Loppe said, “It was a friendly letter, Master Julius, so I suppose it was the good news you were waiting for. It talked of telling my lord Cosimo de’ Medici what a fine man you were, and that they could rely on you, wherever you went in the East, to see to it that all men should be encouraged to return into the unity of the Catholic and Universal Church, and spurn the Eastern errors of worship. They think you’re a Latinist spy sent to subvert the Greeks and get them to join a Papal Crusade. They’re going to execute you as well, Master Julius.”
He could never have learned all that in the exchange he had just had. He was giving, Julius realised, the news he had already gleaned from others. He might have more.
“How did they get the letter?” Julius asked.
“It came to the Greek Patriarchate, Messer Julius,” said Loppe. “As you know, they depend on the goodwill of the Sultan. And in any case, the Grand Vizier had heard about you and the Cardinal Bessarion. Tursun Beg is his secretary. He says Pagano Doria had an audience with his master this morning.”
Pagano Doria. And he couldn’t even draw a decent breath to hate him with. Above him, Tobie’s round, light eyes held a warning. He had taken off the fur hat he had put on that morning and his face was a cold-looking lavender. Julius closed his eyes, releasing Loppe from risky conversation and making it easy for the Janissaries to lay hands on him. Nicholas, you bastard. And there was no point in struggling, even if it were possible. He’d only involve the whole crew.
That was when he heard Godscalc’s voice from the water, and opened his eyes. Tobie, who had a better view, was already striving to see over the side. Then he said in Flemish, “They’re both there. Not the girl.”
So he hadn’t even got Catherine. It had been his, Julius’s, place to take the girl back for her mother. They had had bitter words about it. But Nicholas had gone off just the same, and left them to get into this mess, and had done no good in Pera either. Nicholas thought he’d guessed what trick Doria had up his sleeve. But he hadn’t. Above him, Tobie shifted a little.
The Turkish official, also disturbed by the noise, had turned from his prisoners. Stooped to lift them, the Janissaries straightened. After a moment Tursun Beg walked himself to the head of the companionway, and gave an impatient sign for Loppe to join him. Beside Julius, John le Grant opened his eyes, winced, and said, “What?”
Julius said in Flemish, “It’s all gone wrong. They know who you are. They think I’m a dangerous disciple of Bessarion’s. They’ve hardly looked at the ship. They’ll probably impound it, when they’ve executed us.”
The engineer looked at him blearily. Then he said, “I’ve pissed mysel’, God damn it. Where’s Nicholas?”
“Just coming on board,” said Julius with painful bitterness. “What can he do?”
“Jesus Son of David,” said Tobie suddenly from above. His eyes were on the companionway. Twisting a shoulder, Julius tried to lift himself and see what was happening. As he watched, Godscalc stepped up on deck. His cloak was creased, and his hood, fallen back, showed the bristled black tonsure which the church permitted at sea. His attention seemed equally divided between Tursun Beg, to whom Loppe was trying to make him known, and a commotion from the ladder behind him. Julius saw Loppe step to the side, and then Tursun Beg. There was a splash, and a lot of shouting. Julius looked up at Tobie.
“Nicholas,” Tobie said. He spoke in a clipped voice.
“Escaping?” said John le Grant. He sounded surprised. Below, the shouting increased. They could see the top of the companionway sway. The head of Nicholas came into view, its toneless brown hair frizzed like a ball of brown wool with the damp. His hat was missing, and his cloak had half fallen off. From his belt to his boots, he was soaked in dirty seawater. His face was rosy with pleasure, and he was talking with large and positive gestures in incomprehensible Flemish.
In taverns in Bruges and Louvain, Julius had tracked them both down, Felix and Claes, by that joyous voice and uninhibited laugh. Paid their bills, led them out, held their heads while they retched. “Escaping,” he said.
Chapter 14
IF NICHOLAS HAD ESCAPED, it was only, of course, in a figurative sense. Like everyone else, he was still surrounded by Janissaries on board the impounded Ciaretti, whose sailing-master and notary had been beaten, bound, and were about to be removed to suffer the ultimate penalty, while the rest of her complement (her sober complement) awaited, sickened, the end which fate was preparing for them.
