The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  As had been arranged long before, Nicholas freed from the Florentine villa all the Greek servants who wished to go to their families. The numbers left now were not large: Godscalc and Tobie, with their assistants and their personal servants; Loppe, with those who helped feed and run the household; Patou and his clerks, in the absence of Julius. Twenty-five people, where once he had had charge of a galley-load. With the sudden change in his burden and the promise of action at last, Nicholas found his spirits soar to the skies, as if he had spent all day drinking. The others (all but Godscalc) seemed to catch the same mood, shouting and joking as they moved their belongings from the fondaco to the Middle Citadel, and the house and storeroom John had taken for them before he left. The Venetians, an even smaller company, were already there; and Astorre, who had lived with his men in the Upper Citadel for many weeks now. As soon as they were ready, Nicholas left, with Tobie and Astorre, to climb the garrison tower, and watch the Turkish fleet sailing up.

  The new keep occupied the highest point of the Citadel; higher even than the white and gold of the Palace. From its battlements, they looked down on the roofs and gardens, towers and church domes of Trebizond, cascading down to the sea, white and green, red and gold; and its narrow alleys choked with milling people and bundles and beasts. Soon, the iron gates to the Upper Citadel would be closed, and then the gates dividing the middle from the lower part. The reinforced garrison along the shore wall was long since in place and the moats filled. Armed men glinted, like sequins, wherever you looked.

  From Paraskeuas, purveyor of useless information, they knew that the Genoese community, too large to house under any one roof, had disposed of itself in small households all over the City. The seamen were to sleep in the open. Pagano Doria with Crackbene his shipmaster and the chief officers of his round ship, oarless and dismasted like all the rest, had taken a house in the St Andrew quarter, near the eastern ravine and the shore.

  His hand shading his eyes, Tobie said, “St Andrew, of course. He evangelised Trebizond, and the Golden Fleece used to meet on his feast day. If his head’s got to Rome, it may do more good than Ludovico da Bologna. D’you think our Genoese friend still thinks he’s Jason? One thing is sure: if it comes to a famine, Willequin in pies will be Doria’s first standby.”

  “She took him with her,” said Nicholas. “The camel will run like the wind.”

  “You sent Catherine on the camel? On Chennaa?” said Tobie.

  “If she can ride a horse, she can ride a camel. The cough mixture worked.”

  “It ought to,” said Tobie. “I had a teacher at Pavia whose uncle had been a Mameluke prisoner. They made him a camel doctor. He just treated camels like people. They get everything but—”

  “—the hump. I can guess. The fishermen, God damn them, haven’t come in yet.”

  “You can’t force them,” said Tobie. “Unless you burn their boats and their nets. When the Turks invested Belgrade, they took packs of dogs to eat up the Christian corpses.”

  “Dogs don’t like ships,” Nicholas said.

  “They promised safety to everyone after Mistra, and still killed six thousand people. They flay alive, and behead, and impale. They saw people in half.”

  “So they do. But here, they can’t cross the ravines and they can’t reach us with any weapon at all, even arrows,” Nicholas said. “To get sawn in half, you’d have to be really quite careless.”

  “They could reach us with cannon. The battery they used at Constantinople threw balls of twelve hundred pounds, and the largest Greek helepoli can only manage a hundred and fifty.”

  “They could, if their ships could carry anything but light naval guns. They can’t reach us. They can only starve us out. And we’ve food for three months. Go on. I can feel my hair turning white.”

  “And they’re ingenious. At Constantinople they put their fleet on to rollers and took it overland behind the Greek lines,” said Tobie reflectively.

  Nicholas laughed and said nothing. Tobie said, “To get here today, that fleet out there has already passed Kerasous and the Ciaretti. Or didn’t pass, and stopped, and killed John and Julius and Catherine and took all our cargo. And the camel. Damn you, why aren’t you worried?”

  “I don’t need to be. You’re doing my share. If you really want to know,” said Nicholas, “the Ciaretti is lying dismantled and covered with bushes on the sacred isle of the Amazons, with hideous sounds and fiery portents to discourage anyone from landing. That’s why John had to go. All you have to do is hope that Julius and he can put the boat together again. Lie down.”

