“Taken by whom?” John le Grant said.
Nicholas looked at him. “By Julius,” he said. “Julius left Erzerum when I did, and then took the west road with eight hundred camels. When he gets to Kerasous, he will send word. Then he will stay there.”
Tobie said, “How in God’s name…How in God’s name did you get Julius to go to Kerasous, and let you come and join us in Trebizond?”
“It was easy,” said Nicholas. He let a breath pass, and then said, “Tell me what you know about the Empress.”
Tobie said, “Just that she’s going to Georgia in our galley. The Emperor doesn’t know.”
“He does now,” Nicholas said. “But no one else. Or people will panic, and leave.”
“You’ve seen the Emperor?” Godscalc said.
“When I took the mules to the new house. It’s a good one: what we needed. Of course I saw him; or your gates would never have opened. He wanted to send her today, but I said we’d goods to embark. The manuscripts and the dyes.”
“You haven’t bought any dyes,” Tobie said.
Nicholas said, “No, but our clients did. The ones we sold our silk to. They sold wine to Caffa for furs, and bartered the furs to the Tabriz caravan merchants for kermes and indigo, and will pay me in kermes and indigo for what they owe me for silks. That’s why there was nothing left for Doria to buy.”
“It puzzles me,” Godscalc said. “He was wounded. But why didn’t he go to Erzerum and make his purchases there?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Nicholas. “Unless someone stole all his money.”
Tobie said slowly, “He tried to kill you. Doria did try to kill you.”
“Not in person,” Nicholas said. “And he is only the instrument. You will notice that I have succeeded in ruining him. Would you rather he died?”
“It might have been kinder,” said Godscalc. “What do you mean to do with him now?”
“Leave him,” said Nicholas. “He is Genoese consul. Let him rest on his pinnacle.”
“And you?” said the priest.
“Well, as you see, I came back,” Nicholas said. “I have plans. You have heard what they are. It is for you to say whether I should complete them. I’ve learned one lesson at least in the last month. A company cannot work by committee. It has a leader, or nothing.”
“You find us difficult colleagues,” Godscalc said.
“I find you difficult masters,” said Nicholas. “But that is only my view. You have run the business for some weeks without me. You must have reached some conclusions as well.”
No one spoke. Astorre, opening the door, said in a surprised voice, “Gone to sleep, have you? Christ, I thought you’d be singing drunk before I could get here. What d’you think of the boy? Eh? Eh? Got himself and Julius away from that murdering bastard; made our fortunes; did the little whore down; is going to win a war for somebody if I know anything about it. D’you know any company with the brains in it that we have?”
“No,” said Tobie. He looked at Godscalc.
Godscalc said, “You want to lead?”
“Appoint whatever leader you like,” Nicholas said. “But I have stopped taking orders.”
“Even from your employer?” Godscalc said.
Nicholas looked at him. “To everything, she is the exception,” he said.
Astorre, bewildered, looked about. He said, “Are you mad?”
“No,” said Godscalc. “I see a leader I am willing to serve. Tobie?”
“Yes,” said Tobie. “You have Loppe, without asking. And Astorre. John?”
Le Grant said, “I never served anyone else. What’s the question?”
“There is none, now,” said Godscalc drily. “Unless you wonder what the Charetty company is to do with a camel.”
Nicholas half rose, and sat down again. He said, “It can probably wait till tomorrow.”
“I should think it could,” Astorre said, getting up. “And you’ve got your own doctor tonight. By God, I’ll wager Master Julius is in a worse state than you are.”
Tobie stood. Nicholas said, “Oh, sit down. Doria got a slash or two as well, I should think.” He rose, successfully this time, and walked to the door. He smiled at them, gripping it. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Anyway, I’m quite glad I came back.”
The door closed. Loppe looked at Tobie. Tobie said, “Help him to bed. Then I’ll come.”
