The Spring of the Ram

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Messer Niccolò fell in agreeably with all these plans, while listening with his other ear to the murmured promptings of Martelli. Gregorio and his family had arrived and were staying at the Palazzo Martelli-Medici, where there was sufficient room for them all. “This is kind of you. They didn’t, then, find a suitable place of their own?” Nicholas said. Another speech began, during which he failed to catch Martelli’s reply.

  Alessandro Martelli, a man of fifty with black, grizzled hair, was the brother of the sea consul who had entertained Godscalc in Pisa. Five out of six of the Martelli brothers served the Medici in various parts of the world, as the Portinari family did. Indeed, it was a Portinari who had been in Venice before Alessandro.

  Julius had joined the conversation now, and John le Grant. They couldn’t all leave. The ship had to be taken to the customs wharf and checked and unloaded; the seamen paid off. The practical part of the discussion dragged on. The ceremonial visitors left. The passengers left, some of them embracing him and pressing upon him inconvenient presents. Two of the children cried, and he carried them down the steps and handed them into the boat himself. When he came back he found that Catherine was there, with her boxes and her maid, and Loppe had got the rest of their personal baggage on deck, and the Medici barge was loading already. Loppe said, “I shall go with the barge, Messer Niccolò. The boat will take you to the piazza, with the demoiselle and Father Godscalc and Messer Martelli.”

  “And me,” said Tobie. “Martelli says it’s quicker to land us and walk, and let the luggage go round by the canal.” He paused, and said, “There it is.”

  The mist had lifted, and Venice lay on the horizon, flat as a platter of sweetmeats. Tobie, of course, came from these parts. Gazing at that long chain of pink and white fragments couched in late summer green, pierced by the stalks of belltowers, Nicholas could find nothing, as yet, to remark. Behind the mist, it could have been Bruges. Now, it was nothing.

  Catherine said, “Florence looked better than that. I would live in Florence.” She was trembling. Nicholas helped her climb down into the Medici boat and, as it set off, she sat as close to him as she dared, in her handsome black velvet cloak and silk gown from Modon, which he had paid for. The widow returning with nothing. The runaway child, restored to the pity—worst of all, the pity—of her mother.

  Nicholas said, “They call it the loveliest city in Europe, I don’t know why. Yes, perhaps I do.” For there, after all, was the palace the seamen had spoken of, dainty as a pink and white ivory comb. And the broad, efficient sweep of the waterfront, turning off into the great canal he could just see on his left. And ahead, the smooth red piazza opening into the interior, and fronted by two ancient pillars. They tied up at a long jetty and waited until they could move off in order between the two files of liveried servants, Martelli in front. It was necessary, for the piazza was crowded, and became more so as they penetrated its depths, moving further away from the sea.

  Now Nicholas saw all the landmarks he had heard of. There on the left was the watchtower, and on the right the great basilica of St Mark. Its thick clusters of pillars were of the same coloured marbles as those in the Palace at Trebizond. The form of the doors was familiar, and the reliefs, and the hooded mosaics, their gold turned by shadow to sepia. And above his head were the domes of St Eugenios and the Chrysokephalos, and of Aghia Sophia. Which was nonsense, for they were of a different shape, and there were five of them. But the sailors who came to Bruges didn’t say that Venice had been ruled by Byzantium and also had ruled in it. The Hellenes and the Romans mingled here as they did on the shores of the Black Sea. And he was here to set up his business; and to meet his wife Marian.

  It was not far, Martelli had said. The servants made a way for them, and a few people turned to look, while some looked less openly. It would be known who they were. But until the Doge had received him, he was not officially here. Although this afternoon the chairman of the Collegio would ask him questions, and he intended to give him some answers.

  Narrow alleys, with doors and archways, grilles and shutters; walls covered piecemeal with frescoes and roundels and crests. Belvederes buttressed with lions and monkeys, and loggias with flowerpots in them. Glimpses of small-leafed trees, and well-heads, and fountains, and walls still smothered in creeper. Roses, too, in October. Seagulls mourning on rooftops, big as geese on the thick terracotta. Through an archway a man sat, shaping a paddle.

