The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  At first she thought his opponent, a big, black-bearded half-Caucasian was the one that she sought, because his complaints could be heard all over the camp. She was wrong. When the Sheikh’s riding stick poked them to their feet, it was the other who laid down his yoghourt and, fixing the cloth to his mouth, shambled forward. They were both dressed in stout cotton tunics with coloured linings and sashes, and their drawers were good fustian stuffed into felt boots. Hunting clothes. The few possessions they had stacked by their saddles were of the sort, too, that hunters or travellers carried: bows and quivers, some spears and a couple of waterbottles made out of boarskin. There were also two canvas sacks, one of them open. She could see the white linen lining, and the ends of some jars.

  Sheikh Hüseyin, who was old-fashioned and thought no well-brought-up woman should ever appear in public, came across and said, “The camel doctor is called Ilyas, and has just had his beard shaved and his tongue taken out by some enemy over a misunderstanding. Ayyub, the black fellow, speaks for him. He says your beast has the colic. The doctor has sent for some blankets, and given him two quarts of linseed oil, the best quality. He says you have a careless driver: another of your camels is galled. The fault is the packing of straw in the saddle panels.”

  “No, Khatun,” said the black-bearded Ayyub, daring to speak to her direct. “The lord mistakes. The ailing camel was one of the Vizier’s. It is not our place to cure it.”

  A voice said, “In the Grand Vizier’s camp, it is the duty of every man to serve him. Khatun. Are these the men you sent for?”

  Tursun Beg, master of finance, senior secretary and favourite emissary of Mahmud, who had come with his master from Constantinople. Where in Constantinople, she had heard, he had boarded a certain ship. Sara Khatun said, “My servants are yours. That, there, is the man I sent for. Ilyas. He is mute. The other speaks for him. I am impressed with what he tells me so far.” Above the mouth cloth, the eyes of the mutilated man were pale and round on either side of a short nose, curled like a snout. Under the hairy brim of the other man’s hat you could see little but the tip of his nose, and below that a tightly curled beard, black as gall nuts. From a brass socket on top, a little squirrel tail bounced as he stepped back.

  “Mute? Open his mouth,” said Tursun Beg. By now, men from all the neighbouring fires were looking round, their moustaches spread round their gapped, blackened teeth. Two of the secretary’s own men took the camel doctor by the shoulders and pulled down the cloth and with broad and capable fingers, opened his jaws.

  Despite herself, she looked. Within the gaping mouth, lobes of red severed flesh glistened in the bright firelight. Blood welled and trickled down the man’s chin. The neighbouring soldiers, who had evidently already been granted a view, exchanged murmurs of gratification. At a sign, Tursun Beg’s men allowed the jaws to close and let the man go. He made retching sounds. Ayyub, his companion, said, “He coughs blood. It is not a sight for a lady. If the doctor might withdraw?”

  “Doctor?” said Tursun Beg. He nodded his head and the sufferer, cloth to his mouth, disappeared noisily into the bushes.

  “Of course, lord,” said the black-bearded one humbly. His squirrel tail drooped. “Would he not be dead with such maltreatment, had he not salved himself? If the Vizier wishes his camel attended to, none is wiser than Ilyas. For saddle galls, he burns the sore with hot irons; then rubs it with urine or pigeon dung. Camel urine, my lord will know, is efficacious in many ailments. To clear the head after drink, one need only stand below a pissing she-camel. I have heard Ilyas say so often, when he could speak.”

  “Tell him,” said Tursun Beg, “to call upon me tomorrow. I may have work for him.”

  “With a she-camel?” said the black-bearded man. “I would bring it tonight, if the case is a bad one. There is no quicker relief.”

  “My lord Tursun,” said Sara Khatun, “you refer to the ailment of the Vizier himself? I am honoured that you think these men might be of help. You wish to see them both?”

  “No,” said Tursun Beg. “No. Only the one who is mute. These are his ointments? Tell him to bring them. If he does well, he will receive his reward.”

  “And if he doesn’t, he’ll still receive his reward,” Tobie said. “I can’t. Nicholas, I cannot stick that thing in my tonsils again.”