Loppe left. Astorre, on his feet, lingered with an expression lurking between anxiety and relief, and then abruptly went out. Tobie walked to the window. Outside, someone was pouring water into a pail. A dog barked, deep-chested, and another dog answered on a high pitch, like Willequin. From the kitchen quarters, far off, excited voices were talking, their words indistinguishable. Tobie could imagine what they were. Did you see him? He’s back! He’s alive! The demoiselle’s husband! The young devil, so big and so changed! With a beard, a yellow beard! A silk coat! A camel! Our Niccò!
He was back. The man who had taken the calculated risk of that journey, and left those painstaking notes. The man who had created the joyous, angelic joke of the elephant clock. The man who had gone to the Emperor’s baths; and sired a son on his own father’s wife.
Godscalc said, “Nothing has changed. What he has done, still he has done.”
“I have changed,” Tobie said. “Good and bad, I accept him.”
“You haven’t changed,” Godscalc said. “You have just been made, as I have, to feel your inadequacies.”
It surprised them both to hear John le Grant speak. He said, “Why don’t you leave him alone? He doesn’t need you. I’ve known him six months, and I’m no nearer telling the good from the bad. I suspect you can’t either, or by the time that you can, he’ll be dead. Does it matter? If you want a leader, you’ve got one.”
No one answered him. The truth was, Tobie supposed, that some of them wanted more than a leader; so that disappointment came hard. Toys; toys for the pillow. It was true; they were wrong. A team was one thing; a family was bound by something quite different. What they had was, indeed, enough to be thankful for. Whatever it meant, they had Nicholas.
Chapter 32
THEY HAD NICHOLAS. They had made their submission; and after many months of resistance, the tribe had their leader. Now they were to find out what it meant. What had seemed due to his deficiencies of age, of birth, of status now appeared as the self-sufficiency which, possibly, it had always been. The nature of his arrival had been expressly calculated, you would say, to achieve ascendancy. That the style of it was natural, or that he proposed to sustain it was not something that Godscalc had thought possible. He saw himself proved wrong immediately, in the conference Nicholas called the following day.
Round the trestle he had had placed in the parlour were the men you would expect: Tobie and Godscalc himself; Astorre and le Grant. There were also two others. Nicholas, coming in and sitting down without ceremony, said in Flemish, “I have asked Loppe to join us because our domestic organisation is now as important as the rest, and is going to get bigger. As bursar, he will control it. In the absence of Julius, we shall have the advice of Patou, his senior scrivener. I am going to talk for ten minutes. Then it will be your turn.”
He gave the appearance of being perfectly fit. One supposed that past beatings had made him practised at that. Only the fever could sometimes defeat him. He had not shaved off his growing beard, and no one chaffed him about it. A pity, Godscalc thought. In the profit and loss of this relationship, a number of agreeable credits had been wiped from the ledger. Then Nicholas spoke, and listening with an intensity that hardly allowed his mind to wander, Godscalc was reminded of the diagnostic sciences; of engineering; of medicine.
The case of the Charetty company was laid before them for dissection. First, their present situation. They had been in Trebizond for seven weeks. They had profitably sold or bartered their entire cargo. As both mercenary owners and commission agents they had earned further income and had used that, and their credit, for more purchases.
As a result, they now had lying at Kerasous 300,000 pounds’ weight of goods, half their own and half to be freighted for Venice. This represented one galley load, with accommodation for the manuscripts, the dyes, and the payment in money or kind they received from the Palace, including the hire of the ship to Batum.
“Phasis,” Godscalc said. Nicholas looked at him. Godscalc said, “Beside Batum, the river Phasis in Colchis, where Jason went. The Phasianus is the Colchian bird. I didn’t know whether you knew that. The Vow of the Pheasant.”
Nicholas was still looking at him. He said, “Then perhaps John will bring us an egg. We could present it to Duke Philip of Burgundy. I ought to continue.”
“With the expenditure,” said Tobie. Sitting slumped on his spine, he spoke into his frayed doublet buttons.
“With the expenditure. First, we have to take into account any adverse slip in the exchange. Then, what we send home has to offset the hire and use of the galley, the losses at Modon, the cost of the wool taken at Pera and the other items purchased on credit, and those parts of our living expenses not subsidised by the Emperor.”
