The equerry had a black moustache, and wore a buttoned robe and a hat like a tube. He said, “By order of the Basileus. It pleases him to offer the hospitality of his baths. Pray follow.”
Doria’s smile could be cut up and eaten. He murmured, using Italian, “I wonder, mixed bathing? I have heard things. My dear, I think you are too young.”
“I hope so,” said Nicholas. A door opened; and then another, from which steam emerged. It was what he had expected.
“Mixed bathing,” said Doria softly.
He had been in steam baths in Flanders and Italy. Most were bawdy houses and ran to hard couches in the entrance hall, with floor coverings of a sort, and a few hangings, and shuttered places by the latrines for undressing. In all of them, even the brothels, there were racks of towels to be had. Here, when he had stripped, there was nothing to do but walk mother-naked into the hall. The walls were hung with yellow silk sewn with pearls, and there were couches heaped with down cushions on a carpet from Persia. Against one wall was a buffet on which were laid flasks of wine and silver dishes of sweetmeats and fruit. Two servants stood in silent attendance, both wearing hipcloths. Both were eunuchs. None of the couches was occupied, and there was no sign of Doria. At the end of the room was a double door, heavily gilded. Nicholas walked towards it. As he did so, both leaves opened and a third attendant bowed, and flattened himself in an invitation to pass. He walked into a large, warm room full of steam. The tepidarium.
The tepidarium was not empty. Under its dome, all sound reduced itself to hollow whispers and low, musical resonances, and all light to the scented vapours of steam. Here, the only draped figure was one of a group displayed on a dais between pillars. On a sculptured couch, a golden-faced Zeus lay entwined with two painted boys of exquisite beauty. The position they had been given was unambiguous.
Round the rest of the room were real couches, on which lay supine figures, sometimes alone, sometimes under the kneading hands or glove of a masseur, also naked. One man was in the care of his barber. The bowls and hones and razors stood on a folding table: he was having his nails pared, lying relaxed with one wrist extended, the other hand behind his dyed yellow head. On the adjoining couch, a friend was being carefully oiled by his servant from stoppered bottles of aloes and musk.
The men were courtiers: Nicholas recognised some of them. Their bodies wore last season’s sunburn, worn to a pale and uniform sienna from brow to heel, without interruption. A few had light scars, and several bore the pink marks of weals, but not, he thought, from fighting. When he came in, only one or two glanced up, and then only briefly. The rest paid no attention.
Then he saw the boys. They were all young, between ten and fourteen, and well bred, or else well tutored. They didn’t appear to be slaves. There was nothing untoward, either, in their behaviour. Sometimes one shared a couch with an older man, either in silence or in gentle discourse, the treble voice muted. Man and boy did not touch save on greeting; and then with the most discreet of caresses. Sometimes the children were occupied with each other. He noticed two such, sprawled on the smooth marble intaglio which reflected the brightness of their bodies. They had a stone board between them, and were moving pieces across it. Like the pieces, one was dark and one was fair. The younger, an exquisite child with raven hair to his shoulders, was unfamiliar. The other was the beautiful boy who had carried the Imperial bow. Neither looked at him or at Pagano Doria who, he now saw, was standing observing him.
That was nothing. The men of the Ciaretti were glad to slough off their lice-ridden shirts and stiff doublets and tunics and lounge at ease, bare in the warmth of the cabin. Swimming, exercising, in sleep, they made nothing of it. There was no secret about how men were made. But Doria stood like a stag, his shoulders wide, his palms on his buttocks, and studied him at leisure. Nicholas returned the gaze, for he admired a well-made man, and Doria was that. In the lustrous, thickly lashed eyes was a mockery of adulation, with behind it something possibly genuine. Dislike, for example.
Doria spoke. His voice, in Italian, was lazy. “The boys are never unkind and, indeed, enjoy successes not easily managed. If nothing will serve, then ask them to show you the mosaics. The man who set these on the walls could rouse a corpse to its knees.” He spoke, without changing his attitude, between measured breaths. His gaze, gently derisive, transmitted other impressions: of effrontery and assurance and abundant virility. Unblushingly, he had let himself quicken.
