This time, Julius couldn’t complain of discrimination. Musicians escorted them into the heart of the domain, where Nicholas himself had never yet penetrated, so that they glimpsed, bowered in green, the outlying buildings — the summer kiosks, the stables, the workshops, the library. The cupolas of the pavilions and the baths; the immense one-storey complex of the harem. The high decorated walls of a garden and, between marble arcades, the pink and white volutes of birds, swans and flamingos, mirrored in water. Then they began to pass through the different courtyards, so that they were plunged from heat to coolness, darkness to light. The morning sun stippled soaring towers of basket-weave brick, and glowed on surfaces where brick and faience were mingled together, paste-red and lustrous turquoise and ultramarine, forming geometric patterns, or flowers, or sacred words sprawling upwards in ecstasy, their shape cut by angels in spectacles. Some walls were set wholly with tiles and shone as if a gondola, passing, had rinsed them.
The vaults they walked under were tiled, or worked in faceted stucco such as they had in Granada, although Nicholas had seen only replicas, far from Spain, and ill-kept and dusty at that. Fashioned like honeycombs, they cascaded over his head in stone and plaster and wood. Carved stucco and tiles lined the anterooms and chambers and passages which led, ultimately, to the great central hall, its dadoes enamelled and gilded; its round silk carpet perfectly fitted to its circular floor and, high above, a painted ceiling so fresh that it glistened.
It showed Persian victories. It pictured, in gold and silver and blue, the splendour of subservient Ottoman embassies (their outcome enscripted); the magnificence of the prince’s hunting expeditions and the wonders of his menagerie. There was a water-horse.
Nicholas gazed up at it, forgetting Uzum Hasan on his canopied dais. The Palace of the Eight Heavens: Hesht Behesht. The Muslim cosmos allowed for seven superimposed heavens: above these was only God on his throne. Allah-u Akbar. He said, half aloud, ‘Who painted that?’
Josaphat Barbaro murmured. ‘They claim someone from the court atelier at Herat — even Bihzad himself. I don’t believe it. If you can paint a beautiful miniature, you can do the same on a wall. Tamerlane used Tabrizi artists in Samarkand.’
The Venetian knew a lot about Persia. He was the only one of them to be invited to stay: they knew that for certain by now. Contarini, threatening to indulge in a last, foolish protest, had been sternly advised to refrain — with patience by Barbaro, and with grating scorn by the envoy of Duke Charles of Burgundy, still gripping his Gospel. Now, majestic in his stiff robe of state and plumed cap with its diadem band, the prince Uzum Hasan confirmed the edict. They were to return to their virtuous masters, and affirm to them that he was about to go to war with the Ottoman. Letters would be prepared. The Shah added the appropriate felicities, commending each man, and sending his greetings through them to the exalted, respected, honoured and esteemed princes of Christendom, upholders of the religion of the sons of baptism (may their end be blissful), who might wish to join him. Finally, he expressed the hope that — in his unavoidable absence — their excellencies would do him the honour of indulging themselves at his table.
They were dismissed. His eye had lingered on Nicholas’s earring. He wore two himself, each with a large pendant pearl.
In one of the pavilions, a further array of light silken gowns had been prepared, two for each of them. The Patriarch, as was his custom, took all he was given. Then they entered the gardens to sup.
Under any other circumstances, the Eighth Heaven would have borne out its name. Paradise, to a Persian, was a garden. Enclosed, the piercing green of washed leaves, the unwavering fountains amid the pools and channels of water shut out the shaly waterless desert of rubble and sand, grey and dun with its grey and dun villages; the densely ordered massed flowers with their heady scent stopped the senses: shock set its foot on the throat and then released it, to admit desire.
Not to Nicholas. The ’ud played; slender girls danced barefoot under the fruit trees and between the tall cypresses; dark-eyed pages stood, stirring the air with long-stemmed peacock fans. The sunlight moved through pierced marble screens and damascened the carpets on which the silver dishes were set and the goblets of wine, replenished over and over. Dim through the silks of the awnings the banks of blossom — pale narcissus, languid jonquils and lilies — swayed and lay still like indolent houris scarved in anemones. Nicholas picked up his bowl, which was inscribed with a legend in Kufic: Deliberation before Action Protects against Regret. His lip twitched.
