Race of Scorpions (15 page)

The man smiled. ‘Let us use French. My name does not matter, nor that of my companions. But you know the lady Primaflora, do you not? Is that not enough?’

‘More than enough,’ Nicholas said, ‘if she planned my abduction. But I imagine you yourself had some part in it?’

‘No, no,’ said the man. ‘Absolve the lady. She has been an unwitting conspirator.’

‘You tracked me through her then?’ Nicholas said. He made his anger quite plain, although he made his way to her bench and sat down. She looked at her hands.

‘You might say so,’ said the man. ‘I apologise for your treatment. Speed was necessary, and the men who brought you here were not the kind I would have chosen. Your wounds tell that you fought a brave action at Troia.’

‘There were no cowards, that I saw,’ Nicholas said. He paused. ‘The Angevin losses must have been heavy.’

‘They deserved to be. They were led by a fool. And Piccinino, everyone knows, serves only for money. Duke John has fled to Ischia, I hear, and King Ferrante has a secure throne in Naples, and is likely to stay there.’

Nicholas became aware that silence had fallen. He drew his hand down from the back of his neck. He said, ‘I seem to have lost count of time. What day are we in?’

‘You have been ill. It is Saturday. Late afternoon on the twenty-second day of the month of August. You have missed four days, that is all. Where are you going?’

He had reached the door before they could stop him. He drew aside the curtain and looked. The sun had moved a little from the right quarter and was now more clearly aft. If it was the late afternoon, it could not be so. Unless they were not sailing north. Standing there, he said, ‘We are sailing east.’

The voice behind him was composed. ‘You are not surprised, Messer Niccolò? You knew – surely you guessed – that you are going to Cyprus?’

Cyprus. He was struck dumb before his own incompetence. He had not guessed. His mind bent on his intricate plans for his army, he had neglected the obvious. He had been curious, as Tobie had said, to see what Katelina might do. He had failed to see that the choice he had finally made might be threatened not by Katelina, but by Carlotta of Cyprus.

Nicholas turned back, smoothly closing the curtain. He spoke to Primaflora in a voice perhaps softer than usual. ‘My congratulations. Colard Mansion would add his, if he knew. All the time, you were working for the Queen. You questioned Thomas, you traced me, you told Queen Carlotta where to find me. Well, you have failed. I will not work for her.’

The girl said nothing. The man in the chair plucked his lip with his hand, and the jewel in his hat winked and shivered. He said, ‘The Queen is a powerful woman, and a bad enemy.’

‘I can believe that, if this is her friendship. I will not serve her,’ said Nicholas.

‘She offers land, rank, possessions – all the wealth in the world, once she has been restored to the island,’ the soldier said. ‘The Pope commends her. The Duke of Savoy her uncle supports her. She is raising armies to help her. You married a woman of great worth, I believe, and found it no hardship to work with her. So why not this Queen?’

‘The reason is quite immaterial. The answer is no,’ Nicholas said. ‘So what happens now? Am I thrown overboard, or do her servants stop short at that?’

‘Not often,’ said the man. ‘So it is fortunate, perhaps, that I am not her servant. Do you really feel so strongly against her?’

‘For her personally, I have no feeling at all,’ Nicholas said. ‘The matter is just as I have stated. I do not wish to go to Cyprus, and I will not be coerced into it.’

‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘But that is a different argument. Once, I am told, you had no objection to trade in the east? You considered sugar, I’m told.’

‘I considered many things, before my wife died.’

‘In Cyprus,’ said the man, ‘we grow, as you know, the finest sugar reeds in the world. We need an able, vigorous man to revive those trades that the long war has disrupted. The manufacture of sugar is one. There are other prospects of note in the capital. If you wish to fight, a princely contract is yours. If you do not, there is ample scope for the rest of your skills. May we not tempt you?’

Nicholas said, ‘What sort of offer is that? You hold Kyrenia in the north. The prime cane fields are all in the west or the south. The capital is Nicosia which is not, either, in the Queen’s hands. My other skills, as you call them, could find no outlet unless I fought for you first. Until you clear Cyprus of the usurper and his Egyptian soldiers, you have no such posts to offer.’

