“Would you suggest that I do?” Nicholas said. “The Emperor seems more than confident.” He signed a paper. The inventory, when he glanced at it, turned him cold.
“It is the blood of the Comneni,” said Amiroutzes. “Warriors all; servants of the Incarnate God. He sees no danger, and if he did would die here, in his glory, as Vice-Regent of Christ. As did his kinsman Constantine Palaeologi, who perished for Constantinople.”
Nicholas thought. “Then could one do less,” he said, “than die at his side?”
Returning, he saw John without recognising him, and was brought to himself with a start. They fell into step, walking down to the gates with their escort and servants.
John said, “D’you have any idea of the worth of what is on that one cart? It isn’t money. It’s pearls.”
Nicholas said, “They like paying in jewels.”
“It was a nice clock,” said John le Grant. His face displayed morose pleasure, as usual. “I see they got to steal your dinner as well.”
Nicholas turned and looked at him. Under the red hair, the freckles, running together, had produced a skin like a glaze on a ham. He said, “It’s altogether time you got out of my sight. Take the stuff on the cart and put it on the manifesto for going on board.”
“With the letters?”
“With the letters,” Nicholas said. “Or Julius won’t know what to do, will he? Or anyone else.”
Thinking of Julius, of whom at least he could speak to John le Grant, led to thinking of Gregorio, about whom he wished to speak to nobody. He began talking at random, and passed the rest of the journey back to the fondaco in a contentious discussion about nitre.
Chapter 33
ON THE LAST DAY OF May, a fishing boat put into the Daphnous harbour at Trebizond and a packet was delivered to the Florentine fondaco, for which the carrier received a surprisingly lavish reward. There followed a day of private and somewhat liquid rejoicing. Julius, with all his eight hundred camels, had arrived safely at Kerasous and had found lodging, welcome, and promise of all the help that he needed. He did not, of course, have a galley, since that was at present with the Empress Helen a hundred miles east at Batum. The fishing boat, in due course, set out west with answering messages. Fleece and fortune were theirs. All they had to do was get it home. And survive it.
The next two weeks continued the pattern of those before. For Nicholas, Astorre and the engineers, it meant constant meetings inside the Citadel to guide the combined company of all those responsible for the City’s defences: the blacksmiths and the masons, the crossbowmen and the gunners; the fletchers, the bowyers, the miners; those who dealt with provender and those who dealt with humble articles such as baskets and shovels and hides.
As a contribution, Nicholas had halted work on their own new consulate building, and had only retained what workmen he needed to reinforce the house and storeroom they had leased in the Citadel. Now they had fewer men, he had offered part of this to the Venetians at a fair rent, and the Bailie had gladly accepted. These days, the Venetian fondaco, it could be seen, was also much depleted; no doubt because of the usual warm-weather exodus of the women and children to the airier hills round about. The Genoese, of whom there were not so many, had not been encouraged to leave and remained where they were, sweating in the hot, clammy weather. On most days, it rained.
The court, which was well protected from rain, went to its summer palace, returned when it was bored; went hunting; gambled; attended with brilliant ceremony to its devotional exercises and with equal devotion to a wide range of others, and took pleasure in the discourse of the many learned men with whom the Emperor liked to surround himself. To Nicholas, who was frequently bidden and who frequently appeared at the more fully clothed of such gatherings, the discourses on books he had not read and subjects he had never debated seemed moderately superficial. He suspected that the Emperor was being offered only what pleased him. He amused himself by visualising a congress attended by the Emperor David and his refugee men of letters from Constantinople and, say, Cosimo de’ Medici, and the men he liked to invite to Careggi. The Pope, with Cardinal Bessarion’s friends to dispute with, was possibly best off of all. He had heard it said that the Greek theologians attending the Council of Florence had been dismayed and even routed by the superior ability of the Latins to apply logic in argument.