  “What?” said Tobie.

  “Lie down. Here’s the Emperor and his holy procession, come to pray at the walls.”

  “There isn’t room,” Tobie said.

  “There is, if we lie on top of one another. Kiss his boot and remember. He is God’s vicar on earth, and gods never lose. The Grand Comneni will be here for ever.”

  “As in Constantinople?” Tobie said. A basil twig hovered, and drops of holy water blessed his bald head. The sandals and buskins moved on.

  “Those weren’t the Grand Comneni,” said Nicholas, his voice muffled. “And we weren’t in Constantinople at the time, although John on his own didn’t do badly. What in God’s name was all that nonsense about?”

  “Nothing,” said Tobie, dusting his knees. “Only, sometimes when I think of what you and John get up to, I wonder if you really know what your goading could bring on us.”

  “I know,” said Nicholas humbly. “A real wave of Turkish resentment.”

  All afternoon they stood and watched, like men at a play. On the sea far below, the strange ships drifted together, light as suds, coalescing on the blue moving water to the distant tuck of a drum. Then the drums stopped. A trumpet squealed, and the headsails came down in a crackling patter. Then there were only bare masts tilting in unison, and slanting green Ottoman flags, each with its gold waning moon, to mark the night of the Sultan’s great victory. For a moment, such quietness fell that the forest birdsong could be heard, hung like a cloth between city and mountains. In the eastern gorge, the harp voice of a nightingale made a statement and then developed it, contending with other courting, preening, ritual voices, brought by the wind: Allah-u Akbar; Allah-u Akbar; la ilaha ill-Allah. The imâms, invoking Allah in prayer.

  On all the roofs of the city, people stood, their arms about one another, and watched the flotilla as the carpet of worshippers stirred, roused and began to disperse. Of the ships, there were too many to count. Big galleys: long two-masted triremes like the Ciaretti; biremes with their single masts; and a swarm of longboats, sloops, cutters, transports now beginning to move up for the disembarkation. Leading them, with a gilded prow and a personal flag flying from the stern, was the sloop of the admiral, Kasim Pasha, governor of Gallipoli, and Yakub his sailing-master. Tobie said, “There they go. I tell you. They’re going to ask Allah to tie you to four mating camels and allow them a wish with your breastbone.”

  Nicholas shrugged, grinning. But Godscalc said, “They came in, the fishermen. Why? What has Nicholas done?”

  It was Astorre who answered, his glittering eyes fixed on the shore. “Him and John: they’re a pair of devils. You see that Turkish rabble coming ashore? Paid volunteers and bashibazouk irregulars, that’s all they are. They expect to pillage, and they’re allowed to. So they spend the first day or two claiming their houses. Pick a villa and stick a flag on it, and then get down to the gold and the food and the women.”

  “There aren’t any,” said Godscalc.

  “But they don’t know that,” said Astorre. “There are houses. They’ll go into them.”

  “You’ve left traps?”

  “Watch,” said Astorre. He punched Nicholas on the back. “I don’t know. You’ll do it to us one of these days, and I’ll know I should have cut your throat, back there in Bruges.”

  “I’ll give you warning,” Nicholas said.

  Astorre’s eyes were still on him. He said, “She’s a grand
woman, the demoiselle. You and her, you can count on Astorre.”

  Without turning, Nicholas smiled: the wide, unstinted smile of his boyhood. “I know,” he said. “Look. It’s beginning.”

  Of course John, who understood the whole scheme, was at Kerasous. Astorre had taken a more than vigorous share, and the Greek commander had supplied engineers, and Tobie himself, now and then, had stumbled across some of the more esoteric of the pitfalls Nicholas had arranged for the followers of the Prophet in the eastern suburb of Trebizond. For most of it, he was hardly prepared. The first of the longboats slid on to the coarse pebbled shore: the Turks leapt ashore, turbanned, booted, their coats tucked into their cotton breeches, their short curved blades in the air, and scattered, stumbled, and fell fiat before a series of sharp explosions. The approaching boats veered; the agitated shouts of the landing parties could be heard from the tower. Groups of men, reluctant details, set off over the beaches, weapons in hand. “Tripwires and gunpowder,” Nicholas said. “Watch the sheds.”