  They came to a stepped bridge over a canal, and then another. Their footsteps going over had the familiar echo, and from under came the thudding, sucking litany of moored barges rising and jostling. The smell, too, was home-like: raw and cool and hinting at decayed wood and wet fur and mosses. And something different. Olive oil, and woodsmoke, and spices. Every town had its scent. At the next bridge, a woman coming up the other side slipped, and let spill her basket of lemons. The Medici men sprang to help her. One lifted her up while another two chased the lemons down the steps and along the canal edge. Someone took Nicholas hard by the waist and the throat and pulled him back, across the top of the bridge and down the steps he had just climbed.

  He shouted as loudly as he could. He kicked someone very deftly behind the knee and struck someone else across the nape of the neck and had nearly got free when five others jumped on him, and trapped his wrists and tried to stop him shouting. He closed his teeth on a hand till it was torn away and someone gave him a strong, careful punch in the belly and another one, lower. When he had stopped retching, he was among a mob of them, under the bridge, and they were trying to force him into a boat. He didn’t know what was happening. He had nothing on him: no jewels; no money. All he possessed was by now safe in storage. If they wanted to ransom him, they were fools.

  They were not fools enough to wait until the men pounding back over the bridge leaped down among them. They pushed the boat off and flung him into it. There was someone or something there already, wrapped in a cloak. He fell, striking whatever it was, and took his chance and rolled over the far side as the others landed beside him. He fell half into the water and half by the pole of a jetty. It led to a strip of paving, which stopped. There was a water gate just beyond, but it was locked. Above was a wooden gallery jutting out over the water, with a fence beside it. They caught his foot as he jumped for the fence, but he kicked, and reached the gallery, which was locked and bolted. He handed his way across and saw the pavement started again on the other side, and that there was a row of marble pillars framing a covered passage leading away from the water. He started along it, and someone caught up with him and heeled him and hit him hard when he staggered. He turned on the man and snatched his arm and steadied him for an extremely successful blow on the jaw. The man fell to the ground. He thought it was time to get his sword out. Three other men came at him and he turned instead and began to run hard up the passage. Catherine’s voice screamed from the boat and he stopped.

  The pillars and the roof and everything else became blotted out by lunging bodies. He landed some blows, but mostly he received them, in all the places Astorre had taught him were the best. Or the worst, depending on your viewpoint. Then he was in a heap in the boat with his hair close to the water, which was surfing by as two men took the poles and sent the boat lunging round the next corner, and then along another, smaller canal, and into a network of waterways narrow as drains. The bow wave carried dead cockroaches past, and a patch of grease, and a piece of torn matting. With or without the corpse of a criminal under it.

  The shouting behind them died down, and there was only a short exchange, in a language he couldn’t quite catch, between two of his captors; and the sound of water; and of someone breathing heavily in his ear. He was lying half under a canopy. One of his captors got his hands together and tied them, and bound a cloth over his mouth, and flung something dark on top of him. An object partly under him stirred, and the breathing sound altered. At some cost, he moved back a little and saw the dark bundle again, and a slipper he knew. He was quite thankful. At least he hadn’
t given up for no reason. Although why someone should want Catherine any more than they should want himself, he was at present unable to fathom, and was feeling too sick to care much, in any case. He lay and bled into Catherine’s cloak until they arrived at their destination. He didn’t see where it was, because they knocked him unconscious immediately.

  Simon said, “Kick him. He’s shamming.” The language he hadn’t quite caught had been Scots. Nicholas opened his eyes.

  Simon de St Pol, heir to Kilmirren, was quite as handsome as when he had last seen him in Bruges just a year ago. Viewing this paragon objectively from the floor, and disregarding the unease caused by a cut lip and a swollen eye and various extremely tender areas in the belly, the groin, and the lower back, Nicholas formed the opinion that my lord Simon was untouched by time and probably by experience. His hair below the velvet cap was leaf gold; his eyes blue, his lips curled in a sensitive smile. His doublet was of double-cut satin and velvet, intricately pleated, and he had followed the new Venetian fashion of parti-coloured hose. His legs could have been moulded for him by a classical sculptor. Perhaps they were, and his real legs were inside, which must make it hard to mount a horse.

