33
Watching Darius and Gol dance together, Nat knew he had been right to buy the wedding blanket. He grinned ecstatically to see his friend’s dream come true, and then left barn and barnyard to walk the surrounding lanes.
His mind was a-whirr, his heart was full to bursting at the prospect of selling oil with Darius on behalf of Uruch Bey. Employment gave Nat a future. His life was no longer a thin ribbon of vegetation in a wilderness of shale. Each new passing day of life after Anthony revealed his own power, and made him stronger, more whole and alive. There were other powers than those that ruled. They may be submerged for a while, but, like underground rivers, paved over and forgotten, they had not gone very far.
Whatever he had been doing before he met Darius wasn’t life. This was life. Life and a new job too! He hummed a melody the reed flute had played. He skipped and danced through the late-night lanes, past closed shutters and bolted doors. That reed flute was not wailing his exile, as in the Turk’s poem, but rejoicing at his homecoming. Return to England would be exile. For here Nat had what he’d never have in England: the hope of a life beyond service. Not the life of an indentured servant, but the life of an oil merchant. He would make a life for himself here.
A breeze stirred a house front wind chime and set some hanging tin pots tinkling.
‘WHERE’S MY MONEY, BRAMBLE?’
Nat jumped in terror at the sound of Anthony’s voice.
Eli Elkin slammed him against a wall, and held him there while Anthony punched him in the eye. The raised stitching of his master’s tapestry gloves gashed his eyebrow. Blood flowed down into Nat’s eye. A second punch to the chin studded the back of his head to the wall. The pain as the back of his head banged the wall was worse than the punch.
Anthony gripped him by the throat Nat. Through his stinging eye, saw again the clove of garlic nose and the avid bug-eyes, and smelt again the ambergris in his master’s beard.
‘I led you, Bramble, across deserts, rivers and seas. At mine own expense, I had you schooled in the Persian tongue. Led you safe through half the world. Led you and all my people out of Baghdad, even at peril of my own life. When we first came here, Shah Abbas commanded me to give you to him as a slave. I refused an emperor to save you, Bramble.’
‘On my life, Sir Anthony, I discovered that there existed in Qazvin a better exchange rate for silver! I tried to tell you, but Angelo turned me away from your chamber when you were sick with your stone. Hear me, Sir Anthony! It was precisely in honour of my obligation to you, and for no other reason, that I went to Qaz -.’
‘Lying lawyer’s bibble-babble!’ bawled Elkin, cracking his billyclub against the renegade’s knee. Nat skittered along the wall.
‘Good news, Sir Anthony!’ said Nat, hopping on one foot. ‘Here, here, look, six gold tomans, here in this purse, good Sir Anthony.’
Anthony poured six gold tomans from red velvet purse to glove, and then poured them back in again, before attaching purse to belt.
‘What’s this, Bramble?’
‘Six gold tomans equals three-hundred abbassi, Sir Anthony!’
‘Numbers!’ roared Anthony. ‘Numbers! You dare bandy numbers with me, boy! There’s no arithmetic to wrong and sinful wickedness!’
‘No, Sir Anthony, only restitution. Good my lord, here’s restitution in full.’
Anthony pawed his straw and rye beard with tapestry fingers. Nat stared at the raised stitching of the gloves’ autumnal forest-floor tapestry. What fresh lacerations were yet to come from those seams?
‘Uruch Bey congratulated me,’ he said, ‘on the great fortune won me by my servant selling rock oil upon the maidan. A great fortune - those were his words. Not six gold tomans. A great fortune. So my question for you is this. Where’s my money, Bramble?’
‘I am rinsed, sir. Indeed I am. You have it all.’
‘The only reason you are still alive is because Uruch Bey believes you were acting on my orders when you fetched the oil into the city. He says he saw you serve an oil merchant on the maidan. Is my fortune with this villain? You will take me to the den of thieves, Bramble. I am told it is a barn close by.’
‘On the way back from Qazvin, it’s true, yes, sir, that fearing to travel alone with your six gold tomans, and in return for security of passage, yes, I did help a merchant bring in oil, my lord.’
Nat hadn’t seen or heard Anthony draw his rapier. A sharp hot needle pain pricked his throat. His eyes followed the steel sword all the way past the tapestry gloves to the cold blue eyes.
