The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  But now he could. The hog had gone back to the beechmast of Ribérac and would be too busy rebuilding his wealth to worry about Simon, who had a filled cog out there somewhere in the Black Sea, and a Genoese agent who seemed to be spending more time on his own affairs than on Simon’s, and who well might be pocketing the profits Simon needed to cut himself free from the old man. After he had repaid to the old man the original price of the cog and all it contained. As fat father Jordan had stipulated. Fat father Jordan, whom he loathed as much as he and his father had cause to loathe the upstart labourer Claes. Jordan who spied on him. After he, Simon, found out about the woman Agnès, he had told Katelina to get rid of her. And when she demurred, he had set his grooms at the old whore, who had made as much fuss as if she’d been a virgin and then fled to his father. There were plenty of women to look after Henry. What did it matter? There would be other sons, now. He had never known a woman so eager, so delightfully eager as his wife Katelina van Borselen.

  In Florence, the sea consul Antonio di Niccolò Martelli received word of the arrival from Bruges of the Charetty company and, representing his colleagues the Medici, arranged a business meeting with the Charetty lawyer Gregorio, a dark, youngish man with a nose like a scimitar. To Messer Gregorio he was able to deliver the news that a round ship had just departed Pisa for Bruges containing a cargo of Phocoean alum consigned from Constantinople by Messer Zorzi on the instructions of the Charetty company.

  The lawyer Gregorio, receiving the news, thanked the consul serenely while opening the letters the consul had kept for him. Martelli admired his composure. With the demand for alum now reaching the skies, the profit from this single cargo from Zorzi would pay for the purchase of the Medici galley. The debt to the lord Cosimo de’ Medici was now cancelled.

  Then the lawyer Gregorio, reading his letters, had lifted his head and said, “This is also good news. Our master Niccolò, writing in May from Trebizond, tells of successful sales and a large purchase of Caspian silk from the first caravan train from Tabriz.”

  “The Golden Fleece! Your fortunes are made!” said Martelli smiling. “My lord Cosimo will be happy to hear it. And your lord is well, and the priest Godscalc?”

  “So it seems,” said the lawyer.

  “And that rascal Doria?” had said the sea consul. “That whoreson Doria? What of him?”

  He had been a little too vehement, and the lawyer looked surprised. Then the man Gregorio had said, “You, too, are no friend of the charming Messer Pagano? Messer Niccolò says very little, but I gather Doria is in Trebizond too, but has not been as successful as he would have wished.”

  “In which your master has had a hand? I am glad,” had said Messer Martelli. “When you go to Venice, speak to Alessandro, my brother. Alessandro, manager of the Venice bank of the Medici. If you wish to travel further east, he will help you.”

  “Thank you. No,” had said the lawyer. “Once in Venice, we shall stay there until we have word of our ship. There is nowhere quicker for messages. And I have accommodation to arrange.”

  “You are sure of your welcome,” had said Messer Martelli, with a curious look. “And Pagano Doria? I am told there has been some strange message from Scotland demanding an enquiry into some marriage he has contracted.”

  “Really?” had said the lawyer Gregorio. “I think you must be mistaken, Messer Martelli. My information is that the good Messer Doria did attempt some such marriage, but that all the papers were false. I am glad for the sake of the girl, whoever she was. A pernicious man. He deserves all the trouble that our Messer Niccolò can bring on him.”

  Then, immediately as it seemed, the Charetty cavalcade left the city before any other encounter could be organised. Madonna Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, hearing later, could hardly restrain her annoyance. “The boy Niccolò’s womenfolk, and I missed them! Because your wife is a fool, do you need to be a fool also, Antonio?” she had asked. And he had stifled the natural reply and changed the subject, for his brother Roberto in Rome was married to one of the Strozzis of London, and family feeling counted for something.

  He said, “Well, the lord Cosimo de’ Medici, it seems, has sniffed out a good bargain again. From the news arriving from Trebizond, the company Charetty look to have made a fair fortune for Florence and themselves.”

