The Unicorn Hunt: The Fifth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  That would be why Anselm Adorne was hiring his own roomy vessel from Genoa, instead of choosing the galley from Venice. Or such, at least, would be one of his reasons. Adorne would learn, too, soon enough, which of his companions succumbed when at sea. Gelis would not be one of them.

  Once, Nicholas had taken a sea-chart below and spent time with it, until his shipmaster took it away. The attempt to divine that way had failed, although he had imagined a faint stir on the map about Tunis – but that might be because he expected it. There was no sensation at all from Alexandria. He desisted then, thinking it more satisfying to employ his ordinary powers of reasoning, and to project what he knew of his wife’s. She had several options, depending on why she was doing this. His mind, roving through all his neatly developing conflicts, kept returning to base; reviewing the fulcrum, the axle, the crab of the whole complex structure.

  He would spend his second wedding anniversary in Alexandria. Wherever she was, Gelis, too, might recall what the date marked. Godscalc had died two days before the last one. Two years was not a very long time. Even a decade was not too long, if you were enjoying yourself.

  The African coast then was not very far off. Nicholas watched for it, mostly from somewhere high in the rigging. Working the ship, he went barefoot in shirt and drawers, which no one had liked much at first: a patron should look like a patron, and not only when going ashore. He had fifty seamen and a hundred rowers, three to a bench. None of them was a slave. He had bowmen, helmsmen, trumpets. Ships’ officers and crew changed all the time, and he knew none of these well, but had established an easy enough way with them all. He joked now, up in the mast-basket, looking over the sea.

  The Egyptian coast, being alluvial, was always hard to pick out. Further east, you could tell the mouth of the Nile by the brown stain and the fresh-tasting water. But Alexandria, according to John, was nothing like the dramatic amphitheatre of Trebizond: just a long rim of limestone and sand and two spits. If you were fifteen hundred years old, you would have seen the palace of Cleopatra on one of them, and the great beacon had once stood on the other, four hundred feet high, with its flaming, glittering eye scanning forty miles of the ocean. Eunostos, Port of Safe Return, they had called it.

  Now there was just a bonfire stuck on its base to guide mariners into the harbour, with a clutter of mosques and towers and a battery of bombards below it. Cleopatra’s palace had gone, although there was an obelisk (said John) which would tell him where the Emir’s palace now was. And he would see minarets and a couple of watch-hills and, visible from a long way, a tall red pillar where the Temple of Serapis and the Citadel of Rhakotis had been.

  But Alexander, if he still rested in the city he was never to see, encased in gold in his coffin of glass, lay fathoms under some mosque, and there were tumbledown ruins and pillars where the Mouseion and its library had been. Al-Iskandariyya, eighteen hundred years old, for a thousand years a capital city and chief source of learning, was now shrunk to this, a trading port of the Mameluke Sultans of Cairo. And the remains of St Mark, the pride of present-day Venice, had been smuggled out pickled in a barrel of pork.

  Sic transit. Everything changed. The sun was piercingly hot, but he was ready for that; for all of that. Below, he saw John le Grant neutrally watching him.

  Thirty miles from Alexandria the Emir’s ship came, as was the custom, to board them; to take details of their names and their cargo and send these by pigeon to the governor, who would fly the news by the same means to Cairo. This wasn’t the Tyrol. By the time the Ciaretti reached Alexandria their reception, one way or the other, would be assured.

  He was fairly sure of a welcome. Six years before, it would have been different. Then he and his army had been fighting for the island of Cyprus, hated for a hundred years here since one of its kings had taken Alexandria with an army of mercenaries – Scots, Venetians, Genoese – and left its people massacred in the ruins which had never been rebuilt. Six years ago he wouldn’t have been welcome because he served Cyprus, and because he and Zacco the King had just managed to kill Tzani-bey, the Mameluke commander in Cyprus, and all his army.

  Zacco had bought forgiveness from Cairo, and his merchants traded with Egypt again, even though one Muslim at least had tried to kill him for what he had done. In Venice, Nicholas too had been a target that year. But Nicholas no longer drew fees from Cyprus; and there was a new, astute Sultan in Cairo, and an Emir in Alexandria whom John le Grant had cultivated with success. The Ciaretti’s guns were there, but they were covered in peace and submission. It was left to the Mameluke vessel to fire a salute.