Tobie, herded with the rest on the prow, tried to imagine, bleakly, why Nicholas, just at this juncture, should have resorted to wine; and concluded that the girl was the cause. For all he knew, the same might have happened in Modon, had not the fire claimed all their energy. He tried to read Godscalc’s face, but it was void of expression. Julius, who must have been in considerable pain, was incandescent with anger. Le Grant, also under sentence of death, merely lay, looking puzzled. Loppe, whom one might have expected to show more distress than any one of them, merely looked vaguely content. Hesitantly, hope revived in Tobie’s sharp, Pavia-trained brain. He looked hard at Nicholas.
Like Loppe, Nicholas also looked vaguely complacent. His lower half still trickled with water from his mishap on the steps. His elbows, twined in the arms of two Janissaries, were knobbed like the wings of a pullet, and you could have put a caterpillar as soon as a crust between his smiling, generous lips. They made to hold him in front of the Bey, but his legs buckled a little, and his feet, unexpectedly straying, carried him out of his captors’ surprised grasp and ambitiously onwards. He arrived before they knew it at the roped-off square of the kitchen and stood staring down at his red-headed acquisition from Aberdeen. He sucked his breath in reprovingly. “You’ve pissed yourself,” Nicholas said. He spoke in Tuscan.
The red head jerked. “Well, by God, you’ve filled your boots as well as your drawers, and they didn’t give you the blunt end of an axe on your skull. They’re going to hang us,” said John le Grant in the same language. Tobie heard him.
“No, they’re not,” Nicholas said with confidence. His gaze, straying, found Julius tied up, and he transferred the smile to him, widened. “Impale you, they might. Bury you up to the neck. Tie you in a sack with a dog and then whack it. Fire you off from a cannon. Canon law, Julius. Couldn’t fire John, he’s too wet.”
“They know…” Julius began. He used Flemish.
“And you rowed very well,” Nicholas said, still in Italian. “Won your wager.” He turned his attention to Loppe at his side, and the Bey. He said to Loppe, “Tell your new chief he owes Julius three girls and some ale. Debt of honour. No, not ale; the skin-clippers think that it’s wicked.”
The men on the poop, frozen till now, were looking at one another uneasily. Tobie stared hard at Loppe. The Janissaries by the kitchen stood prepared, their eyes on Tursun Beg, who had given them no signal yet. The Turk spoke curtly to Loppe, who replied. Nicholas, evidently noticing, leaned and poked Loppe in the side. The negro turned.
Water from Nicholas’s cloak streamed over his boots and formed a pool which spread to where Julius was lying. Goat manure stirred, rose and floated into his ears. Le Grant suddenly choked and Tobie, watching, cursed him under his breath. Nicholas said to Loppe in playful Italian, “You’re a eunuch.”
Loppe, glancing nervously at him, returned his attention to Tursun Beg who was asking a question. Nicholas prodded the negro again. “Aren’t you? What’s big black eunuch in Turkish? Want to help row us to Trebizond? Give you three boys.”
“Messer Niccolò,” said Loppe, turning fully. What Tobie could see of his face looked mildly desperate. He said, “My lord Tursun Beg asks where the rowers are. The benches are half empty.”
Nicholas stared at him. The necessity for keeping his weight on both feet evidently escaped him and he sat down, delayed by his cloak, in the water. It ran under le Grant and stopped him choking. Nicholas embraced his knees with one hand and waved the other. “Well, tell him! All the officers had to row, and we had a
wager.”
He sang to himself while Loppe translated, and answered questions, and the damp, cold wind stirred his hair and his clothes and made Tobie, watching, suddenly shiver. Then there was silence.
Tursun Beg had turned from the Negro. For a moment, his black eyes considered Nicholas. Then he gave an order. Two men, reaching, jerked Nicholas viciously to his feet and held him, painfully. Nicholas stopped singing. Then Tursun spoke; and this time the dragoman translated. The dragoman said, “You are to answer. Half your rowers are missing.”
“That’s right,” Nicholas said. “Three girls and a…You didn’t row.” He looked indignant.
“Where are the rowers?” said the dragoman.
Nicholas looked surprised. “Well. All over the Aegean and Marmara. With their families. In Paradise. We did take on others, but they kept deserting.”
“Paradise?” said the dragoman.
“Giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said Nicholas generously.
“The honoured Tursun Beg means, messer padrone, do you say that some oarsmen died? How did they die?”
