Race of Scorpions (16 page)

He looked up. ‘A sobering matter, abduction. Why do you think they brought you on board? Once they had me, there was no need.’

‘I think I know,’ she said. ‘You heard them. They hoped by threatening me to keep you quiet, and prevent you escaping. And, too, they thought I still served the Queen, and they don’t want the Queen to know what has happened. I don’t know which they want more – to use you, or simply to deny you and the ship to the Queen.’

‘Thank you,’ said Nicholas.

She frowned. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are very young, and you have wasted almost a year.’

‘So have you,’ he said.

She lifted one shoulder. ‘What do you expect me to say? All my life is a waste? I enjoy my life. Or did. I shall enjoy it again.’

‘In Cyprus?’ said Nicholas. ‘I thought we might do better than that.’

‘We?’

‘I can’t jump ship without you.’

She said, ‘You won’t get a chance to jump ship. This is a round ship, remember. She sails, she doesn’t have to rest oarsmen, and her holds will carry all the provision that’s wanted. She need hardly call anywhere. They will lock that cabin door, and they will keep your friend Crackbene under guard, and all his officers. In any case, I wouldn’t come with you.’

‘No?’ said Nicholas.

She said, ‘Would you keep me with you when we had escaped? I rather think not. And what would I do on some remote Venetian island? If I am going anywhere, it might as well be to Cyprus. And you heard what he said. If the King himself cannot persuade you, then they are prepared to let you go.’

‘And risk my crossing to Queen Carlotta? Of course not. If I don’t agree, it will be prison, or worse.’

‘Perhaps. But not for me,’ said Primaflora.

‘No. Not for you,’ said Nicholas slowly. ‘You don’t mind that?
You’d rather join King James’s Egyptian court than escape with me?’

‘Why not?’ said Primaflora. ‘Perhaps, after all, you should try to escape. Did you believe their threats against me? Of course not. If you go, I expect I shall pass between those two or three Cypriot-lovers up there. Then they will take me back, a prize for the Lusignan. If you see a chance, leave. Shall I play to you?’

‘What?’ said Nicholas.

‘You are puzzled and weak. There is wine. I have my lute. Lie down, and let me play for you. Has music a place in your life?’

Hearty folk song in Bruges, and obscene versifying in the dyeyard. Consorts, scratchily playing at some big house where merchants were tolerated. Violante, once heard to sing. And in Trebizond.… In Trebizond, the anthems that had come through the doors of the church of the Chrysokephalos, and the song of the nightingale, drowning them.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I know nothing of music.’

The tunes she played him were French, and once or twice she sang, playfully, making the words teasingly clear. They were a courtesan’s songs about dalliance, and quite specific. He thought that she didn’t expect him to understand all the words. But although his working language was Flemish, he had been reared in Burgundy, and his mother tongue was the same as hers. He lay and listened, the empty wine glass beside him, his eyes shut. He heard, but gave no sign, when the sound came nearer and when, still singing and playing, she stooped and sat, gently, on the edge of his bed. He heard his own breathing, and opened his eyes.

‘You have a dimple. Two,’ she said.

If he smiled it had been in self-mockery. She lifted a hand from the strings and touched his cheek. ‘And a scar.’

In the lamplight, she looked like a painting; a pristine confection of tint and line drawn from the ether. Her brows were fine as threads; the twisting forms of her hair echoed the curl of her lips and the little curve between nose and cheek, with its exact carmine crescent. Below each underlid, he observed a fine crease: part amusement, part exhaustion, partly the mark of something, he thought, that was inexhaustible. Queen Carlotta had been married and widowed at fourteen. No one, probably, would know when Primaflora was first wakened, or how.

Her hair was yellow as butter. Silver, with the radiance all round about it. It clasped her head like a shell. He began to wonder, and stopped himself. He said, ‘I have never heard anyone play so skilfully.’

She laid the lute slowly down, and straightened again. ‘And I have never seen a worse actor. So you understood all the words?’

‘So you didn’t mourn him long,’ Nicholas said.

Her back straightened. She sat without answering, studying him. Then she said, ‘Do you think I am offering love?’

There was a long pause. ‘No,’ he said.

‘No. I am offering
this
. Release. Relief. Oblivion. You need not take it.’

‘I wouldn’t take it,’ he said. He didn’t look at her hands.