  Nicholas had never before felt amused by anything to do with Simon. He divided twelve quickly by three and concluded that he had not been punched seriously on the head. He was in a long room with shuttered windows and one door, before which two armed men were standing. By the window was a chair, and an ornate writing desk with a lamp on it. Simon, who appeared to have recently entered the room, was standing in the centre surveying him. Nicholas wondered if it was night; and this madman had accordingly caused hours of worry to Marian, as well as a wretched blight over their meeting. The chairman of the Collegio was presumably also awaiting him, over which he felt no concern. Then he observed that, although the lamp was lit, there were rims of daylight round the shutters. Also, the upper parts of his clothes were still wet. He had not been there very long. He heard a sniff behind him and twisted his neck. Catherine de Charetty sat against the wall in her black gown, blotched with damp, glaring at him. She said, “I thought you could do anything.”

  “Fight eight men, no,” he said.

  “Seven,” she said. “Sit up and tell him. He lets me go, or Gregorio and my mother go to the Doge immediately. Pagano doesn’t owe him a penny.”

  Nicholas sat up. He felt dreadful. The whole business, from beginning to end, was so excruciating even to contemplate that he wanted to break into idiot laughter. This man before him had provided Pagano Doria with a ship and a cargo and sent him east to oppose the Charetty company and, if possible, ruin it. Pagano, in his inimitable way, had responded by marrying into it. But having neither ruined Nicholas nor killed him, he had compounded failure by losing his own life, so that nothing remained for Simon, one would have said, but a sporting handshake for the victor. Instead of which, he himself was here, battered into insensibility, and Catherine, it seemed, had been kidnapped again.

  It was crazy enough to be funny, if you didn’t know there was a relationship between himself and my lord Simon. And even then, it was still fairly ludicrous unless you knew that he, Nicholas, was the father of the new son Simon was so proud of. And then it was not funny at all, but something to be worked at, very carefully. Nicholas said, “We are here. What is it that needs to be said with such force?”

  There was the smallest pause; perhaps because he had used more than three words. He remembered saying very little to Simon. Then Simon said, “I see you learn from your betters before you sell them for what you can get. I wanted a private talk with you both.”

  He was taller than Simon. He got to his feet, and then chose discretion and sat on a bench beside Catherine. His hands were still tied and it was painful to move. He said, “A private talk would have been easily come by without this. About what?”

  “I’ve just told you. Selling,” said Simon. He sank into the chair by the desk, and the lamp gleamed on his hair.

  Nicholas said, “I’ve been selling things for a year, of one sort or another. I’m accountable to my owner, not to you. What is the complaint? Before I make my own, that’s to say?”

  “He means Trebizond,” Catherine said.

  The tone was enough. Simon looked at her, and back to Nicholas. He said, “She has reason to know, hasn’t she? That’s one reason why she is here. You carried messages to the Turks. You sold them my arms. You killed my agent. You diverted the Genoese orders from Trebizond to Turkish Bursa, where they were probably lost in the fighting. You stole Doria’s silver—my silver—and you seized my round ship and are sailing the seas with it, freighting your cargo. You didn’t think I knew that? I’ve spoken to men who have heard from the Bailie at Modon. There were Genoese off your own ship who weren’t slow to tell me all you’d done to them. Doria’s steward is enslaved, and his wife and son killed. Did you know that?”

  “Paraskeuas!” said Catherine.

  “He cheated both sides,” Nicholas said. “And you have the story wrong. I didn’t betray Trebizond to the Turks. I didn’t sell the Turks arms. I didn’t kill Pagano Doria.”

  “Then who did?” said Simon. “Catherine believes what you told her. But who on the Turkish side would kill him if he were the traitor and not you?”

  “If you ask my doctor, he’ll tell you,” said Nicholas.

  “No doubt,” Simon said. “But you did withdraw all your soldiers just before the Turks entered the city? Or am I wrong about that, too?”

