The Spring of the Ram: The Second Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Her gaze, also relaxed, held a sort of amused pity. “Ah, you may trust me,” said Sara Khatun. “And the lord Uzum Hasan. But it is a foolish man who sends a message of commitment to Violante of Naxos. Diadochos will not contradict me. That is all, then. Tomorrow, you may go to the compound and negotiate for your goods. Word of your ambush by brigands has already been sent to the Palace. They will be relieved to hear you are safe. I do not expect you to mention these encounters.”

  “They have not taken place,” Nicholas said.

  “So. When you are ready to travel, you will be given what you require for each journey. You will take the Kerasous train yourself?”

  “It is the most valuable,” Nicholas said. “Khatun, I hope one day to be able fittingly to thank you. You know your own danger.”

  “I?” she said. “In the lands of my son? But I am touched by your solicitude, despite the rough handling we have subjected you to. And it may be that, one day, I shall call on you for a favour. You are strong, for a youth.”

  “Mother of Uzum Hasan, what you see is what you have called forth,” Nicholas said. He knelt before her and, rising, left. Outside the door of the tent, his escort were waiting. He detained Diadochos to ask a single question. “The lady Violante is not here?”

  “She is in her proper place in the Palace at Trebizond; where else, Messer Niccolò? Her movements do not concern you.” It was what he had wanted to know.

  This time, walking back to his tent, he saw clearly where the big caravanserai had been built. Tomorrow he would go there with Julius and, moving from stall to stall in the great building, sit crosslegged drinking cups of strange liquid and talking (at first) of everything under the sun except the dyes, the gall nuts, the jewels and the feathers, the silk and the gold that he wanted to purchase. He had studied, and listened and taken advice. He knew how it was done, and what he wanted. He was glad none the less that Julius was with him and thought again of the courage that had sent Julius after him, virtually alone, to overtake Doria and warn him. Which was not to say that he would not now hear, from Julius, exactly how angry he was at his conduct. But then, one could use that as well. One could use everything.

  He did not go in at once, but stood in the tent entrance, thinking. Julius was there, limping briskly about with a second pallet and bedding. The roses were still on the table, fully opened in the warmth from the brazier. They must have been carried for her from the south: their presence had given him less reassurance, perhaps, than she had expected. While he was gone, someone had retrieved his saddle and harness and placed them, cleaned, at the end of the tent. There was also a small pile of his other possessions and a chest, stoutly locked, whose contents he thought he could guess.

  The silver with which Sara Khatun had so guilefully endowed him. The silver Doria had so triumphantly amassed in Trebizond and brought to spend at Erzerum. Well, he had never reached Erzerum. Someone had been instructed to see to that. One wondered if it had scattered during the fight, or been cut from Doria’s saddle, or if he had even been forced to ransom himself with it.

  At first, the jest seemed wonderful. Then, sobering, Nicholas remembered the dangers inherent in the rest of his plans. There would be nothing for Doria in that small part of the caravan that would travel to Trebizond. His silver also had gone. His mission to Trebizond would have failed, unless he could take over the Charetty company. And nothing was surer than that he would claim it, returning post-haste to the city with news of the deaths of Nicholas and Julius. However soon Diadochos had dispatched his reassurance, it couldn’t reach Trebizond until some days—perhaps many days-after Doria had announced they were dead.

  How would Tobie and Godscalc, Astorre and le Grant respond to that? Not, if he knew them, by catching the next boat to Pera with lurid dispatches for Marian and Gregorio. It was unthinkable that she should believe him dead, and he trusted Godscalc at least to do nothing and concede nothing until the news was confirmed. So his survival would destroy all Doria’s hopes. Godscalc, clearer-visioned than himself, had seen how Catherine would blame him for engineering her husband’s downfall. Now, Doria had put his venture at risk through his own foolhardy actions. What if Catherine became disillusioned just when Doria needed her most? What if he were led, because of this, to give up all hope of the Charetty company? Then he would have no use for Catherine. Except perhaps as a hostage.

  Then Julius turned and saw him and said, “That’s the way I felt this morning.” He paused. “I can smell wine. You bastard, you’ve been drinking, and haven’t brought any.”