“And the lease of the new house in the Citadel,” Tobie said.
“Thank you. But I think,” Nicholas said, “that we shall have no trouble selling that, too, at a profit, if we need to. At any rate, I have made a calculation of both intake and expenditure, using exact figures where I have them, and where I haven’t, the least favourable estimate in each case. Provided the galley reaches home safely, we shall not only have offset our expenses, we shall show an extremely high return for one voyage. I am talking,” said Nicholas, “of a profit in the region of one hundred and fifty per cent. And it could be higher.”
He looked round them all. Astorre whistled. John le Grant’s thumbs stayed stuck in the armholes of his pourpoint. “The Ram that laid the Golden Fleece,” he said.
“The snag being,” Tobie said, “that there are three hundred Turkish ships between us and the neck of the Bosphorus, and we’ve made a silly undertaking, in your absence, to send the galley on a trip in the opposite direction.”
“Silly?” said Nicholas. “The suggestion came, I’m told, from Violante of Naxos.”
The question in Godscalc’s mind had been asked before. He repeated it. “Working for whom?” he said mildly.
“Well, by God, for all of us,” Astorre said, staring. “If the Empress can get a few thousand Georgian soldiers out of her son-in-law and his atabegs, then I’m not for holding her back. Not with the Turk at our back door.”
“Working for Trebizond, then?” Godscalc said. A red head turned slowly.
Nicholas paused for the first time. Then he said, “All I can tell you for certain is that Violante of Naxos is not working against us, and she is not working for Doria. Her affiliation is wholly Venetian.”
Godscalc said, “Her husband is Venetian. Her blood connections are with Trebizond and with Uzum Hasan. One could imagine occasions on which she has to choose which of the three deserves her loyalty.”
“I can imagine them, too,” Nicholas said. “I spent three weeks imagining them, if I may remind you. I’m not complaining.” His eyes and those of John le Grant briefly met. Nicholas said, “I went to Erzerum to find out what I could. Violante of Naxos didn’t stop me. Her kinsmen rescued me from Doria. I was able to talk to her great-aunt. About Georgia among other things, certainly. Astorre is right. An appeal to the King of Georgia is important for everyone. We send the galley to Batum with the Empress Helen, replacing Astorre’s oarsmen with Venetians, if that’s what she asks for. It could be back in two weeks if she makes do with seeing Mamia in Imeretia, or even if she goes as far as Akhalziké, and Quarquaré can give undertakings.”
Godscalc said, “I suppose these are regional governors. If she goes to her daughter in Tiflis, it might be a while before the galley is able to bring back any message.”
“Then we put a time limit on it,” said Nicholas.
Tobie said, “The ship might be safer at Batum, if the Turks come. For that’s the point, isn’t it? Even if the galley were loading at Kerasous today, how could you sail it past the Turkish forts on the Bosphorus, and the guns at Constantinople and Gallipoli? How can you possibly tell when it’s safe to set out? And if you don’t get the Ciaretti out of the Black Sea by the end of the summer, you’ve doubled the length of your venture and half eaten your first profit and missed the whole of your second. You ought to have this ship turned round at Pisa and back here by next April, if you’re going to run a trading station that pays.”
Nicholas gave a sudden smile; and despite himself, Godscalc felt his own lips relax. Familiarly, the conference had turned into an argument. Nicholas said, “That’s the second part of the lecture. Tobie, be quiet and listen. All our profit depends on our judging this Turkish campaign correctly. The Charetty company and the Medici have invested in us, and we have a duty to get our cargo away, no matter what happens. We have also undertaken to set up a trading station for the term of a year, and to allow the Empire the use of our skilled soldiers.”
There was a little silence. Then Astorre said, “You mean you’ve given Julius orders to take the cargo home if he gets the chance. If he uses our galley, we’re stranded.”
“There are no other galleys,” said Nicholas. “And when this one sails back from Batum, I’m proposing that it doesn’t stop at Trebizond. I’m proposing that it sails straight on to Kerasous, and waits there until the Turkish fleet has gone home, or else passed it.”