  “With the Emperor’s leave. He had surrendered. The arms, by the way, went to the garrison at Kerasous,” Nicholas said. “I admit the trick to bypass Trebizond with the Genoese goods. Doria and I were rivals in trade. Your doing, not mine. It was legitimate.”

  “And the silver?” said Simon.

  He hesitated this time. Then he said, “He spilled it, fighting, and some of it did come to me. I used it, in place of reporting him. He lost it trying to have me assassinated.”

  “That’s a lie,” Catherine said. The bright blue eyes stared at him.

  He said, “It doesn’t matter. He was like that. But Julius will tell you. It’s true.”

  She said, “It’s a lie! He was wounded.”

  “By another party of Kurds. He set fire to my ship in Modon, Catherine, and caused the deaths of two men.”

  “He made you jump,” Catherine said. She was crying.

  “Yes, he did,” Nicholas said. He turned to Simon. “I don’t know what else you want? You’ve asked the questions and I’ve told you the answers. There’s nothing I can do if you don’t believe me, except send you to question the others. You should know by now they have minds of their own. They wouldn’t support me for the sake of it. They wouldn’t still be following me if I’d done all those things.”

  “You don’t know what I want? I want compensation,” Simon said. “And by the way, since we speak of assassins, your tame lawyer Gregorio was a sorry failure. I had to teach him a lesson.”

  Nicholas rose. He only realised when he had done it how painful it had been. He said, “I’ve heard from Gregorio. He came to complain of the behaviour of your agent Doria, and you attacked him. Your own father took Gregorio’s part.”

  “Fat father Jordan,” Simon said. “You heard he has all his French possessions again? It’s really time he stopped interfering. Whatever he said, it doesn’t matter now, for Doria is dead, and you are alive, so there can hardly be a conspiracy, can there, to kill you? And young Catherine is free and a pretty widow, if deeply in debt. She has her husband’s round ship to return to me; and the silver he lost; and the other profits he made from the voyage. There must have been some. The consignment of arms, for example. What did you say happened to them?”

  “I don’t! I don’t owe you!” said Catherine.

  “Don’t you? But Pagano Doria was my agent, and you are his heir.”

  “But I don’t have any money!” Catherine said. “Nicholas has it all!”

  She was sharp, but she never could see t
he way a conversation was going. Nicholas sighed.

  “Well?” said Simon. He was smiling. He lifted a finger and flicked a button of the damp doublet, and then resumed his seat by the lamp. “Don’t you want to get home and change? I’ve had some papers drawn up. They’re here and ready for signing.”

  “With my hands tied?” said Nicholas. Simon glanced at the door. “You could bring in another four men,” Nicholas said.

  Simon’s lips tightened. He said, “Read it first.”

  It had seemed a good idea to get his hands free, for he had a fair idea what was about to happen. Nicholas said, “My lord Simon, very few know about this. Leave it alone. It won’t do you any harm and, to be fair, the Charetty business is due a great deal of compensation for what you and your agent have done. I don’t mind describing it all before lawyers, but you won’t come out of it well. Or if you like, think about Catherine. Haven’t you made her suffer enough? Untie my hands and open the door and let us both go.”

  “Try again,” Simon said.

  Nicholas said, “All right. All the ships in the harbour at Trebizond were in enemy hands, including the round ship. Weeks before he died, Doria had lost it. I made up a Turkish-dressed crew and got it away, with a lot of women and children, if it matters. By right of salvage, it’s mine.”

  “You killed Doria and took it,” Simon said.

  “No,” said Nicholas. He glanced at the men by the door, but Simon paid no attention.

  Simon said, “It is mine, and the alum in it is mine. A stolen ship, and the cargo therefore subject to forfeit. And stolen armour, and the price to be repaid.”

  “Then repay it,” said Nicholas. “You stole both the ship and the armour from your father.”

  “No!” said Catherine.

  Nicholas turned to her. “Ask in Antwerp,” he said. “She was called the Ribérac before she was renamed the Doria. The arms were bought from Louis de Gruuthuse. He was probably quite pleased when they sailed off to the East instead of being used either against the Lancastrians or against the French in the fortress at Genoa. But Pagano didn’t know that.”