The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [54]
“Then let’s pass it,” said Tobie. “Take on supplies somewhere else, and go straight on to Gallipoli.”
“Well, we can’t,” Nicholas said. “We’ve got to pick up our passenger.”
They had assumed they were now in his confidence. He had said nothing at all of a passenger. Julius looked exasperated. “Didn’t I tell you?” Nicholas said. “The Greek with the wooden leg. Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli. John doesn’t know him.” He explained amiably to John le Grant, ignoring the others, “We call him Greek, but he’s from the Florentine race who used to rule Athens. He came to Bruges, raising money to ransom his brother. Without him, we might not have thought of this voyage.”
“What’s he doing in Modon?” said the engineer.
“Trading. Bartolomeo his brother is free now, and sells silk in Constantinople. Well: Pera, over the water. With the help of Acciajuoli, we’ll do business with him.”
“You’re talking of Bartolomeo Zorzi? I saw him captured. Silk, yes. And more. That’s the man that runs the Venetian alum monopoly. Did ye know that?”
Nicholas grinned and waited.
“Yes. We knew that,” said Tobie. “Well, are we going to stand here all day? I’m freezing.”
They moved away, all but Nicholas and John le Grant. “So it’s a matter of alum,” said the engineer. “And you with a dyeshop: of course, you and your guild’ll need fixatives. Well, a friend with a pinty leg’ll do ye nae harm. The tax the Turks put on alum is shocking.”
“Shocking,” said Nicholas. “We need all the friends we can get.”
“Well?” said the red-haired man at length, “are ye going to tell me what you’re up to, or have I got to get your notary drunk?”
During the last days at sea, Nicholas had made up his mind about John le Grant. It always pleased him to talk about Tolfa. Nor did he see why Julius should have all the fun. He collected some wine, and took John le Grant off to the stern castle.
Later, Tobie saw them emerge. The engineer was looking thoughtful. Nicholas, on the other hand, was dimpled in the private, conspiratorial manner of a hot pool on the verge of explosion. He did not look like a man who was giving due thought to Pagano Doria.
Which was a pity. Because the first thing they saw in the harbour at Modon, within the Venetian seawalls and under the flag of St Mark, was the immense, castled bulk of the round ship Doria.
Chapter 9
THE FORTRESS OF MODON, or Methoni, was Venetian. Its harbour was good, and its position was even better: at the southwestern point of the old Greek Morea peninsula, halfway between the heel of civilised Italy and the pagan Ottoman lands to the east. It was the Serenissima’s chief naval base in eastern waters, and their main port of call for the Holy Land. Ships from Venice made their way thence to Crete or Cyprus or Alexandria, or up the Aegean Sea to Negroponte and Gallipoli and Constantinople. Men called Modon the eye of Venice, as Corfu was its door, and two thousand people lived and worked there.
The round ship called Doria lay now in the mole, below the long, turreted seawall with its double gate and regular towers. Tilted on the hillside above Modon the wall continued, embracing the town, with its houses, churches, workshops, hostels, barracks, taverns, brothels, store-sheds and markets; the Bailie’s handsome residence, and the citadel, interspersed with the red of turned earth and the beige of winter grass and the bare branches of fruit trees between. On the left, the church of St John had its own landing stage. And at intervals all round the walls the battle-towers kept watch, and the arms of the windmills wheeled against the wet skies of a Grecian winter, watched by Monna Caterina de Charetty negli Doria.
For Catherine, the distance between Messina and Modon could not be measured in sea miles. In Messina, she had completed her wedding rites in the eyes of the Church. On shipboard after the wedding mass she had refused the attentions of her wonderful husband, sobbing and whimpering. It was Pagano himself who had coaxed her to tell him the terrible things she had heard,