The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  “Why?” he himself had said to Godscalc. “They prayed to the All-Holy Hodigitria, to the Invincible Champion, the Breachless Wall, the City’s safeguard, Mary Mother of God. How could a city so sacred come to fall?” And Godscalc had had no answer to give him. Unless it was that Constantinople, when it succumbed, had begun to forget that despotism also needs justice; and had begun to learn the uses of force, and the practices of the East.

  But this was Trebizond. And the business in hand was to pray to St Eugenios. The church, when they climbed to its ridge, was lit by the mellow sun from the west, so that its painted procession of emperors looked earthy and rich behind the lace and the gold of the churchmen awaiting them; and the drum of the dome cast its shadow towards the old hill of Mithras and its denuded shrine. Turning before he went in (for this time, they were admitted), Tobie saw the flat roofs of the City, bowered in green, descending in profile before him from the mountains on his left to the hazy blue of the Euxine, low and deep on his right. He could glimpse the harbour at Daphnous, and the flag of St George over the Leoncastello, but the sea was empty of all moving life but the small flecks of fishing boats; and the distant headland at Platana was insubstantial as smoke.

  Somewhere beyond there, a hundred miles from where he stood, was Kerasous and its Amazon island, the place of cherries, where Julius waited with their galley and all their wealth. Somewhere further west still was a Turkish fleet, perhaps sailing towards them. Nicholas said, “Are you coming in? Or would you like the metropolitan to come outside specially?”

  He was expensively dressed, and looked rather unlike himself. It crossed Tobie’s mind to wonder if he liked or disliked religious observance. He said, walking in, “I don’t see Doria.”

  “No. You’ll see him tomorrow,” was all Nicholas said.

  The spectacle in honour of St Eugenios was held the following day in the stadium of the Tzucanisterion, a mile west of the City. Close to the sea but lifted a little above it, the place caught what cool air might be stirring. It was also near to St Sophia, its tower and its well-endowed monastery, whose kitchens were excellent.

  The game which the Persians called chawgan, the Greeks tzukanion, still preserved, in the Byzantine Empire, some trace of its exclusive pedigree, and was always held last. There preceded it, that afternoon, equestrian sport and display at its most handsome, performed by princes upon the small, collected horses, part Arab, part Barb, part Turcoman, in which their stables were rich. And if, in the spear-throwing, the archery, the contests, the excellence of high art was missing, it was still a presentation to lift a saint’s heart: the teams in their matched silks and ribbons on the cedar flour of the immense stadium; the speckled dyes of the people crowding the tiered timber stands; the bold silks and flashing gold of the pavilions set up all round for the court and their servants. The edge of the stadium had been planted with little sweet-smelling bushes and flowers, and the poles of the banners were garlanded.

  Nicholas, having been absent half the afternoon, suddenly alarmed his colleagues by running down the raked stand and seizing a shoulder of each. He was wearing, Tobie observed, a tunic straight from the bath house in green damask lined with white taffeta, its skirts turned back and tied into a belt he had not seen before; and on his feet were white tasselled boots with gilt spurs. “Like it?” said Nicholas. “Porphyrius, wonder of the Blues. You should see my hat.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t make an entry on your accursed camel,” said Tobie. “You mean you’re in someone’s team?”

  Nicholas slid on to the seat beside them, grinning at Loppe. He said, “Yes. I’m on Doria’s side. I have a feeling that neither of us will ever be the same man again.”

  “So that’s the game,” Tobie said. Godscalc remained silent.

  “Well, the game’s tzukanion,” Nicholas said. “You’ll see some courses first run by the court, and the court against Astorre’s men. Then there’s the showpiece.”

  “Yours,” said Tobie. “I suppose they know you can’t ride?”

  “Well, Doria picked me,” said Nicholas. “Along with Amiroutzes’ younger son Basil and a charming half-Genoese lad called Alexios. Oh, I remember. You’ve seen him.”

  “Doria picked you?” said Godscalc.

