The Unicorn Hunt

by Dorothy Dunnett

  She said, ‘Didn’t you expect me? If you threatened M. de Fleury, Dr Tobias was bound to change sides.’

  ‘Change sides?’ said her uncle, smiling. ‘You make it sound like a battle. I doubt if Nicholas de Fleury is in any danger, but if Dr Tobias wants to join him, he is welcome. I have no quarrel with him. I look at you, and you are blooming.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ said his niece Katelijne. ‘So you have no objection if I come with you to Mount Sinai, to St Catherine’s monastery? I felt she spoke to me in Alexandria. I felt the Blessed Saint wanted me there.’

  ‘My dear!’ said Anselm Adorne. ‘Hardened sinner that you are, your devotion needs no further proof. Indeed, I am sure you misheard. Catherine of Alexandria would be the last to exact a month in the wilderness from any young maiden. Heat; thirst; the dangerous traverse of mountains; the presence of merciless Bedouin? Believe me, such is not in her mind. Of course, you will stay for the Abundance. We leave immediately it is over. You too will leave – I shall find you an escort – to return to the fresh air of Alexandria until I can come back to take you to Bruges.’

  His mind on camels, he touched her hair, smiling. His wife Margriet could have warned him. He was familiar with motherly wives and the skittish ways of other men’s mistresses. For the rest of womankind, he drew on his knowledge of poetry. It was not a very safe guide.

  It might have interested Nicholas, had he been sufficiently detached, to discover that French was the language in which he responded to the white extremes of physical pain. His tormentors, noting the emerging lapses from Arabic, professed to detect in such wilful incoherence yet another ruse to conceal the prisoner’s true identity as an Ottoman spy. After the third interrogation, the muffled figure of the Chief Dragoman himself descended the steps and condescended to turn over the wily French-speaker with the toe of his slipper. The act released a discernible odour: he had come, indolently dressed, from his wives’ deep and various carpets.

  ‘Know that God hateth impudence,’ was all he said. The trap-door closed, and presently his minions returned with their orders. ‘For this, more salt. After that, thou wilt speak thine own tongue, or pay a forfeit. A forfeit for every word. A little beating, of the kind thou knowest well: nothing that scars. Dost thou hear?’

  Nicholas answered. Whatever he said, it must have been Arabic, for they did no more than empty the salt-bag and leave, plunging him once more into darkness. The salt was forced into his mouth, not applied to his skin. His skin was unbroken. When he had finished retching – a profitless exercise – he lay on the dried filth of the floor and waited for the haze of agony to disperse.

  Servants being accustomed to blows, he had in recent years gained an undeserved reputation for stoicism. It did not mean that he was impervious to pain. It meant that he was not affronted by it, and could even agree, sometimes, that it was merited. More important than that, he had learned that bodily pain was less to be feared than the other kind. His lack of tolerance now could be traced to the fact that his present condition combined both.

  David de Salmeton and Gelis. Two years ago, they had been in Scotland together; they had sailed to Flanders in the same ship. He hadn’t believed – still did not believe – Simon de St Pol’s suggestion that de Salmeton and she had been closer than that. But, adroit and subtle officer of the Vatachino, de Salmeton had shown himself an exceptional adversary ever since their first meeting in Cyprus. His company had lost face in Africa, and had been intent on mastery ever since – in Scotland, in the Tyrol, in the Levant. They had ousted John here in Cairo. They had not, so far, offered physical violence at first hand, although he himself had not always been so particular. Annihilation in the business field had been their preferred and most evident aim.

  Until now. Until Adorne had been injured; forced to harbour the Boyds; exposed to ignominy and expense in Alexandria. Then David de Salmeton had set the trap and, knowing he would not fail to come, had delivered him not to the Sultan or the great emirs to whom official complaint might be made, but to some underling, whom even the Chief Dragoman could disown.

  The cellar in which Nicholas lay was not one of the well-equipped prisons which occupied the basement of any official large house. It was empty, communicating by trap-door to the upper floor, and by locked doors to other cellars or passages on either side from which no sound emerged. When they had learned all they wanted to know, they could bury him here, and deny all knowledge of him. And if he were found, there would be no mark on his skin.

