The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [85]
Godscalc went first. Behind him, Nicholas said in a voice thickened but perfectly sane, “After winning, the Sultan made a gift of four hundred Greek children to the rulers of Egypt and Tunis and Granada. I thought I saw a dead child. I felt as if a wave of doom were waiting to fall on me.”
“Well, it is,” Godscalc said. “But we all expect you to deal with it. So get on board that galley, and act.”
Bound and bleeding in the cooking quarter of the Ciaretti, Julius heard Godscalc’s voice through the Turkish babble from the flotilla outside. He was speaking in Flemish, and Julius, with what he could muster of viciousness, hoped that the person he spoke to was Nicholas.
At present, what remained of his mind was equally divided in hatred between Pagano Doria his tormentor, and Nicholas, the conceited clown who had allowed this to happen.
As instructed, the Ciaretti had taken its time about rowing the last miles to the Horn. It had not been difficult. As instructed, they had not resisted hailing and boarding, even though it had occurred before they had even dropped anchor. Instead of customs searchers and harbour officials, they had been boarded by Janissaries: silent, muscular men with white felt hats and an armoury of weapons, sharp and blunt, which they used. With them was a soft-spoken man called Tursun Beg, in a fur cloak over a long buttoned robe and a cap with a turban wound round it.
The ill-treatment had begun immediately, when they found the priest and patron were missing. They knew the name Niccolò. John le Grant had been slammed out of his senses for failing to follow the dragoman’s distorted Italian and had yet to come to himself. Julius, although he hastened to answer, had received two blows to the face and, when he resisted, a kicking that had ended when they dropped him here, his arms and legs bound. Behind him, scorching his back, was the oven. And beyond that was the cooking fire, with a pair of tongs in it. They were used to getting co-operation.
Above him on the deck of the poop, all the senior officers of the ship had been collected together and made to stand in the open, encircled by men with axes, maces, daggers and pikes. Among them was Tobie. The rest were the Florentine complement. Other armed men occupied the length of the gangway, back to back and facing the uneasy oarsmen, who still sat, one or two on each bench, as when they rowed in. One or two, instead of three. This was a trireme. From below came the hollow sound of voices and footsteps, as the rest of the boarding party worked their way through the stores in the hold.
Tursun Beg looked like a man who could count. Lying burning and freezing, his hair in the dung from the beasts in the stable beside him, Julius peered up at the Turk and his dragoman and answered everything that they asked. He told them that Messer Nicholas the patron and his holy man would be returning. They had merely hired a ferry across to Pera, where the patron had a married kinswoman. He gave the name of the kinswoman’s husband, the Genoese Pagano Doria, but it effected no change in the dark disinterested face with its neat black moustache.
The next question should have been about the number and origin of his oarsmen. Instead it was an order to summon before Tursun Beg the notary Julius, and the engineer-captain John le Grant.
Amazed, he had gazed up through swollen eyes at his questioner. The mace had already sunk into his ribs when he saw Loppe moving weightily forward and heard his voice, in sonorous Arabic, launching into a reply in his place.
Seen from below, Loppe was the size and width of the mainmast. He was also, unusually, stripped to the waist. Above the white drawers, his muscles were shapely as unbarrelled pitch. He turned and, talking still, stabbed a finger first towards Julius and then towards the unconscious form of le Grant.
Breathing was painful, but ignorance was much worse. Julius scraped up some breath and croaked, “What is it?”
Loppe looked at the robed