‘Mine is even more succinct,’ said Josaphat Barbaro at his side. ‘He who talks a lot, spills a lot. I see you admiring the irrigation. They bring in qanat builders from Yazd who alone, they say, have the courage to crawl under the soil and stone to lead the pipes where they should go. You must have hoped, being knowledgeable about such things, that the prince would ask you to stay. He might have done, for he likes you. But I have had the advantage of living at Court through the winter.’
‘The boon companion,’ Nicholas said. Beyond the Patriarch on his other side, Julius was displaying all the gloomy discomfort of a civilised man compelled to eat on the ground with his shins crossed. Or the cramps might derive from his wound.
Barbaro wiped mutton grease from his fingers and watched a fresh procession of platters approach. They contained fantasies moulded from sugar, with sweet confections arranged all around them. The Venetian remarked, choosing one, ‘You refer to the Book of Government, the primer of Sultans. Myself, I would make it required reading for every ambassador who comes to this country, believing the prince does not dream what the secret duties of an ambassador are: how we are expected to report on every idiosyncrasy of the land that we visit, down to the ability of the prince to hold his drink. But the boon companion is different. He is assumed to be of the prince’s own race.’
‘Does the Book say so?’ Nicholas said. He drew on his memory.
‘The common society of nobles leads to an assumption of arrogance, and tends to diminish the majesty of a king. A king cannot reign who has not found boon companions with whom he can enjoy absolute freedom and intimacy. Those who are accepted for companionship should occupy no public office. Men of position require to hold the King in perpetual fear, whereas boon companions should be familiar, so that the King may say to them a thousand things, serious and frivolous, which would not befit the ears of his nobles. The boon companion must be well bred and accomplished, with an ample fund of astonishing anecdotes. He must be a pleasant partner for back-gammon and chess; a musician perhaps; certainly a good conversationalist. But as to everything to do with the country and its cultivation, warfare, journeys and honours, the King should consult with his ministers, for that business is theirs.’
He paused and smiled. ‘Does it not describe Caterino Zeno? Does it not describe you?’
‘Does it not describe Mocenigo’s ten Turkish concubines?’ said the Patriarch sourly on his other side.
Barbaro laughed. ‘You think western rulers should be above boon companions.’
‘I do not think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that the Patriarch has given particular thought to their chosen position, but I can tell you that he is much against confidants. Every man should solve his own problems.’
‘I should imagine,’ remarked Josaphat Barbaro gently, ‘that such advice is measured against the quality of the man, and the pressure upon him. I should give help where it is needed.’
His eyes had moved elsewhere. The Patriarch’s followed them. The Patriarch snorted. ‘And much good has it done the abstemious Ambrogio Contarini, whatever help you thought you were giving him. The man’s a dangerous idiot.’
‘It is a great house with many members,’ Barbaro said. ‘They cannot all be gifted with wisdom. There were two Barbaros and six Contarinis among the dead when Constantinople fell, and this man’s excellent brother was my sopracomito on Cyprus and will follow me, I hope, in Albania.’
‘We shall protect your friend if we can,’ Nicholas said. ‘B
ut you know that I no longer represent my Bank, or have any connection with Venice.’
‘Then you should do well in Caffa,’ Barbaro said. ‘You should stay there. They need men of sense.’ There was grey in the brown strands of his hair, but he had the firm, flexible voice of a man much accustomed to debate and conversation and, it turned out, the exercise of lenient mimicry. And for an aristocrat from a Venetian palazzo (if not quite Contarini’s Ca’ Doro), he could produce a campfire laugh of the dimension of a Tartar attack. An ambassador as shrewd and observant as any, and a boon companion as well, to those who felt unable to rule their own lives.