  So de Salmeton and Adorne must have planned. And Gelis had helped them.

  The veiled woman whose eunuch had conveyed that lewd invitation – that had been Gelis, testing, taunting. She had been there, on his first visit to the merchant’s house belonging to David de Salmeton. For his second, she had constituted herself the bait in the trap – she who had sent her wedding ring on a pilgrim galley to Jaffa so that her real whereabouts would remain undivined.

  He wondered by what means she had sailed from Venice, and where she had landed. With de Salmeton’s help, it would not be difficult to find a berth and travel swiftly, reaching Jaffa, Damietta, Cairo ahead of them all. She knew, or David de Salmeton must know of the gold. From Katelijne to Adorne to de Salmeton. It had been a simple chain.

  Knowing his gift of divining, she had used it against him, as she had sent Margot home; as she had stopped him – stopped the hound music, the child’s music with fire. And now she had made her own kill.

  He had thought her dead. How was it for her? Cool and careful and sly, it had been for her: a chain of elegant links smoothly fitted together and leading him here, as he had dispatched her to Florence. They played games, and she had won by choosing a short game in the end, against all he expected. While Umar, who might have forgiven her, was horribly dead.

  He found himself hoarse, as happened at times when the pain remained at its height for too long. No one could hear him, but he set himself to prove, as he must, that he could exert his will and be silent. After a while, the glare receded and he made one anchor, then two; then wove between them a chain, a net, a mail-coat of numbers.

  When Tobie presented himself at his door, John le Grant, Aberdonian, engineer, maker of mines, stood with his white eyelashes wet and gripped his shoulders. When, some time later, Katelijne Sersanders was announced, the engineer told his servant to say that he was out.

  ‘No,’ rescinded Tobias. Made aware of firm opposition, he amplified. ‘She’s not just Adorne’s niece, she’s intelligent. See her. She may have something to tell you.’

  After the kite episode, privately, he had known as much. But Adorne was her uncle, and he, John, had declared open war on the man. Also, she was a child. He said, ‘Is it fair?’

  ‘Let her be the judge of that,’ Tobie answered. If he had fallen in love, it was not obvious.

  Entering, small as a robin, Katelijne Sersanders made her mind known at once. ‘Do you know where M. de Fleury is? Do you know?’

  ‘No,’ said Tobie. ‘Ask your uncle.’

  She tore off her cloak and sat down. She said, ‘I was right. Someone’s got him. So, who?’

  John le Grant said, ‘Your uncle denounced him. Try the Mamelukes.’

  She said, ‘We should have heard. And you would know if he was hiding. I think something is wrong.’

  ‘Your uncle doesn’t have him?’ said Tobie.

  The girl looked at him with something kinder than contempt. ‘He offered him justice in Bruges. He isn’t vindictive. But, escaping, M. de Fleury may have fled into trouble. That is all I came to say.’

  ‘Trouble with the Mamelukes?’ John le Grant said.

  The large hazel eyes made him ashamed. She said, ‘I thought you were concerned about David de Salmeton.’

  It was Tobie who said, ‘John, sit down. Kathi – come, sit, we are sorry. You say Sir Anselm has done nothing so far as you know, but Nicholas has disappeared, and you suspect the Vatachino and David? Is your uncle anxious about him?’

 
‘About M. de Fleury?’ she said.

  ‘No. Obviously not. But you are?’

  She sighed. ‘Shall I go home? He’s a man. He has friends. He’s in trouble. And I don’t want my uncle blamed.’

  ‘Ah,’ said John le Grant.

  ‘Tell me, Kathi,’ said Tobie.

  She held out something white. A small packet, sealed with waxed string, upon which an address had been written in an inept and straggling hand. She said, ‘I promised to have it delivered.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Tobie.

  She said, ‘From the Pisan Consul’s wife. A lock of her hair.’

  Tobie sat up. The girl said, ‘It is one step, that is all. If M. de Fleury has been trapped by a rival, you will have to find him. If he is being secretly held by the Mamelukes, that is more difficult. They won’t give him up to you, to a Frank. You would need help. Cairenes who are not Mamelukes. Do you know any? Does he?’

