The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [108]
The glass lamp was extinguished. All the light came from the bed, where scented oil flamed in a low, burnished container. The illumination fell on crushed pillows and disturbed silken sheets, and on the bent golden crown of the princess of Trebizond, standing beside them. Her face, shadowed, was turned to where, at the back of the chamber, her elderly maidservant was moving about, talking as she set things to rights. At first all Nicholas could hear was the old woman’s querulous voice, and all he could see was the lady’s brilliant hair, caught back in a single fat plait like a lion’s tail; and the thick embossed silk of her robe, and one small unjewelled ear, masked by wisps of gilt hair.
Then the curtain fell closed behind him and, at the sound, the princess of Trebizond turned. Her night robe, swung by the movement, warmed the air with the scent of her body, and for a second time in that place his breath shortened. The delicacy of her face was cause for wonder. Her features were built on the thighbones of mice; her eyes lay fronded in fish pools, their lids upper and lower like molluscs. Her lower lip was a button of coral; her chin round as a shell. Below her throat were two pearl-white globes, and below those, a dimpled crevice, and below that, there was no golden bouquet such as he had fleetingly imagined, but the tender swell of a smooth naked mount with a cleft whose place, barely seen, was discreetly tinted with rose. On either side of her body, the silk of her bedgown fell straight to the ground. His eyes, slowly travelling, followed it. Then the woman saw him, and squawked. But Violante of Naxos stood quite still and composed, and said, “Am I the wife of a tradesman, who has to cover herself before servants?”
“Before no one, lady,” said Nicholas. The heavy pulse beat in his neck, and he could feel it shaking his body.
“Or,” said the lady Violante, “would you thank me if I set you no higher than the animals who are your soldiers, to be stirred by a woman beyond civil constraint?”
“I have come to beg your pardon and your servant’s for that,” Nicholas said. Her breasts were perfect, and their tips developed by marriage, soft as small feeding birds. He felt his face growing white and called, violently, on his intellect. Then he realised that she knew what had happened on deck; had heard the commotion; must have known he or someone would come. Had, probably, recognised even his steps. The anger he felt against his own body died as he analysed that. He said, “Shall I ask your priest to come in?”
“Why?” she said. “Unless your man is dead, and Phryne requires to be shriven. But she is not, as a rule, careless.”
“Nor was she this time,” Nicholas said. “I wondered if she or you required comfort, that’s all. Let me apologise once more for the man’s importunities, and leave you to resume your night’s rest. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
She smiled. “Rest assured,” she remarked. “You have not disturbed me, nor could.”
He withdrew politely, and found a place to wait in the darkness, until he could smile. Then he went back to the others. When, next day, he saw her again, neither mentioned the incident.
The round ship, with its marriage bed imposed no such restraint on its principle. Well provisioned, their vessel put in seldom to port and, being less able for battle at sea, took some pains to avoid other traffic. Once, the Euxine was notorious for its pirates because the pickings were rich—ships laden with slaves and honey and furs coming from Caffa; the archons’ tax ships with their boxes of silver; the Venetian galleys with their smell of Bactrian camel enwrapping the silk and the spices and indigo.
But Venice had not risked her galleys so far this year; and although Doria took his precautions, there was an unusual emptiness about the Black Sea this month. The undersized dolphins wheeled in free water. The fishermen gathered busily, dragging their nets. The smaller cogs coalesced as if for reassurance, and were conned by news-gathering