Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [138]
Thirteen years before, the city he spoke of had fallen: the last outpost of great Byzantium had been ravaged by Turks. Nicholas had not been quite twenty-one. He said, speaking slowly, ‘The Emperor betrayed his own people and surrendered. I shall tell you the whole tale if you like. But why are you angry? You are a Circassian. These were Greeks. You pay the same tribute today, but to Turkey’
‘My lord is part Greek,’ the other man said. ‘Did you not know that remnants of the house of the Comneni fled to the Crimea? The Emperor died, but men of his blood have lived on, and fought. I and others like me are doing what you failed to do. We are his army’
No one came in. You could hear, if you listened, the soft voices of servants outside; pigeons cooing, a dog barking somewhere, his noise taken up soon by others. From beyond the Saray enclosure, there percolated, as ever, the impression of great companies in regular exercise, with faint drumbeats, and occasionally the sound of a horn. Passing swiftly through to the hunt, he had been given no chance to see anything beyond the extent of the domain and the scale of the walls that enclosed it. It did not look, now, as if he would see more.
Once, a boy of twenty, he thought he held the fate of Trebizond in his hands, and had taken his dilemma to the good priest Godscalc, now dead. He had risked his life and the lives of his friends for the Emperor, but the Emperor had surrendered, and dragged all his family into ignominy and death. With time, Nicholas had come to understand, if not to forgive. He had shown no grief in public when the Emperor lost his life. All but a small child had died or been sold off for pleasure. But now the lady Anna was free. And there were free men in Gothia.
Someone spoke. Abdan Khan said, ‘Do I not speak the truth?’ There was an unexpected note in his voice.
Nicholas looked up. ‘Forgive me. I did not know. Explanations, I suppose, would be tedious. I am only sorry that, being here, and willing to help, I do not have your confidence.’
The other man said, ‘What, then, is your account of what happened at Trebizond? Why do you insist that you are not Venetian, when the rulers of Trebizond died, but Venetians and their riches were borne by your own ships to safety?’ And then, with a gesture of rebuttal: ‘I do not wish to be appeased with qumiz. I want facts.’
THE COCKS WERE CROWING, and the late dawn of October was tinging the skies above the rocks of Qirq-yer when Karaï Mirza, the Khan’s close adviser, called at the house of the Patriarch’s emissary and, dismissing his escort, opened the door of the inner chamber himself.
Abdan Khan, dispatched yesterday to taste the fruits of defeat with his chessboard, was still in the room. He was not awake, nor yet in bed, having apparently fallen asleep on the floor while playing a stiff game of chess. The room reeked of liquor, and the chessboard, to a practised eye, announced a long, hard game between two well-matched opponents. Seeking further, the visitor observed that the other player was also present, and also asleep, although he at least had found his way to his mattress and freed himself of some of his clothes, including his cap. His skin was flushed, and his beard, densely black, had produced sparkling gold at its roots. The Circassian, sensitive no doubt to his looks, had not unwound his headgear, of which he held a tail in his grasp like a child. The turban had become skittishly tilted, and there was a bruise like a stain on his throat.
Karaï Mirza stood for a while, reflecting, then left. To the Khan he said, ‘It is for you to declare, lord. But I would say, show this man Niccolò all that is reasonable.’
Chapter 19
IN THE DAYS that followed, Nicholas de Fleury was shown everything and told everything that he needed to know. At first, it was a physical inventory — an examination of the stables and barracks, the forges and workshops and cook-houses, the places in which food and