  “You will not require to do so,” said Sara Khatun. “Your state has been seen, and will be reported on. Only it is necessary that you do not yawn. Or, of course, speak. Discretion in all things is needed.” She was reminding them, and she hoped they realised it, that they were not circumcised. The circumlocution expected of a high-born Syrian princess was sometimes a trial to Sara Khatun.

  Discretion, of course, had also been required to smuggle them tonight for an hour into this, the innermost chamber of her tent. She could trust her own people. If matters went well, and the doctor was successful with the Grand Vizier’s wound, then a tent might be found for the two men, which would be even more convenient. Meanwhile, they sat crosslegged in her presence, and ate cinnamon dragees and green ginger and figs fried in sugar, and listened while she spoke with economy.

  At the end, the leader, the boy she had already entertained at Erzerum, said, “You have, then, to buy peace, Sara Khatun? To promise, if need be, to give the Comneni at Trebizond no more of your help, and allow the Sultan access to the shore?”

  She said, “We can do nothing else meantime. My son has the Black Sheep on his other side. He cannot fight both.”

  Nicholas said, “Agree to whatever he asks of you, Khatun. You are right. Another day, the chance may occur. And meantime, Trebizond will come to no harm. It has never been so strongly defended. Soon, the weather will change, and there will be nothing more for this army to eat, with strong hillmen waiting in shelter to pounce on them. He will not blame you for that.”

  She said, “I thought you would blame me. You see what I have to do. I may have to do worse. But I see this orderly camp; these well-trained Spahis; the marked and varied abilities of such as Tursun Beg, the Vizier Mahmud and most excellent of all, the Sultan himself. I look at them, and I see that my own son, though greater by far, is not yet ready to govern as they are. In eight years, this man Mehmet has begun to learn what the Emperor David has begun to forget. You will see the Sultan. He and his army will come within the next day and night. And meantime, the Grand Vizier has already sent an envoy to Trebizond.” She paused. “You had not heard?”

  “No,” said the man Nicholas.

  “He has sent in the name of the Sultan to call on the Emperor to surrender. A formality, to be sure. But it opens an exchange, and worlds await the result. He has used as spokesman his Greek secretary Thomas Katabolenu, as he used him once to urge the despot Thomas out of Mistra in the Morea. We should have the answer tomorrow. We are only three miles to the south of the Citadel. You will have realised that. It is a little marsh called Skylolimne, Dog Lake. When you wish to return to the Citadel, it will be easy.”

  “I should like to see the Sultan,” said Nicholas.

  They didn’t stay longer. Later, lying stiff-limbed in darkness, wishing for the great copper cauldrons and scented water of home, Sara Khatun thought of the Sultan, and what she herself had said to him at the start of this journey. “Why tire yourself, my son, for nothing better than Trebizond?”

  And he had made the reply that was proper. “Mother: in my hand is the sword of Islam. Without this hardship. I should not deserve the name of Ghazi, and today and tomorrow I should have to cover my face in shame before Allah.”

  The answer from Trebizond was a rebuff. Tobie, snoring under his sun cloth, awoke in fright as a shadow fell over him, and then found, to his relief, that his lips were shut, and the cause of the shadow was Nicholas, his squirrel tail fluttering and his eyes bright under the brim of his hat. Nicholas addressed him in Turcoman. “You lazy fool: you will be late for the Vizier. How can you snore, while the army suffers an insult? One has returned bearing the words of this little Greek king, who says
he will never surrender.”

  “Maybe he will attack us instead,” said someone in the next company, softly jeering.

  “I have heard of such an Emperor going to war,” said another. “He took his chandeliers and his candles, his dinner tents and his bathing tents and his sleeping tents, his table linen and his writing parchment and his sacred altar and his oils and his wines and his caviare and his sheep and cows and goats for the killing. They carried water-beakers for the chickens on horseback, so it is said.”

  “When our lord leaves the Sublime Porte, he carries his baggage upon a hundred camels and twice that number of mules and of horses,” said another. “He takes his sherbet from a pitcher of silver, and made a gift to an emir last year of a skinned sheep painted red and white with silver rings in its nose and ears. He is a greater man.”

