The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [281]
Alexios. Maria. Anna. Who else? “And the people?” Nicholas said.
“Shipped to Constantinople, of course, if their rank merited it. The rest, I fear, were enslaved. The most suitable women and children, as is usual, were divided between the Sultan and his ministers, and the residue otherwise placed. The Janissary corps alone received eight hundred boys to be reared, poor children, as unmarried converts. War is harsh,” the Bailie said. His voice was flat. He had seen it all, in the Morea. Nothing more could astonish him, although some things could frighten him still. After a while he said, “But what could anyone have done, my lord Niccolò? What mortal man can stand against this Sultan now? I have heard of no one who faced him in his tent as you did, so I heard; and killed the traitor as well.”
“No,” Nicholas said. “If you mean Pagano Doria. He didn’t die by my hand.”
“You are modest,” the Bailie said. “It is a tragedy. But, without tragedy, where would be valour, endurance, the tempering of the spirit? You must be weary. What may I offer you? There is water heating, should it please you to bathe. And supper presently. Your cup is not empty.”
“I have enough,” Nicholas said. “Your time here has been no less hard, but you have had news from the West, which has been denied us.”
“From the West? Fragments. Fragments,” said the Bailie. “The doge Prosper Adorno has been replaced in Genoa: you will have heard that. And the King of France is dead, and the Dauphin Louis is monarch. The Yorkists have prevailed in England, but the war still continues. And in Rome—ah, the sensation in Rome is the Pope’s new discovery.”
He was so tired that at first he made nothing of it. He was thinking of Louis of France; and the returned exiles; and Jordan de Ribérac. He was thinking, in fact, that soon he must shave off his beard. Then he said, “New discovery?”
“By his godson, Giovanni da Castro,” the Bailie said. “The dyemaster. He was in Constantinople this winter. An idle man, who consults the stars, and always boasted of making a fortune some day. Well, he has made it. He has discovered a new alum mine.”
“Then,” said Nicholas, “he is indeed fortunate. And very rich. Where is the mine?”
“It is the Pope who will be richer still,” the Bailie said. “The mine is in the Papal States, at a place they call Tolfa, in the hills inland from Civita Vecchia. From which, of course, the stuff can be shipped. And all the profits will go to the Curia. Or, as the Pope has proclaimed, to finance, at last, the crusade the world has been waiting for—the good Cardinal Bessarion has been praying for—the Eastern delegation under its humble and selfless Franciscan has been begging for.”
There was a pause. Nicholas said, “And so the Empire of Trebizond may rise again?”
There was another pause. The Bailie said, “It is not, of course, impossible. But with France and Burgundy face to face, and England busy with its own affairs…Nothing is impossible. But to Venice, you will understand, this news is of immediate significance. The Turk has starved the world of alum: you know this, of course. Six thousand ducats, the Sultan took in toll after Constantinople was his; and in the ensuing years ten thousand, thirty thousand. Now he controls all the mines, and even Venice must have failed to market his alum at the price he will now demand.”
“No,” Nicholas said. “It is more than timely, then, this new discovery. It occurs to me…”
“Yes?” said the Bailie, leaning forward.
“It occurs to me that there might be letters with more recent news perhaps waiting for me. Would you know of this?”
Giovanni Bembo slapped his knee. “Idiot! I had a message to deliver. Indeed, there were letters, but not to me. Last time you were here, you met a gentleman?”
“Several,” Nicholas said. He felt, for the moment, that he would like to be dead; and sat calling, with silent ferocity, on what was left of his sense