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

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘Remember Gertrude’s tales about Basle? She says men throw coins into the steam baths and order their mistress’s maids to up-end and fetch them. The maids love it, according to Gertrude. If they don’t mind, maybe nobody does.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t. Are ye deaf?’ le Grant said.

  ‘About tomorrow? Yes, I’ve planned meetings,’ Nicholas said. ‘And I know Adorne can’t come for a while. But I do want to arrange him a welcome. And I do want to be elsewhere when he receives it. You as well. Should we call on Tobie and see if there is any news?’

  ‘You want to be elsewhere when Gelis arrives?’ le Grant said.

  ‘I didn’t invite her,’ said Nicholas.

  The Genoese fondaco had a chained leopard in the patio and a Consul, Signor Pietro de Persis, who would visibly have preferred to unchain it on discovering that his visitors were bankers from Venice. He did, in time, send someone upstairs to enquire if the Signorina Caterina and Messer Tobias would receive them: eventually they found themselves in a suite even larger than the rooms Venice provided. Nicholas said, ‘He doesn’t like us. We could feed candied fruit to his leopard.’

  ‘I have a better suggestion,’ said Tobie. ‘Feed it to the harbour drummers and trumpeters. No one’s had a proper night’s sleep for a month.’

  ‘Since the Turkish fleet went to war,’ Nicholas said. Unbuttoning and then dropping his gown, he was exploring the room. In its furnishing it was remarkably like the one the girl had occupied in the Venetian fondaco, largely because the same objects were strewn all about it. ‘Well, Dioscorides?’ he said. He sat down and picked up some drawings.

  The girl, too, looked much the same, although marginally neater than when flying the kite. ‘Well, Teiresias?’ she said.

  The silence was almost non-existent. ‘You have been learning. Who from?’ Nicholas said. He laid down the drawings and looked about him. John sat down, attracting a quick glance from Tobie.

  ‘I had a good teacher in Ghent,’ Katelijne said. ‘I wondered why you needed the Jew. I thought the map would have been sufficient. Anyway, what did you find?’

  Nicholas did not answer. John le Grant, drawing breath, saw that Tobie was frowning. Tobie had heard of Teiresias of the rod, blessed with prophetic insight. Tobie said, ‘I thought the Jew couldn’t help.’

  ‘No,’ said Katelijne. She was looking at Nicholas.

  Nicholas said, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘The van Borselen,’ said Katelijne. ‘The Duchess Eleanor writes to them.’

  Tobie said, ‘What does she know?’

  The girl’s eyes were on Nicholas. His gaze was on his hands. He had picked up some palm leaves and was plaiting them. He said, ‘She knows that pigs sometimes find truffles, but not when there are no truffles to find.’

  John was silent. He had already guessed that. If Nicholas had consulted the Jew, it was because he had already tried and failed to find gold by his own methods. Tobie said, ‘I think you will have to tell me what you mean. John?’

  ‘He is a diviner,’ John said.

  Tobie stood. Nicholas, without looking up, indolently continued with what he was doing. He said, ‘I have given myself a special bonus. The Duchess is pleased with her silver mines.’

  ‘She should be,’ the girl said. She added, ‘You know divining is supposed to be harmful?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Nicholas said. He spread his hands and lifted what he had done. It was the beginning of a basket, such as Katelijne had been trying to make. He said, ‘I thought the knack would come back. Harmful? Only to those who don’t know how to manage it. It recognised the candied-fruit poison.’ He looked up.

  ‘And who it came from?’ It was Tobie.

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘But it didn’t find gold?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the Jew couldn’t help?’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘But you would have come to Alexandria anyway, to compete with my uncle. Where is he?’ said Katelijne. ‘Go on, tell us.’

  ‘Kathi, no,’ the doctor said. ‘It isn’t a competition. We know. We heard his ship was going to Malta, then Sicily. He should be here in ten days. The way things are, they won’t sail further east.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Nicholas. ‘There is a considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth in the city. Poor Paul Erizzo.’

  John looked at him. Up till then, he had never mentioned the name. Paul Erizzo, Bailie of Negroponte, had been Venetian Consul in Cyprus when he and Nicholas and Tobie had been there. Now, long past his tour of duty, he had stayed to lead the defence of Negroponte against Sultan Mehmet.

