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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Nicholas walked through the arch, unbuttoning his robe as he went. ‘Where is she going?’

  ‘Tobie’s taking her to her uncle’s fondaco. He says he didn’t bring her here to be interrogated about what her uncle has done so far on the journey, and it wouldn’t be ethical to expect him to report on Adorne either.’

  Nicholas turned. ‘I haven’t asked him to. Or her. Yet.’

  ‘Well, don’t. And he doesn’t want the girl mixed up with poisoned sweets either. Where did those come from?’

  ‘A disappointed admirer. Poor Tobie. Is he courting her?’ Nicholas said. ‘What fondaco is he putting her into?’

  ‘The Genoese. Of course he isn’t courting her. He’s her physician. He likes her. He doesn’t want her overexcited. Oh, Christ.’

  ‘What?’ said Nicholas, completing the unbuttoning. A page, appearing, took off the garment. The silver weave was almost too stiff to fold. Underneath he wore a white shirt and black hose. He pulled off his hat and handed it over. The ostrich, bored with its tree, slung its neck towards him and hissed. He said, ‘No. You’ve got too many feathers.’ Across the courtyard and beyond the next range of buildings a kite floated in the blue sky.

  John le Grant said, ‘It’s hers. Tobie and I saw it last night after we left you. She had this amazing idea.’

  ‘Which you told her not to go on with. I see now why Tobie wants to remove her. What idea?’

  They had walked through the second courtyard and were emerging into the garden, which was shady with fruiting, mysterious trees. There were small birds in the palms, clinging to the long berried sprays, and orange butterflies flirted. A young woman in Venetian dress stood with a child, feeding a gazelle with morsels of bread. She turned and smiled at them. The courts they had crossed had been empty of all but skipping servants and the animals of the little menagerie. The men were mostly indoors or in the warehouses or at other fondaci.

  The windlass squeaked, bringing water up from the depleted wells. All Alexandria was built upon cisterns, replenished by rain, filled to overflowing when the aqueducts brought the miraculous flood of the Nile, as it would in September. It was why the city was green.

  The wind blew from the sea, and distorted the jets of a fountain. ‘There she is,’ John le Grant said.

  Chapter 33

  NICHOLAS LOOKED. It was Katelijne, with a kite. She wore a thin muslin dress, slightly torn, and no hat. She had also taken off her shoes. Her arms and legs, which were bare, were unacceptably brown and touchingly thin. Her tongue was out, and she was gazing at her kite, which was in the shape of a frog. She hadn’t seen them.

  ‘What is she trying to do?’ Nicholas said. From where she stood on the grass, the wind had blown the kite out of the garden and over the lane that adjoined it: soon it was going to break against the walls of the neighbouring fondaco. He supposed she was learning. You didn’t have to be in Alexandria for more than a day to discover that all children flew kites. The cool northern breeze, always present, was the gift of Aeolus to kites.

  John said, ‘She’s trying to lift a map from the main Vatachino offices.’

  ‘What!’ said Nicholas. He started to laugh.

  ‘She discussed it all last night. The wind holds the kite to the shadowy side of the building; the balcony doors are all open for air; you slide the kite down until you reach the loggia you want, direct the kite over the balcony wall and let it travel on into the doorway.’

  ‘Where someone seizes it.’

  ‘No. She was going to wait until she saw them go out. The map’s on a stand; you can see it. And the kite is covered with gum.’

  ‘Mixed by Tobie,’ said Nicholas. He had broken into a run, still hiccoughing slightly. Katelijne, without looking round, repossessed her tongue but continued to concentrate her attention on the control of the kite.

  John, hurrying after, said, ‘He didn’t think she really would do it.’

  Nicholas arrived. He said, ‘Magnificent. Down. To the left. There’s a gust coming. Steady. Up. Let me help you.’ He stretched up, his fingers high on the cord. He said, ‘Let us magadise. Is that the balcony?’

  The frog was ridiculous. The frog looked, in a bad light, like Sigismond, Duke of the Tyrol. It clung, leaped and clung like a leaf down the wall of the opposite building, then suddenly curled itself under and sped like a bird for a doorway. There was a shout from inside. Katelijne tugged. The kite reappeared with a sock on it. Katelijne said, ‘Oh, bother.’ A woman ran out on the balcony and pulled off the sock. Katelijne said, ‘It’s one floor down and two along to the left.’ The kite, fanning uncertainly, rose a little, revealing its surface to be pocked with small objects. One of them was a sponge. John started to weep.

