She had grown very pale. She said, ‘That will suit the Greek.’ It sounded sardonic.
‘The Greek?’ he said, but she didn’t reply, shaking her head with impatience.
Then she said, ‘I suppose, then, I am pleased, to a degree. Better pleased than the Patriarch, who hoped to see you face East. We are not, perhaps, as interchangeable as you think. He may even expect us to part, honour satisfied.’
‘Honour!’ Nicholas said.
She jumped to her feet. ‘A meaningless word, isn’t it, between you and me? I use the same tricks that you do. We both cheat. I believed, finally, that Katelina came to you, and that you were kind to her, and that it was her own will to marry Simon and claim your child as his. I knew what she was like. But it wasn’t like that, was it?’
Because of the fog, it was very quiet. Or perhaps it was quiet for other reasons. His heart beat, and the other pulse, and he felt shaken again between the two, as he had, looking down on the gold. He said, ‘It was like that.’
‘Not under the waterfall,’ she said. And as he did not answer, she went on. ‘Your words in Africa. You were so amused: had you forgotten? I took her under a waterfall, as I remember.’
He had forgotten. It had been idiotic of him to say it. Gelis had desired him to make love to her, as he had to her sister. And eventually, it had happened. And yet –
He said, ‘How can it matter so much?’
She stared at him. Then she said, ‘How can I explain it? One might forgive a passing affair, with sad consequences. But to commit the act twice: to take the same woman, now a mother, now married, and make her your lover – that is not ignorance. Not on your part or hers.’
He stood, shaken by pressures and tried to think. He said, ‘There are different kinds of love, Gelis.’
‘I am eager to learn,’ Gelis said. ‘So what kind of love seduced the wife of Simon de St Pol? Was it guilt that made you try to kill him in Scotland? What kind of love made you marry a courtesan and turn your back on Katelina? And what kind of love did she have, that she died in Famagusta when there was no need for her to have gone there at all? Did you never ask yourself that?’
She was not composed now. Her eyes shone as if full of tears, and her lips set hard as she ended. He felt suddenly incapable of going on. He said, ‘I hardly need to. I’m sure you have all the answers. Just now, I think that is sufficient.’
He watched her collect herself. A tear had escaped. He watched it run over her cheekbone and down to her lips. She said, ‘You don’t want to know, do you? You really don’t want to know. I wonder what instinct you are going by, and what you will do when the day comes when you are forced to hear it all, Nicholas. But not today, you are right.’
He prepared to move. As if she knew it, she spoke again. ‘Shall I tell you something else? Your charming, untroubled sleep at this juncture confirmed another idea of mine. You have some fears for the child, but not many. I think you know who took him. Should I be right?’
Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t know he was alive. I do now. I don’t know who has him.’ If he had been overcome by something other than sleep, he didn’t want her especially to know. It became important to leave before she began thinking of Margot. Turning at last, he jerked the door open.
Three men were standing outside. ‘My bodyguard,’ Gelis observed. ‘I thought your brains were going to revive some time. Now you know where to go, I really should prefer not to be left behind. Shall we leave?’
It was difficult to do anything else. He found he did not really care. He hadn’t been wrong. Something was going to succeed. And, of course, he was going to mislead them.
Unfortunately, she grasped his stick and threw it away, so that he was forced to resort to the flashing, eloquent whistle, which began to shudder as soon as he touched it. By then they had replaced his mask by a plain one. Gelis, too, had altered her cloak and her hood. This time, whatever he found, she wanted no witnesses. It should have troubled him. Instead the whistle throbbed, and his sense of elation kept growing even when the three soldiers manhandled him downstairs, and the crowds pressed about his senses again.
An hour before midnight, the mist dissolved to a haze and St Mark, had he looked down from his pickled pork, would have seen that his Republic’s prince, elders, and priests were assembling outside the Basilica in his Piazza; that the stages and scaffolding had all gone, and that the Carnival, in a last blaze of glory, was withdrawing its revellers to the tall wooden bridge at the Rialto.