  Tobie said, ‘The news is better today. The Sultan has called on Negroponte to surrender, and Erizzo has told him to go away and eat pork. He’s going to try to hold out. They’ve had some reinforcements from Crete, and Venice has fifty galleys gathering there. If a Venetian fleet got to Euboea in time, they could break the pontoon bridge to the island, strand the Turkish vanguard and prevent the rest of Mehmet’s army arriving. You may be proud of the Ghost and the San Niccolò yet.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard that,’ Nicholas said. ‘Trust the Genoese to hear all the gossip. And your uncle is coming?’

  ‘And everyone with him,’ said Katelijne. ‘Can’t you divine people at all? If you can manage silver, can’t you pick out your Gelis? Don’t you have a chart? If I get a chart, will you teach me?’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Tobie said. He moderated his voice. He said, ‘Whatever Nicholas does is his business. This is not something for you.’

  ‘Then it shouldn’t be for M. de Fleury,’ she said.

  ‘You convince him,’ said Tobie. ‘Anyway we’ve proved it already. A Genoese in a fast boat from Tunis can tell us more about your uncle’s ship than a conjurer. Nicholas, it’s taken on African passengers. When they arrive, they’ll have someone with them.’

  A leaf fell. Nicholas picked it up. Tobie swore suddenly. He said, ‘Not … No.’

  Nicholas looked up. ‘So, who?’ he said.

  Tobie had changed colour. John saw the girl considering him, her hands very still. Tobie said curtly, ‘But he might bring news. It’s Benedetto Dei, the Florentine merchant. He’s been in the interior. And someone who sounds like one of the ibn Said brothers. It can’t be good news, Nicholas.’

  No one spoke. Nicholas resumed plaiting slowly. John le Grant wondered if the girl had any idea what had happened to Nicholas in Africa. He himself knew, because Godscalc had told him. Tobie, who had brought Nicholas home, certainly knew. John cleared his throat, and Tobie looked at him. John said, ‘I think you had better stay until the ship comes, hadn’t you, Nicholas? I can go to Damietta on my own. I’ve done it often before. Then you can join me.’

  Nicholas continued with what he was doing, but a prosaic dimple formed and vanished in one cheek. It signified, without speech, that he knew exactly what John was trying to prevent him from doing.

  Katelijne said, ‘Didn’t you mean to stay till the ship came?’ She looked perplexed.

  Nicholas said, ‘Well, what do you think? Only business is business, and we thought for a while we should have to sort something out at Damietta. But John can go and I’ll stay.’ He laid down his knife and, placing the piece of weaving on the floor, began to gather the cuttings. ‘So what about you, Katelijne? What will you do when the good Baron Cortachy comes? Show him Alexandria? Are you going with him to the Holy Land?’ He was looking at Tobie.

  Tobie, unusually, got in an answer before she did. ‘No, she isn’t,’ he said. ‘That is, she’ll spend some time with them all in Alexandria, and travel as far as the Garden of Balm, if you know where that is. Her uncle wants her to bathe in the pool. Then she’ll come back here and stay at the fondaco until her uncle has finished his pilgrimage. Am I right?’

  She was amused. She said, ‘Did we give any secrets away?’

  Tobie went pink and then laughed. He said, ‘Never trust the opposition.’

&nb
sp; She said, ‘But he isn’t the opposition, he’s your friend, isn’t he?’

  Tobie and Nicholas looked at each other. Then Nicholas gave a laugh. ‘Katelijne,’ he said, ‘Tobie’s only friends are the patients he’s treating. The trouble is, he tries to treat so many at the same time. We must go: they’ll be locking the gates. I’ve used up all your leaves.’

  She looked at the piece of work. There was nothing amateur about it. To John’s eye, it was indistinguishable from true native weaving. Katelijne said, ‘Can you make hats?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Buy some straw and I’ll show you tomorrow.’ He looked at Tobie, but Tobie was looking down.

  That time, John said nothing until they were in their own Venetian fondaco, and alone. Then he said, ‘You will stay? I’ll go on to Cairo.’

  ‘Yes. It was as well not to mention it. Yes, I’ll stay. It doesn’t mean, my dear ingenious John, that I mean to alter my programme.’

  ‘She’s a nice girl,’ said John le Grant.

  ‘Certainly she is. She knows about her uncle and myself. Tobie will protect her.’

