The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [193]
“Never mind me. How do we know what you’re doing in Kerasous?” Julius said.
“Pigeons?” said Nicholas. “Relays of Amazons?” He rose, pot in hand, and found Julius also risen, and close to him.
Julius said, “You’re still planning. You’re up to something, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m binding my bleeding arm,” said Nicholas. “I’m also trying to take what precautions I can. The Sultan’s much more likely to attack Uzum Hasan than the Emperor. But suppose he decides to capture Trebizond first. He won’t take it, but he could besiege it until autumn. He could make it impossible to get our cargo out until the season’s too late. At Kerasous, we’ve some chance.”
Julius said, “We get besieged in Trebizond, and you sail home from Kerasous with our merchandise.”
“Ours and the Venetians’,” Nicholas said. He was trying to tie a knot with his teeth and stop grinning.
Julius stared at him. He said, “You mean that, don’t you? It really is what you’d do?”
Nicholas got the knot fixed and looked up. “Well, what do you think? You don’t want me in Trebizond. You’ll be safe there, but the merchandise won’t. The only sensible course is to get the goods out and make sure of our profit. You’re the accountant. Come up with a better idea.”
After half an hour, he did come up with a better idea. Nicholas would go to Trebizond, and Julius would take the caravan and its cargo to Kerasous.
Naturally Nicholas objected, and it took even longer to get him to see that he was in no position to argue. Then, having made his point, Julius condescended to enquire about routes.
“Well, through Erzincan if you like, but it’s dangerous. I rather favoured going back past Bayburt and then turning off west for Kelkit and Siran. Then just past that there’s a road north to Kerasous.”
“Is there? Where?” Julius said.
Nicholas leaned back on his pillows and stretched himself. He was aching, and weary and, despite all his anxieties, furtively happy. “Well, that’s the point,” he said. “We’ll go over the whole thing tomorrow. But where you turn north is this place Sebinkarahisar. Koloneia, they used to call it.”
Chapter 28
IWAS ON A WARM, scented day in mid-May that the news came to Trebizond that Nicholas was dead, and Julius killed at his side. It was brought by a lay servant from the monastery of the Holy Virgin at Sumela, beating a fast little mule over thirty mountainous miles in a little over twelve hours.
As was proper, he went first to the Leoncastello of the Genoese, taking with him a group of loping spectators and scampering children. Monna Caterina, the ambassador’s wife, listened with a pale face to the story of how the monks had discovered her husband dragging himself through the gorge with a few servants, all of them wounded and hardly able to gasp out their story of chance meeting and desperate ambush. Fighting for his life against brigands, despite all he could do, Messer Doria had seen the young man Niccolò succumb to the ruffians and perish. The notary Julius had been cut down soon after, and all their companions put to the sword. Messer Doria himself, robbed of everything, had been left for dead and, but for his servants, might be lying there still.
An Amazon, the young lady wife was. Instead of calling for help, or collapsing, she had summoned her grooms and her men-at-arms and her servants and, taking horse, had set out immediately for the monastery, leaving the courier to do the rest of his duty and make his painful way to the Florentine compound.
There, at least, they knew what was due to a messenger. The man to whom he told the news, a priest, set him at once on soft cushions, with food and drink, and had his mule seen to; by which time he had been joined by the other colleagues of the dead men. One was a doctor, who noticed