  The yellow beard, now considerably thicker, accommodated a generous smile. “Well, I couldn’t ride for the other team,” Nicholas said. “That’s the women’s side.” His smile grew wider. “Girls against boys. The Persians thought it romantic. Prince Khusraw and three warriors against the princess Shirin and three of her ladies. Old legend. Khusraw leading his team in green, and Shirin and her girls in cloth of gold. Our cloth of gold, by the way: the stuff we bought to sell for Parenti. They’ll ruin it, too. It’s an exciting game, tzukanion. Killed one emperor and nearly did for another. Parenti’ll get a repeat order, the humanist bastard.”

  “Doria is Khusraw,” said Godscalc. “Who’s Shirin?”

  “Violante of Naxos, who else?” said Nicholas. “Supported by the princess Maria Gattilusi, the mother of Alexios. And the Despoina Anna, the Emperor’s daughter. And, of course, Catherine.”

  Tobie said, “This is what you’ve been planning, then? The only way you can put Doria out of action and get Catherine away?”

  Nicholas said, “Well, he needs to put me out of action. It was the only thing that would coax him out of his foxhole, so far as I could see.”

  Tobie said, “But you’re on the same side.” He was aware that the others were looking pityingly at him. He said, “And what’s more, Doria’s been riding from birth.”

  “And look what it’s got him,” said Nicholas. “Bandy legs and Violante of Naxos. Tobias, my friend.”

  “Yes?” said Tobie guardedly.

  “Heads come off at this game. Opposing teams are surrounded by medical gentlemen whose duty is to bind, sew, saw or otherwise minister. Your services will not be needed. Understood?”

  “Put your hat on,” said Tobie. Loppe was carrying it. It was tall, and white, and had crane’s feathers coming out of the crown. Nicholas sat it on top of his head and Tobie surveyed him. At length Tobie said, “Yes. I agree. I don’t think I could bring myself to come near it.”

  Nicholas gave a wide smile, and went off.

  It became apparent, before the major games were half over, that tzukanion played in the normal way between teams of powerful men was one of the noisiest games in existence. The players, once roused, roared, cursed and snarled in between trying to dislodge one another from the saddle in order to improve their stroke. Hooves thundered, harness rattled. In case silence should fall, the stadium was surrounded by buglers and drummers. The drums set up a war beat that made the horses lay their ears back and roused the spectators to frenzy. The orders to end the phase, or the game, were conveyed by wild and elaborate outbursts of trumpeting. Added to the continual roar of the crowd, it produced something very close to the sound of a pitched battle, which, Tobie thought, was probably the original idea. He was moderately surprised when the heavy games came to an end with only two horses dead and eight injured, and a few broken limbs here and there.

  Attendants came on to the ground and raked and sprayed the dust till it caked and went dark. There was organ music, and some flutes, and a scattering of dwarves came out and tumbled and threw dirt at one another, and a Saracen girl, nearly naked, stood on a great coloured bladder and danced on it from one end of the ground to the other, while the dwarves beat her with feathers. Grooms bustled in behind the rails with strings of fresh ponies, and pages took off the broken sticks and, running back, resumed their places all round the stadium with replacements held ready. The bamboo they were made of was whippy, and the mallet head was fixed to the end like a foot. In the stadium, they had repainted the gold lines at either end over which the ball had to be driven, to score points of credit. The ball was also bright gold.

  The women’s team, riding on first, was received by a modified silence, which represented, it would appear, the customary mark of re
spect. As was court practice, the noblewomen rode astride, but without the enveloping mantles with which it was customary to make seemly their mounting and dismounting. Instead, they were dressed like the men’s team in short-skirted tunics, but worn over trousers and boots in the Persian style. Like the men, too, their horses had their tails ribboned and tightly bound, and their own hair was the same; braided and tied back with laces under gilded, winged helms like those of classical heroes. In the left hand, each girl grasped a riding cane, with her pony’s reins wrapped round her fingers or over her elbow. In her right, the bamboo stood, slim and straight as the lance in a phalanx. The little, deep-chested horses paced under them; the cloth of gold burned and twinkled like armour, and it was hard to know which of them to look at: from the exact beauty of Violante, the leader, to the olive skin and dark hair of widowed Maria the Genoese princess; from the haunted, imperious face of fourteen-year-old Anna to the youngest, Catherine de Charetty, sitting her pony as if she sat on a cushion, her eyes bright as the sea and the blood rich and high in her cheeks.

