The noise, too, was frightful. The wood squealed and creaked and the stays throbbed and whined and everything banged and rattled all through the night. On top of that, the crew talked all the time, shouting because of the wind, or sang, or barked responses to orders. They hailed other ships, exchanging news about events, and the weather. At the slightest change of sail, the thud of their feet on deck was like a landslide. And, like everybody else, they stank worse than the cattle below. They didn’t shout greetings to her, because of Pagano, but they eyed her, and some of their chants made her uneasy. So she stayed mostly below, not enjoying her food, especially when the joggling started. That, Pagano said, was because they were in the Hellespont, and it was like going up a wide river with the current against you. The river led to the Sea of Marmara, which the Greeks called the Propontis, and which would be smoother unless it was squally. And after that, the channel narrowed again, to take them to Constantinople. Their final call before the Black Sea.
Catherine retired to bed, and asked to be called when they got to Constantinople.
A lint field, they say, is a troublesome crop; but a maidenhead can be worse, for less profit. Pagano Doria did not, after all, wake his bride as the cog entered the Bosphorus, the stream that washed Europe and Asia. On his left was the base of the triangle that formed Constantinople. It was marked by a wall: a long, towered wall set on sea rocks and broken by tall crested gates and the slipways and moles of old palaces. Behind it, thrust upwards by steep, hilly ground and the debris of two thousand years were the scattered houses and pillars, cisterns, amphitheatres and basilicas of the half-empty city which had once been the capital of the world, and was now the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman.
Doria studied it, to see what might be useful. The stories he had tried to tell Catherine were only pastimes: he knew how to talk of the past, but found it of limited interest. The changed city over the wall struck from him no pity, no anguish, no nostalgia. He had been here a long time ago, and had made some money, he couldn’t remember quite how; and had made acquaintance with a new form of luxury, he remembered very well how. Thinking, he smiled at young Noah who, in a new turban and glistening gold buttons, smiled joyfully back.
Refinement of sensual pleasure was what many people had sought and found in Byzantium, once a little Greek trading colony. A thousand years after that, as part of the Roman province of Asia, it had become the Constantinople whose temples for both worship and pleasure were there, in ruins, over the wall. Then the Western crusaders had arrived; the Byzantines had fled elsewhere; had returned; had given way to the Turks. And throughout, of course, the hedonists had needed decent traders to serve them. His own Genoese had built their merchant station at Pera, across the Golden Horn inlet, to look after that.
They had, of course, dug their own graves. They had been arrogant and then rash, both before and during and after the Turks’ conquest of Constantinople. When the smoke cleared away, it was the Venetians who were allowed to replace their Bailie in Pera; the Venetians who had the franchise of the Phocoea alum mines and the privileges, while the Genoese were allowed a low-rank Elder to look after their diminished affairs. The Sultan, like the Emperor, had lost patience with Genoa.
It would be amusing, therefore, to see what the Doria charm and the Doria wits could do for him against those sort of odds. His ship turned, sails bellying, into the Golden Horn and, rounding the point of the triangle, dropped anchor in the roadstead. Her guns boomed in salute: her trumpets sounded. Tapestries hung at her sides: he himself was dressed in furred robe and doublet, with chains and jewels plainly displayed to those who were watching from the shores and the walls and the water. He had avoided, with care, flying the official consular flag of the Bank of St George. However exalted his state in Trebizond, here he was merely Pagano Doria, a private Genoese trader, who hoped the Conqueror Mehmet would permit him to unload at Pera; to sell and buy some of his goods; to restock and provision, and to sail without hindrance the eighteen watery miles that lay between him and the Black Sea. In exchange for which favours, he had information to impart, and a gift of some value.
He waited, with confidence, his boarding by the Sultan’s officials; and hoped the pretty child, his creation, his creature tutored for nothing but love and able for nothing but love (apart from stirring up trouble) would sleep late, and wake in good looks, as was necessary.
At Gallipoli, Father Godscalc and Nicholas had a difference of opinion. Naturally, this had happened before, and not only with Godscalc, since more and more Nicholas had become inclined to speak his mind about what they should do. Up till recently, he had employed a deprecating manner in council accompanied, Godscalc had noticed, by a persistent use of hard reasoning. He usually got his own way.