He supposed it was natural, since they had the money, that every Italian prince should think it as important to collect his humanists as to collect his books and builders and painters. He knew, if only from Sara Khatun, that the Sultan, too, was showing an interest in such things and soon, when and if he had peace, when and if he had wealth, it would be the same with Hasan Bey her son. Meanwhile, he himself acquired a reputation for being a good listener and, being made free of the Emperor’s shelves, would sometimes amuse himself and others by creating small geometric puzzles and astronomical devices, working on his knee as he listened. Once, he found himself in the decorator’s workshop and spent an hour demonstrating with waxes and resins how to make better ultramarine, talking and kneading away happily like a washerwoman. He was not aware, then, that the deficiency had already struck his stepdaughter. He did not, all this time, either meet or avoid either Doria or Catherine de Charetty. Indeed, he had a great deal to think about and was not reserved in discussing his day’s work with Loppe or Tobie or Godscalc, who were looking after matters in the fondaco. Only, sometimes, when Godscalc required of him something more than a summary of what this poet or that writer had said, he grew tired of watching his tongue, and refused to talk further.
In the middle of June, the Ciaretti returned from Batum. As already arranged, she anchored out of sight of the bay and sent her message by boat. John le Grant brought it himself. The Empress had failed in her mission. Despite the affirmations of all their envoys quartering Europe with Friar Ludovico, no army was coming from Imeretia or Mingrelia, Akhalziké or Tiflis to help fight the Sultan. The Empress Helen had remained where she was, a permanent and beautiful advocate; but she did not think her daughter’s husband would change his mind.
It was Astorre who swore, hearing it; and Nicholas who explained to John his special vehemence. “We’ve heard from Julius. There’s something going on at Sinope.”
“I know. The Turkish fleet’s there,” said le Grant. “What else have you heard?”
“That the Turkish land army is near there as well,” Nicholas said. “We know the town can’t be taken, and we know a siege would suit us quite well. But the story runs that the emir of Sinope has been frightened into helping the Sultan. He’s given money and food to the fleet, and sent an army under one of his sons to fight for the Ottomans.”
John le Grant said, “That’s foolish. The Sultan will treat the son as a hostage.”
“The emir has another,” Nicholas said. “He’s also, of course, the Sultan’s brother-in-law. The Karamanid emir has sent his son to the Sultan as well. The Sultan has reassured Sinope that he’s bent on a religious war against Trebizond, but I wonder. Julius says the emir of Sinope has an annual income of two hundred thousand gold ducats a year, a quarter of it from copper mines. Do you think the Sultan could resist that? I don’t.”
“What are you saying?” said Tobie irritably. He had chosen to stay in Trebizond rather than rejoin the galley as ship’s physician, and was under-employed and over-apprehensive as a result.
Nicholas said, “I’m saying that I think the emir of Sinope will surrender. Julia Felix. And it could take the Turkish admiral about eleven sailing days to reach here.”
“Someone needs to tell Uzum Hasan,” said John le Grant. “No army from Georgia. And no protection on his western frontiers, if Sinope gives up.”
“He’ll know about Sinope,” said Nicholas. “But, yes: someone needs to warn him about Georgia. We’d better get up to the Palace. And then we have to arrange to send on the galley to Kerasous. John, she can do three more days without putting in, can she? There’ll be time to attend to her once she gets there.
Also, we have to decide who to send with her and who, if anyone, to take off.”
“And if we’re asked where she is?” Tobie said.
“She never came back from Batum,” said John le Grant. “And if she’s seen, she still doesn’t belong to us. Different sails, different paint, different name. Christened by Nicholas. He’s called her—”
“—Argos?” said Tobie.
“—after his camel,” said John le Grant.
