‘I shall get on with him,’ Nicholas said. He spoke politely. ‘And the other Venetian? A newcomer?’ He ran through his mind all the names he had heard.
‘I’ll leave you to find out for yourself,’ the Patriarch said. ‘Just be nice to him.’
THE BURGUNDIAN TRIBUTE of cloth of gold, crimson velvet and violet, which Nicholas had carried sewn into his bedroll all the way from Fasso, was adequate in its splendour, although outmatched by the hangings of Uzum Hasan’s travelling pavilion of scarlet felt within which, neatened up for the occasion, the Italian Franciscan Ludovico de Severi da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch, presented, with an inclination of the head, his Latin letters of credence and then proceeded, on a nod from the throne, to deliver the greetings and prayers of his lord.
The Duke of Burgundy, so far as Nicholas could gather, had been remarkably vague in his exhortations and remarkably prolix in his expression of them. The Patriarch, whose native ripeness of language had affronted half Europe, discovered, droning, fifteen tedious ways of appealing to the Lord Uzum Hasan to attack his brother the Turk. The interpreter’s voice obediently followed, and the lord Uzum Hasan listened with grace but no visible interest. Tall as his nickname suggested, the old man sat erect on his cushions with one hand on the jewels of his scimitar, the other teasing the chin of his hound. Within the worked golden headgear of ceremony, the prince’s features were dish-shaped and gamboge: the willowy moustaches and beard drooped among the blue pebbled chains of raw turquoises. His nobles, coated with chased and ribbed metal, provided the vast red pavilion with a motionless lining of ruby.
Among them, the ambassadors, glimmering uneasily, identified themselves to Nicholas’s large and disengaged eye. Short Marco Rosso, the Venetian rat turned Muscovite beaver: a man in his thirties, with a black Russian moustache and spade beard above a long buttoned coat in pale damask. Josaphat Barbaro, whom he was expected to like, in the red hat and robe of a well-bred Venetian; his narrow face lined with the marks of thirty-five years in the Levant; his eyes, brown as topazes, moving between the Patriarch and the passive bulk of Nicholas, his anonymous henchman. And the third man, also the spokesman of Venice, whom Nicholas had never seen before, but whom he felt instantly that he knew: knew the pale, fretful face and broad nose and the shaving scar on the neck under the fashionable bulk of the hairline, displayed by the very tall hat.
At first, it didn’t seem possible. The man in question had passed south the previous summer, and would surely have gone before now. But when the Patriarch’s lecture had ended, and the prince had replied with the necessary courtesies and a promise to consider the matter, the first person to file out beside Nicholas was the barbered envoy. ‘Do I gather that you speak the Venetian tongue?’ said the gentleman.
‘I do my best,’ Nicholas said. ‘I have the honour of addressing a nobleman of that Republic?’
‘Indeed,’ said the gentleman, halting and raising his large, lidded eyes. ‘My name is Ambrogio Contarini, son of Messer Benedetto, and ambassador of the Illustrious Signoria to the magnificent lord Uzum Hasan. And you are the Franciscan friar’s secretary? Or the Patriarch, are we invited to call him? Although I thought the title now held by another.’
‘I am honoured,’ said Nicholas. ‘His secretary, no. Some men profess to think writing important, yet what is it but chicken marks on a skin? I care for his camels. He lets me carry his pyx. He sometimes allows me to sing the responses. Orpheus the Thracian Wizard, they call me.’
The face below him turned pink. ‘Or Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, formerly of the Banco di Niccolò,’ said a chiding voice from behind. ‘Ambrogio, he is joking with you. This is a merchant companion of the Patriarch, and one who knows that Father Ludovico is too diplomatic, perhaps, to insist upon his full ecclesiastical title today. My name is Josaphat Barbaro, Messer Niccolò. You may not remember me. But we three strangers would be honoured if you and the Patriarch would join us in our pavilion. We are permitted wine.’
‘Even the lord Uzum Hasan is permitted wine,’ said Ambrogio Contarini, surveying Nicholas narrowly. ‘Too much of it, some of us think.’
‘Is it possible?’ Nicholas said, a little thickly. But before he could amuse himself further, the Patriarch strode swirling over, executed a volley of greetings and benisons, and swept him away. ‘Have you no sense?’
