The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
“What do you usually say to my mother?” she said. “Ask her if she would like me to send her something from Trebizond. Pagano will see to it.”
“When will you come home to Bruges?” Nicholas said. His voice throughout had been easy and level, only changing in the amount of breath he brought to it. Normally, Nicholas had more voices than anyone she knew. But then, he had nothing else.
She said, “I don’t really know. These days, I find the idea of Bruges a little revolting. I suppose Tilde doesn’t mind, but my husband isn’t used to such things in his family. I suppose we might buy a town house in Brussels.”
“Not Genoa?” Nicholas said.
It seemed an odd idea, but she lifted her brows. “Or Genoa,” she said.
“When, Catherine?”
She was becoming bored. “When he’s finished in Trebizond. I don’t know when. Ask my husband,” she said.
He rose off the quilt then, and stood as if at a loss by the bedpost. Godscalc drew a breath and Nicholas looked at him and said, “No. What good will it do?”
Godscalc said, “Very well. But there is almost no time. You can’t leave them to face it alone.” He hesitated and then said, “If you like, I will stay.”
“No. You mustn’t,” said Nicholas.
Anger rose in her. They were talking over her head. They were discussing, apparently, how long it would suit them to coerce her. Catherine drew a long breath, and emitted a single, deliberate scream, followed by the names of her page and her manservant.
The manservant came in immediately but looked at Godscalc, who said, “It’s all right. We’re leaving. The Madonna is over-excited. Stay with her.” All the time he was speaking he was looking over his shoulder at someone else who had come to the door.
It was a man, cloaked and hooded, she didn’t know, although she thought she smelled incense. Nicholas knew him. He went and spoke to him in a low voice and then turned back to them all. He looked first at her, and then at Godscalc. Godscalc said, “What?” and without waiting for a reply pulled open a shutter. Then he said, “She’s in, and dropped anchor. Let’s go.”
Nicholas said, “It’s too late. She’ll have been boarded already.”
“And?” Godscalc said. He had a large face, like a pudding.
Nicholas said, “Someone has told the Grand Vizier that we have Julius and le Grant on board. A troop of Janissaries is on its way to arrest them.”
She heard it. “Master Julius?” said Catherine de Charetty, with all the authority of her mother. “Master Julius? What for?”
Nicholas turned to her. “He knows the wrong people,” he said. “He was a favourite of Cardinal Bessarion. In these parts. Bessarion is regarded as a traitor to the Greek Church and an enemy of the Turks.”
“And John? Why John?” Godscalc said; and Nicholas gave a wry smile.
“Didn’t you know? He nearly saved Constantinople. It was his countermining that defeated the Turkish sappers over and over. He came to serve under Giustiniani Longo. Longo, the Genoese leader. A Doria man.”
“A friend of the Doria?” Godscalc said.
“Related to them, just like Catherine’s husband. So John is twice damned, as a sapper and a Genoese-lover, and not likely to be spared by the Sultan. My lord Pagano, though, has nothing to fear. Not after his acceptable trip to the Vizier this morning.”
Master Julius. Her mother’s notary. Well, he had chosen to go with Nicholas. Catherine said, “My husband took gifts. Everyone has to.” She said it sharply.
“I know,” Nicholas said. “I’ve been afraid of what he might give. But he chose to take the black page, not the white one.”
“Nicholas,” Godscalc said. But this time he received no acknowledgement.
Catherine de Charetty said nothing as her mother’s husband came forward into the light, and hesitated, and then knelt at her side. He said, “So long as you’re happy, none of us will interfere. But if anything should ever go wrong, you have only to call. I shall be at Trebizond. There is a ship, and you have many friends, and people closer than friends. We are always there for you.”
“I don’t want you,” she said.
They spoke very little on their way to the ferry that would take