Astorre said, “They’ll burn it, or sink it, or take it as they pass.”
John le Grant said, “No. There’s a plan for that. It would be safe. And it would have the Venetian seamen to crew it.” His voice, broad and even, was restful. Before, he had been withdrawn. Before the talk about Violante of Naxos. Another worshipper? Godscalc thought. Well: at least Julius was safe from her powers.
“Also,” said Nicholas, “the galley would take off our dye bales and manuscripts. I’d load them before she left for Batum, and they’d come back to the depot at Kerasous.”
“Leaving us to perish here for the Emperor David?” said Tobie, “Now I see why Julius preferred Kerasous. You said it was easy to persuade him.”
The man called Patou said quickly, “Meester Julius would never leave friends in danger.”
Nicholas said, “If you think we meant that, then forgive us. Whoever sails with that galley is a brave man. I said that our future depends on what the Sultan will do. He will attack Hasan Bey, or he will attack Trebizond. He cannot do both in one season. To command the Black Sea and Trebizond, he must take Sinope, which has forty cannon and two thousand artillerymen to defend it. To reduce Hasan Bey, he must begin with the White Sheep’s western frontier, which is the fortress of Koyulhisar. The forces of the emir of Sinope and the King of Georgia could save Sinope and Trebizond. Once the Sultan marches, we will know whether it is Persia or Trebizond he is attacking. Once the galley comes back from Batum, we shall know whether Georgia will throw her army on behalf of both against the Sultan. Whatever happens, Julius will await the right time and sail. Depending on what happens, we remain in Trebizond, or we escape and sail with him.”
“Escape?” Astorre said. “Kerasous is three days to the west.”
“Or we don’t escape,” Nicholas said. “And trade under whatever master takes Trebizond.”
There was a long silence. “The White Sheep? Turcomans? Muslims?” Godscalc said.
Nicholas looked at him with wide, steady eyes. “We have been trading with Pera, a suburb of Stamboul,” he said.
Astorre made a grinding noise in his throat. He said, “I’ll be damned to hell if I serve under a Turk.”
“You won’t,” Nicholas said. “If the City falls and you’re in it, you’re dead.”
The sewn eye was scarlet. “If it falls. I took money to fight here. I’m not running away.”
“Then you have one chance to our two,” Nicholas said. “If the City falls, you lead your men out when it??
?s falling, if your pride will allow you. We can join Julius beforehand, or we can stay as merchants, and hope to be spared. That, of course, depends on who our new masters would be. The Turk, straight from Sinope; or Uzum Hasan with his allies, the Turk conquered behind him. The difference is not so much their treatment of us as their treatment of our clients, the City. We can decide to stay for one, but not for the other. We can decide to stay for neither, and abandon the station as soon as we know trouble is coming.”
John le Grant said, “You haven’t mentioned the best that can happen. Georgia sends over its army, and so does the emir of Sinope. Both the Sultan and the White Sheep recoil, and Trebizond survives, as before. Our station continues, and Julius sails to the West, and comes back next year with a new freight. Is it impossible?”
“No,” said Nicholas. “But it requires no discussion. It is failure that requires to be planned for. Now I want to know what you think.”
Godscalc said, “I know what I think.”
He saw, perhaps for the first time, how attentive the eyes of Nicholas were. Nicholas said, “Yes?”
Godscalc said, “First, that we send the galley to Batum, and then let it secretly pass back to Kerasous. Second, that we wait to see where the Sultan is marching. Third, that we wait to hear what odds from Sinope and Georgia he may be facing. If the Sultan retreats, we remain until Julius returns next year with the galley. If the Sultan wins through, despite the emir of Sinope, despite the King of Georgia, despite Hasan Bey, he can only sit down before Trebizond at the end of the season and besiege it. We stay, and withstand the siege. If Uzum Hasan and his allies conquer the Sultan, we stay as we are. The lord of the White Sheep may covet Trebizond, but I can’t see him overturning it as well as the Sultan. More, it is his channel to Christian help from the West. It’s in his interest to preserve it.”