  Truth to say, through the flame and crash of it, no one spoke. They were traders; they were not a Venetian galley, and the banners they flew were well known by now in the Middle Sea. But mistakes were sometimes made by Muslims wishing to gratify larger neighbours. Then the smoke cleared and instead of the glitter of scimitars you could see the coloured clothes, the tall hats, the white turbans at the rails of the opposite ship. Her oars steadied her, and she prepared to lower a boat. A flourish of trumpets spoke from the Ciaretti and the other replied. The Ciaretti’s sails began to come down, and John le Grant raced below, reassured, for his hat with the brooch and his coat.

  When he emerged, the Emir’s officials were already climbing aboard and Nicholas was preparing to welcome them. The sun sparkled on gold. John saw with relief that the newcomers were mostly familiar. Self-important, disagreeable, greedy, but people he knew. No palace revolution, then, in his absence. It meant that the Emir’s policy, too, was unchanged. It didn’t mean more than that.

  He introduced each man to Nicholas, and Nicholas made his responses in Arabic. They had argued about that. It was not expected; in some quarters it was even held to lower one’s standing. Le Grant used it himself, but then he wasn’t head of the company, and he kept his Scots accent throughout, in case anyone thought he was making concessions. But Nicholas didn’t. He spoke the beautiful measured Arabic of the schools, seldom heard even among Mamelukes, and they looked at him with attention, filing aboard and down the steps to the great cabin.

  The party seemed to be complete. Nicholas had turned and John was ready to follow him when a dry voice spoke in Tuscan from the gangway. ‘Well, Niccolò!’

  Nicholas wheeled. John le Grant stared at the man in European dress who had spoken; at his baggy boots and short coat and brimmed hat with the under-ties fluttering. The frowning eyes in the sun-pinkened face were not looking at him. John exclaimed. ‘Tobie!’

  The doctor’s gaze flicked to him and held.

  ‘He thought you were in Pavia,’ said Nicholas. ‘He thinks we are surrounded by demons who can be in two places at once. Are you all here? The eminent Baron Cortachy and the rest?’

  ‘No,’ said Tobie. He stepped forward slowly. ‘No, they all rode north to sail from Genoa. We found a boat and came earlier.’

  ‘We?’ said Nicholas. He looked perfectly normal, except that he was still speaking Arabic.

  Tobie looked at him. He said, ‘Gelis is still with Adorne. You know she joined us?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘And you stayed at Pavia.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I heard my uncle was dying. He isn’t. I caught up with the rest. I saw she wasn’t up to the journey to Genoa, and found a ship that would bring us direct. She’s much better now.’

  Nicholas looked at him in silence. He gave the impression that he wasn’t sufficiently interested even to guess.

  ‘Who came with you? Who is with you?’ said John.

  ‘Adorne’s niece,’ Tobie said. ‘The girl. Katelijne Sersanders.’

  Chapter 32

  LATER, THE GIRL said to Tobie, ‘Was he pleased to see you?’

  They were in Alexandria, in the House of Niccolò’s rooms on the first floor of the larger Venetian fondaco. Handsomely built by the Mamelukes, it took the form of a rectangular building enclosing two immense courtyards, placed in a garden surrounded by extremely strong walls. It was one of a dozen such khans in the
city, each providing its nationals – Genoese and Venetians, Catalonians and Tartars, Persians and Florentines and Cypriots – with lodging, office, warehouse and trading-counter at once.

  Nicholas was not there, being still incarcerated with the customs officials, securing his passes, displaying his cargo, submitting to the interminable weighing and argument that would determine his tax liability. Even with John and the Venetian Consul to help, it would drag on for hours.

  Katelijne Sersanders sat at a table, where she had been grinding something in a small mortar. She had plaited her hair and tied it out of the way on the top of her head. She was wearing a thin cotton robe with a girdle, and there was a smear on one cheek. She looked up.