‘Where is your accomplice?’ asked Anthony.
‘Accomplice, sir? I know no -.’
Anthony put an ounce more weight behind the sword. The cartilage of Nat’s windpipe buckled. He dry-retched and his whole body grew very cold.
‘To pop your windpipe now, I need press less than to seal a letter with my ring. A flinch will do it. A sneeze. A stumble by Master Elkin against my elbow. Any of these will dispatch you straight to hell. Now, is there anything in my past conduct, anything at all, that might lead you to doubt for even a moment that I will skewer your windpipe like calamari rings. Blink once for “No.” Twice for, “Yes.” So, tell me, where’s your accomplice?’
Nat could not focus his terrified wits enough either to lie or betray. The air hummed. The rapier flashed and slashed. A ripping sound. Not flesh, but fabric. A clatter of metal. All the coins in his doublet scattered across the road.
‘Where’s your silver armour now, Bramble?’
‘The cod’s roe, Sir Anthony,’ cried Elkin. ‘Here’s the cod’s roe!’
The red and black doublet hung in tattered rags. Anthony kicked him in the belly. As Nat doubled over, Elkin’s billyclub struck his shoulder, and sent him sprawling face down in the road.
A canvas hawking bag landed next to his head.
‘Fill it,’ said Anthony, sheathing his sword.
Nat crawled around the road filling the hawking bag with coins, like a potato-picker dragging a burlap sack along a muddy furrow. On hands and knees, he searched for any coins he may have missed. When he had picked up every last one, he lifted the heavy bag up to Anthony.
‘This is all, sir.’
Anthony fastened the bag around his waist.
‘No, Bramble,’ he said, ‘this is not yet restitution.’ He drew his dagger and nodded to Elkin, who grabbed Nat by the neck and hair and walked him backwards to the wall. Anthony approached with the blade at eye-level. Nat writhed and thrashed his head every which way.
‘Hold still,’ said Anthony, and laid the flat of the dagger against his forehead. Anthony carved through flesh and elm gum.
Nat’s last coin in the world clinked onto the road. The dancer’s coin. He had forgotten it was there.
Anthony removed his left glove and pointed at his palm.
‘Put the coin here, Bramble, at the meeting of the lifelines of good fortune and longevity.’
On his knees, Nat placed the gummy and bloody silver abbassi in Anthony’s palm. He watched Anthony’s fist close over the coin, and heard him step back a pace. Then he heard his own teeth clatter as Anthony kicked his chin. Pain burst an aurora behind his eyeballs, and exploded against both eardrums. He keeled over on his side.
‘Ho! Ho! Ho! A day later, Elkin, and I would have missed him.’
‘A very good omen, Sir Anthony. A sign.’
‘Do you know, I think this is a good omen.’
Relief flooded Nat’s body, for Anthony had dropped all talk of hunting Darius now that the hawking bag was five times heavier than when it had first left Anthony. Darius was safe. Nat would not be a burst goatskin laying a drag trail of oil all the way to Kulsum’s barn!
A boot kicked him hard in the thigh. Elkin leant over him and barked,
‘Up, Bramble! Up! Tomorrow we leave!’
34
The following morning outside the gates of Isfahan, Shah Abbas and his entire royal court were ranged on horseback to send off the Great Persian Embassy. The Embassy’s
caravan stretched far along the city walls. Proclamation of war against the Ottoman Empire ruled out travelling west through Iraq therefore the Embassy would travel northwest through Russia to Christendom, where Ambassador Hoseyn Ali Beg would present letters to all the courts of Europe.
Ambassador Hoseyn Ali Beg sat on his horse swaddled in shawls, as if already bitten by the cold northern winds of Europe. He scowled throughout the farewell ceremony. Just listening to the Shah recite the name of every last godforsaken place the Embassy would visit made Hoseyn feel exhausted. He cast a longing eye beyond the city walls at the tops of minarets, at the golden domed mosque. He was still in sight of Isfahan but already he was tired and homesick. If being made ambassador was such an honour, why did it feel like being exiled? He cast an envious look at his fellow majlis ministers who were staying. In a few minutes, they would simply turn their horses and ride back the short distance to their homes, wives, children, to their commercial interests and political intrigues - in short, their lives!