Singing, eating, drinking, embracing, merry-makers and artists alike crowded on the streamer-hung bridge and occupied either bank of the Grand Canal, thick and lively as lobsters. The water was covered with gondolas, glowing like insects in amber, upon which lounged the nobility, the effigies whose beringed white-gloved hands were decked with real diamonds; whose extravagant headdresses and masks had been manufactured by goldsmiths.
The boats were carved and gilded and mounded with ivy and flowers. Dishes gleamed under candlelit awnings while servants stepped up and down, and musicians competed. The flotilla swayed, awaiting the signal to sail.
In the first rank was the beautiful twelve-oar bissona of the Banco di Niccolò, with its unicorn crest. To it, one by one through the evening, had come everyone but its master. Julius, exalted, dragging Cristoffels, who had been reluctant to leave. John le Grant, subdued, with Father Moriz. Tobie, bringing with him Gregorio, induced to walk the few steps from the Ca’ Niccolò by a combination of guarantees and assurances. The sail in procession down the Canal to the Basin would only take half an hour. Less, for everyone to be in position by midnight. And Nicholas would come to the boat.
So far he had not. Others were there, however, who could be recognised – by their coats of arms, by the liveries of their oarsmen and servants.
To the right, the flag of Corner and the lion banner of Lusignan stirred over the lantern-hung vessel of Marco Corner, his wife and his daughter Catherine, Queen Consort of Cyprus; and scent and music floated across from its cabin. The Canal was not very broad, and there was only one darkened boat between the gondola of the Queen and that of the Banco di Niccolò. Tobie, gazing across it, glimpsed Zacco’s stout little bride, and two exotic figures he thought might be the princesses of Naxos.
There was a third, remarkable for its beauty, which twice came to the rail to survey the boats pressed flank to flank all about her. Black within its black cowl, her satin mask was edged with diamanté, and the parted, sensual lips were thickset with diamonds. Below one almond eye was sewn a single, sparkling tear. Over it all she bore a coronet of silver roses from which soared a spray of five black and white plumes. In time, she observed Tobie watching her, and vanished below.
No Nicholas. Behind the grand boats of ceremony, the flotilla of gondolas had lengthened, jostling seven, eight, nine abreast under the shadows of the Rialto and far beyond the curve of the Canal. Not all were occupied. Turning his back on Marco Corner and his neighbour, Tobie was met by the dazzle of lamps as the splendid boat on their other side roused to life and welcomed its owners. A moment later, the flag of the Knights of St John broke out aloft.
Tobie drew back to the shadows, and watched. The Knights’ guests were all there, as he hoped. Anselm Adorne, emerging smiling from the splendid deck-cabin to stand at talk with his hosts, surveying the gaiety on the banks and the bridge. And – he sighed – a glimpse of Katelijne, unmasked, in a red gown with a garland and veil to conceal her cropped hair. He perceived, lurking beside her, a bundle of cock’s feathers which he guessed, without difficulty, to be Jan Adorne. The youth seemed, from his movements, to be tipsy. Tobie was sorry, for a moment, for his father the Baron Cortachy, but the moment soon passed.
He scanned the fleet all around him, but saw nothing of Nicholas or of Gelis. He didn’t expect, by now, to see Margot, although he wouldn’t have said so to Gregorio. He noticed that the boat to his right was now lit, but didn’t observe, of the smaller vessels behind him, that one was quite dark, although there
were several people on board. Nor could he know that Gelis van Borselen was one of them, or that the master of the Banco di Niccolò, silenced and under duress, was another.
A roar came from the north, as the Serenissima’s trumpets began to mount to the crest of the bridge for their fanfare. The noise, from thousands of throats, rose like a blizzard and levelled. Julius appeared, wine in hand. ‘Where has the stupid man got to? We’ll have to set off without him.’
Gregorio said, ‘I’m going ashore.’ It was perfectly possible, stepping from boat to boat.
John le Grant, also appearing, said, ‘Why not wait until we get to the Basin? He can catch us then, during the fireworks.’ Gregorio turned back abruptly.
