40
The blows have left Nicholas the sole occupant of a world in which the only sound is a high-pitched whistling in his ears; the only taste, the iron seasoning of his own blood; the only landscape, a vista of pain that has no horizon.
He stares up from the dirt, dazzled by the glare of the sun. Then, as his eyes focus, he makes out al-Annuri’s white-robed body looming over him, a curved, bejewelled dagger at his belt. The hooded eyes regard him with satisfied amusement, as though he’s prey that it has taken some skill to bring down.
Then the whistling inside his head gives way to muffled voices penetrating from reality: de Lisle speaking Arabic; al-Annuri issuing what sounds like a fusillade of orders; the sound of running feet, sandal-leather slapping against the dirt. Strong arms lift him effortlessly to his feet as though he were weightless – soldiers, he thinks, given the metallic whisper of chainmail against leather. Upright once more, he sways like a creature hooked and dragged from one world to another, unsure if he can breathe its air or stand upright on its surface.
After a few moments, during which they give him water to drink, his senses begin to right themselves, though it is only when he looks around and sees the kufiya and the Irish lad roped together on their knees – under the watchful eyes of two large bearded men in striped linen tunics and mail hoods, loaded crossbows in their hands – that he realizes this isn’t the start of some new torture, but a rescue.
‘His Excellency says you are most fortunate,’ de Lisle tells Nicholas once they’ve led him back into the Bimaristan, to the little iwan where he had pleaded for Surgeon Wadoud’s help the previous night. ‘If Surgeon Wadoud had gone to al-Seddik and not to me when you called for help, you would be well on your way to becoming a dead man.’
Looking around, Nicholas sees the ward has been cleared of patients, even the man recovering from the laryngotomy. Through the open door leading to the rest of the hospital he can see more armed men. How they can wear mail in this climate – even in the relative cool of the Bimaristan – is beyond him. But he’s glad they’re there.
Under Surgeon Wadoud’s guidance, an assistant washes his grazes with honey and water, plucking little pieces of grit from his cheek with the point of a small but very sharp knife. Bruised and debilitated, he sits passively on a divan while de Lisle reveals the measure of his good fortune.
‘Apparently, Surgeon Wadoud does not like al-Seddik very much,’ de Lisle continues. ‘She says he treats the hospital as his own personal fiefdom. Everyone here is terrified of him, except her, of course. She knew you were the English envoy, so she thought it proper that the sultan’s personal physician should hear of what she had witnessed, not a man who makes a habit of treating the hospital’s best surgeon more as a washer of sick bodies than as a healer of them.’
‘Are you telling me al-Seddik is behind this? Is he the Falconer?’
De Lisle looks puzzled. ‘I do not know what you mean. But yes, Minister al-Seddik has been plotting to overthrow His Majesty. He has confessed.’ A look of distaste, and he adds, ‘After the confession, I was summoned to keep him alive. They were harsh in their questioning.’
‘I believe I owe you an apology, Professor de Lisle,’ Nicholas says. ‘When I saw you with Fra Cyprien at the hammam, I jumped to the conclusion that if there was any threat to the sultan, it was from a French physician and a Jesuit priest. I was hasty. I should have been less inclined towards misjudgement.’
De Lisle’s laugh contains just a hint of reproach. ‘A subject of the English heretic Elizabeth jumps to an easy conclusion about a Frenchman! Who would ever have anticipated such a thing.’
‘Yes, well, as I said, I’m sorry.’
‘I suppose I must be grateful to you,’ de Lisle says, relenting. ‘Had His Majesty fallen, I suspect that his physician’s life would not long have outspanned his own.’ He nods towards Surgeon Wadoud. ‘But if gratitude is due, the rightful recipient stands there.’
Nicholas thinks so, too. He thinks it in shovelfuls. Climbing stiffly off the divan, he approaches the surgeon and makes a polite bow. The stab of pain from his right buttock as he bends his knee brings a sharp intake of breath, but he still manages a heartfelt ‘You have my enduring gratitude, Surgeon Wadoud.’ Then, with a glance at de Lisle for his help, he goes on, ‘Were it not for your intervention, I would have no hope of returning to the woman I love. I owe you my life. Whatever happiness God sees fit to bestow upon me now, I pray He bestows it upon you twice over.’ Another glance at de Lisle. ‘Will you say that? Tell her my precise words.’
When the Frenchman has finished translating, Surgeon Wadoud’s previously impassive brown eyes become the locus for one of the most beautiful smiles he’s ever seen. She makes a brief reply. De Lisle translates.
‘Surgeon Wadoud says you have the hands of a good man. And a good surgeon, too. She says: return home and tell them what you saw here in the Bimaristan al-Mansur. Tell them we are not all heathens.’
Muhammed al-Annuri’s house is a palatial spread of airy rooms set around a garden five times the size of the one on the Street of the Weavers. Nicholas is installed in a pleasant chamber overlooking a fountain flanked by purple bougainvillea. A servant brings him a clean gown of Berber cloth, dyed the colour of a hot summer sky. Nicholas is ravenously hungry. He makes a motion of putting food in his mouth. The servant looks horrified. Then Nicholas remembers it is the holy month of Ramadan. There will be no sustenance taken from dawn until sunset – in this household, or so it seems, not even for an infidel. He decides a few hours of hunger is a fate preferable to the one that has probably already befallen the two lads who came to him in the compound. He understands now: when the kufiya and the others had interrogated him at Adolfo Sykes’s house, they had not been al-Annuri’s men, as they’d claimed, but al-Seddik’s. He had sent them to Nicholas to find out how much, if anything, he had learned of the Falconer’s conspiracy.
De Lisle and al-Annuri come to him a few minutes later. The minister regards Nicholas with dark, astute eyes. Yet there is a hint of amusement in them, as though he’s been pleasantly disabused of a poor opinion. He delivers a fast burst of Arabic for de Lisle to translate.
‘In order to save time, His Excellency wishes you to confess that you are an English spy. Denial will not serve you well.’
A reprieve then, not an escape, thinks Nicholas as a fresh wave of fear courses through his body.
‘I’m not a spy, I’m just a physician. I was sent here to study physic,’ he says, knowing as he speaks how lame his denial sounds.
‘A physician who happens to be able to decipher coded dispatches,’ says de Lisle, even managing to capture some of al-Annuri’s scepticism. ‘Please don’t waste His Excellency’s time denying it, Dr Shelby. In your chamber at Sykes’s house, His Excellency’s men found a paper with certain letters written upon it. He believes it was used to unlock Sykes’s code. When he arrested al-Seddik at his dwelling late last night, he recovered Sykes’s full dispatch, with a copy of it made in plain English. He presumes that copy was deciphered by you. I read it myself. There were some errors, it is true, though far less than if al-Seddik had been responsible. In English, his hand is not as accomplished as his tongue; though before much longer he will have little need of either.’ A twinge of distaste puckers the Frenchman’s cheek. ‘What His Excellency would very much like to know is how you discovered the original, when the people of the traitor al-Seddik could not.’