The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
“It would be more exciting,” Nicholas said, “if we got the girl to instruct me herself.”
Doria broke off, looking at him, and then gave a sigh of appreciation. “You’re right. And, do you know, she would probably tell you. Catherine pities your ignorance of the piquant arts: we talk of it often. I believe she thinks, the young innocent, that you have had none to coach you but her wrinkled mother.” He walked, the smile fixed on his face by his thoughts. “You know, my Niccolino, I might some time lend you my wife for an hour or two. She would do it for me. And for herself, to show off her skills. She has tricks from every whorehouse in Italy. Naturally, you wouldn’t tell her their provenance.”
“Naturally,” Nicholas said. “The lady Violante is much the same.”
Two, three, four paces in silence. Although he kept swallowing, he couldn’t clear what was stuck in his throat.
Then Doria said, “Ah yes. They told me someone sailed on your ship. An inventive partner, you thought?”
“She made rather more of it in Bruges,” Nicholas said. “What will you find for yourself while you’re here? The whores will leave if there’s war.”
“War?” said Doria. “Look about you! A one-legged man could hold Trebizond. They can’t broach the walls from the sea. The mountain roads wouldn’t let them bring cannon. They can’t starve us out because they’d have to leave before winter. Of course, the Emperor will love your soldiers, but that’s not because he has any serious fears. Uzum Hasan is the target. That will interrupt the caravans from the south—maybe stop them. You didn’t put your silk on sale when you should.”
They had climbed the steps—the endless steps—and come at last to a doorway. Nicholas said, “You’ve been selling already? But there’s nothing to buy in exchange. They tell me the autumn ships emptied the stockrooms.”
“Ah, Niccolino!” said Pagano Doria. With fond attention, he examined the inlaid marbles of the flanking pillars before them, and then raised his gaze, with affection, to the man at his side. “You have a lot to learn. Of course, there is nothing to barter. There is no assurance of those precious goods you are waiting to buy if the Sultan is fighting across the caravan routes. So one must look for other returns for one’s goods. I insisted on silver. There is not much left in Trebizond, and there was some little resistance. But I can tell you, my dearest Niccolò, that I now have under lock and key—many locks, many keys—all the mint can provide in this city. There is none left for you, or the Florentines.” He smiled again. “But will Cosimo think less of you for your failure? Of course not. You play with his grandson.”
“What is trade,” said Nicholas, “except playing with somebody?”
Then the doors opened on a dazzle of white and gold, and the sound of many voices, and music and a ripple of scents. The honey of Trebizond which, poison or not, was a draught of spring water after what he had allowed to be given him.
He could feel Loppe, black as murder, behind him. He knew the first words Loppe would say, when this was over. “How will you kill him?”
He had no need to think of his answer. It was the same as all the other times. All the other five times.
“I never kill,” he would say.
Chapter 19
THE INNER PALACE, high as a stork’s nest, sat on marble pillars around a fountain court scented with myrtle. Through every window and terrace and balcony there showed a different aspect of the Fortunate City: the greens and blues of forest and mountain, ocean and sea; the red vine-bowered roofs of the City, the leafy depths of the twin gorges, full of spring flowers and tumbling water and birdsong. Led from passage to chamber, Doria at his side, Nicholas was quiet, and recovered his tranquillity. Calmness was a weapon