At the Palace, John conveyed to the Emperor the letters his wife and his daughter’s husband had sent, and Nicholas remained for some little time trying to turn the Emperor’s mind from the festivities for the birthday of St Eugenios and towards the fact that the war between the White Sheep and the Sultan might not last quite as long as had been hoped. The Emperor thought it of little consequence. The Sultan would be a fool if he marched. For one thing, he didn’t know that the Georgians weren’t coming. For another, the traverse from Sinope to Trebizond would take an army on foot half the summer, even without all Hasan Bey’s well-manned forts and blockaded passes. By the time the trip was half over, the Sultan would have to make his way back to Bursa. Then, the fleet? Once those ships got into Sinope, they were unlikely to want to sail anywhere else: there was no other harbour so convenient and good. Next year, of course, they would be glad of any help the West could find to send them. This year, if the Sultan took Sinope, he would have done all he could.
John left with all his freckles blended together, and Nicholas, who had asked to see Diadochos, was taken instead to the women’s apartments, preceded by a chamberlain and flanked by two eunuchs. But when they introduced him to the door of a chamber, they did not accompany him over the threshold; and when he entered, he found Violante of Naxos alone.
He had never been completely alone with her. Since arriving in Trebizond, he had encountered her only a few times since the interview on the day of his audience. Then they had talked about clocks, and he was grateful. During his absence in Erzerum she had made that curious visit to the fondaco. Before it, she had consented to see John le Grant, and had not been unhelpful. It seemed very likely that she had both put his life in hazard, and then saved it. Ever since his return from Erzerum, his dealings had been with Diadochos: through Diadochos he had paid for what he had sent off with Julius. He had seen her in attendance before the Empress set sail; and occasionally since, in the company of the princess Anna, and Maria, the Emperor’s sister-in-law. But never alone. Why was she alone now, and studying him?
She was standing at a window embrasure. Between the slender pillars and arches the air could be felt, moist as a sponge, pressing out scents of mulched earth and strong flowers and peeled wood and brine from the gardens of the western ravine far below, and the hills beyond, and the sea. She was fully dressed; her gown geometric as one of his puzzles. It was not like coming upon her of a sudden at night, in her cabin. Then, she had had the old woman with her. Then, she had stood by her bed and not in a window embrasure: regal; inimical; naked.
He knew now how her body looked, under its gown. He had trained himself not to think of it, and mostly succeeded except when, as now, hunger reminded him. He beat it back, and kept his eyes open and his smile deferential and mild. He bowed, and didn’t avoid the light which showed her his face. He was the toymaster, not Violante of Naxos. She said, “You sought Diadochos. You have news?”
Her voice told him nothing. He said, “I am sorry. Bad news, Despoina. There is no army coming from Georgia.”
The face-painting, delicate, uniform, made them all look, he thought, like encaustic icons. Only under each tinted eye was a line of distant amusement that seemed wholly her own; and the way her lips curled when she spoke. She wore earrings made like small fish in a shoal, glinting from ear to shoulder within the gilt scrolls of her hair. She said, “We have heard what has befallen the Empress my great-aunt. We have heard the tidings from Sinope and, having intelligence, are in no doubt what should be done about both. Another has need of your services.” She raised her voice. “You may come in.”
A curtain stirred and was held aside, to allow a short figure to enter the room. Bronze hair and blue eyes and fresh, blooming colour. It was not Marian, but her daughter, Catherine. He got his breath back but did not use it to say anything that would please the lady Violante, who was a better toymaster than he was. A cord round his middle, and running. He redeemed his mind, and set it to confront the new problem.
Marian’s daughter was overdressed, as she always was, with elaborate earrings and a pleated gown whose neckline dipped front and back, and whose long sleeves were stuffed at the shoulders, making her face and collarbone thinner. She had drawn her hair up to a crown-cap like Marian’s and today, for some reason, she was standing like Marian; her back rigid, her feet a little apart. At first, he thought it might be deliberate and then he saw that she felt herself facing a challenge.
Once she would have run to him. Once, of course, she would have come to him direct, instead of through someone else. She had not done so. He did not, therefore, smile; but said, “The lady Catherine. How may I serve you?”
She had been looking at his beard. She lifted her gaze. She said, “I’m afraid of Pagano.” She stared into his eyes, her own wide.
He said, “Why?”
