But alive. Nicholas turned his head and croaked again, “Julius? If you see that little turd Doria, kick his teeth in.” He heard Julius give a kind of laugh before the club cracked him on the head again. They had taken his helmet. After that, nothing became very much clearer, although there were times when he appeared to be on the ground and not on a horse, and times when he was given something to drink, and very rare occasions when he got something to eat, but found it hard to swallow. He didn’t see or hear Julius again.
Eventually, he woke in a tent, to find himself lying on an old piece of cloth, carefully spread to preserve the floor from contamination with his person. His cloak had been cut off, and his mail shirt taken away, exposing what had been beneath them to the gratification of the general public. The only spectator present was even younger than himself: a youth with a shaven head and a long collarless tunic who had been sitting in silence, crosslegged against the wall of the tent. When Nicholas stirred he rose and stood looking down at him. The expression on his face was one of thorough distaste. Spotlessly clean, he had no affinity, it was clear, with his recent captors, but neither could his clear pallor, his black hair be Genoese. Nicholas said, in Greek, “Who are you? And where is this?”
The delicate face surveyed him without moving a muscle. Then the boy spat, and went out.
The spittle ran down his cheek. Tobie ought to be here. No. On the whole Tobie had done enough. His hands and feet were still bound, but he could turn his head. He looked about him, rubbing his cheek on the cloth. Julius was not there. The tent was empty even of furniture, but well made of good material, and there were tassels. Not the home of a nomad. The tassels stirred, and a man parted the flap and came in. With him was the same boy as before. The boy had been snivelling. The man, in identical dress, had a face like Alessandra Strozzi in a bad mood. He gave a bow, jerkily, towards Nicholas. Nicholas opened his mouth but immediately the man shook his head and signed for silence with a small, angry gesture. Then he looked at the boy.
The boy looked like Alessandra’s son Lorenzo in a bad mood. He advanced a pace, dropped to his knees, and briefly placed his brow on the ground. Then he rose and glared at the man, who made a curt gesture. The boy went to the door of the tent and snapped something. The language was neither Greek nor Italian nor Arabic. His brain, wakening, informed Nicholas that it was Hebrew, of which he knew a few words. His brain went to sleep again. There was an interval, during which the man avoided looking at Nicholas and, indeed, seemed to be praying. Then the tent flaps were fully opened and four men came in, bearing between them a tub full of water. It was steaming. They placed it on the floor of the tent; went out, and returned with a brazier. There followed a table and two folding stools; a pile of linen and a box, from which an assortment of objects were lifted and placed on the table. Lastly a wicker basket was brought and a second table erected. His eyes on its empty surface, Nicholas waited. The men left, all but the first. The boy re-entered, bearing a bowl. In it were roses, exquisitely arranged. Their scent filled the tent, drowning out everything else. Nicholas raised wide eyes to the man, and the man addressed him.
He spoke in Latin. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand you,” Nicholas said.
The man’s face altered a fraction, not more. He said, “I am a physician. I have to ask you, if your bonds are cut, that you do not offer violence. To me or to the boy.”
“I promise,” Nicholas said.
“We have nothing to do with your injuries. Our task is to care for and cure them.” He had signed to the boy. The boy knelt, knife in hand, and felt the cords at his wrists.
“For whom?” Nicholas said. “Who employs you? Where am I?”
“I cannot say,” said the man. “There is a rule. You will be silent.”
Nicholas said, “I have a friend. A friend called Julius—”
He felt the cut as the boy made it. The man hissed and again the boy desisted, his face mutinous. The man said, “The next time, we leave. You may lie in your dung.”
He obliged with silence. He hoped they would thank him when they found that matters were not quite as bad as they assumed. All the same, it was a tearing, unpleasant business unpeeling his clothes, even though done with professional skill. Then his body was sponged and examined. It looked like something Colard and Henninc might have dreamed up together: blotched with indigo bruising and cross-hatched with incisions in Imperial crimson. Some of the gashes were bone-deep, but the bones themselves were unbroken. In any case no single pain mattered beside the corporate agony of his muscles. He wondered how long the journey had actually lasted, and if they had drugged him. He thought so. They might be afraid that he was going to leap to his feet and kill them with a blow to each chin but he found lifting a hand too much trouble. They half-carried him, in the end, to the tub.