  ‘Poor Tobie,’ said John.

  ‘Not at all. Tobie will enjoy it. So when should you leave? In a week? Then we’d better get the other meetings in place. Let’s look at the papers. Bring up Achille.’

  The sun was going down. All the others, work done, were in the gardens or on the roof of the fondaco, sipping their wine in the milky breeze, watching the sky changing over the sea, and the masts, tipped with lights, rocking together in the calm of the harbour. He could hear the sparrows bustling in the palms, and the drilling voice of some bird, repeating the same few notes over and over. Nicholas was sitting, the lamplight on his papers.

  John came back and sat down. He said, ‘You haven’t told me. What did you discover this morning?’

  Nicholas said, ‘Tête-Dieu,’ and flung down his pen.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve been fairly patient?’ John said. ‘I’m asking you whether you’ve found a clue to the gold. I thought that was one of the reasons why we were here.’

  Nicholas said, ‘We’re also here to get this agency up from its knees, plaster the cracks the Vatachino have made in it, fortify the bits that Sir Anselm Adorne undoubtedly has got his eye on, and make some very long-term arrangements indeed looking East. That’s enough, I should have thought, for the moment.’

  ‘All right,’ John said. ‘I know our concern is the trade, not the gold. But what you know, I’ve got to know. Or where will the Bank be, supposing next time you do eat the pigeon?’

  There was a silence. ‘You have a point,’ Nicholas said. ‘The other way of looking at it is the opposite. It might be safer if you didn’t know.’

  ‘To hell with that,’ said John mildly. ‘I’m not moving from here until you tell me.’

  Nicholas looked at him. Then, slowly, he pulled one of his faces and sat back.

  John said, ‘Aye. Wheels within wheels within wheels. You don’t need to tell me. You get lost in the gears and forget what you were making. There are business secrets, and they’re different from personal secrets. This is a business secret, and I’m in the same business. So is Tobie.’

  Nicholas had relaxed. Still leaning back, he said, ‘Well, he’s in the Hippocratic business as well. Let’s leave Tobie until he has decided whose secrets he’s keeping. I don’t mind your knowing.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said John.

  ‘I hadn’t made up my mind what to do about it, that was all. So. I did find the place on the map. It was a church: the Greek Church of St Sabas. The object they gave me had been left, as the parrot was, by someone unknown, with instructions and money enclosed. It came in this.’ Nicholas stretched and flung on the table the well-used pilgrim’s satchel, its cross still faintly embossed.

  John drew it towards him and opened it. There was nothing inside. He looked his question.

  ‘I burned it,’ said Nicholas. ‘It was a writing tablet, an old one, with the wax filled in, but blank. Have you seen a message sent that way before?’

  John shook his head.

  ‘You would have enjoyed the Medici ciphers,’ Nicholas said. ‘This wasn’t a trick worth the name. You melt off the wax and the message is cut on the wood underneath. In this case, just the name of a place. Guess what it was?’ His eyes in the lamplight were grey as water, with hollows beneath. He had wanted to get rid of the paperwork, it was suddenly clear, because he had wanted to work with the rod.

  John said, ‘You were in a Greek church, not a Latin or Coptic one. And this is a Christian purse, indicating maybe another church, or a shrine or a monastery.’ He paused. ‘There is a Greek church at Tor. That’s where the parrot was brought from.’ In the silence, he visualised the Red Sea and small, clamorous Tor, with its brackish wells and its palms and its harbour; the place where the camel caravans gathered to bring the Indian merchandise north. Cairo was eight days north of Tor. He said, ‘There’s a monastery there.’ A flourishing monastery, he remembered, with a plantation of two thousand date palms. They would have a place to hide gold.

  ‘Not Tor,’ Nicholas said. His voice expressed more than the words.

  John took a long breath. Then he said, ‘Sinai.’ If it sounded grim, it was the way he felt.

  ‘Yes,’ Nicholas said. ‘Not Tor but its mother-house, set in the heart of twenty-four thousand square miles of wilderness, and reached by many days of excruciating travel, most of it vertical. Like Moses, we have been called to Mount Sinai.’

  There was a pause, filled with breathing. ‘You can’t take Gelis there,’ John said.

  ‘I don’t propose taking Gelis anywhere,’ Nicholas answered.