  The sheds contained a counterlever system involving timber and rocks. Searching for hidden handgunners, the advance parties suffered. An officer, using his wits, set a party to clearing and testing the beach, after which the incoming flotilla was waved on. Filing ashore, the troops were collected in bands and given instructions. Astorre sniggered. “Watch out for tripwires and levers,” he said. “And much good may it do them.”

  “There’s more?” Godscalc said.

  There was more. Sometimes Astorre explained, sometimes Tobie. Seven feet deep, covered mantraps had been dug in the roads, and the dirt floors of houses. Crossbows had been carefully set up, and triggered by twine. There was a bull in one orchard; a wild boar in another. Where one of the steep slopes invited running, a thin, murderous wire had been stretched; there was a cartload of stones ready to sweep down another. Pulley systems existed, geared to unload a killing series of objects, from sacks of dirt to vats of blistering oil. All of them gnat bites to an invading army; but humiliating gnat bites that caused disarray; engendering caution and a disinclination to jump to orders. Across the ravine, the roar of men’s voices was continuous, as the disembarked men raggedly invested the suburb, absorbing mishap and accident, expressing frustration or excitement. Sometimes a prize had been abandoned or forgotten, and a sudden clamour would emerge. What they found they mobbed, like crows over meat.

  On the other side of the gorge, the people of Trebizond watched. Now the enemy had reached the buildings and trees of the suburb, their movements could be followed mostly by sound, with occasional glimpses of turbans racing across the space of the Meidan, or on roofs, or within a garden or yard. Tobie said, “Is that all?”

  “No,” said Nicholas. He looked expectant, and solemn. Tobie was wondering why, when the explosions began.

  Where exactly they took place could not be seen. Only, somewhere among the villas and trees on the other side of the gorge, there would appear a cloud of black smoke, a toss of flame and a roar, loud as a cannon, followed by screaming. Astorre listened, satisfaction on his face. “Candles,” he said. “This fellow here had them moulding tallow like squirrels. Burning down, you see, at different rates into barrels of gunpowder. Kill the whoresons already inside, and ruin the houses for living in.” Some of the explosions were coloured, like joy-fire. Some were preceded by a sequence of other sharp noises, as if a teasing trail of some sort had been added. After the first, the men on the Trebizond rooftops began to mark each with a hard cheer. What they were seeing was the destruction of their own houses. They cheered defiantly.

  After the fifth or sixth blast, when the fires had taken hold and were beginning to spread, the shouting over the gorge changed in character, as a hive changes its mood. Nicholas said, “They’ve had enough. They want to shoot arrows at us, even if they fall into the gorge. With any luck, they’ll waste quite a lot.”

  “The wave of resentment,” said Tobie. He watched the white-wrapped cones rush together and flow down the ridge on the opposite side until stopped by the wall on the far side of the ravine that separated them from the City. Even at such a distance, the faces had moustaches and eyes, and the collarless shirts were smeared black and red. Fists high above heads were shaking crooked sabres and lances and bows. They stood in a line at the wall, glaring over the gulf: a hedge solid with hatred. Then the hedge was uprooted.

  The explosions had their source in the houses immediately behind the intent, angered men. The detonations took place one by one, so that no sooner had one whirlwind of brick and stone flung itself into the air than the next one had followed it; finely timed as good clockwork. The white-capped forms lining the wall fell askew and were flattened, like wooden pins hit by a ball; except that this impact turned everything red. A spray of blood coloured the brick of the rampart, and began to run down it. Fire rose, and hung in the air like a cloth. Nicholas said, “War without fire is worth nothing; like sausages without mustard.”

  The quotation was lost on Astorre. “You did it!” he said. His voice was hoarse with awe and excitement. Below, from the walls and roofs of the City, there had arisen cries of fierce pleasure. Godscalc turned.