  Doria, trotting on with his three young men, carefully chosen, smiled at his wife as they met at the central line, and the two teams performed the required courtesies. Vivid, glowing with confidence, the sea prince wore both the silk and the cranes’ feathers with the careless dash that had always ensured him the admiration of women. The Treasurer’s son, a big youth of whom Tobie knew nothing, had a face that was both heavy and wary. The boy Alexios was all that he remembered. The high-necked, narrow tunic with its gilded buttons and belt might have been designed to show off the fairness he had received from his Imperial father. His dead, loose-living father who had, one assumed, imprinted some of the faint lines of melancholy on the exquisite face of Maria, his mother. They lifted as Alexios rode over, and Maria smiled at her son, and then at Nicholas, who rode beside him. Genoese. Why had he forgotten in the unpleasantness over the bath house that these people were Genoese, as Doria was?

  Then the trumpets produced a piercing flourish, and someone threw the ball in. Horses stamped; competing sticks clashed. With a snap, Doria’s mallet contacted the ball and it bounded forward, towards the women’s half of the field. His little horse followed, with that of Violante of Naxos scampering at its side. Faster still, the girl Anna whirled and swept ahead of them both in a long protective arc, followed by the streaming plumes and golden hair of Alexios, marking her. The widowed princess Maria, expertly wheeling, drove her horse up to support her duelling leader, while the son of Amiroutzes turned sharply to hinder her.

  Nicholas, the biggest man on the field, cantered helpfully in the rear. He looked cheerful, and also unaware that Catherine de Charetty was riding towards him with her chin on her horse’s neck, glaring. Tobie said, “He’ll fall off. Are they allowed to do that?” Ahead, Doria’s horse staggered as it took the full sideways weight of another and, for a moment, the ball ran untended. Turning, Alexios wheeled and started to make for it, with the youngest princess hard in pursuit. His mother, moving swiftly, blocked her son’s passage. For a moment, their horses blundered together, as they strove with their mallets. Then there was a crack and the ball rose, a speck of gold, into the air.

  Catherine, arrived with a crash at her stepfather’s flank, found the flank revolve at her side as he pulled his horse round with his knees. For two strides they chafed side by side. Then, swiftly collected, the other horse bounded off, punching the ground, at a tangent. The largest mount there, it thundered over the ground like a warhorse, flinging up gouts of woodflour and earth. After a startled moment, Catherine flung her pony after it, with the other women streaming behind. The speck of gold, knowing its business, fell precisely to the right of Nicholas’s saddle. The mallet head, already swinging, connected. Ahead, Doria suddenly laughed. As the ball rose in the air, he collected his horse and, watching it over his shoulder, began to race towards the women’s end of the field. When it fell, he was galloping smoothly beside it. With no one to interfere, he leaned just a little, his eye on the ball, his left hand lightly guiding the reins. Then his right arm rose and scooped the long mallet in a hard, graceful stroke. The impact, so far off, was soundless. But the ball flew, hard and straight as a bee, and was still travelling when it crossed the far golden line. The team of the men, Khusraw, had scored.

  The trumpets blew, the drums banged, and everyone screamed. Tobie, finding himself standing, sat down again. Astorre, who had arrived behind him, sat down as well and said, “They’re allowed to do anything. When the Mamelukes play, they get out their swords. So, heh?”

  Godscalc was smiling at him. “He didn’t fall off,” he said.

  Astorre didn’t even treat the question as serious. “I should hope not,” he said. “After all the hog-spearing I put him through. And what he doesn’t know, the horse does. They’re all palace horses.”

  Tobie said, “But how did…?”

  “Quiet. They’ve begun again. You know,” said Astorre, “I could have done something with that little girl Catherine. Look at that. It’s a pity she’s spending all her time hindering Nicholas.”

  It was a pity because, all too clearly, Nicholas was not going to retaliate with the actions that would unsaddle her or bring her horse down; whereas she would try to do both whenever they neared one another. The game was fast, because most of the players were young and light and their horses were trained to think for their riders. The play streamed from one end of the stadium to the other and from side to side; and you could see how quickly the four girls and the four men were learning to read one another.