He got his own way now, but had dropped the humility. That was since his trimming at Modon: the Bailie’s table, the girl, and lastly the nicely judged exercise of the fire. For one of the things I fancy least, is having Pagano Doria board my ship, and kill my men and burn my cargo, and sail into Constantinople ahead of me. He had meant it at the time, although events had caused him to reverse his plan. It had been the view of Tobie, and Julius, that his distress about Catherine had been genuine. He hadn’t stinted in fighting the fire; and had shown himself able to organise. His crew, hitherto cautious, had been captivated by those rousing speeches. Nicholas could get them to laugh when he wanted to; and he could get them to work.
To his colleagues he had displayed his rage over his abducted stepdaughter; and his determination. So, too, they had accepted the harder edge he now used in his dealings with them. Perhaps it would have come anyway, as a result of his failures at Modon. Adversity, in Godscalc’s experience, made a very good teacher. The greatest problem Nicholas had was his youth. Two problems. Nicholas was now in his twenty-first year: an age at which other men not only led armies but could satisfy a harem. Were the functions interdependent? As a man vowed to celibacy, Father Godscalc sometimes wondered.
By Gallipoli, the tension on board the Ciaretti could be felt. They had lost a day in the Aegean because the Doria’s sailspread was bigger and open seas suited her better. It would be offset in the Hellespont and the other narrows ahead, where the Florentine’s oars would pull her close to the wind, and tease out the north-running currents. Le Grant reckoned they would make up two days, but they would still arrive in the Sublime Porte four days after Doria. Unless she waited, they were going to miss her.
There was no need to underline the irony of it all. With what he now knew, Doria could have them stopped at Constantinople. And yet, against their own interests, they were striving to catch him, because Catherine de Charetty was thought to be on his ship. Thinking about it, Father Godscalc reached a conclusion. At Gallipoli, he put it to Nicholas. “Let me disembark and try to get to the Sublime Porte ahead of you. I might just catch Doria. Or, better still, get the girl on her own. If I brought her back, you needn’t—”
“Call at Constantinople? Of course I should. At best, I’ve got business there. At worst, they’d put a ball through my hull if I didn’t. And how could you bring her aboard? Doria would simply have the Turks search us.”
Godscalc kept his voice even. “All right. Perhaps I couldn’t bring her away. But I could make sure she is Catherine de Charetty. I could speak to her, even.”
“No. It’s too risky,” said Nicholas.
“Riskier than staying on board?” said the priest.
Nicholas said, “We want Doria detained, not the Latin Church. You’d never get out of the harbour. Anyway, if anyone boards the Doria, it’s going to be me. I think she’ll still be there when we arrive.”
“Because he’ll have told the Sultan about Astorre’s army?” said the priest.
“He might have,” Nicholas said. “He’ll do one of three things. Keep quiet and let us sail through to Trebizond, because he wants Astorre’s protection almost as much as we do. Or keep quiet and threaten to tell if we make a nuisance of ourselves over the girl. Or betray us and As
torre, and get rid of us without going further.”
“Or just leave,” Godscalc said.
“No. He’ll wait.”
“Because he wants to be there at the slaughter?” Facing such impervious calm, Godscalc heard his voice roughen. He was frowning at Nicholas.
One dimple appeared and disappeared. It was a sign of impatience. “Because I sent messages by a dozen different fast boats from Modon announcing a state visit to Constantinople by the lord prince Pagano Doria, Genoese commissar of the bank of St George. If they don’t shoot him out of the water, they’ll kill him with welcoming parties while privately racking his servants for secrets. I wrote the Venetian Bailie as well.”
“About the girl?” Godscalc said, after a moment. He began to understand the look he sometimes saw on Tobie’s face.
Nicholas still looked, if anything, impatient. “Well, of course. I told the Bailie I believed Doria’s wife was a kinswoman, and I should be glad if he’d call and ask her to wait for me. Of course, Doria can refuse to let her be seen. But that itself would tell us something.”