  John left, supposedly for Damietta, in ten days. He had several important errands in Cairo, one of which was to locate the whereabouts of David de Salmeton, whose rooms in Alexandria they had so recently and stickily raided. Left to himself, Nicholas settled down and, concentrating on the agency, began to fill twenty hours with work every day. At the end of a week of it, he fulfilled a long-standing engagement and called at the fondaco of Cyprus.

  The agent had once worked in the Treasurer’s office: Nicholas knew him. Gradually, impoverished by Cairene tributes and failed harvests and general turmoil, James, King of Cyprus – Zacco – had lost the power to pay the army Nicholas had provided him with, and one by one had withdrawn his substantial privileges. There had been other reasons for the schism as well.

  Since his return from Africa, the reports from the Bank’s agents in Alexandria and Damascus had indicated a change. Nothing direct – no messages, for example, from the King himself or Marietta, his cropnosed mother – but a hint here and there that matters were open to adjustment. Nicholas had instructed John to ignore them. He did not want to pick up the life or the friendships of seven years ago. He was pleasant, therefore, to this man and his clerks, but did not tell them what they were striving to learn – whether, as a man of independent wealth, he sided now with Venice or Cairo.

  Zacco was married, by proxy, to the daughter of Marco Corner of Venice and, until she had children, Venice itself was her heir. She had no children, because Zacco had not yet met her. Zacco had not yet met her because, very patently, he couldn’t stand the idea of becoming a Venetian colony. Something which Lorenzo Strozzi of Naples, for example, had understood very well.

  If Venice took over Cyprus, she would establish her warehouses there, and the Mameluke Sultan of Cairo would lose both his direct trade and his tribute. If Negroponte fell, the Ottoman Sultan of Constantinople would possibly move into Cyprus before anyone, causing his fellow Muslims in Cairo equal pain. Nicholas said, ‘What’s the news from Negroponte?’

  He knew already it was hopeful. Paul Erizzo had discovered a traitor, and employed the knowledge to mislead his enemy. As a result, fifteen thousand Turks had been killed. ‘All the same,’ the agent said. ‘Constantinople fell to those guns. The walls of the capital cannot survive such a pounding. Signor Paul has sent to beg the ships of Ve
nice, the ships of the Religion, to make haste from Crete.’

  One of the ships which would come to the Captain’s aid was the Ghost, once the Doria: the same vessel Paul Erizzo had used long ago to help capture Nicholas and take him to Cyprus. Venice had wished to acquire credit with Zacco, and had hoped Nicholas would do what he had done, which was to clear Zacco’s foes from the island. Zacco had been grateful, up to a point.

  As for Erizzo, Nicholas had formed a respect for him and his pretty daughter. Nicholas held all Venetians in respect; especially Fiorenza, wife of Marco Corner, sugar-planter, who had presented him with some choice candied fruit. The agent had produced a similar box, just a moment ago, but Nicholas had felt he must regretfully refuse. He made to take his leave, having learned as much as he could, and having conveyed what he wanted.

  The agent said, ‘But my lord will come again, and spend longer? There are many friends who wish to be remembered to you. Perhaps they might tempt you to visit Cyprus yourself?’

  ‘It seems unlikely. I am not staying in Alexandria,’ Nicholas said. ‘Although I admit I have a great curiosity about one thing.’

  ‘Yes? Yes?’ said the Consul. They were standing. He was a short man of Cypriot blood: what they called a White Venetian.

  Nicholas said, ‘I had always dreamed that one day I might possess a parrot as beautiful as the one belonging to the King’s illustrious lady mother. Is the bird still alive?’

  The Consul’s lips parted. ‘Madame Marietta’s parrot?’

  ‘A red-and-blue parrot. It stood by her chair.’

  ‘I know it,’ said the man. He looked simply surprised. He said, ‘A magnificent bird, I agree. Indeed, I agree. But it is no longer there.’

  ‘It died?’ said Nicholas sorrowfully.

  The agent smiled. ‘I fear it has gone through a gate as difficult to unlock as that of death. It was presented by the lady Marietta to a convent.’

  ‘A convent?’

  ‘Well, a lodging. A house serving some property of the Franciscan monks between Nicosia and Famagusta.’

  ‘Not Psimoloso?’ said Nicholas. ‘I should have guessed. I should not, of course, dream of depriving the good friars of their pet. Think no more of it. And now I must go.’