The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [109]
They were not always welcome. At Sinope, the emir refused them harbour, professing to believe that they had sickness on board. The excuse hardly rang true. The coast, swift to hear every rumour, knew by now that the great galley had been joined by the Emperor’s great-niece, and the round ship by Amiroutzes, his treasurer. So they were plague-free, while Stamboul thought otherwise. To a wise man like the emir, with a foot in both camps, it was reason enough to be cautious.
The presence of Amiroutzes (through a misunderstanding) was a source of constant affront to young Catherine. He occupied Pagano’s attention. He gave her lessons she had little wish for. Like the Ciaretti, Doria’s ship had turned into a schoolroom. Looking down on his Jasons, Zeus lord of the sacrificed Ram might have wondered what they were thinking of. What, to Hercules, was protocol? Or to the dragon?
At Sinope, the galley was ahead. The round ship passed it three days later, and called into Samsûn to warn the harbour officials that a ship with the plague was behind them. Lying waiting for the return of his messenger, Pagano Doria was unsettled by the sight of the Ciaretti approaching him under oar at the speed of a fully manned war galley. He saw as she passed that she was fully manned, and by faces he remembered from Modon. Also that the load line was exactly the same as when she had been supposedly stripped of her soldiers. Michael Crackbene his captain seemed to know how it might have been done. He seemed also to think it amusing. The galley did not even attempt to turn into Samsûn.
They were then within five days of Trebizond, and March was ending. On both ships, the men of God had looked at the calendar and taken their masters aside. Barring shipwreck, they would arrive at the Imperial court during Easter Week. Did they want this? Lodgings crowded, other merchants preoccupied, the Emperor and his lords deeply involved in high ceremonial? The arrival of the new Genoese consul, the new Florentine agent, would hardly be noticed. And how, after three weeks at sea, could they approach the magnificence which would be required of them?
Nicholas said, “The Flanders galleys used to do it every year, coming to Sluys. You clean up the day before and sail in like a circus. Come on. You’re getting lazy.” Being now a unit of two hundred and fifty men with a common repository of extremely lewd songs composed for them by their patron, they made the motion of throwing things at him, including abuse, but submitted with resignation to the plans he outlined.
Later, sharing food in the cabin, le Grant said, “Doria will arrive first, if we pause. And they’ll look spruce as well. They have the space to clean up as they sail.”
“I thought Trebizond had a Roman harbour of sorts?” Nicholas said. “He’ll have to row into it, surely. Fifty oars?”
“He’ll still look smart,” le Grant said.
“Xenophon,” Nicholas said incomprehensibly. He looked at them all severely. He said, “I won’t say I admire him, but after three weeks of Diadochos, I can claim to know him like a brother. Just when Xenophon and his Hellenes were marching this way, they all got vomiting drunk on the local honey.”
“Two thousand years ago,” remarked Tobie.
“That’s Greek bees for you,” said Captain Astorre. He gave a long cackle. The nearer Astorre got to fighting, the cheerier he became. The prize spectacle of the lady Violante’s training had been Astorre’s accomplished prostration which, done on his belly like the fieldsman he was, was going to take him across the Emperor’s carpet,