“They made a good death,” said Nicholas. “Ask the chaplain over there. Repented, all of them, to a man. We buried some overboard. Look, I’m wet.”
“Of what did they die?” said the dragoman. His voice, in its urgency, was nearly as peremptory as that of Tursun Beg.
“I don’t know,” said Nicholas. “I’m going to change. Didn’t you look in the ballast? We sanded up two of them there, to last until we get to Trebizond. That’s where they came from, and that’s where they wished to be buried. We didn’t have any Turks. I know how to bury a Turk. I’ve seen it. Under a hat on a gravestone. Maestro Cappello, Madonna Cappello, Bambino Cappellino. Funeral musica di cappella. Mourning wisps of capello. Cap—cap—cap that, my caprone,” said Nicholas. Tobie stopped trembling and stood, suddenly, very still. He felt himself flushing.
Tursun Beg, on the contrary, was sallow. He jerked his head and Nicholas was pushed, talking, towards his own cabin. Two of the Turk’s companions lifted the hatch and climbed for the second time down below. They came back very quickly: so quickly that their faces were white. And they called their news, in Turkish, from the hatch. News that struck, like a blow, everyone within hearing. News that transformed the whole ship.
Like tacks to a magnet, the living pattern of men filling the end-decks and gangway and benches of the great galley Ciaretti rearranged itself. Those who belonged to the ship stood where they were, looking about them. Those who did not, began to move with the first words of the announcement, springing away from both captives and oarsmen; leaving clear the tight groups of officials at poop and at stern. Nicholas, in a dry doublet, had come out of the stern castle with both hose in his hands and was trying to stand on one foot while he assumed them. Tursun Beg saw him and turned. He shouted.
The dragoman swallowed. He said, “My master says, do you not know that you carry the plague?” The rumble of horrified voices rose and fell all about him.
“The plague?” Nicholas said. “It’s the goats. Well, it’s Messer Julius now as well. There’s no smell from the ballast. Two good dry corpses, ready for home.”
“They have the plague,” said the dragoman. “My master’s barber knows the signs well. You cannot stay here.”
“Can’t I?” Nicholas said. He hopped, and pulled one stocking up to his ankles with its laces in knots. “All right,” he said. “But you’ll have to find me a lodging. I suppose I’d better meet the Grand Vizier and sort out this business of le Grant and my notary. What prison…My boots. Wait until I put on my boots. What prison are you putting them in?” His speech, though happily slurred, was quite easy to follow.
“They are to stay aboard,” said the dragoman rapidly. “You are all to stay aboard. You are to sail without going ashore. Water and supplies will be brought to you, but no one else will set foot on this ship.”
Nicholas rested his toes on the deck. “We were expecting the Bailie!” he said. He sounded more surprised than aggrieved. “And the Florentine agent. And Messer Bartolomeo Zorzi and his partner.”
“None of them,” said the dragoman.
Nicholas looked bemused. He said, “Well, of course. If you say so. You don’t have any laws about where I’ve got to sail?”
“Where were you going?” said Tursun Beg softly. The dragoman translated.
“To Trebizond,” Nicholas said. “I thought you knew that. We’re to stay there, to represent Florence.”
“Then,” said Tursun Beg, “I think, Messer Niccolò, you should pursue your excellent plan. I think you should take aboard what you need, and set sail directly for Trebizond.”
It was the last pronouncement he made. He said something aside. A whistle shrilled, and voices shouted from one end of the ship to another. There was an urgent shuffling of feet. With dignity, Tursun Beg and his entourage turned and descended the companionway followed, with fearful alacrity, by the host of their Janissaries, their hatchets glistening, their plumes jerked by the wind. As their rowboats cast off, Tobie ran down the steps from the poop and crossed to where Nicholas stood surveying the general departure with the greatest good will, waving frequently from the outrigging while he attempted to get the other leg covered. When the sea round them was empty but for the far-distant unhappy circle of guard boats, he finally put both feet down and looked about him. Every man left on board seemed to be crowded about him. “Three cheers,” said Tobie with careful sarcasm. They gave them, in a whisper.
Nicholas failed to look embarrassed. “Well, I should think so,” he said. “Look: for Christ’s sake, get down and start sawing the woodwork. Astorre and the rest’ll be dead. Loppe, I insulted you. You are reckoned a three-ball man from this day for services rendered. St Nicholas, patron of pawnbrokers. Tobie…?”
