The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [88]
Loppe, glancing nervously at him, returned his attention to Tursun Beg who was asking a question. Nicholas prodded the negro again. “Aren’t you? What’s big black eunuch in Turkish? Want to help row us to Trebizond? Give you three boys.”
“Messer Niccolò,” said Loppe, turning fully. What Tobie could see of his face looked mildly desperate. He said, “My lord Tursun Beg asks where the rowers are. The benches are half empty.”
Nicholas stared at him. The necessity for keeping his weight on both feet evidently escaped him and he sat down, delayed by his cloak, in the water. It ran under le Grant and stopped him choking. Nicholas embraced his knees with one hand and waved the other. “Well, tell him! All the officers had to row, and we had a wager.”
He sang to himself while Loppe translated, and answered questions, and the damp, cold wind stirred his hair and his clothes and made Tobie, watching, suddenly shiver. Then there was silence.
Tursun Beg had turned from the Negro. For a moment, his black eyes considered Nicholas. Then he gave an order. Two men, reaching, jerked Nicholas viciously to his feet and held him, painfully. Nicholas stopped singing. Then Tursun spoke; and this time the dragoman translated. The dragoman said, “You are to answer. Half your rowers are missing.”
“That’s right,” Nicholas said. “Three girls and a…You didn’t row.” He looked indignant.
“Where are the rowers?” said the dragoman.
Nicholas looked surprised. “Well. All over the Aegean and Marmara. With their families. In Paradise. We did take on others, but they kept deserting.”
“Paradise?” said the dragoman.
“Giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said Nicholas generously.
“The honoured Tursun Beg means, messer padrone, do you say that some oarsmen died? How did they die?”
“They made a good death,” said Nicholas. “Ask the chaplain over there. Repented, all of them, to a man. We buried some overboard. Look, I’m wet.”
“Of what did they die?” said the dragoman. His voice, in its urgency, was nearly as peremptory as that of Tursun Beg.
“I don’t know,” said Nicholas. “I’m going to change. Didn’t you look in the ballast? We sanded up two of them there, to last until we get to Trebizond. That’s where they came from, and that’s where they wished to be buried. We didn’t have any Turks. I know how to bury a Turk. I’ve seen it. Under a hat on a gravestone. Maestro Cappello, Madonna Cappello, Bambino Cappellino. Funeral musica di cappella. Mourning wisps of capello. Cap—cap—cap that, my caprone,” said Nicholas. Tobie stopped trembling and stood, suddenly, very still. He felt himself flushing.
Tursun Beg, on the contrary, was sallow. He jerked his head and Nicholas was pushed, talking, towards his own cabin. Two of the Turk’s companions lifted the hatch and climbed for the second time down below. They came back very quickly: so quickly that their faces were white. And they called their news, in Turkish, from the hatch. News that struck, like a blow, everyone within hearing. News that transformed the whole ship.
Like tacks to a magnet, the living pattern of men filling the end-decks and gangway and benches of the great galley Ciaretti rearranged itself. Those who belonged to the ship stood where they were, looking about them. Those who did not, began to move with the first words of the announcement, springing away from both captives and oarsmen; leaving clear the tight groups of officials at poop and at stern. Nicholas, in a dry doublet, had come out of the stern castle with both hose in his hands and was trying to stand on one foot while he assumed them. Tursun Beg saw him and turned. He shouted.
The dragoman swallowed. He said, “My master says, do you not know that you carry the plague?” The rumble of horrified voices rose and fell all about him.
“The plague?” Nicholas said. “It’s the goats. Well, it’s Messer Julius now as well. There’s no smell from the ballast. Two good dry corpses,