The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [236]
And there was the Great Chancellor, Treasurer Amiroutzes, with his two sons, the student Alexander and the sulky lout Basil, godson of the Greek Cardinal Bessarion whose message had, in the end, got Julius into more trouble at Constantinople than he had got out of in Florence. Not far from him rode Violante of Naxos, with the Archimandrite Diadochos in her train. Both the Treasurer and the woman had known Doria well; both had since had many dealings with themselves. Amiroutzes was the Emperor’s personal philosopher, personal agent, arbiter of his taste, master of his acquisitions. At the fondaco and about the city his manner had the ease of a professor towards the lay unlettered who saw to his wants. In the Emperor’s circle, it was to be presumed, his discourse was very different. When asked, Nicholas could never quite remember what Amiroutzes and the Emperor talked about. Only once, Nicholas had volunteered a comment of his own. “But he is a man who likes pleasure.”
“At the baths?” Tobie had said. And Nicholas had laughed and said that he thought not; it would bend his hat out of shape.
So they passed; all the rarefied beings. The Master of Horse and the Pansebastos. The Protospatharios, the Protonotarios, the Grand Vestarios. The Candidatoi, with their wands. The captain of the Palace. The Drungarios and the archons of the invisible fleet, who had yet been able to dismantle Doria’s cog, thanks to Nicholas. The Augusta’s ladies; the eunuchs. All the beautiful symbols. Not quite vacant reliquaries, because they still served as their counterparts in Byzantium had served; as their fellows in Constantinople had served until eight years before. Hear us, O God; we beseech Thee to hear us, O God, the coronation ritual had run. Grant the Emperor life; let him reign. The world expects him; the laws wait for him; the Palace awaits him. Our common glory, let David come. Our common good, let him reign. Hear us, O God, we beseech Thee.
Protected by God; ensconced in his city the image of heaven, the Basileus could not really have fallen, or Constantinople really have been lost. Not when the flock and their shepherds had sent to heaven all their affirmations: Possessing Thee, O Christ, a Wall that cannot be broken. The ships in the Golden Horn had each flown a prayer: the standard of Christos Pantocrator and the Mother of God, the flag for St George or St Demetrios or St Theodore Stratilates, saints strong in battle. It was John le Grant who had said they could have done with a few good ship-masters and more than a few good masons instead. And John, far from hailing the skies with a crucifix, had set to burrowing like a rat to smell out the enemy mines.
“Why?” he himself had said to Godscalc. “They prayed to the All-Holy Hodigitria, to the Invincible Champion, the Breachless Wall, the City’s safeguard, Mary Mother of God. How could a city so sacred come to fall?” And Godscalc had had no answer to give him. Unless it was that Constantinople, when it succumbed, had begun to forget that despotism also needs justice; and had begun to learn the uses of force, and the practices of the East.
But this was Trebizond. And the business in hand was to pray to St Eugenios. The church, when they climbed to its ridge, was lit by the mellow sun from the west, so that its painted procession of emperors looked earthy and rich behind the lace and the gold of the churchmen awaiting them; and the drum of the dome cast its shadow towards the old hill of Mithras and its denuded shrine. Turning before he went in (for this time, they were admitted), Tobie saw the flat roofs of the City, bowered in green, descending in profile before him from the mountains on his left to the hazy blue of the Euxine, low and deep on his right. He could glimpse the harbour