You couldn’t tell, Godscalc thought, if it was true self-assurance or another aspect of the veneer he had assumed ever since Modon. Godscalc said, “You really think the Doria will be there?”
“Yes,” said Nicholas. “I consulted an oracle.”
“Well, now kindly consult me,” Godscalc said. “Once you arrive in Constantinople, you won’t be able to move anywhere without being seen. But someone could land before then. There is a house of Franciscans just inside the Marmara wall. We will pass it.”
Nicholas looked at him. “Would it harm them to help us?”
“I don’t see why it should,” Godscalc said. “I disembark there while you continue to sail round the city, taking your time about arriving. The Franciscans take me the quick way on foot through the city, and ferry me across to where Doria is staying in Pera. Then I join you. Bring her back with me, indeed, if I can.”
“All right,” Nicholas said. “You go. And I’ll come with you.”
The Universal Creator, tired of Catherine de Charetty’s complaints, decreed that the ancient capital of the world should receive her with a welcome that, at last, managed to exceed her expectations.
It began with the sound of trumpets and cymbals; and continued with the approach of a fleet of caiques hung with streamers and silks and manned by crews of picked oarsmen in livery. Then people started coming aboard: thundering up the companionway in furs and jewels with scented gloves in their hands; and followed by servants carrying boxes and vases and bales, all containing gifts for Pagano.
It seemed they thought he was a representative of the bank of St George and the Republic. Even when that was corrected, they seemed to esteem him none the less. For he was, indeed, Genoese ambassador to the Empire of Trebizond, and deserved to be fêted. The envoy of the Venetian Bailie, especially, made a point of it.
At first, she thought Pagano was a little bewildered by the extent of it all. In the middle of some of the earlier speeches she saw his mind was clearly elsewhere. But soon he returned to himself, replying to each verbose compliment with wit and vitality; dispensing wine and sweetmeats with a princely and prodigal hand. And for the first time she took her place unveiled at his side, and received the open admiration of well-dressed men who were not Pagano’s gaming friends but the kind she had watched, veiled, in Florence. Then the Genoese elder, a thin man of flustered appearance, was inviting them to disembark when they could, and occupy his poor house for the length of their stay.
Pagano, of course, had tried to explain that they were leaving immediately, but had been overruled. He had begun to insist, when the elder leaned over and murmured something in Pagano’s ear, and Pagano nodded and then, smiling, changed the subject.
Afterwards, when she asked him, he said that after all they might have to stay for a day or two, since the merchants, it appeared, had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare feasts and entertainments for them both. Also, as a matter of courtesy, he was to be invited to visit the Sublime Porte itself: Constantinople, which the Turks called Stamboul.
Catherine didn’t care what they called it, but was wondering what gown to wear for the Sultan. When Pagano said that the Sultan was not in the city, and in any case did not receive women, she suspected him of deceiving her. Then the thought was swept aside by the excitement of disembarkation, and the journey, with music, to the elder’s little house with its courtyard and gallery; and then the feast at the Bailie’s that night.
She wore her velvet gown, with pearls embroidered over the mildew, and led her dog. The Bailie was especially taken with it, even when it worried his gown-end. The Bailie, a sallow Venetian with an affable manner, spoke to Pagano as if really concerned about the course of their journey, even though Venice and Genoa were rivals. He then enquired about the Florentine ship, the Ciaretti. “Owned, I understand, by Madonna’s own kinsman, this Messer Niccolò. I look forward, as you must, to his arrival. A delightful man, I am sure. You will permit us to give him a reception.”
She was speechless. For a moment, Pagano too looked taken aback. Then his face slowly smoothed out and cleared and became attractively pink. It was a look of relief and success, and she had seen it before, when he had been short of time, and dependent on finding her willing. She could see no connection with Nicholas.
Now Pagano said light-heartedly, “You have news of Niccolò? Monsignore, I am glad. He fell into some trouble at Modon, and we had to leave him behind, as I fear must happen here. But we shall meet him in Trebizond. We count on it.”