“I see it suits you,” said Nicholas. His voice shook and steadied. Not the moment for stricken laughter. He could not even feel confident of turning his back. And as if it were not enough, the black-haired boy was coming towards him. Nicholas waited, and said in a calm voice. “My young lord, excuse me.” The sweat ran down his body and his skin itched and shivered. He wondered if anyone could construe that as excitement.
The boy said, in Greek, “We are desirous of pleasing.”
Before he could answer, Nicholas felt a wet hand touch his shoulder. Doria stood close beside him. He moved, and the hand slid off. Doria said to the child, “We are not all born of boors. What do they call you?”
His name was Anthimos. It was a Greek name, but not a Comneni one. A younger son, perhaps, of good but impoverished birth. The boy had soft lips and blue eyes and pale, smooth limbs like a bird. He looked up gravely, and placed delicate fingers at Doria’s waist, where Doria caught and flattened them.
What use to interfere? The boy and the short, handsome man faded into the steam until only one taut shape could be seen, and then none. Remotely, there came a sudden squeal of wet feet, and Doria’s voice laughed on a rising pitch. An attendant, hitherto unobserved, spoke sharply into the fog, “If you please, my lord. There are cubicles.” Still, no one had looked round.
Nicholas stood where he had been left, feeling ill. If there was anything explicit about his condition, it must be the deadly absence of all desire to be where he was. Yet the other boy now came before him.
The bow-carrier. Once, an emperor had given the post to a baker’s son. This was a different matter: a youth of perhaps fourteen years, who knew, as the other child had barely known, exactly what he was about. He had last seen him emerging from the Chrysokephalos, dressed in white silk, with the consecration prayer of the Eucharist still echoing in the purified air. His hair still smelt of incense, although he was bare except for the paint. He lifted arched brows over long, dripping lashes and said, “I have lost my partner. I am Alexios. Will you play with me, my lord?” His fingers, stealing out, proposed a playground. Nicholas trapped them carefully, as Doria had done, and tucking the boy’s hand under his arm, bent and scooped up the board and the pieces.
“My friend,” he said, “you have challenged a man who lays wagers with soothsayers. Show me the cubicles.”
The boy’s body was oiled. His pores, steamed open like those of a woman in childbirth, exuded sweet scents. Whatever he looked at, his eyes trod the same intimate paths as his fingers. Leaving with him, Nicholas glanced through blurred eyes back at the room. The reclining men had not stirred. Only, on the plinth with the two painted boys, Zeus the Cloud-gatherer moved, and coaxed himself free and, turning his great, golden mask, looked thoughtfully after him. And through the steam the smell of incense, again, made itself known.
Outside the cubicles, there was a eunuch. Well, that was no surprise. What was surprising was the boy’s sudden halt. The boy said, “It isn’t time.”
“My lord,” said the servant. He was addressing the boy, Nicholas saw. “My lord, I have orders.”
The youth walked forward. He leaned over and, taking the man’s fleshy upper arm between finger and thumb, pinched it viciously. The man drew in his breath with a hiss, but stayed where he was. Nicholas said, “Alexios? Who are you?”
The boy turned, the expression of discontent vanishing. The eunuch said, “My lord Alexios is the nephew of the great lord the Emperor. I have the Emperor’s orders to take you to other chambers. My young lord will excuse us.”
/> “Like this?” Nicholas said.
Wordlessly, the eunuch had turned. From the curtained stall at his side, he withdrew and shook out a loose folded garment and held it for Nicholas to assume. It was of cotton, he thought, and clung to his damp body, making him shiver. The eunuch, kneeling, closed the loops that fastened it from the ground up to his throat. “I should have done that,” said the boy; and gave a glorious smile.
Nicholas said, “You haven’t earned it yet. It’s the prize for winning three boardgames.”
“There are other games,” said the boy.
“No doubt,” said Nicholas mildly, “but I don’t play them.” The last he saw of Alexios, as he followed the eunuch out of the steam, was a lissom figure hugging itself and looking after him in part annoyance, part puzzlement.