The man sat back, and clasped his hands before him. He said, ‘But, Messer Niccolò, I speak for the usurper, as you call him, and his Egyptian army. The usurper holds the sugar, the royal capital. The usurper has driven Carlotta into Kyrenia. The usurper, whose servants you fought so worthily, so disconcertingly that day south of Bologna, has been most impressed by the tales of your resistance to the blandishments of the Queen, tales which I have now seen for myself are quite true. I,’ said the man, rising suddenly, ‘am making no offer to you on behalf of Carlotta of Cyprus. I speak to you in the name of James, her half-brother. All she offered, he will give you and more. And much more, if you will come and work for him in Cyprus.’

Nicholas stood, ignoring the pain in his head, and let the implications of that burst like metal filings around him. His main emotion, he found, was one of exasperation. He walked to a stool, and sat down on it. He said, ‘The Queen’s brother approached me before. In Venice. His delegates failed with the Pope and, passing through Venice, came and spoke to me.’

‘The Bishop and Sir Philip Podocataro. Their approach to you was untimely,’ his captor said peaceably.

‘And again at Silla? Then it was her brother’s hirelings who attacked Queen Carlotta, and made off with the sugar? Of course,’ Nicholas said. He understood now the words of the Cypriot.
Venetians? Genoese? They would have taken the sugar. Only one man would have destroyed it
.

And Queen Carlotta, without naming him either, had talked of the rival set up by her Egyptian enemies.
A puppet … apostate from the Christian faith, who swears the Gospel is false, that Christ is not the only one, nor Mary a Virgin
. Small wonder the puppet had failed to extract support from the Pope. The puppet who was James de Lusignan, her bastard brother and would-be usurper. In whose hands, at one remove, he now found himself. Nicholas said, ‘I refused him in Venice and fought against him in Silla. Is it reasonable to expect me to agree to work for him now?’

‘Men change their minds,’ said the other. ‘King James wishes to see you. He is merciful. If you insist, you need not fear he will keep you.’

The spokesman glanced for the first time at the two men on his right. The older, his black hair mixed with grey, returned the look from under his brows, grimly silent. The younger shifted position and, as if compelled by the other’s taciturnity, said, ‘There are opportunities such as perhaps you could not imagine. But we know the King well. You may trust him.’

Nicholas said, ‘Then let us save my time and his. No argument will persuade me. When you next touch land, I wish to disembark.’

‘I regret,’ said the other. ‘Not only my own life would be at risk. We have the lady, Carlotta’s servant, to consider.’

So we had. Through his considerable headache, Nicholas considered the problem of the lady Primaflora, who had clung to Thomas for months and who had undeniably been attempting to rejoin himself. Why, he did not yet know. On the affirmation of the man in the chair, the girl had not knowingly led his captors to him. But his abductors were working for Carlotta’s rival and, though she denied it, Primaflora might still be attached to the Queen.

He had a memory, suddenly, of a girl desolate in the snow with a dead man’s blood staining her breast. In Bruges, he had thought he saw truth in her face and had given the help that she asked for. Help to hide from a Queen who took it for granted that she would move from Ansaldo’s arms to his.

She sat, her head downbent, without looking at him, while he weighed one thing against another. Nicholas said, ‘She has left Queen Carlotta. You must know that.’

‘To bring you back,’ said the other. Through the passable French ran a strain of amusement.

‘No!’ said the courtesan Primaflora. She stood.

‘Then why?’ said the man in the chair.

Nicholas said nothing. The girl looked at him, and then at the man in the chair. She said, ‘The Queen ordered me to recruit him, but I only pretended to do so. I was escaping her.’

‘By following the man she had told you she wanted?’

The girl said, ‘Because he understood, and was kind, and I had nowhere else to go.’

‘You have formed an attachment to him,’ said the man in the chair, for whom Nicholas was forming a respect several degrees short of liking.

She did not answer at once. Then she said, ‘No. My lover is dead.’

‘So,’ said the man, ‘there is no feeling between you. On the other hand, Messer Niccolò is clearly a man of chivalrous impulses. I must tell him therefore that we intend to hold the lady as hostage for his good conduct. Any attempt to leave ship, and we kill her.’

‘Kill her! She’s a courtesan; a messenger; she earns her living by moving between men in high places. She has done nothing to deserve death,’ Nicholas said.

‘No. But there is a risk in moving between men in high places. You have incurred it yourself. She is aware of it. Nor is she in the least danger except for your actions. She looks to you for her life,’ the man said. ‘And now, we have spoken enough. You have suffered. You need food, fresh air, rest in a more salubrious cabin. We have one, at present occupied by the lady. She will not, I am sure, object to sharing it.’