It was afternoon when they left the garden, their servants bearing their gifts, and filed again through the Palace to take formal leave of the prince. He received them this time in a light coat that showed mail armour beneath, and his trousers were thrust into boots. Outside, the streets were full of drovers and carts, but the main army had gone. Within the hour, the prince had left Tabriz as well.
It was not a final separation. Two days later, the ambassadors followed, travelling north, and for nearly three weeks kept company with their host and his army, living in tents, and lingering in one place or another, so long as the grazing allowed. Occasionally he would receive them in the field, and presents of food sometimes arrived from his cooks. Nicholas had a last, business-like meeting at which Julius was present, and was given, in private, a small casket whose contents, drawn from a larger, he recognised. Contarini, Rosso and the Patriarch received personal gifts and formal ones to present to their masters, including pairs of magnificent swords. Josaphat Barbaro, who was not leaving, contrived to see Nicholas alone.
‘I told you. You are in favour. You could come back one day.’ He had seen the casket of jewels.
Nicholas said, ‘I wish you were coming. So what secret reports have you confided to Messer Ambrogio, that being the duty of an ambassador? Or would you prefer not to tell me? They say we have moved out of Tabriz because of plague.’
The other man smiled. ‘There is plague, and it is spreading. But of course the prince left to make war.’
‘And then stopped,’ Nicholas said.
‘And then, certainly, slowed. My guess is that he has had news, and is waiting for more. His couriers are the fastest in the world.’
His couriers rode racing dromedaries. ‘Crete?’ Nicholas said. ‘The Sultan has launched his attack against Crete, and so, for the moment, Uzum Hasan is free to do as he wants?’
Barbaro’s brown gaze was direct. ‘The Turkish fleet left Constantinople last month. They carried an army, but where they went is not known. Crete is likely. It is rich, and Venetian, and acts as an arsenal for her ships in the Levant. I am telling you this because, whatever has happened, it will be known in Venice long before Ambrogio gets there. And yes, if Turkey is busy elsewhere, the prince can march to deal with his son. I am waiting to see what occurs. Then I, too, shall leave.’
‘I am sorry,’ Nicholas said. With the part of his mind that was not numb, he wished he could convey the fact that he distrusted Venice, and yet regretted the decline in its glory for the sake of men such as this: the adventurers, the pioneers, the inquisitive merchants. All through his journey in Persia, Josaphat Barbaro had observed and filed what he saw, from the black oil of the Caspian, which could be lit but not drunk, to the smallest detail of the places and people he had encountered.
He had done the same in the years spent as Venetian consul in Tana. From his own perspective of one solitary winter in disguise. Nicholas had worn several nights through with the Venetian, recreating that strange Crimean society, half icy, half tropical; discussing, conjecturing; sharing knowledge. Thirty-seven years ago, Tana had been a Venetian colony, and Barbaro had befriended the Tartars who came there. They suffered, he said, from sore mouths caused, they claimed, by lack of salt. But Barbaro had seen mouths like that among seamen, and it was not caused by an absence of salt.
Then, Nicholas had said nothing of Ochoa, as he said nothing, up to that point, about gold. Barbaro’s tales were not about achievements or money. One of the best had to do with his mortifying endeavour (for a bet) to dig for Carpathian gold in a burial mound, hacking through frozen sub-soil with crews of sceptical labourers, to uncover no more than you would on a rubbish heap. It was in the wake of that lugubrious story that Barbaro suddenly said, ‘But you know, of course, that there is treasure in Cyprus. Or was.’
He could be silent, or pretend. Instead, Nicholas said, ‘I know of Zacco’s will, which referred to it. It may well have gone by now. I do not have it.’
Barbaro said, ‘The story ran that it was yours.’
‘It was put there by a man called Ochoa, with Zacco’s collusion. Zacco did not like the Knights of St John.’
‘They were claiming it? I do not like them myself,’ Barbaro said. ‘I hope the right person receives it, and that the recipient does not prove to be the small, scented person I once mentioned.’
‘David de Salmeton? He could not return,’ Nicholas said. ‘Your Venetians would kill him.’
‘We Venetians like money,’ Barbaro said. ‘Which reminds me. I have brought my own dice, much better loaded than yours. What shall we play, and what shall we play for?’
