Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [121]
‘You needn’t concern yourself with it,’ she said. ‘Or you might think you owe it to Julius. If Julius had been here, he would have forced them to repay.’
There were circles under her eyes. He said, ‘How did this happen, Anna? He is a lawyer. He should be able to run a business without incurring this sort of debt.’
‘But he always had you to advise him,’ she said. Her voice sounded tired. She said, ‘We are even in your debt for your ship.’
He said, ‘It isn’t my ship, it’s the Bank’s. So why not tell me before? Because you thought I wouldn’t come?’
‘Because I didn’t know if I could trust you,’ she said. There was a gleam in her eye. He saw it.
‘And now you can?’ He sent his voice up just a trifle. ‘And now you can, because I didn’t leap over and ravish you?’
‘Because of your expression,’ she said. ‘You looked petrified.’
‘Surely not,’ Nicholas said. He was prepared to say more — he expected to be required to say more — but she rose calmly then and excused herself, saying that he must be tired and that he should have time to decide what he wanted to do.
He knew what he wanted to do.
HIS HAIR DRIPPING, his mighty cassock soaked from the climb, Ludovico da Bologna stood in the heat outside the Genoese citadel gazing north: surveying the white, hazy curve of the great bay of Caffa, and the city which spread itself on its near slopes.
He was not interested in the view. He knew all about it. The first Bishop of Caffa had been a Franciscan monk. He himself had been here three times in nine years, and it was a week since he sailed into that harbour, wide and sound enough to shelter two hundred ships, lying calm in the lee of the mountains. What he was looking at, what he had come to look at, was a situation.
He had explained the situation now to five Heirs of St Peter and countless thickheaded rulers. Popes and merchants generally knew their geography: you couldn’t rule a world business without it, and the Middle Sea (to date) was the hub of the world. You had to explain to some princes that the Middle Sea was joined by the Straits of Constantinople to the Black Sea, and that within the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula jutted south like a misshapen diamond, with the bight of Caffa below its east point. The Genoese had held Caffa and most of the Crimean seaports for centuries, hanging on to their fabulous trade and paying tribute to the heirs of Ghengis Khan, whose massed Mongol tribes claimed the steppes.
What created the situation, and kept altering it, was that the Mongol-Tartar overlordship was breaking up. The Golden Horde, once the first khanate of them all, still sat on the banks of the Volga and held its neighbours in thrall, while shaking the occasional fist over Caffa. But a separate horde, the horde of Crim Tartars had settled into the Black Sea Peninsula and, finding the pickings rich and the traders nervous but willing, had reached an accommodation which would make them all wealthy. The Peninsula was ruled from his inland stronghold by the Khan of the Tartars. The Genoese ports might have local officials, but were managed from Caffa by a committee of Genoese bankers and a Tartar Tudun, a Governor picked by themselves and the Khan. By paying their taxes, Christians bought tolerance in a Muslim community: uneasy bedfellows, held together by the golden cord of trade. And laid upon them and dreaded by all, the considering eye of the Sultan of Turkey, who leaned now and then from his palace in Constantinople to remind the Khan of the Crim Tartars that Allah was Lord over them both, and that security did not come cheap.
These were serious matters: their significance to the world was surely plain. But by the time Ludovico da Bologna had arrived so far in his account, the ruler’s eyes would have flickered; his foot found occasion to tap; his throat subjected to clearing in order to break in and thank him. And the rest of the tale would be consigned to the ears of the princely advisers. All envoys suffered from lack of understanding, even those of the