  Tobie said, ‘No. He wasn’t pleased to see me.’ He sat down. The table was littered with saucers, boxes and jars, a piece of unfinished palm mat and several books. He said, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Improving on yesterday’s mix. It’s a secret: I told you. I should have gone on board to meet M. de Fleury, not you. It was too much like the time he came out of the Sahara. When you were waiting for him at Oran.’

  He said, ‘They wouldn’t have let a lady on board. But you’re right. Too soon after Oran; too soon after Godscalc. Godscalc was part of Africa too.’

  He had stopped wondering at himself for talking to this girl about Nicholas. He had been with her now for four months: ever since he had left Bruges in February in the knightly cortège of her uncle, bound for the Holy Land.

  His reasons for joining Adorne had been complex. The girl was ill, and he liked her. He would be able to visit that old devil Giammatteo in Pavia. And he had become haunted by the feeling that Nicholas in the hands of Father Moriz and John le Grant was still not good enough: that they would both let him get his own way. For nine years, Nicholas had needed someone to stop him, but only one man had, for a while. And the one man was dead.

  Tobie had seen Katelijne Sersanders before, as a child. Meeting her again in the Hôtel Jerusalem he had been disturbed, as a doctor, to see how slight and pale she had become; how the quicksilver energy had drained away, leaving her prone to sudden fatigue and seized with perpetual headaches. She had smiled from brilliant eyes all the same, and had spoken with all the readiness he remembered.

  ‘Dr Andreas is very forbearing, and doesn’t seem to find it an insult that my family should rely so much on St Catherine and not on his potions. But he says the climate in Alexandria is good, and the sea air should help, and the martyrdom of St Catherine on top of all that should spell perfect health. Only he can’t come with me.’

  She had been speaking in February when persons of eminence were beginning to gather for the birth of the Countess of Arran’s first baby in March. Of course Katelijne was tired: she and Adorne’s wife between them had borne all the travail of the Scottish Princess’s arrival with her handsome, smouldering husband. And later the husband’s father, Lord Boyd, had favoured them with his presence as well. Poor Margriet, lady of Cortachy. Poor Katelijne.

  It was fortunate, then, that the physician Andreas of Vesalia had arrived with the rest of the party from Scotland, come to stay for the birth and the christening. There were two of these who were strangers to Tobie but who brought Gregorio to life when they called on him: a woman called Betha and another called Phemie of the Sinclair family. Tobie left them together, and continued his own easy befriending of Margot which arose from philanthropy rather than choice, much though he admired her. Since she had come back to Gregorio, the strain between them had been obvious. As Gregorio wouldn’t talk of the cause, Tobie had to assume that Margot’s loyalty to Gelis and her invisible child was somehow responsible. He sympathised with Gregorio.

  Then Bel of Cuthilgurdy arrived, and Tobie felt immediately better. She had a new grandchild, and fell into comfortable chat with Tilde and with Margot without asking questions, and carried off the Sinclair women to cheer up Anselm Adorne who, in a resigned way, was making his will.

  That was when it appeared that Andreas had to stay to look after the Princess, and there might be a place in the excursion for a footloose physician.

  By then, the number of reasons for leaving had increased by at least one. The ceremony of the birth would be followed with terrible inevitability by the ceremony of baptism. Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, was going to be godmother. Eleanor, Duchess of the Tyrol, was to travel north to see her royal niece’s first child. The Hof Charetty–Niccolò was already awash with bales of satin and silk as Tilde and Catherine prepared to dress themselves and the company and Diniz.

  Tobie made it known, with regret, that he proposed to leave Bruges with Anselm Adorne and his niece Katelijne as their physician. He found, with annoyance, that the company was to include John of Kinloch, a priest he had cause to dislike. He later learned, with mixed feelings, that Gelis van Borselen was going as well. But it was too late, then, to change his mind.

  The situation had made Tobie deeply uneasy. All he had originally known of the grown woman Gelis had been learned from Godscalc, and he had formed a mental picture of a beautiful, independent, valiant girl who had been with Nicholas in Africa for half at least of the three years he had spent there, the watershed of his life. Nicholas had gone to find gold, but he had been prepared to pay the price that was necessary, and had suffered with Godscalc, and nearly died. His reward had been the great friendship with the black scholar Umar, who had once been a slave and had become his teacher. His reward and his punishment, for Umar, after sending him home, had been lost in the tribal rebellion that followed. And with him, it seemed, had been lost the healing power of all Nicholas had learned from books, and learned from the desert.

