The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [246]
As had been arranged long before, Nicholas freed from the Florentine villa all the Greek servants who wished to go to their families. The numbers left now were not large: Godscalc and Tobie, with their assistants and their personal servants; Loppe, with those who helped feed and run the household; Patou and his clerks, in the absence of Julius. Twenty-five people, where once he had had charge of a galley-load. With the sudden change in his burden and the promise of action at last, Nicholas found his spirits soar to the skies, as if he had spent all day drinking. The others (all but Godscalc) seemed to catch the same mood, shouting and joking as they moved their belongings from the fondaco to the Middle Citadel, and the house and storeroom John had taken for them before he left. The Venetians, an even smaller company, were already there; and Astorre, who had lived with his men in the Upper Citadel for many weeks now. As soon as they were ready, Nicholas left, with Tobie and Astorre, to climb the garrison tower, and watch the Turkish fleet sailing up.
The new keep occupied the highest point of the Citadel; higher even than the white and gold of the Palace. From its battlements, they looked down on the roofs and gardens, towers and church domes of Trebizond, cascading down to the sea, white and green, red and gold; and its narrow alleys choked with milling people and bundles and beasts. Soon, the iron gates to the Upper Citadel would be closed, and then the gates dividing the middle from the lower part. The reinforced garrison along the shore wall was long since in place and the moats filled. Armed men glinted, like sequins, wherever you looked.
From Paraskeuas, purveyor of useless information, they knew that the Genoese community, too large to house under any one roof, had disposed of itself in small households all over the City. The seamen were to sleep in the open. Pagano Doria with Crackbene his shipmaster and the chief officers of his round ship, oarless and dismasted like all the rest, had taken a house in the St Andrew quarter, near the eastern ravine and the shore.
His hand shading his eyes, Tobie said, “St Andrew, of course. He evangelised Trebizond, and the Golden Fleece used to meet on his feast day. If his head’s got to Rome, it may do more good than Ludovico da Bologna. D’you think our Genoese friend still thinks he’s Jason? One thing is sure: if it comes to a famine, Willequin in pies will be Doria’s first standby.”
“She took him with her,” said Nicholas. “The camel will run like the wind.”
“You sent Catherine on the camel? On Chennaa?” said Tobie.
“If she can ride a horse, she can ride a camel. The cough mixture worked.”
“It ought to,” said Tobie. “I had a teacher at Pavia whose uncle had been a Mameluke prisoner. They made him a camel doctor. He just treated camels like people. They get everything but—”
“—the hump. I can guess. The fishermen, God damn them, haven’t come in yet.”
“You can’t force them,” said Tobie. “Unless you burn their boats and their nets. When the Turks invested Belgrade, they took packs of dogs to eat up the Christian corpses.”
“Dogs don’t like ships,” Nicholas said.
“They promised safety to everyone after Mistra, and still killed six thousand people. They flay alive, and behead, and impale. They saw people in half.”
“So they do. But here, they can’t cross the ravines and they can’t reach us with any weapon at all, even arrows,” Nicholas said. “To get sawn in half, you’d have to be really quite careless.”
“They could reach us with cannon. The battery they used at Constantinople threw balls of twelve hundred pounds, and the largest Greek helepoli can only manage a hundred and fifty.”
“They could, if their ships could carry anything but light naval guns. They can’t reach us. They can only starve us out. And we’ve food for three months. Go on. I can feel my hair