The passage led to another, and then a series which became dryer and grander and eventually, he guessed, took him back to one of the lower courts of the Palace. He asked nothing and the eunuch was silent. The mark on the man’s arm was dusky red, with a line of blood where the nail had pierced through. Whatever was about to happen, the range of possibilities was not large. He was Florentine consul, and life and limb were not in danger. Unless, of course, he met someone who did more than pinch when frustrated.
When they came at length to a door, he was hardly surprised when the eunuch scratched and, setting it open, left him to enter and face the occupant of the room himself. It was Violante, the Emperor’s great-niece. He said, “You missed my Prostration.”
“I thought I had prevented it,” she said. She wore her robe of ceremony and her diadem, and was seated in the same heavy chair she had used when on shipboard, with her servants about her. To one side, as on shipboard, was the black-robed figure of the Archimandrite Diadochos. Everyone was fully clothed but himself. Inside his single garment the sweat trickled down his wet skin and, but for the cotton, would have pooled at his bare feet. She added, “We have embarrassed you? I am sorry. I have been instructed by the Emperor to present you with a mark of his favour, that is all. It is here.”
It was a velvet-covered box which, when opened, proved to contain two manuscripts, one on top of the other. He put in his hands and unwrapped the first from the cloth which held it together. It was unbound and very old. He opened it carefully, and then stopped at what he saw. The lady said, “Sit and turn the pages. I want you to see what you have.”
The Greek was hard to make out, but not the diagrams. Nicholas said, “Who wrote this, Despoina?”
“You know what you have?” she said.
“A book of automata. Of machines. Yes,” he said.
“Could you make them?”
“Yes, highness,” he said.
“I think you probably could,” said Violante of Naxos. “It is a book of mechanical devices, written many generations ago by an engineer of Diyarbekr. I had it from my aunt, who married the lord Uzum Hasan. You will know. His family have been princes of Diyarbekr since before Timur the Lame.”
“It is too precious. It is yours,” Nicholas said.
“Then perhaps, some day, you will give me a copy,” said Violante of Naxos. “Meanwhile, there is nothing that would please his magnificence the Emperor more than to have realised one or more of these devices. I have told him you will discuss it with him.”
He hardly heard her, turning the pages. She said, “Messer Niccolò! Do you thank me?”
Then he looked up, his face burning. He said, “I lack the means, Despoina. This is truly generous.”
She said, “Then look at the other. It is my payment for another length of the red and rose silk I have heard of. In return, I expect you to be generous.”
He laid aside the book of drawings and picked up the other. After a moment he said, “Despoina: are there other books of this kind?”
“A great many,” she said. “You have never heard of Gregorios Chionides? He was chief physician to one of the Emperor’s forebears. He brought many such books back from Persia, and summarised them in Greek. We have a book on mathematics and clocks by Master Fusoris. And there are the philosophers. But I hardly expect that you ask on your own account. You wish to know if the Emperor would be willing to barter?”
“Our silks find favour with him, I notice,” said Nicholas. “If he preferred other payment, the Medici would arrange it. Yes, I could sell such books in the West, bought or copied. But perhaps the Emperor has in mind a library of his own, and would prefer not to deplete it.”
“As you say, they can be copied,” observed the lady. She was sitting so still that the gems in her diadem hardly flashed. He gave up the books to be restored to their box and sat with his hands firmly clasped, quelling discomfort until the negotiation should be drawn to an end. For it was, of course, a negotiation. The Emperor had a menagerie, but no library, although he did, it seemed, have a storehouse of books in the Palace. They were short of silver, Doria had said. Were they short of funds? Surely not. Although their trading wealth, it was true, had yielded its cream these many years to the Genoese. During one of their ridiculous quarrels, the Genoese had threatened, unless better treated, to increase the duty on wine and salt to such a degree that the Emperor’s subjects could no longer export wine to Caffa. The lady said, “What are you thinking, my damp Messer Niccolò?”
Nicholas said, “That with unrest beyond the mountains behind him, perhaps the Basileus will find it harder to collect the tolls and taxes from his people.”
