The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [228]
ON THE LAST DAY OF May, a fishing boat put into the Daphnous harbour at Trebizond and a packet was delivered to the Florentine fondaco, for which the carrier received a surprisingly lavish reward. There followed a day of private and somewhat liquid rejoicing. Julius, with all his eight hundred camels, had arrived safely at Kerasous and had found lodging, welcome, and promise of all the help that he needed. He did not, of course, have a galley, since that was at present with the Empress Helen a hundred miles east at Batum. The fishing boat, in due course, set out west with answering messages. Fleece and fortune were theirs. All they had to do was get it home. And survive it.
The next two weeks continued the pattern of those before. For Nicholas, Astorre and the engineers, it meant constant meetings inside the Citadel to guide the combined company of all those responsible for the City’s defences: the blacksmiths and the masons, the crossbowmen and the gunners; the fletchers, the bowyers, the miners; those who dealt with provender and those who dealt with humble articles such as baskets and shovels and hides.
As a contribution, Nicholas had halted work on their own new consulate building, and had only retained what workmen he needed to reinforce the house and storeroom they had leased in the Citadel. Now they had fewer men, he had offered part of this to the Venetians at a fair rent, and the Bailie had gladly accepted. These days, the Venetian fondaco, it could be seen, was also much depleted; no doubt because of the usual warm-weather exodus of the women and children to the airier hills round about. The Genoese, of whom there were not so many, had not been encouraged to leave and remained where they were, sweating in the hot, clammy weather. On most days, it rained.
The court, which was well protected from rain, went to its summer palace, returned when it was bored; went hunting; gambled; attended with brilliant ceremony to its devotional exercises and with equal devotion to a wide range of others, and took pleasure in the discourse of the many learned men with whom the Emperor liked to surround himself. To Nicholas, who was frequently bidden and who frequently appeared at the more fully clothed of such gatherings, the discourses on books he had not read and subjects he had never debated seemed moderately superficial. He suspected that the Emperor was being offered only what pleased him. He amused himself by visualising a congress attended by the Emperor David and his refugee men of letters from Constantinople and, say, Cosimo de’ Medici, and the men he liked to invite to Careggi. The Pope, with Cardinal Bessarion’s friends to dispute with, was possibly best off of all. He had heard it said that the Greek theologians attending the Council of Florence had been dismayed and even routed by the superior ability of the Latins to apply logic in argument.
He supposed it was natural, since they had the money, that every Italian prince should think it as important to collect his humanists as to collect his books and builders and painters. He knew, if only from Sara Khatun, that the Sultan, too, was showing an interest in such things and soon, when and if he had peace, when and if he had wealth, it would be the same with Hasan Bey her son. Meanwhile, he himself acquired a reputation for being a good listener and, being made free of the Emperor’s shelves, would sometimes amuse himself and others by creating small geometric puzzles and astronomical devices, working on his knee as he listened. Once, he found himself in the decorator’s workshop and spent an hour demonstrating with waxes and resins how to make better ultramarine, talking and kneading away happily like a washerwoman. He was not aware, then, that the deficiency had already struck his stepdaughter. He did not, all this time, either meet or avoid either Doria or Catherine de Charetty. Indeed, he had a great deal to think about and was not reserved in discussing his day’s work with Loppe or Tobie or Godscalc, who were looking after matters in the fondaco. Only, sometimes,