  “Did I say he was not?” said the first. Tobie rose, and dressed, and filled a canvas bag and took it, alone, to Tursun Beg, who had not recognised the dyed beard of Nicholas and even in daylight would hardly remember, he was sure, one of the many captives on the Ciaretti. That the plague symptoms had been his creation, the Turk had no means of knowing. He hoped.

  He came back half a day later and found Nicholas rolling dice with five men while something sizzled and smoked on the little grill over his fire trivet. As soon as Nicholas saw him, he finished his game, pocketed the screw of parchment he had won, and came over to help Tobie erect the tent he had brought. Then he returned to skewer the meat on the grill and cheered everyone up by pretending to make Tobie eat it. Finally they both went into the tent with all their possessions, and ate in relative comfort while Nicholas discoursed noisily about nothing. Then, while the camp slept in the heat of the day, Nicholas said in the lowest of voices, “Now. Tell me.”

  Tobie said, “As we thought.”

  Nicholas looked at him. Then he sighed, and said, “The wound? The Vizier was pleased with you?”

  “He’ll ask me to come back. It’s infected: it’ll need to be treated. And because I’m mute, they talk to each other. It’s true: they sent Katabolenu to Trebizond, and the Emperor sent him back with an absolute refusal to surrender.”

  “But?”

  “But the call for surrender was only a ruse to get Katabolenu into the Palace to collect advice from our treacherous friend there. He has been busy, it seems. The Emperor has been repeatedly told that the White Sheep have deserted and that resistance is hopeless. At the moment, he can’t quite believe it, but a letter from Sara Khatun would soon persuade him the Sheep are dead mutton. Next, Mahmud will send to the Palace again, promising compensation and honour if the Basileus packs his children and luggage and leaves. Our treacherous friend has indicated that, with such help from the Vizier, he can persuade the Grand Comnenos to see sense and hand over his empire. The treacherous friend being, as you thought, George Amiroutzes. Great Chancellor, Treasurer, Count Palatine, and the Emperor’s closest adviser.”

  “And second cousin to the Grand Vizier Mahmud. Whose mother was a native of Trebizond. Everyone should have a mother from Trebizond,” Nicholas said. “You sit on the fence and other people get the stake up their guts. She’ll write the letters, Sara Khatun.”

  “That was what she meant, last night,” Tobie said. “She knew about Amiroutzes. And her niece; and Violante, I suppose.” His gaze sharpened. “Did—?”

  “She practically told me, on board ship. But I wasn’t sure, until later. I did what I could in the way of counter-advice, but it wasn’t enough. I suppose if you can reconcile Greeks with Romans, it isn’t a tremendous step to throw in the Prophet as well. After all, Constantinople puts up with a Greek patriarch, and if the heathens can show tolerance, then why shouldn’t everybody?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tobie. “It’s the mass murder beforehand that puts everyone off.”

  “Well, George will be all right,” Nicholas said. “When does the Sultan come?”

  “Tonight or tomorrow morning. Nicholas. Sara Khatun. That was also why she talked of…?”

  “Yes. It was also why,” Nicholas said.

  Tobie looked at him. He said, “What good will it do, seeing the Sultan?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nicholas. “I suppose you could do it all by numbers instead. Let’s call it a gesture. And if he makes himself available to be seen, that will be another gesture not to be sniffed at. And the earth will be blessed with another day of your silence. And even with Amiroutzes dripping sense into his ear, the Emperor isn’t witless. He has the whole strength of the Great Church at his elbow; and his little heirs reciting their lessons; and the men of his dynasty glaring down from the walls of his chamber. He has Astorre and his own commanders to tell him how strong the City is. When we go back, we can show him exactly why Mahmud wants an early surrender.”

  “But first, we need another day here,” Tobie said. He spoke with resignation. He had made the point before, and didn’t expect to be answered. He knew all the arguments. He had heard them, over and over, from Godscalc. All the same, he let the silence stretch on. Then he said, “You’ll get marsh-fever. It’s the one thing that makes me happy about you, is your marsh-fever.”

  Chapter 38

  THE SULTAN ARRIVED in the cool of the night, in a subdued bustle of sound and the light of many torches. When the sun rose on the little marsh three miles south of Trebizond, all the high ground above was covered with the cooking-fires of the main army, and among the aromatic pines of the highest ridge stood the great pavilions of the Sultan himself, the supreme Emperor, King of Kings, the victor, the winner of trophies, the triumphant, the invincible: by the will of God, Mehmet the Fortunate.