There was a pause. ‘But?’ she said. She swept him from head to foot with her eyes, and then returned her gaze to his face. She was not smiling. She said, ‘But you need to receive it. So the blame would be mine. You betray nobody.’

‘I wouldn’t say that either,’ he said. ‘If you heard my friends: it is my lifetime’s interest, plotting.’

She said, ‘So, say it.’ She withdrew slowly and stood, always watching him. Her fingers, slipping down her own body, parted one by one the fine fragile clasps of her gown. The garment lingered and fell.

‘But I need to receive it,’ he said.

She stood in her chemise. Then, raising her arms, she drew the fine voile steadily over her head. She knelt, then lay on his bed. Her breasts, suspended, were oval. Her calves and thighs were perfect, as if moulded and grown from ripe peaches. Her head came to rest on his arm. He bent his wrist, and touched the tightly-bound cap of her hair. His hand stood away. She said, ‘Let me do it for you,’ and lifted herself and, sitting beside him, disengaged the ribbons and cords and unfolded her long, silken hair with her fingers.

It was yellow, not chestnut; and the breasts lifted below it were perfect spheres with unused nipples, soft as bruised fruit. She said, ‘Close your eyes. This is my profession, not yours.’

His hands sprang to grip her, smiting the breath from her lungs. He said, painfully smiling, ‘You think so?’

Chapter 9

E
SCAPING CAME
naturally to Nicholas, for it required youth, strength and agility and he had all of those, as well as the kind of mind that solved puzzles. It failed to solve this one. Someone, somewhere, knew very well what kind of animal they had lured to their trap, and nothing he did, from the time he recovered his health, enabled him to take over his ship, or to land.

He was prepared, if escaping, to abduct Primaflora, if only to preserve her from the perils of her own philosophy. He was equally prepared, if he got off alone, to return in some fashion and rescue her. He was not at all sure that she would thank him for either effort. He did not, of course, have her affection. He doubted if he had even her friendship. He felt responsible for her for other reasons. Perhaps even because of a look on her face, caught sometimes unguarded.

Extraordinary precautions were taken to secure them both. In port, they were locked in separate cabins. When sailing, they were each allowed on deck closely guarded, but never together. Primaflora’s servant attended her, and he was served, cheerfully enough, by the man in the rough leather jerkin. He cherished his moments under the sky, if only because he knew every quirk of the
Doria
, and could assess the wind and the sea, and judge the set of the sails, and set his hand on the sheets he had learned so swiftly to work in two dangerous voyages. He had no chance, however, to direct his ship now. He hardly glimpsed Michael Crackbene, and was never permitted to speak to him.

He could, if he wished, have dined daily in the great cabin with those three well-dressed seigneurs, his captors. They had expressed disappointment at his first refusal, but soon had ceased to send messages. He had no interest in Cyprus, and no wish to add to his prejudices. He felt, however, some slight gratitude that they had not compelled him to attend, as they might well have done. As far as the route went, they made no secret of it, and much of it
doubled the way he had taken himself, last October. They rounded Greece, calling at Corfu and Modon. He knew the Venetian Bailie at Modon, and had thought that there, if nowhere else, he might slip ashore. But nothing worked: bribes, ruses, or cajolery. And Crackbene, he heard after, had been shut away bound like himself when the ship sailed into harbour. He himself was not only bound, he was gagged.

Lying helpless, he realised why, from the commotion. They had invited the Bailie on board. His name was Bembo, and Nicholas had met his cousin in Venice. Another of the same name had married a girl from the house of Corner, one of whose former palazzi had been presented to Nicholas by a grateful Republic. He still owned it, he supposed, and Gregorio his lawyer should be presiding there, conducting the Bank of Niccolò without Niccolò. The family Bembo, in other words, could begin a campaign which, with any luck, would bring the Signory of Venice to his rescue. It was unfortunate, therefore, that Nicholas was locked in the
Doria
, and the Bailie’s voice, in time, receded; and there came the clank of the anchor chain coming up, and the first tug of the oars, and then all the running about to get the sails ready. And then Modon was behind them.

There was only one other chance, and it turned out to be no chance at all. After they had paid their call at Crete, another ship hailed them. Nicholas was on deck at the time, and watched its coming with attention. From its size, it was a carrier, one of the biggest he had seen, and it came from the east, which meant it was returning from Alexandria, or Cyprus, or Rhodes. Then, as it came nearer, a trumpet call came over the water, and it ran up its flag.

