The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [245]
He turned. He had got to the steps when Nicholas spoke, on an impulse. He said, “She is not with me, and is well protected.”
On Doria’s face, as he left, was a trace of scorn and a trace, rather stronger, of mystification. Nicholas waited until the garden door closed, and then, turning, went back to the others. Astorre was red. He said, “Did he say all that? The bastard! His own wife!”
Nicholas said, “She’s safe now. Forget him. Look, let’s get on with this. How many men on board, do they think?”
Later, Tobie tried to re-open the subject but allowed himself to be sidetracked. They were learning. Or he was getting better at holding them off. It was a help, of course, to have a war on your hands.
On the fourth day after that, the fleet of the Turkish admiral Kasim Pasha appeared, a fretted line on the western horizon. It was the first day of July, and the time when the sun alternately burned and masked itself behind veils of thick cloud, which now and then unloaded their lukewarm torrents over the orchards, the gardens, the forests festooned with wild vines. The flat roofs of the houses poured water; the steep streets rushed with it; the brawling streams in the two gorges rose higher and roared. Then the sun came out, and Trebizond, thick with flowers and fruit, lay in its steam. Soon, as the fleet entered the distant arm of the bay, you could see the sprinkle of gold from the mastheads and the sail bellies blaze out like coloured silk lanterns as they moved steadily east and the sun fell behind.
By then, everyone was in the Citadel. From dawn, the bells of the City had been clanging their warning: the great bronze voice of the Chrysokephalos from inside the Citadel; of little Anne west of the Meidan and St Basil down by the shore and St Andrew and St Sophia to the west. And in the merchants’ quarters, the bells of the Latin chapels and of St Philip over by Mithras and, loudest of all, the warning from the fortress church of St Eugenios on its ridge to the south. The message was simple. Abandon your homes and come, now.
They did not come readily, for the practice was new. To protect its harbours and trading, every headland and ridge of the Black Sea had long since acquired its Genoese castle, its fortified churches and monasteries. These, together with the notorious storms of the Euxine (once properly entitled the Axeinos), generally saw to it that sea-raiders didn’t stay long.
A determined enemy was a different matter. Only the Citadel between its two ravines was truly impregnable. The flat shores with their wharves and warehouses and fishing communities, the steep network of streets on either side with their rich villas and gardens, baths and markets, had only the island fortresses of the churches and the merchant colony’s keeps to protect them. Stout buildings of brick and stone were strong enough to withstand most raids, but not all. St Eugenios had more than once been taken and occupied. Only three years ago, an enemy camp had stood on Mount Mithras and all the suburbs up to the eastern ravine had been pillaged and stripped of their people. So, in times of real war, men had chosen to trust neither the fortresses nor the Citadel. The rich in the past had taken ship and fled east to Georgia. The poor took their children and what goods they could carry and disappeared south, into the mountains.
They couldn’t do that this time, with Ottoman armies fighting the White Horde behind them. And this time it was necessary that the able men of the City should not melt away but should be there, within its walls, to help the garrison keep its watch. And men fought better, as Astorre, as John le Grant knew, when their wives and children were present; just as shepherds, under the eyes of their flock, had to remember their honour. So the ships had been disabled, and the people warned. So stores had been gathered, and preparations made for the great influx of population into a place from which the people had always fled in time of danger. And so the monks came into the City, carrying their crosses,