  Nicholas said, ‘How many along?’ He had his other hand on the cord.

  Kathi said, ‘Not that one.’

  It was too late. Silkily gliding, the kite disappeared over a balcony, slithered across its tiled floor and presented itself in some inner sanctum. There was another scream, followed by a howl from a baby. ‘Oh,’ said Nicholas. A different woman came out holding a baby, a spoon and the kite. The three travelled rapidly forward; then the woman let go the spoon and the kite soared upwards once again, the spoon embedded in it. Heads, male and female, began to appear on other balconies and voices could be heard, distantly ejaculating in Spanish. The Vatachino balcony was still empty. Nicholas aimed at it, and Katelijne jumped about at his feet. ‘Up! Out! Over a bit! Higher! That’s it!’

  The frog steadied itself on the balcony. An Orthodox priest, emerged from the next doorway, stood in his tall hat and black robe, gazing at it. The kite flipped over the balcony and hopped into the Vatachino’s empty room, fluttering about the frame upon which the vellum was resting. The priest, resting his hands on the dividing railing, peered inside after it. Nicholas put a slow, steady strain on the kite.

  It popped out like an owl from a tree. Pasted across its wide cheeks was the paper. It sped past the priest, who leaped back, and soaring and dancing consented to be driven high into the sky and steered backwards and into the garden. The balconies of the Catalonian fondaco were rimmed with animated faces, pointed fingers, and audible emanations of annoyance and laughter. Nicholas stood, the kite flying on a short cord above him, and bowed; Katelijne curtseyed. John le Grant sat on the grass chortling. Then Nicholas reeled down the kite and pulled off the rectangle that was stuck to it. Strings of soft glue plastered his hands. He let the kite out on its cord and then stuck peg and cord in the grass, leaving the kite trapped to float in the middle air. All the time he did it, he was looking at the map.

  It wasn’t titled, but it was clear enough what it was, even when disfigured with smears. It was a map of Alexandria, the town they were living in. There were the two harbours, Muslim and Christian, with Pharos between them. There were the two intersecting main streets: the one that led inland to the Pepper Gate and the one that crossed it and led to Rosetta and Cairo. There were a lot of other streets roughly filled in, and some mosques and some churches, and a bit of the area outside the walls: Pompey’s Pillar and Lake Mareotis, the reedy stretch full of waterfowl that was once joined by canal to the Nile.

  There was nothing on it about Alexandria’s defences, or about fondacis and markets. It was not the map of a spy or a trader. It was a simple record of streets. None was named, but three had symbols drawn in against them. Each was a letter of the Greek alphabet.

  John said, ‘You’ve spoiled their map. They’ll never find their way out the door after this. Was that what all this was for?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Katelijne. ‘Though we didn’t know it.’ She sat back, looking at Nicholas. ‘The parrot. You wrote down what it said?’

  The laughter left Nicholas suddenly. He said, ‘Yes. What reminds you of that?’

  The girl said, ‘It spoke Greek. What did you make of it?’

  John le Grant stared at them both. Nicholas said, after a moment, ‘Some was nonsense. The rest was a fragment of service from the Greek
Orthodox ritual.’

  She looked at him. Then she said, ‘Trebizond and Cyprus?’ and smiled. ‘I didn’t get that. I got something else.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I thought you didn’t know Greek.’

  ‘There is this Jew,’ she said.

  ‘I thought he was teaching you Hebrew,’ said John le Grant.

  ‘That’s in the mornings. He teaches Greek in the afternoons. He has fifteen languages. How many do you have?’ she said to Nicholas.

  ‘Not enough for this,’ Nicholas said. ‘Talk quickly.’ Distant noise continued to emerge from the next fondaco. People were beginning to come towards them over the grass.

  ‘He says,’ said Katelijne, ‘that when the Greeks planned Alexandria, they named all the streets with a letter. Being Greeks, they laid out the whole place in rectangles. So, by naming the letters and the points of compass, you could describe any location you wished.’