He fell asleep while he was there, something he was prone to do. You always get cramped in a barrel. He was aware when they dried him, and wrapped his wounds in old soft linen with balm, and brought to replace his groundcloth a fresh pallet covered with ticking, and sheets, and a blanket, and a pillow. They gave him something to drink, thickened with sops, and then let him sleep.
He wakened stiff as a plank, with his mind clear. The tent was mellow with candlelight: two stands had been brought while he slept. The tub had gone, but the brazier remained and most of the other things, including the roses. On a carpet at his side were some clothes.
They were not, thank God, his own. He sat up, swearing, and examined them with some pleasure. Soft shoes without fastenings. Leggings with laces, and drawers. A shirt which would reach to his thighs. A short-sleeved tunic with a light embroidered belt, buckled in what looked like silver. No side-arms, no purse, no possessions. No headgear, for which he was grateful. Today the air weighed on his head. Nevertheless, in a moment, he rose slowly and carefully and started to dress. He had nearly finished when the tent flap stirred but was not opened. He had just finished when he heard the tramp of marching feet and steel clashing. The sound ceased in front of his tent; a man’s voice spoke his name, and the door cloth was flung wide. In the darkness outside he could see only the glitter of spired helmets and strange armour and beyond that, a medley of tents like his own but much larger, all handsome, all brilliantly lit.
He was led a short distance among them, his silent escort surrounding him closely so that he could see little else. The reflected glow showed them to be of middle height only, each being dressed in mail shirt and quilted tunic, its skirts kilted up over heeled riding boots. Their helmets had damascened edges and earguards, within which their faces were ovals of expressionless fawn, each marked with black brows and a glossy bracket of short ink-black moustaches. At the mouth of the largest tent they were challenged, and halted.
He waited, smelling strange cooking and unguents; listening to chattering voices; absorbing curious sounds. Some of these came from inside the big tent he was facing. He could hear a stringed instrument playing, and sometimes a man would speak softly. Beside him, the slender chains binding the tent to its pegs also shivered and strummed. When firelight caught them, they glinted like gold.
A man stood in the tent doorway, frowning. Between his hands stretched a fragment of fur. This he held out and, after waiting a moment, rapped the air with it angrily. Nicholas took it. It was a hat, made of felt banded by fur. The man facing him wore one like it above his long quilted tunic. He was old and heavy and beardless. A eunuch.
Nicholas tenderly smoothed on the cap, which fitted well enough. His hair, roused by the bath, curled and climbed all round about it. He stood conveying the embodiment of Claes, humble and obedient, and wondered what he had got himself into. The tent flap was parted for him, and he walked in.
Chapter 27
FOR A LONG TIME now, Nicholas had wondered how far Pagano Doria intended to go, in the skirmish he had embarked on so long ago: in Brussels; in Pisa; in Florence. He had his orders, one took it, from Simon. To defer the final engagement until now had
been strategically sensible. Deferring it, Doria had, of course, enjoyed being playful. He had apparently enjoyed, too, directing the attack at Vavuk. Allowing Nicholas to survive, but on his own terms, might be another example of Doria’s turn for mischief. Simon had none, that he knew of. There was one other possibility, but that would be too much to hope for.
Nicholas stepped into the pavilion, and saw his answer before him; for it was as if he had stepped into a scented bath, surrounded by flowers. Swayed by the air from his entrance, gilded lamps sent a surge of dazzling light over silk hangings and deep, patterned carpets; appointments of carved wood and gilded copper and bronze; the silks and gauzes of the many occupants who sat in cushioned groups all round the walls.
They were all women. Moving among them were slaves, and soft-footed eunuchs. He was in a seraglio. Perhaps the vilest evidence yet of Pagano Doria’s cast of mind. Perhaps not. It came to him that, although clean, he was injured, and aching, and unshaven, and therefore probably as little to be desired as he was desirous. Once, he had had…It was a long time since he had had anything, or wanted it. He stood still, and looked again.
