The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [177]
Climbing, they left behind them the nutgroves and the forests of oak and beech and came to conifers where snow still rested in shining grey patches and the track was firm with frost. Men lived in these parts as well; sometimes in hutted villages and sometimes in tents, which their beasts and their flocks and their children shared with them. When it became known that he would pay for information, he was offered a surfeit, most of it spurious, and had to resort sometimes to hostages to exact the news that he needed. In turn, men tried to buy his interest; sometimes with food or furs; sometimes with their daughters or sisters. Often, wherever he was, he was offered a girl to take to his blanket. He knew his refusals embarrassed both his own men and the donors. He never explained. When they gave him a boy, he dismissed him goodhumouredly. For the first two days, he discovered, his servants thought him a eunuch. He thought of telling them that there were several people who wished that he was.
There was real snow at the Zigana pass, by which they left the seaward slope of the mountains for the further ridges and basins that climbed to the tableland of the Armenian interior. Now they unpacked and wore the thick hooded cloaks of raw goathair which had been his first purchase. The horses, too, were doubly covered: he had brought enough to give them all a change of mount as the going got steeper, for there were no relay horses here. They had some minor accidents, and lost a pony which broke its leg in a hole, but made good progress in spite of it. He wanted to move quickly.
Through it all, he had not forgotten why he was there. He had already found and spoken to a man recommended to him at Maçka. He bribed another just over the pass, and left a messenger of his own in the valley at Gümüshane. By then he had had his little talk with the professionals he had picked to come with him and they knew what to expect and were, he thought, in high heart. Indeed, he knew they were. They were his, as he had learned to make the seamen his. Their lives were in his hands, and his might be in theirs.
He waited until they were over the Vavuk pass just north-west of Bayburt before he called the long halt they all deserved, and found a proper place to make camp, and rest. It was there, as he had hoped, that his spies reached him, and the word came that he had been waiting for. Pagano Doria, with twenty men, was behind him.
Chapter 26
PUT YOURSELF IN the other man’s place. It was what Nicholas had done, during these last wretched weeks; behaving in every small detail as Tobie and Godscalc and Julius demanded with the one small, innocuous exception of John’s special call at the Palace. His altered status would not, he thought, have been evident to an outside observer, even one as committed as Doria, unless he too had his spies. Unless he knew what only two people could have told him—that the Charetty company at the moment had a divided leadership; an empty warehouse; a high reputation because of Astorre; a personal relationship with the Palace which had now ceased, and was valueless compared with Doria’s own.
He had thought it likely, sending le Grant, that the lady Violante would question him, and that le Grant would feel impelled to answer. He had little idea whether she would pass what she learned to Doria, and whether, if she did, Doria was now in the mood to believe her. He didn’t care, either way. If Doria knew of the disaffection among the company’s seniors: if he also knew, for example, of the growing bundles of manuscripts in the strongroom of the villa—he might well think