  “But will it console the good Cosimo?” said Alessandra Strozzi. “Poor old man, will it fill the gap that a favourite grandson has left? He would give all the gold of the Orient for one day of Cosimino; an hour of his hand on his knee with his whistle.”

  After a week of the noise and the stench: the crackle of fire; the screams and the explosions; the bouncing tumble of woodwork and masonry; the belching of unpleasant smoke, there developed a routine in Trebizond. Now there was little left to destroy in the suburbs, the enemy turned its attention upon the beleaguered Citadel and began to besiege it with sound. In temper, it would use weapons too: sometimes, for no evident reason, arrows would shower across to the shaved inner side of the gorge, or gun muzzles flare and bark uselessly. But mostly the noise was deliberate. Five times through the day and the night the imâms raised their warbling calls, and the throaty chanting would follow. Between times, the Ottoman army set its musicians to work. All the while, the drums beat, day and night, with almost no respite. Cymbals clashed and horns blew and pipes shrilled over and over. The gorges rattled; the solid walls of the City reverberated. At night the inhabitants of Trebizond stuffed cotton into their ears, those who could afford to. The rest stood on watch, hundred upon hundred manning the stout, roomy ramparts and strained their eyes, as their heads throbbed.

  Nicholas thought it was funny. He and Astorre, roving from city to palace, made up verses to go with the drumbeats, and set words to the holy invocations that made even old matrons cackle. They had them sung on the ramparts to music, until men would wait eagerly for the next time of assault in order to drown the Turks’ voices. La Alla; illa Alla; Hazaret-Eesa Ebn-Alla, the defenders would roar, and add a little something about the Prophet Mohammed. When it came to understanding men, Nicholas was a genius.

  Indeed, unlike other times, there was good order within Trebizond for this siege. As soon as it was clear that the thing was going to last, the food and the wine and the wells were all commandeered, with recompense for those who had a surplus; and what the populace needed was handed out fairly. The exception, of course, was the Palace; but no one but Nicholas and Astorre were in a position to see the secret hoards; the greedy haggling that went on from chamber to chamber. The noblemen of the court were the Emperor’s personal friends, and the Vice-Regent of Christ was beyond criticism.

  Nicholas spent half his time at the Palace where he and Astorre were treated as joint ringmasters of some crude but enjoyable circus. The spectacle of the devices which greeted the first Turkish landing had set the tone for the Emperor’s attitude to this little war. For their presumption in landing, the Ottoman soldiers deserved to be teased into slaughter. Of course, many remained. But, bored and disgruntled, they would withdraw when the weather grew rough, while the God-protected Basileus and his circle reclined on the heights, creating satirical poems; hazarding money on the firing pattern of the enemy guns; setting one another perilous quests: to slip at night from the postern and come back with an Ottoman head, or a flag, or a sleeping man’s drawers.

  Eight courtiers lost their lives and two familiar spiked heads gazed at them now from the Ottoman side of the gulf. One of them was that of the elegant man Nicholas had last seen in the baths, having his fingernails tended. Quite recently, the baths had been closed because of the fuel they consumed but, before that, their custom had dwindled. What had taken place with decorum in that elegant setting took place now behind closed doors and curtains, and sprang from the rough promptings of war, and danger, and fear; and not the languid devices of boredom. The professional soldiers revelled in favours. Astorre, while controlling his own men with oaths, took every woman he was offered and three times as many who came unsolic
ited. Nicholas, beset from other quarters, had sought, ingeniously, the highest protection.

  The Emperor had been amused. “You are their talisman. They hope to share your success, your good fortune.”

  “Excellency,” Nicholas had said, “how could I squander something so precious, unless it were upon the highest of altars? And that I cannot do. An astrologer told me.”

  The Emperor had frowned, touching the silk of his beard. “To sacrifice the best to the highest: what can be wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, my lord,” Nicholas had answered with sorrow. “Save that, the astrologer says, the essence of my luck and my carnal being are one and the same. To disperse one disperses both.”

  “Hah!” had said the Emperor. “So you are content to live your life as a celibate? There is a man there. I have seen him.”