  “He drinks,” said Tobie. “Oh, Christ, if you make that joke again about camels…”

  “Don’t underrate camels,” Nicholas said. “Mohammed was the son of a camel-driver. Good Arabs want to die on their camels and go to the grave wrapped in their camelskins. Then comes Paradise, everlasting delight of the senses; and absolutely no dissatisfied customers. I like your vest.”

  The gift of a fur-lined vest had arrived from the Grand Vizier Mahmud, with a message summoning the doctor Ilyas with his spokesman to the Sultan’s tent three hours before noon. Tobie said, “If you’re nervous, how d’you think I feel?” This time, they had part-cooked the liver and, gagging, he was about to put it into his mouth, with the cage that kept his tongue down. His hat was melon-shaped, with a small upturned brim. He felt like an idiot. Nicholas seemed quite at home in his own hairy headgear topped by the agile whisk of his squirrel. Between that and his newly daubed beard, his face had a watchful look as he moved about, dressing. Tobie began again. “They say he rides between two lines of archers, one right-handed, one left-handed. That way, they don’t show him their backs when they shoot people. If I dropped dead on my camel this moment, you wouldn’t notice it, would you?”

  Nicholas twisted his sash round his tunic and tied it, and sat down to pull on his boots. After the second one, he said, “I should. Your tongue would fall out.” Tobie wondered what, in the interval, his mind had been dealing with. A lot, he hoped. It was Nicholas, the non-mute, who was going to bear the brunt of this interview.

  It was the trappings of power rather than the King of Kings himself that overwhelmed those he summoned. First, the many-chambered pavilion of crimson silk turned back with gold and bound with patterned fillets and tassels. The drooping hosts of the banners, and the plumed lines of the guard with their round shields and axes and scimitars. Then the silence within, despite the great crowds standing against each inner wall of the audience tent.

  Alone, the Sultan sat in the centre, crosslegged upon round tasselled pillows, with a fan of white ostrich feathers moving slowly in one ringed, short-fingered hand. The bulbous white of his turban was not of the traditional shape, but had been devised by himself to the pattern habitual to scholars. To it had been added an osprey feather in a socket of emerald. His caftan, woven in Bursa, was a maze of stylised flowers: carnations, tulips and roses; an
d its only ornament was the line of intricate buttons that ran from its throat to its hem. Above it, the beard and moustache were deep brown, and not thick. The eyes, under arched, painted brows, were brown as well, and the nose was the nose of a parrot. A parrot eating a cherry, they said of him, referring to the red, red short lips. The Sultan said, “Speak for your master. Where did he learn his healing?”

  The carpet was silk, and embroidered with gold. Tobie kissed it and rose beside Nicholas. Nicholas said, “Lord, my master’s uncle lived among Mamelukes. The name of my master is Ilyas.”

  Behind and to one side of the Sultan was the Grand Vizier, the bandage still on his face, with Tursun Beg and the other secretary beside him. On the other side was the Sultan’s personal staff, one supposed. As a boy he had been taught by Ahmet Gürani, a Kurd. Now, they said he had Greeks and Italians about him—Kritovoulos the historian; Kyriakos of Ancona; Maestro Jacopo of Gaeta, his usual physician whom, thank God, Tobie had never met. The Sultan said, “You have cared well for our camels. My surgeon tells me your treatment of our Grand Vizier has also served well. We are pleased to reward you.”

  The gift was a quiver, banded with gold, with a leopard tail fixed to the filigree. Beside it was a brooch with a ruby in it. Tobie took them both from a cushion, offered silently by a turbanned black boy who stepped back at once. Nicholas said, “Lord, my master thanks you for your infinite generosity, and asks how further he may serve you?” He paused, and said, “The illustrious lady Sara Khatun pays ten aspers a day and our food.”

  Tobie felt sweat pour down his back. Don’t do it to me. Nicholas.

  The red lips of the Sultan made a small movement. It might have been a smile. He said, “Indeed, good camel doctors are hard to find. I do not know whether I could match such munificence. Nor do you know what sort of lord you might have. And if your master were to fail, what skills can you offer?”