  More than most games, this one exposed character. Violante ruled her team, giving no quarter to the princesses who were her equals. The widow Maria, compact and skilful, appeared to take no offence. It was a game, you would say, she had played very often but liked, perhaps, for the distraction it offered rather than any intrinsic pleasure. Anna, on the other hand, surrendered herself to the sport: hovering between ecstasy and despair, she would sometimes scream back at her team mates. Her horse was always the first to tire: she had replaced it twice before her team-leader needed to change her pony at all. The player who should have been worth watching was Catherine. Eager, child-boned, flexible, she moved her horse’s muscles with her own, without, it seemed, need for thought. Dressed in cloth of gold before thousands; playing with princesses at a sport in which she excelled, she should have been euphoric. When matters went well, you could see that she was. At other times, her whip, her mallet, her spur would be commanded furiously to her aid. Supremely, of course, against Nicholas. But quite often, it seemed, against her husband as well.

  Oddly, despite her strictness with the others, Violante let all this pass. Nor did Nicholas change his temperate play, although he could hardly ignore what was happening; nor, of course, was Catherine his only opponent. The jabs, the cuts, the bruises, he withstood, it appeared, with his native stoicism. By the halfway mark, he had been thrown by a horse brought to its knees by another man’s blow; but others, too, had had falls just as violent, and even Doria, leaning to take a difficult shot under his pony’s neck, had collided with someone and fallen quite hard. You couldn’t tell, in such a large ground, who was to blame, or if anyone was, and so far no one had been crushed or kicked or rolled upon badly. It was not to say that they didn’t all show damage of some sort when the halfway mark arrived; and they trotted back to dismount, and take water and towels from the pages and throw themselves, panting, on the seats brought for them, while the ponies, drooping, were led away and replacements brought out. It was a violent game, even scaled down for women.

  Tobie said, “Do you want to go down and speak?”

  “To Nicholas?” said Astorre. “What could I tell him?”

  “To watch out for Catherine,” Tobie said.

  Astorre snorted. “That little madam could do with a thrashing; but she hasn’t the muscle to throw him. No. It’s two at once that he’s got to look out for.”

  “The two older women? The Genoese and her son? You
ought to tell him.”

  “No, no. He knows. It was the Amiroutzes boy that brought him down that time. Basil. Neatly done, too.”

  Of course. Doria had picked his own team. Amiroutzes and Alexios. A lethal combination. Leaving Doria to play like a gentleman. Indeed, to play as if he and Nicholas had been teamed together all their lives.

  Astorre said. “And he’s lucky, whatever you think, to have that pretty bath boy on his side. It was him that got the good lord Doria down on his neck. He’s saved Nicholas once or twice.”

  “Alexios?” said Tobie. He was unused to Astorre seeing more of any game than a doctor did.

  “The pretty one. You’d think his mother’d object, but she doesn’t seem to be taking sides, except as much as she ought for the game. Her husband slept with his own sister. You don’t wonder if the boys get into habits. All the same. If Doria’s to be got rid of, there isn’t much time left to do it. He’s a good gamesman, I will say that,” said Astorre. “And he’s soft, that boy of ours. I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t sorry he’s got to do it.”

  Godscalc turned his head. Irritated, Tobie said, “After what Doria did to him and Julius at Vavuk? In any case, Nicholas doesn’t need to kill him; just put him out of public life for a day or two or a dozen.” He refused to look at Godscalc. He was irritated because he knew Astorre was right. A blind man could see that Nicholas, despite everything, was in his element. And that part of the reason was the game Doria was giving him.

  It was even clearer by the time the course resumed, because they had fresh horses, and were rested, and were able to play with all the knowledge they had acquired in the first half. And again, you could see, as had happened in the very first moments, how similarly the two minds were working: both quick, both witty; both devious. Suddenly, on the point of careering elsewhere, Nicholas would cut the ball to the side where, mysteriously, Doria would be already waiting. Or Doria, under attack, would back-hand the ball under his horse’s tail to where Nicholas, anticipating, had already pivoted ready to punt it off in the opposite direction.