He had a store of good bawdy songs, from the long winter nights in the fishing-grounds, and knew all the verses of some of those the Russians sang. The bagpipe ditty had become an unspoken favourite, launched upon at a certain stage of the night when Contarini was not within hearing, and reaching its last two lines, and refrain, with a shout:
… De cop de cotel
Fu sa muse perchie …
Cibalala du riaus du riaus
Cibalala durie.
Their parting, when it came, was brisk and friendly, as befitted men who were not boon companions.
On that, the final day with the prince, his guests were treated to a ceremonial parade of his army, viewed from a pavilion raised on a bluff. Contarini, anxiously calculating, counted ten thousand foot and twenty-five thousand cavalry passing below them. Rosso and Barbaro said nothing. Nicholas stared at them unseeing, blinded by the dazzle on helmets and cuirasses, the brilliant harness; the housings on horses and camels; the intricate work on the round silken shields. The tall standards crowded like hollyhocks and the sun flashed from raised swords. The prince was marching upon his son, or upon the Turk: no one was quite certain which. Or if they were, they did not say.
On Wednesday, the twenty-eighth day of June, the envoys left Uzum Hasan for the last time. Two Persian legates went with them. For some — the Patriarch, Rosso — it was the end of one of several such visits, and carried no significance beyond what was obvious: the prince, in age, was striving after twenty-two years to hold his throne against enemies from within and from without, and might not long survive. For Contarini, in tears, it was a blessed release from a horrid assignment, marred by the parting from his dear friend Messer Josaphat. For Julius, it represented a business coup now complete, which he immediately set aside, in order to dwell on the treasure that waited in Caffa.
For Nicholas, it was the laying to rest of a myth that had pursued him all his life. He had met the son of Sara Khatun for long enough to show that there was a career for him here, if only when Barbaro concluded his mission and left. In the event, Nicholas did not think that he would return so far south after Caffa. He had not rejected the Levant. It seemed to him that his future might well lie there, on one side of the Black Sea or the other. But not at Spaan or Shiraz or Tabriz. There was a tide running here which Venice might have changed once, but no longer would. And he could not dam it back, any more than could the Patriarch.
For both of them, the ride back towards Caffa covered much the same ground as before, but this time they travelled in the heat and the dust of high summer, and the cavalcade was very much bigger, for the routes of the Venetian and Russian envoys passed through Caffa as well.
It did not preserve them from trouble. The formidable personality of the Patriarch migh
t wring hospitality, once again, from the scattered Christian communities, but the two envoys of Uzum Hasan turned out to be untravelled novices; they carried no weight once the Georgian frontier was crossed, and precious little before it. With sobering frequency, they lost horses, money and weapons to troops of soldiers, official and unofficial, or to the population of some village which took against them, or to the keepers of river crossings. Women were often the worst. In Mingrelia, King Bendian had just died, and it was safest to sleep in the forests.
Julius rode beside Nicholas, sometimes silent, sometimes passing time in irritable interrogation; Julius, who once enjoyed campaigning, now preferred comfort. He was quick, however, to lend his authority at moments of danger, and showed himself invaluable on occasions such as the woodland feast of bleeding beef and rivers of wine offered by the monarch of Georgia, where Julius held his own (as did Nicholas) in a testing debauch which continued all night. The Venetian ambassador excused himself almost before it began, and his pious entourage followed him.
The rest of the time, Julius showed a tendency to return, in a roundabout manner, to the topic of Anna, although in terms nothing like the abrasive ones of their quarrel at Tabriz. Even so, circumvention was difficult, even sickening. Unlike that of Barbaro, Julius’s conversation had always been personal, the hidden motives piercing the surface like rocks. When Julius riled him, travelling north, Nicholas frequently broke into song, forcing Julius to join him. He couldn’t sing, but some of the others could, and it stopped some of the questions. But not all.
‘What exactly did you promise the Khan to make him send for your furs? Anna said you saved her from the Russians.’ (Spoken with Rosso within earshot.)