For all Hoseyn’s gloom, however, there was at least one man among those staying in Isfahan with whom he would not wish to trade places. Hoseyn Ali Beg looked at Robert Sherley, the brother that Anthony was leaving behind as a hostage. From the Englishman’s unconcerned air, it was clear that he didn’t know what was about to happen to him, what part he was to play in this grotesque ceremony of leave-taking. Hoseyn winced and snapped at Uruch to stop humming.
The Shah waved his sword, at which signal hundreds upon hundreds of white doves emerged from a round dovecot, the size of a two-storey house. The doves flew to the front of the Embassy caravan, where they immediately turned round and flocked back to the giant dovecot, all squabbling and fighting to get back inside.
‘A bad omen, Uruch,’ he said.
‘Scared by a hawk, Hoseyn Mirza. All shall be well.’
Hoseyn grunted.
Robert Sherley’s attention was wandering from the big sendoff. Hands on saddle-horn, he gazed longingly towards the orchards and barley fields on the horizon. Soon, let’s say in one hour, he would be trotting past those trees and that waving barley, and he’d never see Shah Abbas again. A new chapter of his life was beginning: The Great Persian Embassy.
He glanced at Ambassador Hoseyn Ali Beg, and covered his mouth to hide his mocking laughter. Somewhere on the steppe a flock of goats was missing its shepherd. You could take him out of his yurt, tie a mink cape round his shoulders, and call him Ambassador, but his lowborn nature hung about him. He would be lost, utterly lost, in the courts of the Christian princes, which made it a small matter for Robert and Anthony to gain control of the Great Persian Embassy. Hoseyn’s broad flat turban made him look like the supporting pedestal of a subsiding porch, and he was fated only to play a supporting role in this Embassy. Anthony would be the de facto or titular Ambassador once they got into Christendom, but Robert would be the real Ambassador, the effective policy-maker, doing his brother’s thinking for him. After all, it was Robert and not Anthony who had ambassadorial experience, Robert who had concluded successful trade negotiations with the Moroccan court on behalf of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He would be the real Ambassador behind the show Ambassador. He just had to keep a straight face until they were level with the barley and those orchards. That was all he had to do.
Suddenly, the Shah’s voice cracked with emotion. So deep a silence followed that Robert thought he had been struck deaf until he heard a lone dove flap overhead. All eyes turned towards him.
‘Have I have missed my place in the line,’ Robert nervously asked himself. ‘Is this my cue to trot forward and bid farewell to Shah Abbas? Yes, I believe it is.’ But when he reached for his reins they were gone, and he found his horse being led to the side of the Shah’s by a Tofangchi.
Shah Abbas kissed the reins then pressed them to his heart. Cheers erupted from Tofangchi, royal court, Great Persian Embassy and from the spectators.
‘Am I a hostage, Anthony?’ shouted Robert. ‘What have you done?’
The mask of propriety that settled on Anthony’s face made the blood drain from Robert’s own. By the look on his face, Robert knew what the Shah and the cheering crowds did not: Anthony was never coming back! ‘My brother has made good his escape by sacrificing me! Oh, I am betrayed where most I should trust!’
As his horse was led back towards the city walls, Robert concentrated on not fainting, on keeping dignity, on staying upright in the saddle, by taking deep breaths and breathing and blinking the black dots from his eyes. He was flanked by the Shah’s two blind brothers, Prince Abu Talib and Prince Tahmasp, whose horses were being led along with his.
‘So the three blind brothers are led away,’ thought Robert. ‘There’s no shame in the princes’ blindness, only mine. I knew Anthony would betray me, knew it from when I was on top of the tower with the crystal to my eye! I knew and yet I did not know. I didn’t admit to myself what I already knew. Fool! The princes are past danger now, but not me, dear God, not me. One day Shah Abbas will find out that my brother has lied to his face and fled the coop. What will the Shah do to me then! I am at his mercy now. Oh, Anthony, oh my brother, you have abandoned me at the gates of hell.’
The crowds watching the Great Persian Embassy depart were so deep that Darius could see nothing. He found a tree that looked as though it had been struck by lightning, and climbed the black stumps of charred branches, each about the size of a rolling-pin to the very top of the tree.