  Nicholas said, ‘The parrot said nothing of that.’

  ‘Not to you,’ Katelijne said. ‘It had to be drunk.’

  John had begun smirking again. Nicholas said, ‘And?’

  She said, ‘It sounded like gibberish. It wasn’t. It was street names and compass points based on the original highways. You know. Four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, one thousand two hundred greengrocers and forty thousand Jews. My Jew knows the old Greek names of the streets.’

  Nicholas looked down at the map. ‘And the Vatachino knew three of them. How?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ she said. ‘But David de Salmeton is away, and you’re here. You can prove out the message. I can pretend I’m an idiot and hand the map back as if it were all a mistake. Unless, of course, there’s going to be a riot.’

  He became aware, lifting his eyes, that the noise from the fondaco had greatly increased. Instead of dispersing, the inhabitants of the balconies had crowded even thicker. Their gaze was all trained in one way.

  The balcony of the Vatachino company was still empty. The neighbouring balcony was wholly occupied by a kite in the shape of a frog. Nicholas wheeled. The stake with its reeled cord had gone. John said, ‘It pulled loose five minutes ago. I didn’t want to interrupt you.’ His freckled face gleamed. Nicholas looked up, and so did the girl.

  The kite was not alone on the balcony. In fact it was being held by four or five people, all talking with great animation. Glued to the kite, they now saw, was the priest of the Orthodox church, still wearing his hat. He was talking as well. To one side of him, carefully snipping, a barber was detaching his beard. He completed the task as they gazed. The priest stood, his face naked, his manner as perplexed as that of a newly halved twin. The frog, disengaged, sprang to its full unfettered height and set out in the direction of India, wearing eighteen inches of beard and a spoon.

  John had started to cry again.

  ‘We shouldn’t laugh,’ Katelijne said. ‘But it is rather funny. It’s Alexandrian. It’s like the jokes they used to play in the Mouseion. You know, rewriting the whole of the Odyssey without using the letter S. You couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I could if I had a lisp,’ Nicholas said. They had begun to walk quickly over the garden in the direction of the nearest door to the courtyard. ‘I suppose they called it the Iliad. I could do you a good line in Ls.’ John was running behind, his hands held palm outwards like chicken-wings.

  Katelijne started also to hurry. She said, ‘Mind the fountain, it’d make the glue run. The Mouseion produced some nice verses as well. ‘Who sculptured Love and set him by the pool, Thinking with liquid such a flame to cool. And take Callimachus.’

  ‘I’m trying to,’ said Nicholas. ‘Why are you holding up your hair?’

  ‘I can’t let go,’ she said. ‘Berenice was lucky. Were those your best hose? How do we open the door to the yard?’ She held the map in one hand by a corner.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said John and, advancing, used an experienced elbow. The courtyard inside was filled, but no one stared at them. It was feeding-time for the animals. The Venetian Consul’s wife, wearing a fine beaded headdress and a gown with puffed shoulders, saw them and came over smiling to Nicholas. ‘What has happened! You have been throwing off ceremony, having successfully finished your audience! Then I see you are better suited than any of us to assist. There. That is for the hog.’

  ‘The hog,’ Nicholas said. It was not a query. Behind him, someone was choking.

  The lady said, ‘You must have seen it. We keep it to annoy the wretched pagans. It is perfectly tame. Over there. Pour it into its trough.’ She smiled and walked away, leaving him standing looking after her. Attached to his hand was a bucket of pigswill. Katelijne said, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

  John was pale with emotion. He said, ‘Oh God, oh God, I can’t stand it, I have to go somewhere and –’

  ‘You can’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘Can you?’ He began to walk away. ‘On the other hand, I have this bucket of pigswill. No, on this hand, as it happens. Here’s a door. We take the pail to our rooms; you help me get it off, and I’ll help you put on your gloves. Katelijne, go away. Have a bath. We’ll come for you.’

  Katelijne continued to nudge him. It wasn’t Katelijne. It was the hog, trying to get at the bucket. Katelijne was behind, kneeling on the fondaco’s tiled floor silently rocking herself, with one hand on top of her head and her forearm over her eyes.

  John said, ‘That’s it.’

  ‘The pig won’t like it,’ said Nicholas.

