The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [189]
There was another pause. “It is a rarefied world, that of Byzantium,” the Lady said.
“Perhaps it was once,” Nicholas said. “It is half-Turkish now.”
He caught, swift as it was, the glance between the woman and the monk. It was the monk who said, “Was it Muslim, the Easter service you heard in the Chrysokephalos?”
It was Sara Khatun who said, “No. Give him the credit for what he has deduced. Yes, young Messer Niccolò. Eleven Trapezuntine princesses have married Muslims. Sultans have been known to marry Christian wives. My great-niece Violante and her sisters married Venetian merchants. Thus are alliances made, and children born with a hope of surviving.”
Nicholas said, “In any language, loyalty is a difficult word.”
She laughed. The sound took him by surprise. She said, “If you understand its meaning in any language, you must explain it to me one day. Yes, the City was once under the suzerainty of the Mongols; is under the suzerainty of the Ottomans, and shows the effect of it. The guard is turbanned. The market is held in a Meidan; the princes ride Turkish-style; shoot Turkish-style. The Empress is called Khatun, the title you gave me, as often as they name her Despoina. The Comneni nieces and nephews of my daughter-in-law are tutored by a Tatas, the soldiery are commanded by the Emir Candar; the Emperor’s chief falconer is his Emir Dogan. The bow-carrying page is called the horchi more often than he is called the Akocouthos, and your lover’s name is Iskender more often than it is Alexios.”
“He is not my lover,” said Nicholas furiously.
“Then someone’s plans have miscarried,” she said calmly. “Let me resume. It is true that the native Greek families have always despised the Comneni. It is true that, unlike Constantinople, Trebizond is bound to the East. To Georgia, to Armenia, to the tribes that flow across Asia. The costume they wear comes from Persia, and many of their old courtly practices. The Roman highways have gone. What remains is a king of Georgia descended from King David the Psalmist and an Ottoman sultan descended from Alexander the Great.”
“So it hardly matters who rules in Trebizond now?” Nicholas said.
She looked at him for a long time. Then she smiled. “You ask me that, in the presence of a Christian confessor?”
Nicholas said, “Your son allows Christian worship. So does the Sultan. There is a Greek patriarch in Constantinople and a Latin bishop in Caffa. Ludovico da Bologna was sent here, surely, to care for the Latin communities in Persia as well as in Georgia.”
Diadochos said, “It is true. He calls himself elected patriarch to all the nations of the Orient. An exaggeration, but only a slight one. But he was sent, too, as apostolic nuncio to encourage my lord Uzum Hasan to ally with the Empire of Trebizond against the Ottoman forces. Also, as I remember, to encourage my lord Uzum Hasan to ally with the Emperor of Ethiopia against both the Ottomans and the Mamelukes. It is clear, therefore, that Rome thinks that Christian congregations ought to have Christian rulers.”
“But you disagree?” Nicholas said.
The monk said, “What is best for the people? There are some who say that, under the Sultan, the Greek Church has found itself at last firmly united under one patriarch, instead of thrown to the winds in so many scattered communities under disparate rulers.”
“So much for their souls,” Nicholas said. “Or at least, I suppose, the souls of those who were not taken as children and turned into Muslims. So what of the rest? Would Muslim rule be more just, more efficient, more beneficent if an Ottoman governor sat in the Palace at Trebizond? Or a Turcoman?”
The monk looked at the princess, but did not speak. She said, “You see the tents, Niccolò?”
He said, “I see a city as well.”
“There are cities,” she said. “We worship in them. Its forts hold our troops, and our treasure. We visit its baths. But as yet we are a pastoral people. We live in tents, and move from place to place as policy, and war, and the grazing dictates. So did all tribes until recently. So did the Ottomans. It is only now