  There was no point in alarming Julius with baseless conjectures. Instead, he sat down and told him all that had happened, keeping nothing back. What Julius didn’t need to know of that interview had not been put into words anyway. For the rest, Julius was shrewd enough in his questions. “She doesn’t really believe the Duke of Burgundy and the Doge of Venice and the King of France and the King of England and the Pope are about to sail past Gallipoli and murder the Turks?”

  “Of course she doesn’t. Of course, they sent Alighieri with lavish promises to the West. Some day, if Fra Ludovico stays long enough, a war might end or a king die, and a crusade will be mounted. But meanwhile Uzum Hasan can hold out hope of one to his allies, and even prove how confident he is by offending the Sultan. If he can hold Sinope and Trebizond and Georgia together, he can at least hold his own until the end of the season.”

  Julius said, “What if Uzum Hasan wants to do more? We know he wants the Sultan out of Asia Minor. What if Hasan Bey himself takes the chance to seize Trebizond?”

  You forgot, sometimes, that Julius was a natural soldier. Nicholas said, “Trebizond is secure. You have said so yourself. The only way it has ever been taken is by negotiation, and Uzum Hasan has nothing to offer a Christian emperor. I’ve made no bargains, Julius.”

  Julius thought. Then he said, “Why his mother? Where is Uzum Hasan?”

  And that was near the bone, too. Nicholas said, “Where should a leader be, except with his army? With the Ottomans and the Black Horde to worry about, I don’t suppose he has much time to think about trade. He’s left that to the most trustworthy Greek-speaking Christian he knows. She’s a brave woman, Sara Khatun.” He paused and said, “What is it about Persia and Trebizond that breeds women like that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Julius wistfully. “But I’d like to find out.”

  In the end, Julius was good enough to endorse most of his plans. He quite saw that the Florentine cargo would be safer stored at Kerasous than where Doria could get it. He supposed the same was true of the Venetian goods, and Venetian goodwill wasn’t to be sniffed at when it came to confronting Pagano Doria. It took some time to convince Julius that there was no point in accusing Pagano Doria when there was no proof that he had done anything. And Paraskeuas as a witness could no longer serve as an informer. The loss of the silver and the goods he would have bought would have to be punishment enough for the present. That and the arrival of Julius in Trebizond.

  “While you go to Kerasous,” Julius said.

  “Well, yes,” Nicholas said. He had pulled off his shirt and was attending, awkwardly, to his dressings.

  “And stay there? How long?” said Julius.

  “As long as may be needed. You don’t imagine we can leave that kind of merchandise unguarded?” Nicholas said. The gash in his arm had started bleeding again and he poked about the wicker basket till he found some clean cloth to put on it. Neither the physician nor his sullen assistant had reappeared. He said, “There’s some ointment here. What about you?”

  “Never mind me. How do we know what you’re doing in Kerasous?” Julius said.

  “Pigeons?” said Nicholas. “Relays of Amazons?” He rose, pot in hand, and found Julius also risen, and close to him.

  Julius said, “You’re still planning. You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m binding my bleeding arm,” said Nicholas. “I’m also trying to take what precautions I can. The Sul
tan’s much more likely to attack Uzum Hasan than the Emperor. But suppose he decides to capture Trebizond first. He won’t take it, but he could besiege it until autumn. He could make it impossible to get our cargo out until the season’s too late. At Kerasous, we’ve some chance.”

  Julius said, “We get besieged in Trebizond, and you sail home from Kerasous with our merchandise.”

  “Ours and the Venetians’,” Nicholas said. He was trying to tie a knot with his teeth and stop grinning.

  Julius stared at him. He said, “You mean that, don’t you? It really is what you’d do?”

  Nicholas got the knot fixed and looked up. “Well, what do you think? You don’t want me in Trebizond. You’ll be safe there, but the merchandise won’t. The only sensible course is to get the goods out and make sure of our profit. You’re the accountant. Come up with a better idea.”

  After half an hour, he did come up with a better idea. Nicholas would go to Trebizond, and Julius would take the caravan and its cargo to Kerasous.