  Nicholas returned his gaze without flinching. Nicholas remarked, in distinct conversational Flemish, “Gathering credit in Heaven for purging the land of the infidel. But, you will say, is this the way a man of honour would take? Tricks and treachery? But yes, I shall reply, for how else has the heathen ever dealt with our kind? And what do the means matter, so long as the good of God’s Church is preserved? But, you will say—”

  “How dare you presume to know what I will say?” said Father Godscalc.

  “Since you dare to criticise, it is my privilege,” Nicholas said.

  “You are sensitive,” Godscalc said, “if to look at you is now an offence. I am going back to the house. It is going to be a long siege, and I need to gather my stomach for it.”

  They watched him go down. Tobie said, “I’m not sure I liked that. Any of it.”

  Astorre spat. “First day nerves. He saw plenty of men blown to pieces at Sarno. And he’s a good fighter, too.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Nicholas said. “So long as he picks the right people to fight.”

  Later, he went down with the others, and when he saw the priest next, neither referred to what had occurred. Publicly, their relationship was no different. Privately, the man who was waiting still waited; and the man who kept away continued to do so.

  The siege began, and the City of Trebizond settled down to endure it.

  Chapter 36

  THE STIFLING HEATS OF July embraced warring Europe, and chain mail and plate armour, skin tunic and thick wadded canvas all weltered in hot brine and blood. In struggling England, the Yorkist leader was crowned Edward IV, and George and Richard his juvenile brothers were created respectively the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. In Rome, cardinals fled from the poisonous humours, and the Curia packed up its vellum. The Holy Father received a visit from his godson Giovanni da Castro, former dyemaster at Constantinople; embraced the dear fellow many times and then departed to stay for three months in the fresh air of Tivoli. The Minorite Order of Franciscans gave him lodgings, and all the lords on his way proffered protection. “What fairer sight than troops in battle array?” said Pope Pius, affected.

  In France, his jaws jammed, old King Charles VII died of starvation, having given his last living audience (but no money) to Fra Ludovico da Bologna and his little party of grotesque Eastern delegates. They stayed for his funeral. In Genappe, the Dauphin Louis ordered a requiem mass for his father and, dressed in red and white, spent the afternoon hunting.

  In England, the unsuccessful Lancastrian party waited to see if the new King Louis XI would spare them an army, but received nothing but promises. In Genoa, where there had occurred a quick change of doge, there was some edgy (and more realistic) speculation over the chances of the new King Louis sending troops to turn the Adorno and the Fregoso and every other native faction indiscriminately
out of the city. In France itself, there was a convulsion of dreadful unease, as the old court prepared to receive their new hated king Louis: the friend of Burgundy, the protected of Burgundy and now, no doubt, the puppet of Burgundy.

  From their places abroad, the refugees friendly to Louis began, with discretion, to return to their estates and their holdings in France. Among the first to arrive was Jordan de St Pol, vicomte de Ribérac; father of the fair, handsome and short-tempered Simon. Left in command of his Scots lands at last, Simon de St Pol expressed his relief in a week-long bout of tumultuous drinking, to the frustration of his wife Katelina whose bed was worn through already with the hours she brought him to spend there, although so far without profit. When she heard he was to go overseas, she would hardly leave him alone. Simon, whose vigour was considerable, was both pleased and amused. And she was quite right. One son was not enough. He would not, however, agree to take her with him to Italy.

  Gregorio, the Charetty lawyer, had of course left for Italy ten weeks before, with the intention of stopping between Dijon and Geneva, rumour said, to collect and escort his employer, the former widow Marian de Charetty. The word from Bruges was that the elder daughter Mathilde, the one left with Anselm Adorne, had insisted on going as well. The object, of course, as Simon knew, was to untangle the marriage between the other girl and his agent Doria. He wished them well of it. He had intended to follow himself until his father had pointed out how unwise it would be. Fat father Jordan. Bloated father Jordan, who had reinforced the argument by withdrawing all Simon’s spending money and closing his credit, so that he couldn’t get away even if he had wanted to.