The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [276]
“They had friends in Kerasous. Officially, we didn’t bring any. How do you suppose we’d choose which to take? Hold a lottery?” He propped his shoulder against the wall and watched the other man, the bread still in his hand.
“You could have earned a tidy sum,” said John le Grant. “If we hadn’t disabled his ship, Doria would have got a load of people out to Caffa that time.”
“I thought you were all against it,” said Nicholas.
“Oh, I was. I’m still against it. If you’d sailed off to Caffa, you’d have been stuck in the Crimea all winter, if not for years. Tartars, Genoese, and terrible weather. Tobie wouldn’t like that. And you’d not have room for a cargo.”
“That, of course, was the worry,” Nicholas said. “On the other hand, Greeks are human like everyone else, and one must consider such things, or seem to consider such things, with Godscalc about.”
“You tossed a coin,” said John le Grant. Julius shifted in his seat.
“You guessed,” said Nicholas. He and le Grant gazed at one another. Nicholas said, “Perhaps you would have loaded the cog with whoever you thought you could take, choosing the richest, or the weakest, or the ones that survived the mayhem that would happen when you announced you were going. My view was different. You know what the Emperor sold himself for? Vice-Regent of Christ, Servitor to the Incarnate God? His daughter Anna, and a home in Turkish Adrianople, plus a yearly income of three hundred thousand pieces of silver. You might say, mightn’t you, that those who sustain such an emperor deserve such an emperor; or they would have risen against him? And if they didn’t they might as well sink.”
“Adrianople,” said John le Grant. “I wouldn’t have chosen Adrianople. Too near the new owners. If someone bought out my company, I’d go and settle a long way away from the competition.”
Nicholas said, “I don’t think he plans to set up again in the emperor business.” The moment’s violence had faded. He said, “You are a bastard.”
“They tell me,” said le Grant. “You were saying?”
Nicholas stood where he was. Then he came and sat down, his hands on the table still holding the bread and the meat. He said, “We tried to take them. They wouldn’t come. We were Latins. Caffa is Genoese. They would rather have the Turks.”
Julius felt his face flush; and found Godscalc looking at him. Tobie was scowling. John said, “And so much for the Council of Florence and the union of churches. Man, I’m glad I was at Kerasous all the time, without any of these terrible questions to answer that stop you eating your dinner. If you don’t want it, I could do with some bread.”
And Nicholas had said, “Get your own God-damned bread,” and begun to eat.
After that, now and then, he looked more like himself and Julius began to have hopes of a reasonable voyage, provided they got past the guns in the Bosphorus, and the guns at Constantinople, and the guns at Gallipoli, and managed to eke out their stores until Modon. They could be in Venice by October. Well, by mid-October. He gave little more thought to the conversation, beyond wondering why John had chosen that day to attack Nicholas. After three months of John le Grant’s company, Julius still found him impenetrable.
On 18 August, as planned, they set sail. First the round ship, flamboyant with Turkish flags and seamen in Turkish turbans and jackets. Next, grappled fast as her prisoner, the Florentine galley with no flags but two ranks of oarsmen, apparent captives, to help her along. They were given a guard of honour at the shore; and on the island of Ares, sacred to the Greek god of war, the monks who had kept their secret so long stood and waved to them.
It was like the leave-taking Trebizond had denied them. There they had steered out among Turkish ships anchored at random; breaking out their sail with Turkish commands. Then, no one looked back to the shore. No one tried to pick out the white-blotted walls of St Eugenios, or the blackened shell of the fondaco, or the ruined square of the Meidan, or the bare pole of the Palace where no banners flew.
Now, although both