‘There is no need,’ Nicholas said. ‘My own room will serve.’

The man raised his brows. ‘I am afraid the choice is not yours. You say Carlotta of Cyprus impelled you together. If that is your fate, then James of Cyprus will not reverse it.’

Someone took his arm from behind. Someone else came, and gave the girl a push to the door. The man in the chair spoke sharply, ‘With courtesy! I will have no more unmannerly handling!’

Nicholas turned to go, and then stopped. Approaching the master’s cabin, head down, was a newcomer: a fair, bulky man with a complexion of brick, against which his chin-bristles twinkled like bird-quills. Purposeful, light on his feet, he took the steps in a stride, like a man with a job he was good at. Then he looked up, and halted. He stared. From brick, his fair face turned scarlet. He said, ‘Master Nicholas? Lord of Mercy, you’re better!’ It was his own sailing-master, Mick Crackbene.

They looked at one another. The man in the straw hat appeared suddenly at his back, speaking calmly. ‘Master Crackbene has work to do. Take Messer Niccolò to his quarters.’

Crackbene said, ‘Have they told you –’

‘That’s enough,’ said the man behind Nicholas.

‘No, it isn’t,’ Nicholas said, without turning. ‘How does Master Crackbene come to be here?’

Crackbene drew breath, but once more his abductor forestalled him. He said, ‘He is not here by his own choice. Don’t blame him.
We found him near Manfredonia, in charge of a ship we felt would serve very well back in Cyprus. The King would also prefer that the vessel should not be sent, full of corn, to Carlotta. We were present in strength, and Master Crackbene had dispatched all his protectors to fight for Ferrante. We took the ship as she lay, and Master Crackbene and his officers with her. You will not lose by it. It will be paid for. It will be regarded, shall we say, as an indefinite charter?’

Nicholas looked slowly about. The round ship pattern, so familiar to all of them. The big cabin, so like his own, except that it was newly painted. The place he had lain which, he now realised, was a cell of the round ship he had brought back from Trebizond. The
Doria
. He was in his own ship the
Doria
, a prisoner, and sailing to Cyprus. He said, ‘May I talk to the master?’

‘I am afraid not,’ said the man. ‘Or not at present. It depends. All depends, as I have said, on your conduct. Agree, and there is nothing that is not within your grasp.’

Passing Crackbene, Nicholas contrived, he hoped, to look both resigned and reassuring and Crackbene, in return, managed a faint worried smile. Nicholas supposed he had cause to be worried. Himself, he had lost his ship, the ship by which Astorre and the rest might have followed him. On the other hand, he knew all its officers.

Later, there might be something to be done about that, when he felt less unsteady, and his head had ceased to ache. Meanwhile, he had the problem of the girl Primaflora.

In the cabin which, embarrassingly, they were to share, Nicholas found a second pallet already made up, with his horse gear and satchel beside it. The clothes he had fought in were absent, and so were his sword and his knife. The room, wide and low, was wainscotted and pleasantly furnished. It had made a bridal chamber, only last year, for Pagano Doria and his step-daughter Catherine. Forget it. Forget it.

The girl Primaflora stood by her bed until they both heard the lock turn in the door. Then she said, ‘They will bring us supper. We will talk after that. You should sleep now.’

He still stood, though not easily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ve lost your privacy.’

She looked as though she found him naïve. She said, ‘Through me, you have lost your freedom. You owe me no apology. Lie down. I don’t intend to nurse you or seduce you or slaughter you.’

Nicholas let himself drop and stretched out. He felt his eyes close. He said, ‘Please yourself. Whatever you do, I’ll be asleep when you do it.’

The promise on both sides was kept. She shook him awake, in the end, when the food came, and he demolished more of it than he
had expected. The Lusignan family employed capable cooks. Astorre, who liked his food, would have enjoyed this. Astorre. Both he and Tobie would learn immediately of the pirating of the
Doria
. But if they did, would they connect it with his abduction? And would they link it with Cyprus, or be misled, as he had been, by the more personal danger from Anjou? Again, incoming ships would soon tell where the
Doria
was calling. Except that there were a lot of round ships at sea, and her name might have been changed. Or perhaps not. The Doria family were Genoese; and the Genoese sided with Queen Carlotta. On a ship called the
Doria
, this crew would get to Cyprus unmolested. The girl said, ‘Solemn thoughts.’