Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [247]
‘No, they’re not,’ John le Grant said. It was hard, sometimes, to be reasonable with John le Grant.
Nicholas said, ‘So, why?’
The engineer pursed his face and scraped the sandy bristles on his chin. He said, ‘Someone came over the wall. They do, now and then, and our Egyptian friends usually cut out their tongues and their livers. We got to this one in time. A Jew, who thought their quarrel wasn’t his quarrel, and was likely right. He knew more than most: the stores and the munitions are locked, and only the Genoese in the castle know how the supplies really go. But this fellow had helped with the stocktaking.’
‘And they’re living off fresh-cooked lamb and white bread and sweet Commanderie?’ Nicholas said.
‘They’re living off beans and cheese and horse and ass-meat if they can pay for it, but even the price of dogs and cats is getting on the high side. Their cattle are finished: they made the last batch of bread with oxblood to save what’s left of the water, and they drink that mixed with wine, of which there isn’t all that much, either. They’re reduced to five thousand with short commons and sickness, and the extra irony is that a cargo ship diverted from Chios got in just before the port closed. It had a big crew and a full commercial load – wax and mastic and wormwood seed, six bales of carpets and eighty baskets of sulphur, fifty bundles of silk and five hundred oxhides, two hundred barrels of saltpetre and a hundred bales of Syrian soda. Three cases of our very own sugar. Oh, and sixteen tons of alum that must have been left over from Phocoea.’ He stopped, his unwinking blue eyes on Nicholas. He had his own sense of drama, John le Grant, as well as a very good memory.
Nicholas said, ‘God’s left big toe,’ in a sad voice.
John le Grant said, ‘Precisely. Nothing to eat, of course, excepting the sugar, which will scour the inside out of their stomachs. The ship wasn’t even properly victualled for the crew: they’d been going to take food on at Crete. But enough saltpetre and sulphur to keep those guns firing for ever.’
‘And alum and oxhides,’ said Nicholas slowly. ‘That’s why the galleries weren’t burning. But charcoal? They’d need charcoal.’
‘They have it, he says,’ said John le Grant in his sensible voice. ‘Or if they didn’t, they could always burn the ship, couldn’t they? They’ve no beasts to work the powder mill, but men could do it, if they aren’t too weak. Or they could mill it by hand. Lacking the piss of a wine-drinking man, the poor sods will have to do without granules. But these two nice bombards that bastard Sor de Naves presented them with? They’ve got gunpowder enough to keep the whole battery firing for ever. That’s why they pretended to stop. They knew by now we’d think they’d run out. They were hoping against hope we’d attack them.’
Nicholas was silent. The engineer said, ‘So they’ve enough powder, very likely, to baulk that final attack we were all counting on, but on the other hand the food is just about finished. A sensible Genoese colony, however stiff-necked, might therefore meet over its ass-bones and set a date for surrender, you’d hope. But here’s a twist. They’ve heard a relieving fleet’s on the way.’
‘How?’ said Nicholas sharply.
‘Someone got in from the sea-wall. It isn’t hard to cross from the islands. So long as no food’s going in, our soldiers don’t mind allowing an extra mouth or two into the city. But a rescue fleet? It isn’t true, is it?’
‘No,