The Bailie had turned to her, gallantly chiding. “He hoped very much you would wait for him, madonna. What does a day or two matter? Indeed, you will meet, I am sure. None of us is likely to permit such a charming pair to leave Pera lightly.”
In their chamber that night she found Pagano briskly attentive but disinclined to waste breath on chatter. He said he supposed some fishing boat had brought news of Nicholas’s coming. What did it matter? He must be a week behind them at least. Perhaps they would see him; perhaps not. It depended on the Sultan’s viziers as much as on their good friends in Pera. He did not want to offend the Bailie. He must not offend the Sultan. She would understand that.
She understood that, more or less. They spent the whole of the next day visiting the other residences of the colony, taking wine and being entertained. She received a great deal of praise, although the men were inclined to stand in corners and speak in low voices together. One woman commended her courage in going to Trebizond but, before she could reply, another broke in to ask why a new bride should care for such things? It could be war in Bosnia, Belgrade, Albania. If one hesitated every time there was a rumour, one would never go anywhere.
They were talking, she knew, about the Turks, but she had no fears. Pagano had said there was no possible danger and if there were, did she not trust him to protect her? And meanwhile they would receive, undiluted, all the court had to offer.
Her only concern, then, was her wardrobe. She found the matter solved by the Venetian Bailie who, tireless in service, sent her presents of velvet and silk and asked merchants to call on her with precious things he thought she might like. Their chamber began to look like a store. She thought, if Pagano agreed, she might sell some of the velvet at Trebizond, and use the money for something she wanted. Now she saw other rings, she was a little displeased with her carbuncle. She could sell that as well, for a real ring. Pagano, she understood, had to keep his money at present for trading. Of course, he was right.
The following day, they became hosts in their turn. Pagano had a banquet laid out on his ship and all the colony came. He was especially kind to an old man of fifty whom he called Master George Amiroutzes and who spoke terrible Italian with a heavy Greek accent. His eyes were light, and ringed as if by a crayon with lash-bristle. He had a big nose and a supple, talkative mouth, and a striped beard and curling brown ringlets. Catherine thought him probably some sort of teacher, and
was not impressed by his long, plain black gown or his supposed acquaintance with Florence. He also claimed to know Genoa which Pagano, the soul of courtesy, of course allowed to pass uncontradicted. He and Pagano spoke Greek together, and the man redeemed himself on leaving by kissing Catherine’s hand and comparing her to Helen of Troy, with whom of course she was familiar. Pagano had escorted him to the door, and returning had touched her cheek fondly. “What a delightful hostess you are! Who else could so have impressed the Great Chancellor of Trebizond, the Count Palatine Amiroutzes?”
Of course he should have warned her. In Trebizond men wore tunics, or long jewelled robes, and gorgeous cloaks, and Asiatic boots with long toes. She had asked. Now, when she complained, her husband embraced her. “Why, what more would you have said to him if you had known? He’s a lay philosopher; he has travelled the world. But he’s a man who can talk also of ordinary things. You will get to know him much better. I’ve asked him if he would care to sail with us to Trebizond.”
“You didn’t ask me!” Catherine said; and was glad to see him abashed.
“Nor did I, my princess. Then if you don’t wish it, of course he won’t come.” She was comforted.
She was still sleeping next morning when the summons came for Pagano to travel over the water to present himself to the lord Mahmud Pasha. The Grand Vizier had sent his Greek secretary. Catherine’s maidservant woke her when Pagano was ready, and he came to the bedchamber to see her. Taking his leave, he was amusing and playful as ever, but a shade inconsequential. The Grand Vizier was, of course, the Sultan’s right hand; but Pagano could make anyone living admire him.
She waved her final farewell from the balcony. Looking down, wrapped in her cloak, she saw that it was a real cavalcade, with an escort and all Pagano’s bodyservants in cerise velvet and silver, two of them drawing the cart with the presents. Noah had a ruby clasp in his turban and that look of adoration that he wore when close to Pagano. She had no time for Noah. Pagano himself wore cloth of silver and was mounted on a white Arab horse their host had kept for this day. Her husband, who doted on her.