  “My life?” had said Nicholas. “My lord, no. When Trebizond rejoices in freedom, so shall I rejoice; for my luck and my essence will be well lost together for joy. Meanwhile, chastity is my offering.”

  “Then,” had said the Emperor after a pause, “we must wish our captains good progress. We commend you. You will report to us daily.”

  Astorre, apprised of the exchange from very particular sources personal to himself, went in search of Nicholas, cackling. “My boy, they’ll take an interest now in their war! Urbino never thought of that, I can tell you! Or Sforza! First prize for winning…”

  “And second prize, yours,” said Nicholas briefly.

  Both of Astorre’s eyes were sparkling. He said, “You’ll have to do it. Will you mind?”

  “How should I know? I’ll give you a detailed report, if you like. Meanwhile, I can get on with the siege without my time being wasted.”

  The smile left Astorre’s face. His beard jutted. He said, “Don’t try that with me. I remember the girls you bedded in Bruges. If you were not who you are, I’d give you three women and tell you to get on with it, wife or no wife. I don’t want to be led by a man going mad from an itch he won’t scratch.”

  Nicholas held up a spread hand. Astorre looked at it. Nicholas said, “When it shakes, you can come and take me off to a brothel. Meantime, I can manage, so long as the dogs don’t object. Am I wrong, or is the change of watch behind time? Perhaps you should see to it.”

  Now and then, after a session with Nicholas, a man would find himself breathing more sharply than usual. But in between, he was everyone’s friend.

  Then, ten days into the siege, he was summoned to the Palace out of turn, and with an urgency missing before. He had grown long used, now, to the morning chamber the Emperor used for his councils, with its verd antique, its mosaics, its belvedere of pillared air overlooking the western gulf and shores of the Empire. It was in the same quarter as the chamber of Violante of Naxos, whom he had not seen for two weeks. Looking round, Nicholas saw that the high officers of war were there, as was usual; and the captain of the Kabasitai as well as Altamourios and the rest of the Emperor’s personal staff and his Protovestarios Amiroutzes, who bent, one foot on the dais step, listening to David, Autocrat of the Romans. He rose, as Nicholas was announced, and waited, as they all did, while he advanced bowing, and lightly made the prostration. Whatever the occasion, nothing ever removed the need for the courtesies. There were no boys, and no churchmen, and no members of the Emperor’s family. The Emperor said, “Sit. We have received news.”

  The council benches were marble, cushioned in silks, and stood in a broken horseshoe before him. Nicholas took his place between the Drungarios and the commander of the Imperial Guard, while Amiroutzes sat at the head of the horseshoe, next to the Basileus on the dais. Once, there had also been an interpreter, but there was no need for that now. He understood them, Nicholas thought, in more ways than perhaps they would care for. Certainly, it was not their business to understand him. Latin merchants and their mercenaries were, in the end, only paid labour, in their obscene hose and outlandish tunics and cropped hats, fit for cheap slaves and seamen. The Emperor said, “We are divided in our opinion; and since the Ottoman is adopting the western fashion of war, it seems to us that the view of one from that world would be beneficial.”

  Without daily exercise, the Emperor had increased a little in girth. Amiroutzes, the Great Chancellor and Count Palatine, on the other hand was unchanged. The lightly woven stuff of his hat brim threw trellised shadows over the handsome nose and sensitive mouth and striped beard, and the thick brown hair clinging a little with heat. He moved well. He was a fine archer, people said. In Italy, George Amiroutzes had ranked himself eloquently with the Cardinal Bessarion, who recommended the Roman Church and the Greek should unite. Admirer of Aquinas; skilled negotiator; fluent commentator; Amiroutzes had come back from Florence to Trebizond covered in glory. The lover and judge of letters, rightly called philosopher by all the fatherland, someone had called him. A thinker; a guide; a companion to the God-protected sovereign on his pinnacle, whose dissertations Nicholas had sometimes heard, and sometimes agreed with. A man with two growing sons; and a free hand with pearls.

  Therefore…therefore, one chose one’s ground, and perhaps even planted it. Nicholas spoke to a point between the Protovestarios and the Emperor. “There are those who know more than I do, magnificence. May I send for captain Astorre?”

