The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [120]
So guarded, the dynasty of the Grand Comneni had survived in Trebizond for two centuries and a half, a safe bond-house between Europe and Asia, and residual heirs, as could be seen, of all that was precious in both. For many generations, the consorts and princesses of the Imperial family had been known for unsurpassable beauty, only matched by the fairness and strength of their lords. The City they inhabited seemed worthy of them, or so thought Catherine of Bruges as she entered it, sitting carefully sideways on a pretty mule which slipped on the steep marble paving, while the bells rang and rang, for Easter Monday, and the Emperor.
Around her, behind high discreet walls, could be glimpsed pillars and cornices, a carved garland, a statue. Beyond those were the baths and the arcades, the wells, the markets and courtyards, the convents and hospices that lay under the golden domes and the towers. Here, the streets of the ancient Milesian builders were steep and narrow and filled now by the people on holiday in folded caps and thick coloured cottons, admiring the procession of foreigners as it wound its way through the gates of the monastery. The royal road that led uphill to the Palace, empty as yet, was hung with patterned carpets, and floored with green branches and lined with men in glittering livery, bearing bows and lances and axes that were all tipped with gold.
Pagano, before her, was wearing his Imperial coat, his heavy emerald chain round his shoulders. Beside and behind them walked their retinue led by Paraskeuas, the stout, soft-spoken steward and dragoman whom Amiroutzes had found for them. When they reached the basilica courtyard, it was Paraskeuas who helped her dismount and take her place beside the conventual buildings and under the fig trees. There was a bronze dragon beside her, with water coming out of its mouth, and a sentence in Greek about the emperor whose feat it commemorated. It reminded her of the stories she had had to listen to on shipboard, which had depressed her so much. She could hardly believe that once she had been discontented.
The church of the Golden-headed Virgin stood in the centre. It had a copper-gilt dome on a drum, below which every inch of the walls was covered with holy paintings in buff and brown and dark red and ochre and olive and a dark blue which the dyer’s daughter in her told her was smalt, which surprised her. The pigments of the walls absorbed the dull light except where, here and there, she could see the glint of mosaic. Next to the paint, the rich cloth of living men’s garments glowed like the tufts on her mother’s price card, artfully displayed in soft light. Here, you could tell all the factions and guilds by their different colours; not least themselves, the foreign merchants, placed on each side of the patio. The Genoese, behind and beside her, were dressed in red Lucca velvet. The Venetians wore brilliant yellow, the Bailie broadened with fur and flashing with goldwork. Exceptionally, among the crowds on the other side of the yard, there stood a small group in quite disparate dyes under a banner which bore, surely, the lilies of Florence. Its leader, like Pagano, wore a coat whose depth of colour and richness of pattern could only have come from the Imperial looms. The wearer was Nicholas.
He carried it off, she had to admit, almost as well as Pagano, and being well set-up and taller, presented an appearance she would not have been ashamed of, had he not been her mother’s new husband. Below the good velvet hat, the fresh-skinned face was devoid of any familiar expression. The eyes, unusually open,