  Returned, Gelis and Nicholas had married, but had not stayed together. Until now, Tobie had conformed to the general conclusion: the idiot had got her with child far too soon. On this journey, he had revised his opinion. Then, thrown into the company of Katelijne, he had found as she convalesced that she had formed one or two opinions herself. And because she was wholly uninvolved, wholly without envy, wholly tolerant, and extraordinarily perceptive, he responded by telling her what he knew.

  Not all of it. The secret of Henry he kept, even when she described, with pity, the blow that had nearly ended his real father’s life. He did speak of Umar, and Africa.

  For a long time after that, she had been silent. Then she had said, ‘How many people are given the chance of that kind of love? A black slave; a judge. He withdrew M. de Fleury from a pointless life; gave him silence, gave him teachers, gave him wisdom, and then died. People mourn in queer ways; then they stop.’

  ‘If they are allowed to,’ said Tobie.

  The hazel eyes had looked up from the pillow. Katelijne said, ‘The lady of Fleury is jealous of Umar?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tobie said. ‘Umar had a loving young family … babies … It was partly what drew Nicholas home, Godscalc thought. For the first time, Nicholas wanted that for himself.’

  The girl had seemed to think. She said, ‘The lady Gelis never speaks of your Umar, even when asked about Timbuktu. She would, if she hated him.’

  ‘Does she hate Nicholas, then?’ Tobie had said.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Katelijne said. There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘You are saying, why hasn’t he seen his own son?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s for lack of trying,’ Tobie said. ‘If he stopped short of force, I think it was only in case he goaded her into doing something extreme. I don’t know why she should deny him, but young mothers are sometimes irrational for a while. She may not have wanted a child. A bad birth-experience may have led her to blame him. There may be something wrong and she is ashamed of it, or even trying to spare Nicholas from the knowledge.’

  ‘Or she may be jealous,’ had said Katelijne.

  He frowned. ‘Of Nicholas? In case he steals the love of the child?’

  ‘Perhaps. Or,’ she said, ‘of the child. In case it steals the love of Nicholas.’

  They looked at one another. She said, ‘They ar
e very alike, M de Fleury and his wife. Trade, calculations, puzzles, mechanical devices, the manipulation of money.’ She paused. ‘She refers to him lovingly, always.’

  ‘Lovingly,’ Tobie repeated. She didn’t speak. Tobie said, more lightly, ‘Isn’t everyone interested in money?’ He watched her face.

  ‘Are you?’ she said.

  He had been disconcerted by her before. This time he just said, ‘You should meet my uncle. I rest my case until then.’

  Curiously, neither he nor the girl ever talked about reaching Alexandria ahead of Gelis van Borselen. Only, at Rome, Katelijne – Kathi, she had asked him to call her – took this turn for the worse. By the time they had sailed she was practically recovered.

  Nicholas arrived very late at the fondaco, long after the groans and braying of asses and camels and the clamour of many voices, shouting in Italian and Latin and Arabic, indicated that the cargo had been released, dues paid, taxes implemented, and was being installed in the warehouses. He ran up the stairs and came into the rooms, cap in hand, his hair like astrakhan from the heat.

  He shone. Occasionally in the past Tobie had noticed this property in Nicholas: that, however tiresome the moment, a chance happening, like a spark, would set some fire running, and he would radiate a burning and transient happiness.

  Nothing in the abrupt, cold reception on board the Ciaretti had prepared Tobie for that. He thought the successful landing was perhaps the cause; or sudden hopes for the future; or the assimilation of the truth that Gelis was not here. He even thought it might have something to do with the girl, until he saw the quality of the gaze Nicholas directed towards her. It was not admiring or fond, but neither was it the look a man allots to a pet marmoset he is training. It was the sort of greeting he had seen Nicholas give to an exceptionally bright clerk of his own company; and the girl’s smile, responding, was as frank.