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By Root 2683 0

so Trebizond prepared for the exotic arrival of the source of its wealth. As for a feast day, market stalls were withdrawn and streets hung with cloths and garlands and banners. Within the walls of the City, the great caravanserai with its merchant rooms and storehouses and stabling was swept and sanded and readied, and the kitchens stocked with the wood, the oil, the meat, the bread that for three days the City would present to its guests. Outside, on the customary grazing, space was cleared for the camels and their shepherds and keepers, where the women would make fires and raise the low, hump-backed tents on their poles and sit talking and spinning while the camels lay with the familiar goats sprawled on their necks, and the claws of tick-hunting birds plucking their thick matted hair.

The first warning came when they were barely up and preparing to dress; when the day porter of the Florentine fondaco, going to sweep out the yard and unlock the big double street doors, found they would not yield to his key. Then, opening the spyhole, he had seen that the street outside was filled with soldiers who turned and shouted at him and, when he yelled back, shook their swords at him grinning.

Tobie, wakening to a sea and sky dyed rose with a Colchian sunrise, was struck by the commotion, and ran half-dressed out to the yard. Godscalc stood there already, his powerful feet astride in the dust, demanding redress and explanation. Beyond the grille, you could see cold steel and turbans. The Emperor’s guard. The Emperor’s personal guard. Then Godscalc turned and said, “We have been forbidden to leave the fondaco by Imperial order. We are locked in until the caravan leaves.”

“Who says?” said Tobie. “Let me speak to them.”

“Speak, then,” said Godscalc. “But it’s the captain of the Palace Guard, and he has written orders.”

Tobie stared at him. He said, “How many?”

Godscalc said, “What does it matter? You don’t imagine we can use force with them, do you?”

“You don’t imagine we just give in, do you? I could get over the wall.”

“They’re all round,” said Godscalc. “And if you could get out, what would you do? Go to the caravanserai and bid against Doria? Doria is head of the Trebizond branch of the Charetty company. That is what this means.”

“I wasn’t thinking of bidding against him,” said Tobie.

“I didn’t think you were. And what are you going to do to get rid of Catherine de Charetty?” Godscalc said. “You do remember that she’s the head of the company? I query if, as a widow, she would make a factor of her late husband’s murderer. She might, of course, but I doubt it.”

“So we do nothing?” said Tobie.

“We use our brains,” Godscalc said. “The caravan has still to arrive. The buying has still to begin. We could send a petition, for example, to the Emperor. We could send a message to the lady Violante. We could advise Doria himself that, no matter what transaction he makes, we shall dispute it afterwards as the deputies appointed by Nicholas. We could go in and have something to eat and pick John le Grant’s brains. You’re indecent.”

Tobie dragged down his shirt. “It reflects my state of mind,” he said. “So it was a waste of time, the elephant clock? What in God’s name does the Basileus see in Doria?”

“Charm,” said Godscalc. “I shan’t malign him by imagining there are other reasons. We shan’t even see the procession. It goes along by the shore.”

“What a pity,” said Tobie. “I was going to wave flags and kiss all the camels.”

The sun rose, and began to burn. Standing at the shore gates to the City with her husband and the other merchants and the Treasurer Amiroutzes and his party, Catherine inhaled once more the special perfume of Trebizond, now so customary that she hardly heeded it; and wished that she could sit, like a child, on her husband’s silken shoulders and watch for the plumes and the banners that meant that the caravan had begun to pass along the shore to make its state entrance. They said a camel’s sense of smell was so keen that it could pick up a nut of ambergris left on the beach. They said that ghost trains of camels