‘The situation didn’t call for any,’ said Nicholas. ‘He’s an ass.’
‘He’s Venetian,’ the Patriarch said. ‘A Venetian ass isn’t the same as a Flemish one. Its ears are bigger. And don’t: add what I am sure you are longing to add,’
‘I shouldn’t dare,’ Nicholas said. The Patriarch was, of course, right. He had been a fool. He had been a fool because he did not want to think about what he was doing.
He tried to put matters right, as was only fair, on the trek back to Tabriz, which was made in the company of the entire royal migration. Ambassador Contarini still didn’t know what to make of an ex-banker who (it was true) carried a pyx on a double-humped camel; but the small Veneto-Russian was amenable and Ambassador Barbaro, who chose to ride with him, turned out to be agreeably informative. It appeared that the Persian ruler’s rebellious son had fled with his family to the Turks after giving up Shiraz, which was still a frontier town and vital because of its armourers, even though the caravans no longer poured up from the Gulf with their jewels and their spice and their indigo.
In the days when Marco Polo rode through, the Tabriz fondacos had been full of the merchants and consuls of Venice and Genoa. Now, fine though it was — M. de Fleury had seen it — the place was largely a staging post for Caspian silk going through to Aleppo in Syria, just as Caffa had become an entrepôt for slaves and grain and preserved fish and furs instead of an emporium for the mighty caravans crossing from Astrakhan. The way to Cathay was blocked; the spice route through the Black Sea had become throttled by Turks; but traders regrouped and forced their way through somewhere else: they always did. When they found a way to circumnavigate Africa, that would be a different challenge again.
At that point, the pleasant voice paused, but not necessarily to invite speech. Nicholas nevertheless accepted the invitation. ‘Yes, I remember your excellency,’ he said. ‘Four years ago, at the time of our meetings in Venice, when my Bank decided not to invest in the Levant. And then later in Cyprus, when the King died.’ He looked round, and met Barbaro’s eyes.
The Venetian said, ‘Zacco held you in high regard. We were not enemies, either, he and I, although he made me his whipping-horse often enough. It was the Captain-General, Mocenigo, none of us had patience with. Cruel and unnecessary destruction.’
‘Smyrna burned to the ground, and two hundred and fifteen Turkish heads pronged on the yards of his ship,’ Nicholas said. ‘And he hanged the ringleaders of the rising in Cyprus. Who killed Zacco?’
He spoke through his scarf, as the other did: the dust and the noise lashed against them.
Barbaro said, ‘A Venetian, of course. I don’t know which. It was not I. I was at his funeral Mass. I was present when his son was baptised. They were fools. They could have ruled through him. You could have helped us all, once. The other, the artistic young man, was too vain. David de Salmeton. You had him thrown out.’
‘You have spoken to Hadji Mehmet,’ Nicholas said.
‘We travelled from Venice together. He is discreet. And so am I,’ observed Josaphat Barbaro, coughing into his veil. ‘Indeed, in this climate, who wants to be talkative?’
Tabriz was under garrison, as it had been when they had passed through: as in Bruges, as in most towns these days, the hardworking inhabitants were not necessarily about to take arms and rush to extract their revered ruler from whatever silly mess he had got himself into elsewhere. Uzum Hasan did not try to compel them, but left a round thousand soldiers to make sure that his son didn’t rush in and capture Tabriz while he was gone.
In other respects, the city was not much like Bruges. Set in its high, mountain-girt plain, deep in snow th
rough the winter, seared by sun through all the long summer, Tabriz had no need of walls; owned no windmills. Its irrigation was underground, from the little two-forked river, the Adschy Tchai, which emptied itself far away into the long barren sump of a salt lake, home of wild duck and flamingos and arid, sulphurous fish. But water Tabriz possessed, and therefore gardens, and the population of merchants, administrators, artisans which required this array of glittering edifices, twenty miles in circumference: the domes, the minarets, the silken awnings and carved, gilded wood; the porcelain tiles that glowed in the high, clear sunlight of early summer.
