Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [124]
THEY REACHED CAFFA two hours after midday, when men of sense take to their beds in high summer, and even the din of the harbour is stilled. The Genoese wall with its towers encircled the high ground of the city, ending with a fort at the sea on each side. It was to be expected that the portal they approached should be manned at its upper windows, and that men in half-armour awaited them. Caffa was a fief of the Crim Tartar khanate, and a town as large and as rich as Seville. Outside its confines were ferocious hillmen, opportunist nomads and professional robbers. Far outside were the lands of the Turk. And crowded inside were the houses, warehouses and churches, the mosques and cathedrals, the markets, stables and orchards of close to a hundred thousand inhabitants of every colour and faith: Armenian and Tartar, Russian and Circassian and Georgian, Polish and Lithuanian, Moldavian and Gothian, Venetian and Genoese. The citadels, the arsenals and the prisons were Genoese.
Anna had sent word ahead of their coming: openly to the Protectors of the Bank of St George who represented Genoa, and to the Patriarch with more circumspection. Their arrival was therefore expected. The soldiers of the guardhouse were sluggish but civil, glancing at her letters and making cursory examination of their baggage, which included samples but no goods to sell. Then they were bidden to wait, while a detail was prepared to take them to the temporary shelter of the Franciscan monastery. They now required not only a house, but servants and protection, for they had turned off their escort that morning with a settlement lavish enough to earn Nicholas some strong-smelling, matted embraces: he had proved a very bad gambler. Petru had received his last payment too, and although never given to hilarity, had allowed his gloom (encouraged by Nicholas) to lighten a trifle. Wishing to find new employment, he rode into the city ahead of his former employers, who were now reduced to a party of eight: the German lady, her maid, her Mameluke, and the five soldiers of the guard who presently joined them, yawning and with their straps half undone. They rode through the vault of the gate, the cart rumbling, and out into the sunlight of Caffa.
They were out of sight of the fortification when they were attacked. The four soldiers who rode two on each side of the packmules and wagon did not even notice at first, and their leader, deep in charmed conversation with the beautiful Contessa, was almost as slow to observe the carts drawn across the narrow road down which they were pacing, between two high walls broken only by the frontage of an old wooden house just ahead. Then, as the leader shouted and turned to his fellows, they saw that the same thing had happened in their rear. Their way was cut off, and from before and behind, twenty men were running towards them, shouting and brandishing staves. And curiously, there was no one but themselves to see them, for the road was empty but for a single rider who had left just before them, and who now flung himself from his horse and rushed to the one silent house, where he could be seen hammering frantically on a door. The door opened, and closed quickly behind him. Petru was safe.
The soldiers were armed with short swords, and carried maces and whips. There were only five of them, but there was a full body of troops in the garrison. The leader raised a trumpet to summon them, and had