The trumpets blared. It was a long and elaborate fanfare, and those hearers acquainted with Scotland found coming to mind certain strictures of an earthy, a whistling character. They were reminded, immediately, that in Venice all commonplace standards are useless. The fanfare ended. As if struck by the finger of heaven, a hedge of four thousand torches sprang alight on each side of the water. Hidden drums beat, and music blossomed like shrubs on each bank. The packed boats trembled and stirred and, moving, set off in consort on the last, glorious voyage back to the Piazza.
By now, such was the beat of the signal that the noise didn’t matter. Pressed down in the little hired boat, concealed by its hood, Nicholas was not much aware even of Gelis, close to him, watching. His three captors leaned at his shoulders, their eyes, too, on the silver thing spinning. He could not have disguised it. He could not even have controlled the stick, very likely. All he knew, and they didn’t, was that the force was coming from two people, close to one another. One of them he now knew was Margot. The other must be the child. And they were going towards it.
Once, he remembered the cruel hoax of Cyprus and the dumm, the deep summons he had seemed to experience then. But this time, he had not been thinking of gold; and Gelis was with him, her hands clenched white one on the other.
Once, he thought of something that he had been told about Margot, and that he thought sometimes that Tobie also knew.
It did not matter.
The flotilla moved down the crowd-lined Canal, passing the palaces of Bembo and Loredano and Cavalli; passing the Ca’ Niccolò, beflagged and garlanded like the others; servants crowding its balcony; all its torches ablaze. No arrow crossed the water tonight.
On either bank, lamps strung along jetties threw blooms of peacock colour into the water. Streamers of mist veiled and unveiled the tinted window-lights studding the darkness: the gilded mooring posts faded and glinted and overhead the fireworks, when they began, seemed to hang behind films.
Katelijne watched them from under the flag of the Knights, and collected her thoughts, which kept straying. At the time of the Abundance in Cairo, every mosque and palace and tower was swagged and massy with light, and boats of joy moved like this through the water, bells tinkling, music rising, while fireworks flowered and spat. She remembered fireworks and the Unicorn knighthood, and the unobtrusive, deft actions by which Nicholas de Fleury had exiled two people, and caused her uncle to suffer the consequences.
Fireworks. Catherine wheels. What had she learned from her pilgrimage? She didn’t know; or not yet. Her uncle had brought back literal Catherine wheels, or their models. They were to decorate his magnificent house in another city built on canals. Everyone celebrated water. In Venice they married the sea. After the disaster at Negroponte, the Turks had laughed at the Venetian Envoy: ‘You can leave off wedding the sea. It is our turn, now.’
Jan bumped into her, knocking the jew’s trump out of her hand. She picked it up. He said, ‘What do you want that for?’ Without waiting for an answer, he walked unsteadily to the other side of the boat, the side next to the beautiful vessel she was pretending nonchalantly to ignore. The bissona flying the unicorn flag of the Banco di Niccolò.
Apprehension gripped her, turning to horror as she saw him lift one unsteady knee to the rail. She said quickly, ‘M. de Fleury isn’t there. What are you doing?’ He was dressed, pathetically, in cock’s feathers, with glass eyes and a stiff golden beak and a great ruff of iridescent blue and green plumage.
He paid no attention but continued to climb with the evident intention of crossing to the next boat. She wished they were not so close, or moving so slowly. For a young man, even when drunk, it was easy. Infuriatingly, all the people she knew – M. le Grant, Master Gregorio – seemed as yet unaware. Then she saw Dr Tobias step forward and hold a hand out to steady and stop him. There was an argument. Heads turned. She saw Dr Tobias shake his head and step back, while Jan fell inside the Bank’s boat and, righting himself, began to walk forwards. Dr Tobias glanced towards her, and she knew he had seen her, but he didn’t approach. A few feathers stuck to the gunwale.
She thought it was the end, but it wasn’t. Far, from wishing to join Dr Tobias, Jan had merely used his boat as a bridge. Reaching the opposite rail, he clambered over and dropped out of sight. Feathers rose, and he reappeared giggling. Kathi saw he was in the boat next to the Bank’s. Once in darkness, it was now lit and raucous with laughter. The voices seemed to belong mostly to women. A man emerged, his golden tunic adorned with a panther skin, and a wreath of ivy and vines in his hair. The costume exhibited the splendid symmetry of his body, but when he helped Jan aboard, you could see that the bare, cross-gartered leg was not that of a young man at all.
