The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [273]
For Catherine de Charetty negli Doria, the days of August dragged as never before. To waste six weeks of her married life in Kerasous had not been her intention, when agreeing to take part in a ball game. To begin with, the game itself had been shameful. Far from competing to claim her, Pagano and her mother’s husband had conspired to make her look foolish. The subsequent journey by camel had been hardly less humiliating. She had made it clear to her mother’s accountant as soon as she arrived at Kerasous, her trembling dog in her arms. The camel was to be sold.
Matters did not improve. A Doria by marrige, a Charetty by blood, she expected to be housed on the hill in the governor’s palace, with Master Julius and this man John le Grant to do what she wanted. Instead, she found herself crammed into cellars with a terrified crowd of Italian women and children while, apparently, the entire Turkish fleet passed their shores. From the women, whom she despised, she learned to her amazement that they had come to Kerasous on the Ciaretti, her mother’s galley. And that the galley was here, lifted out of the water and put on rollers, and hidden somewhere on land. On an island, they told her.
It didn’t take her long after that to discover, stored in the Kerasous citadel, the entire cargo of the Ciaretti, brought by Master Julius from Erzerum. There were Venetian goods too. There were bits that the Ciaretti had picked up in Trebizond, including books and jewels and dyes: all the sorts of dyes that she had expected Pagano to buy. She saw a keg of pearls that she recognised. Nicholas had got it all. He had got everything Pagano ought to have purchased, and he was not even a Charetty. And he’d managed to evacuate all the Venetian women and children as well.
It was a matchless performance and she failed to see, now, how Pagano could equal it. When she ached for him nightly, she reminded herself how incompetent he had proved; how Nicholas had outmanoeuvred him. And still, day by day, she looked for him to arrive: to put these sneering Venetians to the sword; to load their goods and hers into his cog and say, “Come. I am the greatest sea prince of Europe, and you are my lady.” Then common sense would prevail and she would grit her teeth and press her nails into her hands. For if he could manage only a quarter of that—less than a quarter—she would manage the rest. Anything. Anything so that her mother’s friends would stand back in awe and say, “Our little Catherine! Such a marriage! Such a husband! Such a fortune!”
Then the day came when a great Turkish cog slowly broke through the mists from the east and instead of keeping its course, as did all the ships, captured and free, that came by on the way to Stamboul, began to turn towards Kerasous. Then the guns ran out on the citadel and the shore, and the strange sounds began that had frightened off more than one ship in the past; and Master Julius, and Master John, when she spoke to them, threw her a word over their shoulders but explained nothing. Until, almost opposite the precious island, and with her mainsail torn by a ball, the crescent flag had suddenly slid down the mast and another replaced it. She had been standing, at that moment, on the ramparts of the citadel, and had found herself abruptly in someone’s embrace. Master Julius said, “They’ve come. They’ve come.” And she saw that he was crying.
Then she said, with dawning delight, “It’s the Doria! Pagano’s ship! It’s Pagano!” And Master Julius had dropped his arm and said, “It was his ship, Catherine, but we don’t know what’s happened to it since. Don’t worry. Stay here. I’ll send you news as soon as I have it.”
Despite that, she had run down after him to the gates, Willequin at her heels; and would have fled down the slope to the shore except that the notary—her mother’s notary!—had snapped a command and some men, kindly enough, had stopped her, and caught her hands when she scratched, and escorted her back to the