Then when the sun sank, as now, when the Shah came to enter his city, the lamps bloomed within, tinselling the chain mail and helms of his soldiers lining the streets; illuminating the white tulip-heads of his kneeling people, rousing the dim gold of archways and doors as the echoes were roused by flute and bagpipe and drum, and the thud of horses’ feet, and the unctuous padding of camels. Ahead, the Blue Mosque stood aflame like a ship, bright as St Sophia, whose thousand lamps could be seen twenty miles off at sea. There was a smell of dung and spiced meat, flowers and horses, sweat and urine and bath-oils. There were wandering whiffs of something that made the Patriarch’s ready lip curl. ‘Luxury, debauchery and defilement.’
‘I hope so,’ said Nicholas automatically.
This time, as guests of the Shah, they were not compelled to lodge in the austere recesses of the Armenian church of St Mary’s, but were led towards the Palace itself, to those quarters overlooking the Meidan set apart for visiting envoys. Since their first encounter with Uzum Hasan, they had not yet been called for a second audience. It was understandable. The son’s revolt was an increasing embarrassment, and any consequent reversal of policy would be best announced in the full theatre of state. As for the Shah’s private discussions, secrecy could be better guaranteed behind walls than in tents. After the recent charade, Nicholas was looking forward to watching Uzum Hasan and the Patriarch together.
The procession ended. Porters carried the Patriarch’s meagre boxes through night-scented gardens and set open the doors of the spacious chamber which, it appeared, Nicholas and the Patriarch were to share. As he was not unaccustomed to doing, Nicholas directed the unpacking for both of them, with the admiring help of Brother Orazio, who later departed. They were offered food. They were not offered, but received, a double guard at their doors. They were finally alone, and the Patriarch was saying his prayers, when harsh voices erupted outside and Nicholas, who had been standing motionless at the window, his fingers pinching the cord at his throat, turned his head. Then the doors opened, and a visitor was announced.
The Patriarch broke off and rose. Nicholas moved. Their eyes met, and Nicholas laid hands on his cloak. But it was not an olive-skinned royal clerk, come in robe and slippers and turban to take them at last to his master. This was a clean-shaven, muscular man in rich clothes, in rich western clothes, who strode in and stood surveying them both with an athletic zest that still recalled his years as a soldier.
‘Well, Nicholas,’ the newcomer remarked. ‘And you thought you’d contrived to get rid of me. So where is she? What have you done with my wife, you young goat?’
Julius.
Chapter 28
‘JULIUS.’
Trained to dissemble — caught, indeed, in the act of sustaining one of the most difficult deceptions of his life — Nicholas brought out the name with a flatness he could not prevent, his brain having no surplus capacity. Then the flood of calculation was over, and he was able to register the bonhomie on Julius’s face, and the cheerfulness in his voice, and produce words of his own that sounded normal.
‘Julius, you bastard! I thought you were going to Caffa? Anna isn’t here: she decided to wait for you. Come in and sit. Are you better?’
And as Julius, entering fully, eased himself grinning down to the cushions, Nicholas added, ‘I don’t seem to have made a very good job of getting rid of you. You look well enough for another ten years, if you give up competition archery’ And Julius, agreeing amiably, hit him a reasonably painful blow in return. After which, Nicholas opened the wine, and kept pouring.
Julius did in fact look little different. Perhaps the high cheek-bones were sharper, the handsome body less mobile, but the oblique stare was the same, if a little more lingering. He was rested, for he had been here for several days. He’d come to Tabriz the day after Nicholas left, but decided to wait for him. My God, Nicholas was well in with the prince: he should see where Julius was staying, in the stinking canosta. But of course, Nicholas had the benefit of his spiritual friend: how was Father Ludovico?
Father Ludovico, who had after all given Julius’s wife his protection all through Julius’s absence, and helped her establish in Caffa, opined that it was late, he was tired, and they would no doubt encounter one another next day. He then returned to his prie-dieu while Julius, half rising, sat down again beside Nicholas in a temporary fashion, refilled his cup in an absent manner and said, ‘All right, I’m going, but tell me. You’re about to get hold of the gold, and Anna says you’ll invest it with us? I won’t say I’m not pleased — business hasn’t done as well as I’d hoped — but you did owe me something, you murdering brat. I was only hoping it would come in time for Anna to join us. But I suppose she’s better staying in Caffa. I’d rather get the gold home overland than trust it to the Middle Sea and all those bloody bandits.’
