Chapter 153: Kingdom of Georgia

Once the docked ships left the piers, Zorzi and Zustignana resumed the seaward screen, bringing the fleet back to eleven, with Bepi carrying the needle in his pocket and the bows pointed east towards Georgia, eight days ahead.

Trebizond lay in their path, and they had no intention of stopping there. The lord of Sinope had been short of funds and willing to forgive a Lion, but the Emperor of Trebizond had no such excuse.

Latin hulls entering his waters could earn the worst of the three welcomes, the crews held for ransom or sold, and the cargo kept for good measure. The seizure would ruin the whole venture, so both struck Trebizond off the list without an argument.

Meanwhile, the archon’s message was making its way to Trebizond along the coast road, though no one aboard knew whether it would reach the city before the fleet slipped past.

On the fifth night, the fleet sailed far out to sea, abreast of the capital, with every lamp shuttered. The city appeared only as watchfires across a flat shelf of land cut by ravines, which was how the Greeks had come to call it a table.

Near midnight, a fisherman’s lantern crossed their track. His boat spotted dark hulls and made straight for the beach, its crew rowing as fast as they could manage.

Two more evenings passed beyond Trebizond, both spent by Vito at the stern with his histories.

Tamar had ruled the Georgians since 1184. Her people called her mepe, meaning king, while the Greeks called her Queen, and aboard La Contessa, Queen was what she remained. Her first marriage, to a Rus prince named Yuri, had ended badly enough that his supporters rose against her, but she bargained and gave ground until they finally laid down their opposition.

Her second husband, David Soslan, had been her best commander, though the report was that he had died about a year ago.

Royal blood, the Church, her victories, and the great houses kept Tamar on her throne, each great house holding its own land and retinue, along with the power to defy the crown when it pleased.

The next evening, Vito’s reading turned to her lands.

Kartli and Kakheti in the east, the country behind the Black Sea in the west, and Tbilisi, which the Georgians had taken in 1122. The border emirates paid homage when it suited them, so any map showing the full extent of Tamar’s authority was liable to tell a few lies.

Georgian spears had driven the Komnenoi from their coast, and the Queen still held sway there, though the Emperor kept his throne and his grudge.

Her riders had beaten the atabeg of Azerbaijan at Shamkor in 1195, then a Seljuk-led army at Basiani in 1202 or 1203. The Sultan who had led the latter was dead, and another now sat at Konya.

The chronicles listed Tamar’s heavy horse, light horse, and foot in numbers large enough to make a man suspicious, so Vito cut each figure down as he read.

The Greeks claimed that Tamar’s army was at Kars that summer, without David Soslan. Vito’s knowledge had the story onward under the name of the Mongols, a word no one else aboard had ever heard, and the farther he read, the less he trusted those books.

The Queen had more than horsemen to rely on. Vines, grain, herds, and forests fed her realm, and most of its people worked the land, while rents, customs, tribute, and booty filled her purse, with captives counted among the booty, while the road to Iran paid its tolls to whoever controlled it.

There were worse ways to become rich.

The Queen’s country had the funds, and it also had vines in its western valleys.

At the river entrance, they could expect a sandbar and a boat, followed by a governor ready to receive the Queen’s taxes and a Church that had heard about the sack. A crown that rich had no empty chest to fill, meaning less reason to forgive a Lion but more money to spend on its cargo.

No one at Sinope could tell them how a Georgian treated Latins, since none had come that way before, so Bepi’s three welcomes remained open.

On the seventh night, Vito brought the three books below. In the stern cabin, he and Caterina lay bare beneath a single sheet, her hair loose across his shoulder and the psalter propped on his knees.

He had learned the round Georgian script in a week, and the [Lingua Franca] had given him a useful grasp of the language behind it.

Caterina, who had learned Greek at her mother’s knee and Latin from priests, had watched this performance with open disbelief. She put him against verses, the surest way she could think of to check his work, then opened the gospel to the wedding at Cana.

"Vinum non habent. Ecco, Vitale, here, show me which word means wine."

She tilted the page into the lamplight. "And do not you dare to invent me one, hm? I will know, and then I make you walk back to Venezia, on the water. Which one is the wine, show, show.

Vito read the verse aloud in Georgian, then rendered it into Latin for her. "Ghvino, mia cara. Ghvi-no. This one, this, with the little curl on the tail like a pig’s, see?"

He read it out slowly, relishing it. "’They have no wine,’ says the Gospel. Ah! A sad thing, so I light a candle, a fat one, that the Queen’s country makes Saint John a liar, because the fattest belly of our fleet, Caterina, she is full of wine."

She tried him next on the psalm about the queen at the king’s right hand, and he gave her dedopali for queen and mepe for king without pausing. She checked both words twice and found no mistake, while Vito merely grinned.

Caterina shot upright so fast the sheet pooled at her waist, hair flying loose around her shoulders.

"Seven nights! Seven, Vitale, I count them. See, on my fingers!"

She flung up the hand and ticked them off in his face. "Three priests it takes, and a stick, a stick, to hammer the Latin into my poor head, and you? You pluck the Queen’s tongue off a page like a coin from the gutter, as if it is owed to you!"

A finger jabbed into his chest on every word. "Madonna santa, give me those books, before I begin to dislike you. Only a little, but I begin."

She snatched the word-list and gospel from his reach, threw back the sheet, and bit his shoulder, then his chin, then his ear, before kissing him hard enough to bring the lesson to an end. What followed needed no translation, and the psalter slipped off his knees and landed on the floor, where it remained until dawn.

By morning, the grey light at the stern window had turned to warm rain, which cleared away from the east. Vito and Caterina stood at the rail, her arm through his and the ring reflecting the sunlight, while the naves held their formation, the Lion flew at the masthead, and the war colors remained struck.

An hour before land appeared, the water turned muddy, carrying driftwood and whole tree trunks on the swell.

Then the land rose ahead, a flat green horizon of reeds, then the forest behind it, and beyond the forest the mountains, with snow still covering the farthest peaks.

The Greeks of Sinope had called this water the river of the ram’s fleece, and Vito’s histories said the Argonauts had sailed here in search of a single fleece, while a pheasant, named for the same stream, called from the reeds as the wind blew off the land.

The entrance of the Phasis appeared ahead, marked by a pale sandbar where the surf broke white across it. Beyond lay a modest harbor, with a fortress on the near bank and timber piers standing on piles driven into the mud. It looked much like home, yet no chain barred the entrance and no customs boat had come out to meet them.

Then smoke rose from the fortress, followed by a second column from the low headland beyond it and a third from a hill far inland.

"Smoke, Messer!" the lookout cried. "Three columns, and they’re answering each other!"

It was a chain of signal fires, and word of Latin keels raced inland faster than any road could carry it.