“Is it ever easy to pay tolls and taxes?” said the lady Violante. “True, the Empire is less than it was; certain wealthy families have always complained; the peasants are sly, and transform their wealth from corn into cattle. There is always someone to complain if a road is not maintained, or a route safeguarded from brigands, or a well allowed to fall into disrepair. But no. The Emperor exacts all he needs for the court and his palaces. We are not poor. We have gems. You can scotch the rumour, if you hear it, that the Greeks are too mean to pay mercenaries—you have been paid. Or will not spend money on defences—you have seen the walls. Trebizond endures. Even under Timur it endured and even prospered, while the Mongol horde took from Georgia the coat of mail forged by the hands of King David the psalmist himself.”
Nicholas sat without speaking. Then he said, “Trebizond was a vassal state of the Mongols.”
“But the Mongols have gone,” the lady said. “The White Horde of Uzum Hasan will go too, or win all of Persia and sit in Tabriz or Diyarbekr, troubling no one. The Ottoman army will take one thing or another, but will always go back to its cities in Europe. Trebizond will continue.” She paused. “Have I reassured you? I felt you uncertain.”
“About what, Despoina?” Nicholas said. “I shall buy what books you can spare me. And if I am uncertain, it is only because I fear to keep the Emperor waiting.”
He had heard the door open. Her eyes lifted, and some signal must have passed. She turned her eyes back to him. “He has awakened, and will see you. You will discuss al-Jazari.”
“Al-Jazari?” he said.
“The engineer whose book you hold. And perhaps other devices. But I am told he will not expect you to stay long, in view of your illness.”
“My illness?” he said.
“You became unwell in the baths. Otherwise you would have joined him immediately. He will understand. You are flushed. You sweat. Are you shivering?”
“I am undoubtedly shivering, Despoina,” said Nicholas.
“Then you may leave,” she said.
He rose, and bowed, and left, while a servant brought the box after him. There was no sign of his clothes; nor was he offered any means of improving his appearance. He gathered that the omission was not accidental. A chamberlain finally received him and introduced him by a small door into a room he thought at first empty. He was admiring the silk of its hangings when he saw the dais, and the bed, and the figure, loosely robed, reclining upon it. He felt, from the heat in his face, that he had probably assumed an appropriate flush. The Emperor said, “You may c
ome a little nearer. There. You are unwell?”
“Forgive me, Basileus,” Nicholas said. He rose from the prostration, but slowly. Upright, he allowed himself a quick glance before dropping his lids.
The pillows and sheets were of silk, much disordered. Uncovered, the Emperor’s hair was seen to be of a light ruffled gold, paler by two or three shades than his beard. Below the heavy robe, the strong neck was bare. His hands, loosely clasped, were fine and massively ringed. The Emperor said, “Who has it in his power to command weakness? We do not blame you. We are told you make toys.”
“I make engines for use and for pleasure. What is your wish?” Nicholas said.
“We should like a clock,” said the Emperor of the Hellenes. “A clock such as the Persians had, for my palace. Will you make it?”
“Gladly, Basileus.”
“You would make it gladly. We are pleased. We enjoy the company of light-hearted men, Messer Niccolò. You will bring us your plans for this clock. You will show us its progress.”
Nicholas said, “Given health, I will come when the Basileus asks.”
The figure on the bed stirred. “And meanwhile, are we so unapproachable? Is that the book? Bring it here.”
It was possible that a discussion about al-Jazari was about to take place. Nicholas carried the book with care to the bed.
The Emperor said, “What is it? You are trembling, boy! What do they call you? Nikko? Niccolino?”
They were not going to discuss al-Jazari. Nicholas said, “My lord, it is dangerous. My complaint may pass to the Basileus unless we remain apart.”
The noble face smiled. “We are not afraid,” said the Emperor David. “The Turk claims to fear nothing, so sweet is his heaven. We make our heaven on earth, and it is worth some small risk. Come. Show me the devices and see, we shall put our hand on your shoulder. It steadies you.” The Emperor turned to his chamberlain and said, “We are busy. Return in an hour.”
In a little under that time, Nicholas left. The chamberlain, summoned by bell, took him through many passages and into a booth where his clothes were. At first, he sat without dressing. Then a bath eunuch appeared, and came in and helped him, and started him on his way to the gates, with a page to carry the box.