She realised suddenly whose boat it was. This time, Jan was staying aboard. When he disappeared under the awning, there was an outburst of feminine laughter.
Her uncle had not seen.
The fleet moved round the loop of the Canal, passing the Ca’ Foscari, the Palazzo Justinian. The loggias were full, the roof-tops crowded. Music fought against music from one house to the next, obliterated sometimes by drunken singing within. The heat from the massed torches warmed the dank night air of February; seagulls dipped and rose into fog. Their whining, thought Tobie fancifully, sounded like the souls of the dead; the shrill voice of the mask, of the larva, of the ghost from beyond.
The boat flying the Lusignan flag was filled with such phantoms. Chiefly he hated those masks which were white. A human back turned, and there was the oval, inhuman face, the pursed lips, the slender, classical nose, the ceramic cheekbones, down which a thread of silver or gold had been lazily drawn. The lightless eyes and cut nostrils above the beautiful gown; the shy, timorous gestures. The girl wearing the black diamanté mask had come forward again, and was gazing down at the boat with Jan in it.
Tobie had seen who was in the next boat. He had tried to stop Jan from climbing over. He knew Simon de St Pol had befriended Adorne’s son. He knew the girls in St Pol’s cabin were harlots, masked and costumed as men. The only mercy was that Jan also was masked, and the journey was short. Nothing much could occur in ten minutes.
Two minutes later, the curtains in the next boat flew apart and Dionysus emerged, dragging an indignant cockerel by the wrist. It was not apparent what they were arguing about. Then the argument suddenly stopped, as the eye of the cockerel fell on the Corner boat beyond, and the girl in the black mask who stood there.
Slowly she raised one gloved hand and allowed something to float from it: a kerchief. Jan leaned out and caught it. Then, shaking off the man at his side, he placed a precarious foot on the gunwale and offered his hands to the girl who began, with slow, ineffable grace, to step from her boat to his. Simon de St Pol made to move to prevent her.
Tobie called John’s name, without making it urgent, while he himself scanned the Knights’ boat. Adorne, to his relief, was not visible, but he could see Kathi’s red gown, and where her gaze was directed. She saw him. He could feel her question, but do nothing about it. By the time John pushed to his side, the drunken cockerel and Simon were fighting in the next boat while the exquisite girl stood, one ringed hand arrayed at her breast, her mask sloping. The single tear glistened. The curtains of the deck-salon were open, and the entrance crowded with plump
ish young gentlemen.
Simon was not a man of great patience. Perhaps only Jan was surprised when the golden god lifted his arm and caught his feathered disciple an efficient blow to the chin. Jan staggered back, stumbled and fell. The girl made no effort to save him. Instead she lifted her head and put first one gloved hand, then the other on Dionysus’s near golden shoulder. The cockerel scrambled to its feet. Simon glanced at him, then turned his golden mask to the girl. She leaned on him, her white fingers folded, and he put a muscular arm round her waist.
Jan exploded between them.
By now, every boat within reach was alerted, and people were scrambling to watch. Tobie stood grimly at his own rail, with John and then the others crowding beside him. Father Moriz said something in disgust and walked away; Gregorio followed.
It was never a contest. Jan was the son of a jouster but not the champion that Simon was. He gripped the boy by the shoulders and spoke to him. When the boy continued to fight, he spoke louder. Last of all, Simon de St Pol twisted back the cockerel’s arms and, pinning him down, leaned to draw the girl closer.
She came, in a glint of jewels and a rustle of taffeta. She came within an inch of them both. The eye spaces devoured, the diamanté lips hung; the spark of a tear lent its wistfulness to the virginal face. Then Simon wrenched off the mask and the headgear.
Nerio of Trebizond laughed and said, ‘Oh! Oh! How cruel!’ and rubbed the bare skin of Dionysus’s chest with his finger. Then, leaning forward, he plucked a feather from the motionless cockerel’s cap and stuck it in his own well-cut, masculine hair. ‘Now who will ever teach him the difference?’
The Unicorn Hunt: The Fifth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 82