The chamber presented itself, controlled; exact; as if in a painting. He saw the harpist he had heard. The music continued: a smooth, perpetual flow, ignored by the company. The tinted faces, the jewels, the coats of brilliant dyed silk, the feathered crests in the dark hair were not those of whores, or bought-in slaves, or emirs’ daughters, presented in tribute. Whoever they were, they served someone high-born. Their movements were graceful and studied: a hand moved a backgammon piece on a low fretted table; another fondled a gerfalcon; a third poured a pastel liquid from the long, slender neck of a flask; a fourth examined a painting. His entrance caused no stir other than the tranquil turn of a head. In the centre, alone, was a woman who was not young at all, and whom he had never seen before. He waited a long moment, mastering the shock: revising his intention. Then he walked slowly towards her.
She sat in the reflected light of her robes under a canopy upheld by four light golden poles. Their sockets formed the corners of a heavy fenced dais, lustrous with tiles of blue and white porcelain and cushioned in velvet. The little gate to the dais had been closed: none could reach her. Behind her, high as the tent and lit by a ten-branched candelabrum, was a stretch of silk painted with flowers and birds in such a way that she herself appeared part of it. She sat among violets and peonies, roses and hollyhocks, willows and cypresses; and peacocks stood with hoopoes and doves at her shoulders.
She was between sixty and seventy, and art still preserved much of her beauty. The shape of her face remained oval, its olive cheeks tinted with rose and its eyebrows razored into delicate arches, drawn to meet at the nose. Her eyes, outlined with kohl, were still pear-shaped and clear in spite of the wrinkles about them, and the silk that capped her hair and her brow also masked her throat and her shoulders. The veil was held in place by a fragile, leafed diadem, from which hung a face-necklace of great Ormuz pearls. She was sitting so still that the jewels lay quiet at either temple and down the smooth cheeks to where they cupped and flattered the line of her chin. He thought he knew who she was. And if so…If so…
He couldn’t believe, yet, that the plan had become more than a plan. He had been wrenched away with the foundations half laid. Half laid Turkish-style, he thought, with ram’s blood mixed with the chalk and the mortar. He had bled. Perhaps it would stand firm. Unless it was still not his plan, but Pagano Doria’s.
The eunuch had gone. What was required? An act of homage, perhaps, like the boy’s. Arrived before the glittering dais, Nicholas sank at some cost to his knees, touched the ground with his brow, and then rose and stood. Finally he took his gamble and spoke. “Sara Khatun?”
He heard the little rustle on either side among the women behind him. In front of him, the enthroned woman gave him a long, contemplative look. He thought she would speak in Arabic. Instead, she used the Trapezuntine Greek of her great-niece. She said, “Who else, Messer Niccolò? But a moment ago, you were confounded.”
“I am still confounded, princess,” he said. “But I guessed the name of the Khatun from the painting.”
She didn’t glance round. She said, “Artisans do not read Farid ud-Din Attar.”
He had turned the pages of the Thirty Birds in the Palace, dressed-undressed—under a robe. He contradicted her gently, with a quotation. I am not that bird who will reach the King’s door. To reach the keeper of his gate will be enough for me. If she did not, he appreciated the irony.
The eyes remained on him. Then she tilted her head and spoke, but not to him. “Well?” she said. “If this is not humility, and it is not, then it is insolence. Come and help me deal with it.”
He had expected a woman to join her, and then saw that he was, of course, quite wrong. The figure moving out from the screen was that of a man robed and hatted in black, with a forked white beard spreading over the old copper cross on his breast. Nicholas said, not entirely with pleasure, “Diadochos.”
One person who would, all too well, perceive the irony. In the chamber of Violante of Naxos, he had discussed Persian books in his presence. The monk seemed to smile. He said, “Messer Niccolò, you are in Erzerum. As you have guessed, this is the lady Sara, noble mother of the lord Uzum Hasan, prince of Diyarbekr; lord of High Mesopotamia; chief of the White Sheep tribe of the Turcomans. To her you owe your present safety.”
