The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [253]
The smile left Astorre’s face. His beard jutted. He said, “Don’t try that with me. I remember the girls you bedded in Bruges. If you were not who you are, I’d give you three women and tell you to get on with it, wife or no wife. I don’t want to be led by a man going mad from an itch he won’t scratch.”
Nicholas held up a spread hand. Astorre looked at it. Nicholas said, “When it shakes, you can come and take me off to a brothel. Meantime, I can manage, so long as the dogs don’t object. Am I wrong, or is the change of watch behind time? Perhaps you should see to it.”
Now and then, after a session with Nicholas, a man would find himself breathing more sharply than usual. But in between, he was everyone’s friend.
Then, ten days into the siege, he was summoned to the Palace out of turn, and with an urgency missing before. He had grown long used, now, to the morning chamber the Emperor used for his councils, with its verd antique, its mosaics, its belvedere of pillared air overlooking the western gulf and shores of the Empire. It was in the same quarter as the chamber of Violante of Naxos, whom he had not seen for two weeks. Looking round, Nicholas saw that the high officers of war were there, as was usual; and the captain of the Kabasitai as well as Altamourios and the rest of the Emperor’s personal staff and his Protovestarios Amiroutzes, who bent, one foot on the dais step, listening to David, Autocrat of the Romans. He rose, as Nicholas was announced, and waited, as they all did, while he advanced bowing, and lightly made the prostration. Whatever the occasion, nothing ever removed the need for the courtesies. There were no boys, and no churchmen, and no members of the Emperor’s family. The Emperor said, “Sit. We have received news.”
The council benches were marble, cushioned in silks, and stood in a broken horseshoe before him. Nicholas took his place between the Drungarios and the commander of the Imperial Guard, while Amiroutzes sat at the head of the horseshoe, next to the Basileus on the dais. Once, there had also been an interpreter, but there was no need for that now. He understood them, Nicholas thought, in more ways than perhaps they would care for. Certainly, it was not their business to understand him. Latin merchants and their mercenaries were, in the end, only paid labour, in their obscene hose and outlandish tunics and cropped hats, fit for cheap slaves and seamen. The Emperor said, “We are divided in our opinion; and since the Ottoman is adopting the western fashion of war, it seems to us that the view of one from that world would be beneficial.”
Without daily exercise, the Emperor had increased a little in girth. Amiroutzes, the Great Chancellor and Count Palatine, on the other hand was unchanged. The lightly woven stuff of his hat brim threw trellised shadows over the handsome nose and sensitive mouth and striped beard, and the thick brown hair clinging a little with heat. He moved well. He was a fine archer, people said. In Italy, George Amiroutzes had ranked himself eloquently with the Cardinal Bessarion, who recommended the Roman Church and the Greek should unite. Admirer of Aquinas; skilled negotiator; fluent commentator; Amiroutzes had come back from Florence to Trebizond covered in glory. The lover and judge of letters, rightly called philosopher by all the fatherland, someone had called him. A thinker; a guide; a companion to the God-protected sovereign on his pinnacle, whose dissertations Nicholas had sometimes heard, and sometimes agreed with. A man with two growing sons; and a free hand with pearls.
Therefore…therefore, one chose one’s ground, and perhaps even planted it. Nicholas spoke to a point between the Protovestarios and the Emperor. “There are those who know more than I do, magnificence. May I send for captain Astorre?”
“Indeed, we intend to summon him presently.” It was Amiroutzes who replied, at a nod from the Emperor. “But first, it is a matter of interpretation, rather than strategy. We have news of the Sultan and the