At a sign from her hostess the girl sat abruptly on a low, cushioned stool, and he sank himself to another one opposite. The lady Violante, turning, seated herself in the window embrasure, the dull light behind her.
Catherine said, “You know what you did. You stole his silver. You left him nothing to buy. You stopped him selling at Pera.”
“I stole his silver?” said Nicholas. “Did he say that?”
Her lips compressed, and then parted. She said, “You did all the rest.”
“Then he can’t be blaming you,” Nicholas said. “So why are you afraid?”
“Well, you don’t know him,” said Catherine. She looked at the window embrasure, and then quickly away again.
“Not as well as you do,” said Nicholas gravely. Why Violante? He suddenly realised why Violante. Baby Catherine. Well, no one could say she hadn’t boldness. He said, “But I do know that reverses are difficult for men used to a fine life. It can drive them to do strange things.”
He had pushed a little too far, and she glared at him. She said, “You do admit, then, that you ruined him? You just set out to spoil all his business!”
But that, on her side, was asking too much. He said, “That’s trading, Catherine. We sailed to the same market, he and I, and we competed against one another in different ways, as all merchants do. He had his chance of winning just as much as I did. So, does he want to go home?”
“He says he can’t,” Catherine said. “He says the Turkish fleet is in the way. I don’t know whether to believe him.”
The woman in the window embrasure gave him no help. He continued to feel his way carefully. He said, “It would be hard to leave Trebizond, that’s true. But you needn’t stay with him unless you want to. The way he married you was not the usual one. It would be quite easy to find you legal protection until all the papers had been seen and approved.”
She said, “He thinks you’re the cause of all his troubles. He’d be jealous.”
This time, he was careful not to look at the window. He said, “I can see you might not want to put yourself in my care. Then—”
“Not with your reputation,” she said. “Bath boys. And…”
The exquisite woman in the window embrasure spoke. “Messer Doria has told his wife, my dear Niccolò, of our passion. Yours and mine. She already suspected that I had amused myself with her husband in Florence. I have had to tell her that persons of standing seek such frissons on occasion, and how little it means. It lifted her husband, for a little, above the rut of common whores he commonly exerts himself with and it gave you, I suppose, a taste of something you would otherwise never aspire to. I don’t see how even her mother your wife could object. Unfortunately, Messer Pagano is now mak
ing a public spectacle of himself in the Trebizond brothels, and has ceased to act as the child’s proper protector. So she came to find another.”
He could just see, against the light, her painted brows lifted. Seized with delight, he stared at this extraordinary woman whom, of course, he had never touched and who had never for a moment done more than patronise him. Of course, Catherine had come somehow to blackmail her. And with infinite artistry, the princess had both turned the tables and reprimanded him at the same time. He said to Catherine, “Do you want to leave Trebizond?”
Her eyes turned brilliant. She said, “But he would never let me go. And how could I?”
Violante of Naxos said, “I have told her that there are ways. If she wished, we could even take her husband as well. Once away from temptation, the marriage might prosper.”
“He wouldn’t go,” Catherine said. “He has a scheme. What could he barter that would fill a round ship? It’s nonsense.”
All Nicholas’s anger had gone. He said, “I’m afraid it is. The Emperor is just about to order the dismantling of all foreign ships. He couldn’t load anything anyway.”
She was amazingly good, but just too young to hide the thought that came to her. He added, “If the goods are still on board the Doria, he’ll have to unload them. How surprising that he didn’t sell them at once. And, of course, fortunate.”
The voice from the window said, “I expect he thought that by waiting he would get a better price. Would you not prefer to stay and share his fortune, demoiselle?”
“Fortune?” said Catherine de Charetty. “When you think what he’s lost? I wouldn’t trust him to make two in the hundred. I would rather leave. If he wants me, he can follow me home.”
Violante of Naxos said, “He will have to follow you home if he makes another loss.”
The Spring of the Ram: The Second Book of the House of Niccolo Page 51