  Naturally Nicholas objected, and it took even longer to get him to see that he was in no position to argue. Then, having made his point, Julius condescended to enquire about routes.

  “Well, through Erzincan if you like, but it’s dangerous. I rather favoured going back past Bayburt and then turning off west for Kelkit and Siran. Then just past that there’s a road north to Kerasous.”

  “Is there? Where?” Julius said.

  Nicholas leaned back on his pillows and stretched himself. He was aching, and weary and, despite all his anxieties, furtively happy. “Well, that’s the point,” he said. “We’ll go over the whole thing tomorrow. But where you turn north is this place Sebinkarahisar. Koloneia, they used to call it.”

  Chapter 28

  IWAS ON A WARM, scented day in mid-May that the news came to Trebizond that Nicholas was dead, and Julius killed at his side. It was brought by a lay servant from the monastery of the Holy Virgin at Sumela, beating a fast little mule over thirty mountainous miles in a little over twelve hours.

  As was proper, he went first to the Leoncastello of the Genoese, taking with him a group of loping spectators and scampering children. Monna Caterina, the ambassador’s wife, listened with a pale face to the story of how the monks had discovered her husband dragging himself through the gorge with a few servants, all of them wounded and hardly able to gasp out their story of chance meeting and desperate ambush. Fighting for his life against brigands, despite all he could do, Messer Doria had seen the young man Niccolò succumb to the ruffians and perish. The notary Julius had been cut down soon after, and all their companions put to the sword. Messer Doria himself, robbed of everything, had been left for dead and, but for his servants, might be lying there still.

  An Amazon, the young lady wife was. Instead of calling for help, or collapsing, she had summoned her grooms and her men-at-arms and her servants and, taking horse, had set out immediately for the monastery, leaving the courier to do the rest of his duty and make his painful way to the Florentine compound.

  There, at least, they knew what was due to a messenger. The man to whom he told the news, a priest, set him at once on soft cushions, with food and drink, and had his mule seen to; by which time he had been joined by the other colleagues of the dead men. One was a doctor, who noticed his stiffness and sent for warm water and ointments while they questioned him. They spoke in low voices. He saw that, unlike some consorts of merchants who saw death as a chance for advancement, this one was patently stricken. Only once did he hear a burst of brusque speech, when a man with a beard and a screwed eye turned to the rest with a growl that would have flattered a dog. “You threw him away when you let him go. Julius had more sense than you did, and followed. The Colchians and the Kurds know more about mountain fighting than any people alive. He knew nothing. You threw him away.”

  No one answered him; but the doctor, who had been wringing out cloths, lifted his bald head as if he, too, would have spoken in accusation. But, unlike the bearded man, he looked at the big priest who had welcomed him. And presently that man, turning, said, “And, sir, you heard the story from Messer Pagano himself? If we were to make our way to the monastery, might we see the wounded man and learn more?”

  “Indeed,” said the man from Sumela. “It will be a week before Messer Doria may easily ride, and the sight of his friends will surely comfort him. His lady wife has already set out there.”

  He saw them look at one another, but the man with the beard said, “What’s the point?”

  It was the doctor who replied. He said, “The point is, Astorre, to find out who killed them.” Then he turned his back on the bearded man, who had drawn a long breath, his cheeks turning red, and, laying the cloths down, said, “I shall send someone to go on with this, and make you a bed. If some of us go to the monastery, there will be others to set you on your way with food and a horse when you wish.”

  “I can see,” said the messenger, “that these are men you held in esteem. I am sorry to carry such news.”

  “I am sorry, too,” said the doctor.

  The priest and the doctor, with a good escort, left indeed almost immediately, although not before an equerry from the Palace had knocked at the door and asked to hear all the messenger could tell. He was, it seemed, from the women’s apartments, and not from the Emperor. Leaving, he had spoken to the Latin priest, and to the ship-master, a man called le Grant. “My lady would help if she can. It is a loss of which we cannot yet measure the depth.”

  “No one could,” the doctor said. “He was not old enough.”

