles in circumference, which would remain as long as the grazing allowed. Already the bazaars had been set up with their trestles of food, and the merchants, the armourers, the apothecaries were arranging their goods. The sun, not yet high, had yet to ripen the smells. The noise was already overwhelming.
The Patriarch said, ‘You are comparing this with the merchant caravans of the Sahel, or the Tartar yurts, or the military encampments you have known in Cyprus or the Somme? Will Neuss be like this?’
He disliked having his thoughts read. Nicholas said, ‘Neuss? That will be over by now.’ He thought it must be, for the last time he had tried to find her, Gelis had been in Bruges. After that, he had stopped divining for a while, in order not to frighten her any more. He didn’t know why he thought she was frightened, since she must know by now how well protected she was.
He was sorry, in a way, that this journey was over. It was easy to avoid major decisions when travelling demanded so many of the other kind. Now he would have to work, establishing trading connections which could be operated from the Baltic and Poland, assuming he stayed there, or Julius did. And if conditions — which he had yet to discover —precluded that, he could still make suggestions on behalf of the Bank, even though he no longer represented it. Some day, if a long war stretched ahead, Gelis or Diniz or Gregorio would be able to offer weapons and men to replace the cannon and trained gunners that Venice had dispatched, but then diverted to Crete.
He could have done with knowing more about this family rebellion and the course it was likely to take. It had begun, they said, with a Kurdish rumour to the effect that Uzum Hasan had died. He was in his seventies now and, given the existence of sons of all ages by four different mothers (one of them Kurdish), there was liable to be the same sort of murderous falling-out that had been prompted in Caffa, for example, by the old Tudun’s widow and her bribes on behalf of her son.
They managed things better in the West. Philip of Burgundy had possessed just as many sons, but without having married their mothers, and had brought them up to be strong and confident allies with no need to usurp him. The merchant empires of Medici and Strozzi depended on the loyalty of fond, hard-working, highly trained offspring. Further back, of course, western kings had behaved as Uzum’s sons and the brethren of Gothia were doing, and simply got rid of their rivals. Certainly, it could prevent civil war and save time and expense and distress: look at Scotland and the struggle between James and his brothers. Yet a sufficient supply of sons and daughters was necessary — daughters for useful alliances, and sons (speaking of course without bias), outside marriage as well as within it, to ensure the survival of somebody competent. Principalities organised their successions in the way that their people condoned and their religion allowed and experience had shown to be best at the time. The secret was to know when to change.
Someone should tell Jordan de Ribérac.
They were nearly at the central pavilion. He already knew that there were few people here he would recognise. He had never met Uzum Hasan, although he had had trade dealings for a long time with his officials, and owed a long-standing debt to his late mother. His other friend of fourteen years, Uzum’s principal envoy Hadji Mehmet, had already returned to the West, but his reports to his master of Nicholas also spanned fourteen years. If the Banco di Niccolò had not always supported Uzum Hasan, its reasons would be understood. In any case, that was past history. Nicholas was being taken round Tartar and Turcoman princes in order to make mercantile offers which would increase their dependence on the West. It happened to suit him, and so he conformed. He was also attached to the Patriarch’s angelic skirts because — as the Patriarch had gone to the trouble of finding out — he had an army which, although no longer his, was still loyal to him. Nevertheless, although Nicholas de Fleury might be acceptable to Uzum Hasan, and the Patriarch of Antioch could almost be termed his
familiar, none of this would necessarily be reflected in public. For their initial audience (they were reminded), diplomacy demanded a certain formality. Later, there would be room for something more personal.
‘Isn’t that a slight?’ Nicholas had enquired innocently after the source of this news had departed.
The Patriarch had merely grunted. A cool reception was nothing, if it was strategically necessary. It would have been more of a slight had the Patriarch appeared in full battered feather as triple nuncio of the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and Charles, Duke of Burgundy, which in the absence of Adorne, he was entitled to do. He was not, however, a fool. In the presence of two Venetian envoys and a Russian ambassador, it was best to forget the Pope (at present offended by Venice) and the Emperor Frederick (at present at war with the Duke). The Patriarch felt it sufficient to present himself simply as legate of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who, in return for the dukedom of Guelders, had promised ten thousand soldiers to combat the Turk. When they were available. If they were needed.
‘And am I slighted too?’ Nicholas had persisted, to receive the full glare beneath poisonous eyebrows.
‘Slighted? You do not exist. You are part of my train. You produce the gifts. You fraternise with the underlings.’
‘Which ones?’ Nicholas had asked.
‘Holy God! Which side paid you to come here? The Venetians! The Venetians! I can’t do it, but you can. And the Russians. Marco Rosso, envoy of Duke Ivan of Moscow. A bustling rat masquerading as beaver. Barbaro lived in the Rosso family house all those years he was fishing from Tana. I’m talking of the Venetian consul Josaphat Barbaro. If you didn’t meet him in Venice, you probably came across him in Cyprus. You’ll get on with him. He knows the Crimea like the back of his mistress, speaks the language, and was picked by the Signoria to bring all that arsenal over to Uzum two years ago. Then Zacco died, and Barbaro was made to stay over in Cyprus till the uproar subsided and the summer campaign collapsed, and then they took all the arms and the presents and sent them to Crete instead of on to Uzum. It says a lot for his character that he came to Court none the less, and Uzum has kept him since April last year. I think there are times when they are both sick of Venice.’