The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [251]
“The Golden Fleece! Your fortunes are made!” said Martelli smiling. “My lord Cosimo will be happy to hear it. And your lord is well, and the priest Godscalc?”
“So it seems,” said the lawyer.
“And that rascal Doria?” had said the sea consul. “That whoreson Doria? What of him?”
He had been a little too vehement, and the lawyer looked surprised. Then the man Gregorio had said, “You, too, are no friend of the charming Messer Pagano? Messer Niccolò says very little, but I gather Doria is in Trebizond too, but has not been as successful as he would have wished.”
“In which your master has had a hand? I am glad,” had said Messer Martelli. “When you go to Venice, speak to Alessandro, my brother. Alessandro, manager of the Venice bank of the Medici. If you wish to travel further east, he will help you.”
“Thank you. No,” had said the lawyer. “Once in Venice, we shall stay there until we have word of our ship. There is nowhere quicker for messages. And I have accommodation to arrange.”
“You are sure of your welcome,” had said Messer Martelli, with a curious look. “And Pagano Doria? I am told there has been some strange message from Scotland demanding an enquiry into some marriage he has contracted.”
“Really?” had said the lawyer Gregorio. “I think you must be mistaken, Messer Martelli. My information is that the good Messer Doria did attempt some such marriage, but that all the papers were false. I am glad for the sake of the girl, whoever she was. A pernicious man. He deserves all the trouble that our Messer Niccolò can bring on him.”
Then, immediately as it seemed, the Charetty cavalcade left the city before any other encounter could be organised. Madonna Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, hearing later, could hardly restrain her annoyance. “The boy Niccolò’s womenfolk, and I missed them! Because your wife is a fool, do you need to be a fool also, Antonio?” she had asked. And he had stifled the natural reply and changed the subject, for his brother Roberto in Rome was married to one of the Strozzis of London, and family feeling counted for something.
He said, “Well, the lord Cosimo de’ Medici, it seems, has sniffed out a good bargain again. From the news arriving from Trebizond, the company Charetty look to have made a fair fortune for Florence and themselves.”
“But will it console the good Cosimo?” said Alessandra Strozzi. “Poor old man, will it fill the gap that a favourite grandson has left? He would give all the gold of the Orient for one day of Cosimino; an hour of his hand on his knee with his whistle.”
After a week of the noise and the stench: the crackle of fire; the screams and the explosions; the bouncing tumble of woodwork and masonry; the belching of unpleasant smoke, there developed a routine in Trebizond. Now there was little left to destroy in the suburbs, the enemy turned its attention upon the beleaguered Citadel and began to besiege it with sound. In temper, it would use weapons too: sometimes, for no evident reason, arrows would shower across to the shaved inner side of the gorge, or gun muzzles flare and bark uselessly. But mostly the noise was deliberate. Five times through the day and the night the imâms raised their warbling calls, and the throaty chanting would follow. Between times, the Ottoman army set its musicians to work. All the while, the drums beat, day and night, with almost no respite. Cymbals clashed and horns blew and pipes shrilled over and over. The gorges rattled; the solid walls of the City reverberated. At night the inhabitants of Trebizond stuffed cotton into their ears, those who could afford to. The rest stood on watch, hundred upon hundred manning the stout, roomy ramparts and strained their eyes, as their heads throbbed.
Nicholas thought it was funny. He and Astorre, roving from city to palace, made up verses to go with the drumbeats,