Too much was going wrong all at once. Nat had not come back to the barn last night. Earlier this morning, Atash Zarafshani had refused to admit Darius into his house, asking whether he’d ever been promised in a sigheh. When he hesitated before answering, Atash slowly closed the door in his face, leaving him looking down at the quarter circle the door had inscribed in the dirt like a compass-pencil.
On his way back from the Zarafshani house, Darius’s way was blocked at the Sharestan Bridge by crowds of people in holiday mood. When he asked where they were going they told him they were off to see the departure of the Great Persian Embassy. Darius ran around the outside of the crowd overtaking them all, plumed hat in hand and sweating in his astrakhan coat. When he came out at the gates, the crowds were so deep that he could see nothing of the Embassy. Now, from the top of the blackened lightning tree, he could see the whole train of the Great Persian Embassy. Nat was nowhere to be seen.
The two short men, Anthony and Abbas, faced each other on massive stallions. They looked like rich, overdressed children at play. Anthony, dressed in silver armour, sat very upright in the saddle, bracken beard thrust out. Was it possible to read Nat’s fate in that bug-eyed countenance? Was this a man who had just murdered his servant?
Darius caught sight of Uruch Bey, his patron and benefactor, sitting on a tall smoke-grey horse. That wizened old fellow in the pancake hat beside him must be Hoseyn Ali Beg, the Ambassador and former friend of Gol’s dad. Mounted behind Ambassador Hoseyn and First Secretary Uruch were a few secretaries and servants, but still no Nat. He glimpsed servants darting to and fro among the English party ranged behind Anthony, but could not see Nat among them.
Summoned by a nobleman, a footman limped forwards to tighten a saddlebow. Darius did not at first recognise this hobbling footman as Nat. When he did, he shook with anger to see the damage done his friend. There was a starburst of dried brown blood on the centre of his forehead. One eye was purple and almost closed, his mouth bruised and puffy. Those new clothes were covered in dust. He hobbled painfully. Not all the rigours of their oil venture had damaged Nat as much as a few hours with his old master. Yet now Nat must toil across the lands of Europe and northern Asia with that shaytan!
Nat limped down through a wreath of dust into a roadside ditch, where he disappeared from view. Moments later he popped up again wearing a pack fastened to his back by two crisscross leather straps, from which hung a blanket roll. Nat joined the line by the side of the road, behind the horses of the English party. Thank God for his new boots of brown buffalo hid
e, since he appeared to have no mule or pony to ride. Oh, how lonely and desolate a figure he looked.
‘Dostum! Dostum!’ Darius cried out, but the loud entraining of Great Persian Embassy drowned his cries out. All the way up the caravan’s line, camels rose amid a cacophony of banging clanking baggage. Darius shouted fit to burst his lungs: ‘Dostum! Dostum!’
‘Hark!’ said Hoseyn, hunched in the saddle, ‘the Turks are here already.’
‘Let’s go back into the city,’ said Uruch, ‘and see if we can negotiate terms.’
‘An excellent suggestion, First Secretary of the Embassy. Wheel the horses! Yes, no point going now. The Turks are already here.’
‘We can give the Sultan some of these expensive gifts intended for popes and doges!’ said Uruch.
‘We can offer Antonio’s beard in return for Muhammad Aga’s,’ said Hoseyn, grinning. Again they heard the shouting Turk.
‘Dostum! Dostum! Nat-jan!’
The First Secretary of the Embassy turned in the saddle to find the shouting Turk. His blood ran cold. With unutterable sorrow he recognised Darius Nouredini, the oil factor in whom he had reposed the welfare of his family, perched up a tree and shouting like an Izmiri drunk.
But then Uruch realised that Darius Nouredini was calling to someone among the English party. He followed the direction of his oil factor’s gaze and recognised the shagird - but only just, for the English servant had suffered a violent beating since Uruch last saw him. The shagird must have been a runaway, for why else would such punishment be meted out upon his return to Anthony Sherley? Uruch’s guts rolled. This meant Darius had lied to him when he had claimed that Antonio had financed the oil venture. This liar was the man in whom Uruch had placed his trust and the future of his family!
If the shagird heard what was shouted to him, he was too dejected, or too ashamed to lift his eyes to search for his friend’s face. Just then, however, he slowed his walk, as if he could, after all, hear the words Darius shouted:
The Trade Secret Page 16
