The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [233]
“Unfair to your wife. To whom you take back a shipload of wealth. Then will your debts be discharged?” said Violante of Naxos.
He got up. He said, “You are thinking of trade. Trade is a game, like the elephant clock. Between the demoiselle and myself are no debts, any more than there are obligations between the demoiselle and Catherine there, or Felix who died, or Tilde her other daughter.”
“She owes nothing to you?” said the woman and he smiled, hiding his anger and wondering that she found it needful to hurt.
He opened his hands and said, still smiling, “Look at me.”
“Oh, I am looking,” said Violante of Naxos.
On Monday 15 June, the fortress town and harbour of Sinope surrendered to the Sultan Mehmet, his commander the Grand Vizier Mahmud and Kasim Pasha his admiral. With the Grand Vizier were Tursun Beg and Thomas Katabolenu, respectively his Turkish and Greek secretaries. As had been expected of it the fleet remained for some days in the harbour, exploring the amenities of the town and rounding up the emir’s splendid fleet in order to send it under convoy to Stamboul. The emir left Sinope for his new home at Philippopolis which the Sultan, ever generous, had given him in exchange for his emirate of Kastamonu, his town and his copper mines. The emir’s brother, who had been close to the Sultan throughout, was rewarded by some of the emir’s best lands.
It might have been expected that, lord of Amasra and Sinope, the Sultan would count the season successful and stay. He did the opposite. While the fleet lingered, the Sultan’s army left Sinope in heavy rain and set off on foot south-east over the mountains. Their immediate object was calculated to be Koyulhisar, the frontier citadel of Uzum Hasan, two days’ march east of Sivas. From Sinope to Sivas was generally reckoned to be between two and three hundred miles, most of it vertical. They would be fortunate if, having reached Koyulhisar, they had energy left over to take it. After that, they would be well advised to sit down and rest and consider. Erzerum lay some two hundred miles off across land fortified and defended by the White Horde. From that point to Trebizond was another two hundred miles. And it was wet, and midsummer already. The Sultan’s Greek neighbours observed his predicament and were gratified. Secure behind its fine mountain barrier; reinforced by its Muslim relations and allies; the court at Trebizond felt freed to pursue with solemn energy all its plans for its greatest annual festival, that of St Eugenios, the City’s patron and favourite benefactor.
Wise, by now, in the ways of their client, both Nicholas and Astorre had taken measures to draw most of their work to a close before the holiday. The galley had gone, stealing by night westwards to Kerasous and taking John le Grant again with it, as well as, among other things, a box of fine books which had cost forty monks in the City more sleep than they could spare. Le Grant, taking his leave, had been no more talkative than usual. Tobie doubted whether he was looking forward to several months in the company of Julius: on the other hand, perhaps he was. In any case, they would not see him again until the galley returned with its new cargo next year—always assuming that it managed to leave Kerasous and get home with the old in the first place.
Had things been normal, he supposed Nicholas and not the notary would have taken the Ciaretti home. He wondered how Nicholas felt, exiled now as they all were until the next voyage. He wouldn’t be back in Flanders now for fully two years. Two years without a wife, or a companion. Two years of limited industry, even when war didn’t immure them, or interrupt the shipping or camel trains. And in between the buying and selling, a languid, vacuous existence in the moist warmth of the Asian Euxine, rich with flowers and fruit, nut groves and vineyards, milk and poisonous honey. While at the same time, in Bruges, his wife worked and aged, and, in Scotland, a child grew and learned to call Simon St Pol of Kilmirren its father.
At least one thing, it seemed, was