The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [128]
He instantly lowered his own. What had she been told? The many ladies-in-waiting around her did not include Violante of Naxos. But there were other women behind whom he could not identify, just as there were many richly costumed men standing below the Imperial family who were not its servants, its guards or its chamberlains. Members, probably, of the native Trapezuntine families; the Grecian aristocrats he had heard of—the Ypsilanti, the Mouroussi—who had owned their estates long before the Latins threw the Emperor out of the New Jerusalem twelve hundred years after Christ had been thrown out of the old, and the Imperial brothers came to found their Empire of Trebizond here.
They looked to be powerful men; and their eyes, too, were fixed on Doria and himself. If there was danger coming (but what danger could there be?), men with a stake in the land would want to know what help they might expect from Genoa, the Mother-Republic, and Florence, the cashier of the Pope, regardless of any small differences in the matter of worship. The Patriarch, he now noticed, was not here.
The Secretary, bowing, made way. It was Amiroutzes the Treasurer, Count Palatine, Grand Vestarios, Great Domestic of Trebizond who now stepped forward, with his striped beard and teasing brown ringlets and wide stiffened hat, and announced them to his Emperor. Which first? But of course, Genoa. Mistress of the Levant, ancient thorn in the flesh of both emperors; but still capable of bringing lucrative trade, and clever technicians, and presents.
Walking forward, Doria held every eye. For all his lack of height, he was well made, and the green silk of the coat flattered his slow, easy movements. He reached the end of the carpet, paused, and then prostrated himself with courtly competence. The scarlet buskin rested above him on the low marble step. He kissed it, rose, and bowed his neck until the Emperor spoke. He had walked on the carpet throughout. Nicholas, too, had been tempted. But, like Doria, he recognised an irrelevance. That could wait.
Doria presented the folded parchment, tangled with bright silk and wax, that held his credentials. The Emperor touched it and passed it to his secretary. From where he stood, Nicholas could hear the Emperor’s voice, light and musical, and the thicker tones of the Treasurer, translating. Veteran of Rome, Florence, Genoa, Amiroutzes spoke in Italian strongly accented in Greek. Observing etiquette, Doria responded in the same tongue. Two young men—his sons?—stood at the Treasurer’s back. One of them, by all accounts, was Bessarion’s godson.
Nicholas wondered how much of the Greek tongue Pagano Doria possessed. All he needed, very likely. He had been in the East, on and off, for a good part of his life. At any rate, Amiroutzes was taking no liberties with the Emperor’s words, which he translated exactly. They contained nothing new, beyond a formal welcome, a formal message of goodwill to their magnificent lords the seigneurs of the Republic of Genoa, followed by a brief confirmation of the terms of the Genoese tenure and privileges which already obtained in the colony. It was the existence of the previous agreement that had enabled Doria so adroitly to accomplish his business. The best one could say was that there was no hint that the terms might be bettered. The Genoese, in the past, had been officious agents. Charming, deferential, Pagano Doria was the right man to correct that impression.
Then came the presentation of gifts. The Greek steward named as Paraskeuas brought each item to Doria, and it passed from his hands to those of the Treasurer. The goblets, the spices, the bolts of fine woollen cloth (the Ciaretti had none to offer) were superb, and costly. Two hundred ducats had gone to pleasing the Basileus. The Basileus