  The Jew said, ‘It is a poor map, but it will serve. You are looking for the great Alexander’s treasure?’ Below the obligatory yellow turban his face was broad rather than long, with a short black beard and brown eyes from which all trace of irony had been banished. He gazed mildly at the three of them, and the girl. The girl shouldn’t be here. They couldn’t find a reason to exclude her.

  ‘Next time, perhaps,’ Nicholas said. ‘Is that what everybody does?’ The man was a scholar, said Tobie, and had come recommended by the Consul. Tobie had interviewed and appointed him. He had been teaching Katelijne for three weeks. Kathi, as Tobie called her.

  Tobie was there now with John and the girl and himself, his small round nostrils inflated, his cap already dragged off his bald head. In a moment, he would start sneezing. The map on the table was not the original, but a copy hurriedly drawn up by John. The Jew said, ‘It saddens me to cause disappointment. You have, then, some other purpose?’

  Nicholas said, ‘A friend has posed us a puzzle. It depends on the street names. These are the names we have been given.’

  The Jew took the paper. He said, ‘What do you know of the city? The whorehouses? The markets? The houses where you can buy smuggled aphrodisiacs and jewels?’ He spoke in accented Tuscan, the language they had begun with.

  Nicholas said, ‘Tell me, is it true? Sixteen hundred years ago, out there on Pharos, seventy rabbis in seventy huts translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek? Do you think no one read them?’

  The Jew looked up. He said, ‘Your Greek is Trapezuntine.’

  Nicholas said, still in Greek, ‘So I know, at least, the legends of the cities Byzantium ruled. There is the Canopic Way, leading to the Gate of the Sun and to Cairo. There is the Street of the Soma, crossing it. There were green silk awnings spread over both, and colonnades and mansions of white marble so dazzling, they said, that the men and women of Alexandria wore only black. There was the tomb of Alexander, there the Mouseion, with its observatories, studios, library; there the shrine to Hephaestion. I want no lecture,’ said Nicholas. ‘I want to know what I do not know, the names of the streets.’

  The Jew said, ‘You do not want your companions to know.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. Then he added, ‘Lack of knowledge will not harm them.’

  There was a silence. Then the Jew said, ‘I believe you.’

  Katelijne said, ‘Truly, we admire the city. You must forgive us if we are ignorant.’

  ‘Ser Niccolò has explained,’ said the Jew. He had returned to Tuscan. ‘I understand.
Only I am not sure if I can help. These are letters referring to obscure streets, whose whereabouts are not precisely known. I shall do what I can.’ He frowned, his pen working over the map. ‘There. Possibly there. And possibly there. Does that meet your expectations?’

  They all gazed at the map. The streets he had marked were those the Vatachino had already identified. ‘It might do,’ said Nicholas. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I do not know the three others,’ said the Jew. ‘I deeply regret. Of course, I shall exact no fee for such trifles.’

  Nicholas walked out with him all the same, to engage him in friendly talk and persuade him to accept what was fitting, and was given in turn a painstaking receipt which he slipped into his purse. Returning, he found Katelijne gone, and John and Tobie glaring at each other. John said, ‘He’s told her what it’s about.’

  Tobie’s handkerchief punished his nose. He withdrew it. He said, ‘You said yourself. Without her, you wouldn’t have known what to look for. Of course I told her.’

  ‘About Ochoa and the parrot,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘And the gold,’ John said grimly.

  ‘Then it’s just as well,’ Nicholas said, ‘that the Jew’s information was rubbish. If the streets are where he says they are, the directions mean nothing. Or the parrot was lying. Take your pick.’

  They both gazed at him. He laid out the map and explained it. Tobie went away, finally, sneezing.

  John said, ‘Well?’

  Nicholas said, ‘You mean you still remember your Greek? All that time digging holes in Constantinople?’

  ‘And in Trebizond,’ John le Grant said. ‘She’s Adorne’s niece. I follow the reasoning. I wish you didn’t have to keep it from Tobie, that’s all. Anyway. What did you really find out?’

  Nicholas took a paper out of his purse and, laying it beside the maligned map, opened the inkpot and took up his pen. He said, ‘Read them out, and I’ll mark them. Then read out the compass directions.’