The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [280]
“Then I’m coming to Venice,” said Catherine. It was like hewing rock.
Nicholas said nothing. It was John le Grant who said, “We may find letters here, demoiselle. Then we shall know better what to do.”
She walked away. Letters. Letters from her mother, complaining about her. That was what he was waiting for. And she had killed Willequin for him.
Chapter 40
IT WAS SO LONG AGO…It was in February, seven months ago, that he had last come to Modon. An interval long enough for a birth; or a still-birth; or the birth of a freak. He found he couldn’t bear the presence of Catherine; and asked everyone he could trust—Tobie, Loppe, Godscalc, Julius—to keep her entertained. Remembering, he needed no one to point out the irony of that.
It was the same Venetian castellan, Giovanni Bembo. Bowing before him in the little repainted room, before the same carefully preserved family silver, Nicholas remembered also the fatal supper, and saw it all now in a different light. In the Morea, too, Sultan Mehmet had moved from town to castle, intimating his intentions; and the governors of the Moreote fortresses had sent messages of surrender; and watched their kinsmen dragged off to repopulate Constantinople in their thousands. When the despot Thomas, useless brother of the useless Demetrius, had looked like resisting, the Bailie of Modon and his fellows had begged him, with offers of ships, to leave the country. Which had not saved the Venetians, when the Sultan rode up to the walls of Modon and put to death those inhabitants who thought to approach him under a trembling flag of truce. Modon was the creature of Turkey, as Pera, as Trebizond were the creatures; and all that preserved them was trade. So the Bailie served his spiced food, and indulged in the anodyne of light gossip, and looked over his shoulder.
The Bailie said, “My lord. This day, I have heard such news from my compatriots on board your vessel. How you saved their lives, and their merchandise. Your bravery under gunfire. Your ingenuity in trial. I have sent word to Venice: to my cousin Piero; and the Signory. They will know how to reward you.”
He had not remembered that the man was an idiot. The man was not an idiot. Nicholas said, “I hope you told them, too, how you enabled me to conceal my soldiers and sail to Trebizond in the first place. Your help after the fire has not been forgotten.”
He was given a great chair, and a footstool, and a goblet of wine. “I cannot forgive myself,” said the Bailie. “That invidious Genoese.”
“He was an appointed consul,” Nicholas said. “It would have been a fault to deny him the courtesies. Unfortunately, his business did not prosper.”
“That, too, I am transmitting,” said the Bailie. “Through your foresight. I have heard of it. News comes swiftly in these parts. From boat to boat. We heard of Trebizond before you arrived.”
“What have you heard?” Nicholas said. He lifted his wine to his lips and set it down again.
“When did you leave? The Sultan entered the City on the fifteenth day of August, and celebrated his triumph in the church of St Eugenios. The Panaghia Chrysokephalos is the Mosque of the Conqueror. The Janissaries rule the Citadel, a Mussulman colony of Azabs hold the Christian houses in the City; and the lord admiral Kasim Pasha rules from the Palace as supreme commander. The world of free Greece; the glorious Byzantine Empire is ended for ever, two hundred years to the day since the Emperor’s forefathers wrested Constantinople back from the Latins. I feel the shame of it,” said Giovanni Bembo. “Were they not Venetian troops who helped take it from them?”
“Your Bailie chose this time to stay in Trebizond,” Nicholas said. “He and some of his fellows. They are brave men.”
“They serve a great Signory,” said the Bailie with reverence. He fell into thought.
Nicholas said, “And has the Sultan been lenient?”
The Bailie recovered. “In Trebizond? To the Emperor, yes. The Emperor, his family, his kinsmen, his nobles have all been shipped to Constantinople. He has asked for the same pension as the despot Demetrius, and