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By Root 2636 0

them over the Golden Horn to where the Ciaretti lay off the point, surrounded by guard boats from which, even at such a distance, they could see the glitter of steel. The monk from the Franciscans’ had been right, in the message he’d brought them. The Turks had sent an armed detachment to halt the galley and board her. The excuse, it seemed, was to take John and Julius. On the Ciaretti, they had been prepared, of course, for boarding by customs officials; by delegates from the Porte. They had all been carefully primed what to do; what to say. But being overrun by a troop of enemy soldiers was another matter. Of course Nicholas had planned for it: he had planned for everything. Except, of course, that the lives of two of his men might now be forfeit, or at the very least, hostage. But one didn’t know, yet, how much that meant.

It’s too late, Nicholas had said, back there in Pera; and for a shocking moment Godscalc had thought he meant to leave the ship to her fate, as had nearly happened at Modon. But this time Nicholas had set off downhill at once to the shore; although what lay before him, Godscalc saw, was a fiendish replica of the earlier occasion. Whatever his concern for the girl, Nicholas had to abandon her for his men and his galley, now exposed to something at least as dangerous as the fire, thanks again to Pagano Doria. No one else could have told the Turks that le Grant and Julius were on board; reminded them of le Grant’s war record; exposed the link between Julius and Bessarion. Unnoticed by anyone—unnoticed by himself as well as the young, the immature Nicholas—Doria had always held the fate of these two men in his hands. Julius, who had shared some at least of Nicholas’s boyhood. Red-headed le Grant, who had so readily joined them after that ingenious masquerading in Florence. Who had once fought, it seemed, for a Genoese leader. Well, there was little room now to doubt where poor le Grant’s loyalties lay.

At the water’s edge, Nicholas stopped, on the point of jumping down to the skiff. He said, “Wait. You should stay. If anything happens, there must be someone to look after the girl.”

Godscalc looked at him. He said, “I have a shipload of souls to look after. She has Pagano Doria.” Nicholas said nothing more.

It was cold on the water. As soon as the oarsmen started to pull, Nicholas got a flask from his pouch, took a long swallow and, wiping its mouth, held it out. Godscalc hesitated, and then, accepting it, did the same. The strength of the spirit surprised him into coughing. He passed the flask back, but although Nicholas drank from it twice more in short, savage snatches, he didn’t share it again. Nor did he appear to be watching his ship. Instead, all the time he kept his eyes on the long seawall of Stamboul as it began to come nearer. Behind it stood the dome of the Holy Wisdom, once the greatest church in the world. Nicholas said, “What does it tell you, this place?”

Godscalc looked at him. The flask, tilted a little, had made a spreading stain on the man’s dark felt cloak. Godscalc said, “You want a sermon on human weakness, greed, courage? A history lesson? It tells me what all cities have to tell.”

“All cities?” said Nicholas. “I thought this was the New Rome, the new Jerusalem; the second Mecca?” He lifted the flask again and checked, meeting Godscalc’s brown eyes.

They were getting near. Godscalc said, “Must we? Well then, yes, you are right, it is a special case. Zeus and Jupiter. The Latin God, the Greek God, the Muslim God. A spiritual stew. The reek is one I am used to; I need a smell to diagnose illness, as Tobie does. Why, does it worry you?” It was, under the circumstances, an extraordinary conversation.

Nicholas turned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I only feel an abomination somehow in the air.”

They were among the guard ships, and turbanned men were baying at them. Godscalc said, “Because of the Turks? Doria?” He saw Nicholas express a convulsive and irritable negative. It seemed to restore him, like a sneeze. The reek, not of spiritual decadence but of alcohol rose from his person.