The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [116]
She returned often that day to her windows. Beyond the yard she could see the expanse of the gulf to its furthest blue arm from which they had come. Below the acropolis lay the arms of another small harbour. Elsewhere, the gritty dark shore was uninterrupted save for rare jetties packed with skerries and fishing boats. The few great ships like their own stood off in deep water, stoutly anchored. If the Emperor of Trebizond had a fleet of thirty war galleys, as Pagano had assured her, they were not visible here.
Where the hilly ground met the shore were dozens of fisher shacks, untidy with creels and nets and children and goats and ragged cloths drying. Behind and above lay the handsome suburbs she had seen when they landed. From there, the wind brought her woodsmoke. Now and then something else crept through the small landward windows, obsequious as a Colchian serpent. It was a scent not yet familiar: the compound of fruit, musk and incense that was the essence of Trebizond.
But here, she was in Italy; or very near it. In those villas were other merchants. Over there, on a promontory a little less steep than their own, stood another trading enclosure, with towers and rooftops which flew the Venetian Lion instead of the Cross of St George. There lived Pagano’s compatriots, rivals, enemies: the merchants and Bailie of the Republic of Venice. She was studying it when she saw the Florentine galley arrive, and heard, at a distance, its trumpets and guns.
Nicholas. Soon her mother’s servants would all come ashore. Master Julius. Master Tobias. Captain Astorre. Godscalc, the foreign chaplain who had helped Nicholas enter her room. Loppe, her late brother’s negro, and the thin shipmaster who was new, with red hair. Not making, of course, for this castle or the Venetian palace but for some cheap hired fondaco over there in the suburb. Nicholas in his artisan’s clothes who was going to meet Pagano at last, and be abashed before him. And humbled. And jealous.
She turned aside then, and went to find Pagano and see how her gowns had survived the unpacking.
The Charetty company, settling in turn in the Florentine fondaco, responded in its various ways to the new situation.
Julius became disagreeable. Tobie, amused, put it down partly to the change from maritime life which took some men oddly, like a return to home life from a war. It had other causes. Although Julius knew that the City was meanwhile forbidden, he longed like Catherine to go there; to see the marvels, to affirm the success of the voyage. Instead, he was working to plan as they all were: landing and storing their stock; furnishing the house and arranging services and provisions; interviewing Alighieri’s caretaking staff and appointing others to help them.
Regularly, eating together, they turned over their problems with Nicholas. Most of the nuisances had been foreseen: the clamour of would-be vendors at their gates; the attempts to set extortionate prices; the caution of the Greeks around them towards the new foreigners; the small resentments among their own men over precautionary restrictions. From his own days in the army, Julius knew how to deal with that; as he knew how to set up a bureau and prepare the accounts and the ledgers for business. He helped receive the unofficial, swift courtesy calls from other established Latin merchants, including the secretary of the Venetian Bailie, and was inclined to talk when he should have been listening. He had, indeed, strong views