All but a touch, the thickened speech had vanished. Nicholas was sober. He had always been sober. “John’s all right. You’ve got a fine, battered notary, though,” Tobie said. In a mess of cut ropes, John le Grant sat up rubbing his arms and seeking tenderly the lump where the Turk’s mace had caught him. Someone had dumped straw all round Julius and Tobie had slit his shirt and was strapping him up prior to moving him. Julius, in between being stoical, was gasping and swearing under his breath, largely at Nicholas.
“Now, now,” Tobie said. He felt silly with elation. “We thought Doria was going to report our hundred soldiers, and planned accordingly. And it worked. All those beautiful fitments they made at Modon, and boxes, and barrels. They’ll have cramp and arthritis for weeks, but it saved them. Not to mention my convincing plague paintwork.”
“You mean it was lucky we had the two dead men,” said John le Grant. “I think I know what Julius is complaining about. But Doria outplayed us all. It was clever.” He paused. “What was that about a letter from Bessarion?”
Tobie said, “The Medici bank promised to back us provided we received a clean bill of health from the cardinal. The clean bill of health seems to have come, if at an inconvenient moment. We’ll get copies from Florence. Right; let’s lift him now.”
Nicholas and two of the seamen helped carry Julius to the cabin. The senior helmsman said in Nicholas’s ear, “Christ, Messer Niccolò, that was funny. It was all I could do to keep quiet.”
Nicholas grinned. Behind them, small drifts of laughter were beginning to pass from one side of the ship to the other. The cook’s fire flared. Men were gathered in groups round the main hatch. Nicholas said, “Well. We all want to relax, but I suppose we mustn’t look like a happy ship. And whatever else, Captain Astorre and his men must stay below until dark. What about getting the canopy up, and some wine broached? Don’t bother Messer le Grant: you can do it amongst yourselves. But quietly, yes?”
He stayed with Tobie and Godscalc until Julius was bandaged and settled. Tobie said he had seen worse from a hunting fall, but it was still a matter of broken ribs and a collarbone and some cuts and heavy bruising. Godscalc went off and came back with something h
ot, with a powder in it. Sipping it one-handed, Julius was reminded for the first time, drowsily, of his other grievances. He said, “That poor little brat. What went wrong?”
Godscalc said, “She wouldn’t come, Julius. She is actually married, and he is being a good husband. She is happy, and clearly adores him. He has written, she says, and told her mother.”
Julius said, “You believed her?”
Godscalc said, “She had no reason to lie. Doria wasn’t there.” Tobie, methodically repacking his bag, wondered why Nicholas was not being allowed to speak. Reclining on the next pallet, the inebriated Florentine consul had helped himself to a cup of the very good wine someone had brought and was this time authentically draining it. He then poured another.
Julius said, “But Trebizond, if there’s war? She shouldn’t go there. And he won’t stay a good husband. It’s only her money he wants. I say we abduct her regardless.”
Tobie said gravely, “We could. We have to pick up passengers at Pera.”
Godscalc said, “Have we? I didn’t know that.”
Nicholas said, “People going to Trebizond. Tobie got word from the Greek’s brother Zorzi. It’ll have to be done at dark, on the Bosphorus side, since we’re supposed to be a ship with the plague. Julius, we can’t force her away: she’d just run back to him. And anyway, where should we take her? We’re going to Trebizond ourselves.” He paused, and then said, “If turning back would help Catherine, I would do it.”
“It wouldn’t,” said Godscalc. “If you had been with us, Julius, you would agree.”
Julius gazed at him for a while, with a puzzled look, until quite suddenly the opiate sent him to sleep.
Watching him, Tobie asked a soft question. “Will the war involve Trebizond? What did the Franciscans tell you?”
Godscalc said, “You saw the fleet at Gallipoli. They say there are three hundred Turkish ships gathering there. The Sultan is not in Adrianople, but has installed his second Vizier there, as if against a long absence. Meanwhile Mahmud Pasha the Grand Vizier is here in Stamboul, with all his household. He’s a successful general: he quelled Serbia, where his father came from, three years ago. If the Sultan takes his army to war, Mahmud will probably lead it.” He halted.