  They set out to confront Doria, and it felt like going to war.

  An onlooker would have said that the journey was senseless. A company deprived of its leading officials has a requirement to close the wound rapidly: make its new dispositions and appointments and, most of all, repair the shaken trust of its clients. No onlooker had heard Nicholas say, as Tobie and Godscalc remembered, You have to keep me alive. You have to pretend that I’m still running the company. Because the moment I’m dead or deposed, you belong to Doria.

  So Tobie and Godscalc rode out, lightly escorted, on the coast road to the Pyxitis estuary and, turning inland, took the road Nicholas had taken two weeks before. With them thundered Astorre with thirty men armed to the teeth. Even had he known more than he did, he would have been ashamed to think of his own future, or the company’s. Whoever had attacked his boy and his notary was going to bear a short life. He had whatever second-hand account of the brigands the messenger had passed to them, and a description of the battleground even vaguer. But Astorre proposed to find it. And examine it. And root out the killers. Behind them, to do his excellent best to manage the affairs of the company, they left a silent John le Grant and their clerks and their servants.

  From the very start Tobie had said, “It was Doria.”

  And Godscalc, debating rather than contradicting, had said, “He took very few men, compared with the fifteen Nicholas had. And you heard what the man from the monastery said. Doria was covered with wounds, and so were his servants. Wounds from axes and curved knives, not sword slashes.”

  “It was Doria,” Tobie had repeated.

  And Godscalc had said quietly, “It probably was. But it has yet to be proved.”

  “And if he claims the company?”

  Godscalc had been silent. Then he had said, “A murderer cannot benefit from his crime. But we must resist the temptation to pin the blame on an innocent man.”

  “And if he can’t be proved guilty?” Tobie said. “We beg him to take over the company?”

  He had thought Godscalc soft. But Godscalc turned to him and said, “If, when we return to Bruges, the Church and the law and the demoiselle de Charetty find his marriage is valid, and the demoiselle has no wish to change her bequest, then one day Messer Pagano Doria will inherit half of the Charetty company. Until then, I shall resist any attempt on his part to take control. Did you think I should say anything else?”

  “No,” said Tobie.
“But we may find it harder than we think.”

  “If you think it hard for us, think of the child,” Godscalc said. “When we catch up with the girl, remember what she must be feeling.”

  “And Marian de Charetty?” Tobie had said.

  There had been a silence. Then Godscalc had said, “We shall have to write and tell her, of course. But not yet. Poor woman, not yet.”

  After that, they rode in silence through green corn and blossoming orchards in the warm, hazy sunshine and then through the climbing, narrowing valley whose walls were feathered with alder and walnut, elder, beech and lime. Then, after ten miles, came the first of the fir trees, clothing the heights on either side. They paused there to rest their horses and refresh themselves briefly, saying little. For the practical side of such a journey, Astorre was the natural leader. But Tobie, remembering, acknowledged to himself soberly how much such an expedition would owe its stimulus, latterly, to the imagination, the secure touch of Nicholas. Even the men, in their silence, seemed to recognise it. “My boy,” Astorre had called him more than once. Before, it had been “that brat;” with whatever tolerance. Yet they knew, he and Godscalc better than anyone, how incendiary the real Nicholas was. It should make the loss easier.

  They overtook Catherine de Charetty past Cevizlik, where the basalt cliffs rose in columns above them and the river was joined on the left by the stream they were to follow. They were then within three hours of their destination. She and her escort in its good Genoese armour had already set off into the neighbouring valley. The Imperial road, kept in roughest repair, was half sunk in dirt and looked as untended as the other highways, the bridges, the viaducts bequeathed by the past to the Empire. Beyond, the deepening valley seemed filled and brimming with green, where summer suns and fine mists had nourished the forests so that they mounted and thickened with flower and leaf. Already the horses had brushed past purple banks of rhododendron and azalea bushes yellow as butterflies. Ahead, he had been told, was a gorge a thousand feet deep, fragrant and steaming with flowers. And the monastery, cool and airy, laminated the rock face far above it, rooted in deep caves and grottoes, with a sheer drop to the torrent below.