The emblem was the eight-pointed Cross of the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes. It was all he saw before an angry voice spoke somewhere behind him, and he was hustled below. Later, the man who came to unlock him was smiling. ‘Gave them a fright, didn’t it, those bastards in the big cabin? Stands to reason, if a ship’s called
Doria
, it’ll attract every friend of the Genoese on the ocean. Especially if their commander’s called Doria as well.’

Nicholas said, ‘I thought it was a ship of the Order from Rhodes.’

‘It was,’ said the man. ‘Knights of St John, effing bastards. Sail all the time, getting supplies for that prime bitch Carlotta. Sir Imperiale Doria it was, on that ship. Brings the Queen cattle and grain, and hocks her silver when she calls for more money. Wanted to come aboard and tell us what the Turks are doing on Lesbos. I can imagine what they’re doing on Lesbos, and we’re not going to help stop them, I can tell you. Your rich friend in the cabin had to tell him we were infectious before my lord of Doria would go.’

‘Who is the rich man in the cabin?’ said Nicholas.

The man tittered again. ‘They don’t tell you, do they? Well, I’m not going to risk a whipping and let on. What’s it to you, with free food and drink for the asking? Whenever, that is, you’ve breath to spare from laying the woman.’ He backed and said, ‘None of that. Digi!’

By the time Digi flung open the door, Nicholas had recovered. The men left. He flung himself down on a chest, and a moment later the door was unlocked again and Primaflora rejoined him. She said, ‘What was the shouting?’

‘Nothing. I made a threatening gesture,’ Nicholas said. ‘Stupid of me.’ He was still breathing quickly. And aware, in his anger, that she was here again, and the afternoon would be spent as it was always spent, in exquisite instruction.

Well, not today. When he got up and walked over, he did not even undress her. He ignored, as if he had never learned them, all the delicacies; the devices to postpone, to heighten, wonderfully to protract, and simply made straight, as if time were short, for what he wanted. And she, extinguishing self, met him with feverish greed as if she, and not he, were in extremity. Her skills were, after all, to give pleasure.

Later, he lay on his face. She said, ‘I cannot go away. I could ask for another cabin. I am not sure why you suddenly think this is wrong.’

He had explained nothing. She was good at divining. He said, ‘It isn’t wrong. But it is a waste.’

‘Waste!’ she said. ‘That word again? What blows have you had, that you feel unshriven unless someone is beating you? Ten months of misery were a waste. But pleasure is not.’

‘Then let us say,’ Nicholas said, ‘that I don’t deserve it. One should work, and one should take relief from one’s work. That, my dear, is the Flemish way.’

She was quiet, as she always was when he held her at arm’s length. His thoughts were his own, and not Primaflora’s. His vision of Catherine and Pagano, locked exactly thus in this room by their voracity. Catherine his step-daughter, and Pagano Doria, whom he had caused to be killed. He turned over. ‘But your way is better, and I’ve been ungrateful. So long as you’re prepared for a parting. You know I’m going to refuse to serve this man. James the Bastard. This alternative king of the sorry island of Cyprus.’

She said, ‘If you worked for him, you could have both your relief and your trade. In the Flemish way.’

Her eyes were not smiling. He said, ‘You would stay with me? There must be more …’

She said, ‘Do you expect a declaration of love? You won’t get it. I made that mistake once, and fell out with my employer. Now I need another patron, and it would amuse me to stay with you.
Also, you require someone like me. You learn quickly. You conceal what you know. I had not expected –’ She paused.

‘What?’ said Nicholas.

‘To talk,’ she said. ‘In the evenings, when we hold conversation, it is what I enjoy most.’

He smiled at last. ‘Shall we,’ he said, ‘write this down and post it up on the door? It might earn me the respect of the crew; but I very much doubt it.’

She said, ‘Then you will keep an open mind about James?’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘If I don’t serve Carlotta, then I’ve no wish to serve James. I will hear him and leave, if he will let me. If he does, will you stay?’

She had a robe she wore in the heat, light as a chemise. It lay crumpled about her as she reclined on one elbow, considering him. He had given her no time to undress. She had not complained, but had been generous. He added, ‘I should be afraid for you.’