So it was his plan, and not Doria’s. But for the way it had been carried out, he would have felt relief. He said, “I must convey gratitude for those of us who survived the rescue. Did it include Master Julius?”
The monk said, “The manner of your rescue was no concern of the Khatun’s. Men were hired to bring you here, for your sake and your safety. They found you in difficulty. They killed your oppressors, all but the leader and a few of his servants, who escaped. They removed you. They were too rough, I know it. But your scars may yet serve you well.”
“And Master Julius?” Nicholas repeated.
The woman made a disparaging movement. “He is a child. Must you copy him?”
“He is not a child. He is a man, and a friend. I don’t wish to copy him,” Nicholas said, “I wish to see him. And then the camel train.”
Diadochos said, “This year, they are late.” The woman’s eyes narrowed.
Nicholas said, “They are here. I heard them. Do you want to let them take their merchandise through to Erzincan and Sivas and Bursa, with all the Ottoman armies lying off to the west? I hear Amastris has surrendered to Sultan Mehmet.”
“Indeed?” said the woman. Her hands had tightened.
“The Sultan was there in person. No one knows where he will march next.” Nicholas paused. “I am a merchant. I, too, am concerned with the course of these wars, and how they will affect my company. It may be convenient for us to compare what we know. Once I have seen Master Julius.”
He had wondered if they knew about the loss of Amastris. He had got the news from a flockmaster. Amastris lay on the Black Sea west of Sinope and was run as a Genoese trading base. He couldn’t weep for the Genoese; not at the moment. But if the Sultan’s gaze was already turned to the East, he might look closer and further. It must add to the White Horde’s anxiety.
It was his task, at this moment, to discover how anxious they were. To do what he wanted, he needed all the bargaining power he could get, including any feelings of guilt they might have over Vavuk. He supposed they had hired Kurds to find him. Perhaps the men whom Doria had hired to attack him were also Kurdish. There was a joke in that somewhere, if he hadn’t lost so many men. But then, the friends of Uzum Hasan had not been concerned to rescue his men, just himself. He remembered that Kurdish lands adjoined the lands of the Turcomans. Uzum Hasan’s eldest son, in his twenties, was by a Kurdish wife. Perhaps the men who brought him back from Vavuk were not hired, but came from this very encampment. If so, he hoped not to set eyes on them.
She said, “Take him to see the fellow. He is with the other
s, and well cared for. Then we shall talk, you and Diadochos and I, over a sherbet.”
He could have eaten the falcon. He bowed, backed and, turning, walked painfully out. By the same unwritten law, no one paid him any attention as he went, although his escort at the door took him every inch of the way to where Julius was. They wore Shiraz cuirasses of gilded steel, and their round shields were all worked in silk. The smell of camels was as strong as before. His wounds ached and throbbed, and he closed his mind to them. He took the chance, as he walked, to look about him; and saw where the caravanserai had been built. Beyond, outlined in lights, he could see the high walls and towers of the town and its citadel, and the double minaret of the old medresseh, and the dome of the mosque. Erzerum, sentinel of the plateau, guarded the camel route between Europe and northern Persia. Along the string of plains between here and Tabriz, thousands of camels passed yearly. Once, as Theodosiopolis, this was a bulwark of the Roman Empire of the East. Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Seljuks, Tartars held it before the Turcomans overran it fifty years or so since, and sent their mothers as negotiators, heralds, couriers, spies. Their brave, their demanding mothers.
His escort stopped. Before him was an earthen building, not a tent, with a stout door. The windows were shuttered, and there was no light round the cracks. There was no sign of his men. Either they were dead, or asleep, or he had been tricked, or else…Just as his guards were starting to unlock the door, Nicholas stepped aside and rapped on the shutters. “Julius? We’re free. Don’t do anything stupid.”
They must have been clustered round the door, waiting to break out. Julius roared, “What! Nicholas!” and there was clamour of voices. A lot of voices. Six? Eight? The door opened and two of his escorts, carrying torches, strode in ahead of him. The light swept round the room, illuminating face after face. Long before the big lamp had been lit, he had counted them. He heard the guard leave, and stood in his silly tunic and leggings with his face aching from the grin that was on it.