  “Indeed, we intend to summon him presently.” It was Amiroutzes who replied, at a nod from the Emperor. “But first, it is a matter of interpretation, rather than strategy. We have news of the Sultan and the army of Mahmud Pasha, his Vizier.”

  “They have left Sinope,” said Nicholas.

  “They have taken Koyulhisar,” said the Emperor. “They are devils, not men. They have completed a march which no men before them have managed so quickly; and scaled the heights of the Turcoman’s western frontier, and taken its fortress. If they have the energy to continue towards us, the hills and passes and forts of the White Sheep are all that lie between them and us.”

  No one spoke. There was no way of telling what had already been said; what views the commanders had already expressed.

  Nicholas said, “Magnificence: it has always been known that this was possible. The loss of the frontier fortress is great, but it must have taken its toll. Now Hasan Bey is prepared, the Sultan will have to fight every inch of the ground, over mountains where the White Sheep are at home. And by the time they are done, the season for war will have ended. I see no need for alarm.”

  “Do you not?” said the Emperor. “Do you not? Some here have expressed the same view. But hear, then, the next piece of news. Erzerum has been vacated. The lord Uzum Hasan and the core of his army have not come forward to push back the Turk. They have retreated into the mountains, leaving garrisons to do what they can to hinder the Turkish advance.”

  “But do you not think, magnificence, that this too will serve?” Nicholas said. “In direct conflict, the army of my lord Hasan Bey would succumb, now he has no help from Sinope or Georgia. But a war of attrition, carried on against tiring men in the mountains, will keep the Sultan from his door just as well, until the autumn storms come. The Sultan may occupy Erzerum, but he can hardly hold it. And with all that to deal with, he can have no thought of attacking this empire.”

  The Emperor turned his head, and the Treasurer answered. Before he spoke, Nicholas knew what he was going to say. “The third piece of news,” said George Amiroutzes, “is that my lord Uzum Hasan is not preparing to defend his land to the death, or even resist until the season has closed. It is said that he has brought his mother, the Syrian Sara Khatun, to the field. It is said that he has sent this lady to meet the Sultan, and ask for lenience in return for neutrality.”

  There was a rustle and a shifting of feet. Nicholas said, “How trustworthy is such news?”

  The dark eyes were watching him. “From a source, Messer Niccolò, which has never failed.”

  Nicholas said, “And that is all?”

  “All?” said the Emperor. “With the Turk at our gates?”

  “Is he at
your gates, magnificence?” Nicholas said. “Forgive me. I thought he was at Koyulhisar, in July.”

  “Then your advice is, that we have no cause for concern?” said the Great Chancellor. “You do not think it likely that this seaborne army burning our suburbs is merely waiting for the land army to march through empty mountains and take us between them?”

  “My lord: how could they?” said Nicholas. “How could ten times the number take Trebizond?”

  “How could Constantinople fall and her emperor perish?” said the Treasurer wearily. “God is just, Messer Niccolò; but there are weights in His scales that mortal men cannot know.”

  “But we may guess,” Nicholas said. “By sea or by land, there are no guns coming here of the kind that felled Constantinople. The fleet, we know, have not brought even the tools that would cast them. Holy fount of the Church as Trebizond is, it is not the sacred heart of the Eastern Empire, to take which no price was too much to pay. It has not the riches that Byzantium had. Its merchants can serve the Turk just as well from Bursa and Pera. And facing this enemy is a city renowned for its courage; blessed by Nature with barriers no one can storm; blessed by God with our Basileus to uplift and to lead. I say, be at rest. We cannot fail. There is nothing here in this news to disturb the sleep of the men and women and children who trust their lord here in the City today.”

  There was, at least, a pause before the Treasurer gave his wry smile. “An eloquent answer, in praiseworthy Greek, Messer Niccolò. You have a good grasp of our tongue: on that, at least, all must agree. As for the rest, we have heard your views, and they will not be forgotten. Magnificence?”

  The dismissal did not immediately come. The Emperor said, “Others have spoken thus.”