  ‘None we could trust,’ said John bluntly. It was true. Here, the Bank did business in limbo with the Sultan and his Mameluke emirs – when it did business at all. The Muslim traders did not like it. Even his boatbuilder would admit all he knew, were he asked.

  ‘Wait,’ said Tobie. ‘Nicholas may. John, you told me the open risks he was taking. Didn’t he mix with the doctors and the students?’

  The girl said, ‘From the University? You mean from al-Azhar?’ Her eyes had opened: pools bottomed with gravel; the irises specked with sharp colour.

  Tobie said, ‘Yes.’

  The word struck John with its baldness. He looked at the girl. She had flushed. She said, ‘So.’

  There was a silence, which seemingly impelled her at length to jump to her feet. She said, ‘I mustn’t keep you. I suppose you are leaving? My uncle means to set out for Sinai immediately after the Ceremony. Do you think it will be soon? The river rose thirteen more qirats last night.’

  John’s eyes met those of Tobie. John said, ‘Are you bidden?’

  Her teeth gleamed. ‘To Sultan Qayt Bey’s flotilla? Oh, no. We are pilgrims, taking our humble place in small skiffs and not required at the Nilometer, the banquet or even the Act of the Breach. But all of consequence in Cairo will be there.’

  Her clear eyes studied John, and returned to search Tobie’s face. Tobie said, ‘Kathi –’

  She was at the door. She moved as quicksilver moves. ‘No. He is my uncle,’ she said.

  The nature of the fourth interrogation was such that Nicholas knew there would not be a fifth. For one thing, the Chief Dragoman had attended uncovered. And the questions, which had always been cursory, were now vacuous. They had always known who he was. It would have been convenient, no more, had he confessed to being an Ottoman spy, permitting them promptly to put him to death, publicly impaled by the al-Wazir Gate. Since he had not, they would dispose of him in secret, and John would not suffer.

  There was no redress, for he had come to Cairo disguised and without sanction. No diplomatic crisis would follow his non-reappearance in Venice or Flanders. His would be one more unexplained disappearance of the many which occurred in the souks and alleys of Cairo; his body left stripped, his flesh masticated by curs.

  He was being prepared for a second terminus, a mandatory departure; something he had never been disposed to arrange for himself but might be content to accept. (Gladly? Meekly? Infested by fatigue and stupidity, Bel would say. Bel …) Which he might or might not be content to accept, living as he did in a welter of pain, the focal point of hatred such as he had never imagined.

  He had been incalculably wrong: all his senses, all his instincts proved worthless. (An arrow shot across the wilderness within the wilderness must fall.) Of course there was no child: he had lived in a fog of illusion. He lay as the Dragoman spoke and so distant had he become in his banishment from all that was warm and human and natural that he neither heard nor understood what was said. Soon the man left. Halfway up the ladder he stopped, and added something in anger, and laughed.

  Presently, the others left too, repeating the laughter. Nicholas did not register its meaning or cause. Since he now spoke neither Arabic nor French, they had not carried out their threat, and his fingerbones – all his bones – were unbroken. With the part of his mind that was Arab he appreciated the humour. He could have moved, crawled, gripped with a few broken bones. He lay in the stifling darkness, uttering sounds until death or sleep overcame him.

  He sneezed and, being still alive, opened his eyes. The trap-door was open, and the torch that hung below it was lit. The draught was not what had disturbed him: a fan, glinting with jewels, stroked his lip. ‘My dear man, how you stink!’ said David de Salmeton, disposed with the grace of a vine on the staircase.

  Once, it had seemed a sin to doubt beauty; to think that anything less than goodness could dwell in a face and form such as this, or within Simon’s golden perfection. The childish belief clung all the longer in that it was allied to a morbid awareness, a misdoubting of envy. One should love beauty for its own sake, he believed. In time, he had learned to understand the impulse, and control it. It was one of the many worthless lessons he had learned.

  He looked up, beyond the mouth of the trap-door, but Gelis did not seem to be there.