‘Such as the Knights of St John,’ Nicholas said. ‘You heard Ochoa died?’ He emptied and filled his own cup, to keep level.
‘He was always going to die. Like Benecke,’ Julius said. ‘You should be glad Anna made you see sense and go east with her. She’s all right? She’s a good business-woman. You’ll have noticed.’
‘I’m surprised she let you come to Tabriz on your own,’ Nicholas said. ‘What are you supposed to be doing? Supervising my deals with Uzum Hasan?’
‘Have you made any? Anna reckons,’ Julius said, ‘that he’s going to need weapons if he’s going to face an attack from this son. And he won’t get them from Venice: not for a family quarrel, and when Venice needs them herself. Whereas I can get them with a much better margin from the Tyrol and Germany, unless Venice stops the delivery.’
‘They won’t,’ Nicholas said. The Patriarch, his eyes glaring, was praying louder.
‘Why not?’ asked Julius. He gave an intent grin, and got up.
‘Because they don’t want Uzum to give way before a Turkish army with his own son helping to lead it. It’s what Caterino Zeno was afraid of. That’s why I was bribed to come and sell non-Venetian arms to Uzum against the wishes of Venetian arms merchants. You don’t need to do any deals with Uzum Hasan: you just leave that to me.’
Julius’s face looked, for a moment, the way Nicholas had felt half an hour before. Julius said, ‘So when are you seeing him?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Nicholas.
He accompanied Julius to the door, exchanging scraps of news mixed with banter: of Anna’s conquests in Caffa, and Nicholas’s ridiculous life as a Mameluke. Julius, straying on to the subject of the lunacy of Duke Charles at Neuss, thought to add, with a display of his fine upper teeth, ‘Of course, if they’d listened to Gelis and Astorre, the siege would have ended before it began. You know she’s practically enrolled as a mercenary? They may knight her in the field: you’ll get her helmet and spurs if she’s killed. But the boy is all right. Jordan? Jodi? She sent him to Scotland with Kathi.’
They were actually standing within the half-open doors. Gauzy insects blundered over their shoulders, lured by the Patriarch’s lamp. Outside, the scent of roses and jasmine mingled with the other, libidinous odours so reviled by the Patriarch, and somewhere, a beguiling trickle of water was exchanging notes with a nimbly played harp. Nicholas became aware that he hadn’t yet: spoken. ‘And Kathi?’ he enquired. It sounded quite cordial, as he intended.
‘Oh, she’s produced. I heard just as I left. To that poor little sod Robin of Berecrofts. Between
them, they’ve managed a daughter. They’re calling it Margaret.’
Nicholas heard him; but from his desert, his morass, his sea of moral squalor, found himself this time rendered irreparably dumb. Julius, oblivious, took his leave and was met and guided out of the grounds, walking erratically. He had drunk quite a lot. They had both drunk quite a lot. It was like old times. Nicholas stood for a while, and then went in and joined the Patriarch, who had finished praying and was preparing for bed.
The Patriarch looked up, leered, and then gave a nod towards the now-vacant cushion. ‘Does everyone know he’s a koekoek?’
In the Netherlands, it meant ‘willing cuckold.’ ‘He isn’t,’ Nicholas said.
‘Isn’t a cuckold, or doesn’t know it?’ the Patriarch asked.
‘You decide.’ Nicholas was half stripped already.
The Patriarch gazed at him with a kind of contentment. ‘You’d like me to be soft. I expect you confided in Godscalc. Nearly unmanned you, didn’t he, Julius, talking of your lady wife and your little son and Katelijne Sersanders?’
‘But you’ve braced me again,’ Nicholas said. He went out, got rid of the wine, and came back.
The chamber was dark, but the Patriarch’s voice continued to flow, sonorously, as if nothing had happened. ‘You want someone soft because you can’t stand isolation. You’ve got the brains, but you haven’t the guts, to make a good friar.’
‘If you say so,’ Nicholas said, from his bed, carefully.
‘Oh, I say so, and correctly, or how else have I made you spitting angry? A youth finds a priest or a doctor and dribbles out all that ails him. A thinking man keeps his own counsel, listens to teachers, and applies what he learns to himself. In private. With due humility, with unrelenting honesty, and in private. So don’t try to piss your woes over me.’