  His rival said, ‘It is unseemly to gloat, but I wished you to meet your successor. We had planned to integrate the Vatachino with your Bank in twelve months, but you have run it down a little too quickly: we did not wish to take over a destitute house. Your flair – you had some flair – deserted you in your Scottish transactions.’ The charming voice made a pause. David de Salmeton had come, as a vain and clever man would, to make his victim aware of his fate; to hear him protest or plead.

  Your Scottish transactions. For a threadbare, ludicrous moment, Nicholas reviewed his Scottish transactions; summoned to mind the fierce and complex activity which had filled his every waking moment in Scotland and then, bridging the chasm of Godscalc’s death, in the Tyrol and Venice, in Florence, Naples, Alexandria, until the cable had snapped and all he had set in motion was stilled. Stilled now, in all its destruction, for ever.

  He returned to de Salmeton’s words, and felt a pang of amusement. He did not show it. He had deliberately left no private instructions: for Scotland, for anything of the long, complicated design upon which he had been launched. When he died, the victory of his enemies would be half, perhaps three-quarters assured. His Bank would probably fall, to the triumph of the Vatachino and Anselm Adorne, and Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren and his fat father Jordan. And, of course, Gelis. I wished you to meet your successor.

  He had said nothing aloud. From malice, then, the man broached the same subject. ‘By the way, the lady your wife sends her regards, and wished me to assure you that she is in health, and all her friends and kinsfolk relieved of their premature mourning. She has gone to Mount Sinai. Something about a parrot, I gather?’ He smiled, his eyes attentive.

  It was, of course, the first independent confirmation that Gelis lived. Nicholas believed it. The oblique reference to Margot was sufficient proof. He had convinced himself of it already although, he must now admit, his judgement was faulty. De Salmeton spoke again, bland as barbed fur. ‘What, Nicholas? So poor a spirit? The stable-boy sulks, but surely the knight dies with a quip on his tongue?’

  Allah and the Hallows requite thee.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Nicholas said. ‘They didn’t warn me your presence was lethal. The lady my wife, then, was too busy to call? I should have had her admitted.’

  De Salmeton stirred, as if the tone of the remark had surprised him. Then he said, ‘Time passes when one is occupied, and pleasure makes one forgetful. We parted late, and she asked me to be her ambassador, as you see. I shall report our modest success.’ Despite its grace, the set of his body was wholly masculine. It was what had attracted Zacco, wayward Zacco. A woman, a starving, warm-blooded woman would find it hard to resist.

  ‘Do,’ said Nicholas. ‘You are staying, then, for the dénouement? The Dragoman may make a small charge. Or per
haps, on leaving, the lady paid you your wages?’

  His mind, moving on, left his words behind. His lack of attention, being genuine, was not particularly intended to goad, but succeeded, causing his visitor to caress the plumes of his fan, and then to extend them in a slow, exotic gesture. Nicholas didn’t notice them until it was too late.

  There was nothing much he could do. The cellar was small. He did move, with all the grace of a frog, lurching sideways to adhere to the furthermost wall. De Salmeton merely increased the range of his arm. The feather-tips floated down upon Nicholas, drifted along the distorted length of his limbs and, settling curled at his feet, began to caress the flaps and bubbles of membrane upon which, once, he had walked.

  The initial screaming was quite automatic; no more to be diminished or halted than any other act of uncontrolled Nature. De Salmeton seemed not to expect it, and dropped the fan. Nicholas, mutating to pitches lower and hoarser, was aware of nothing outside his immediate task except perhaps a shade of deathly contempt. He felt the other man watching; after a while de Salmeton said something and, lifting the fan, began to walk up the steps, having apparently found the entertainment too raw. Before he left, locking the trap-door behind him, he turned and looked lingeringly down, as if to imprint some choice scene on his mind.

  A picture to describe to Gelis, no doubt. Nicholas wondered what torment she felt, to need comfort like that.

  The pain, in time, returned to its habitual level, its progress marked by occasional sounds. His lips were paper, his tongue parched, but although desolate with hunger, he could not have swallowed. He drifted out of consciousness and returned.

  De Salmeton had forgotten to put out the torch. It revealed the accumulated filth on the floor: his nose no longer distinguished the fetor. It also showed that, on two opposite walls, the doors had been unlocked and stood open.