Race of Scorpions (5 page)

The young Poles beside Nicholas were silent. They reined in when they came to the spot, and looked down at the thick Turkish carpet of red and white snow, and the slashed bodies lying upon it. Nicholas wondered which of them was Ansaldo. Then they sprang off, in the wake of the wagons.

These were easy to follow, if not to catch sight of. The ruts, not yet filled, led through uneven country that denied a clear view, and human hands as well as snow had muffled untoward sounds. The brigands were riding in silence. Nicholas said, ‘We’re getting close. The ruts are clearer. I don’t like it.’

‘An ambush?’ Thomas said.

‘Wait,’ said Nicholas. They stopped. Ahead were the wagons. They were motionless. Beside them were snow-covered bushes; a copse; a ridge behind which men could be hiding. It took a long and cautious approach to discover that there was no ambush here. The copse and bushes were empty of men. And the wagons, when they reached them, contained nothing.

There were footprints everywhere. One of the Poles said, ‘Sir?’ and pointed to a trail of them, deep as a trough. It led round a thicketed mound.

Nicholas said, ‘What’s over there?’

‘The Reno. The river,’ said one of the merchants.

Thomas swore. ‘And a boat, or a barge.’ He swung into the saddle. ‘We’ll get them.’

The river was there, round the ridge. And there were the brigands, their horses beside them. The contents of the carts stood
there also, or those very few chests that were left. One by one, they were being heaved down to the water. As Nicholas and his troop came in sight the last chest was released, the last pair of men swung themselves into their saddles and the small, well-armoured force set off along the bank, wheeled, and thundered over the bridge which lay beyond it. The air they presented was one of extraordinary efficiency.

There was no time, then, to examine the fate of the Queen’s possessions. But dashing over the bridge, Nicholas caught sight of the clutter of boxes below him, and conceived the impression that the barge or boat had foundered beneath them. He had the further impression that what he heard, far ahead, was the sound of men cheering. He was interested enough to be quite intent on catching them, but after fifteen minutes his horse started to founder, and two others had to drop out. After twenty minutes Thomas said, ‘They’ve got away. Their horses were fresher. They were mercenaries.’

‘Did you know them?’ Nicholas said.

‘No. But I know the second-hand shop their gear came from. Who paid them?’

‘Let’s ask the Queen,’ Nicholas said. ‘But first, let’s go back to the bridge.’

At the bridge, they had company: a dozen of the Cypriot household had come from the farm to assist them. They stood on the bank, looking downwards. Nicholas tied his horse to the bridge and looked over it. Below lay the contents of the Queen’s wagons. The exotic merchandise, to acquire which a mercenary troop had been told, it would seem, to stop at nothing. The merchandise for which Ansaldo and his brave men had perished.

The chests lay all burst open below him, some overturned, some floating and empty; one of them tranquilly sinking. He watched it. It contained a seam of grey, glistening silt which rose groggily, clouding the water. Beneath the boxes was nothing but river. There never had been a boat. The contents of the chests had not been stolen: they lay, presumably safe, on the bed of the river. So why had the men cheered?

Nicholas said, ‘What was in them?’

One of the Cypriots came up, walking slowly from where the carts stood. ‘What was in them? Sugar,’ he said.

Diamonds, he might have said. It was nearly the same. Nicholas looked at him without speaking, and then at his companions. ‘Sixteen loaves a box, and how many boxes …? For Bologna?’

‘For the refineries at Bologna,’ another of the Queen’s entourage said. ‘The robbers couldn’t do anything with it, you see. It had to be refined. They couldn’t do such a thing secretly. So they brought it to the river and ruined it. All that money lost to the Queen; the gold she needed to win back her throne.’

‘Who were they?’ said Nicholas.

The Cypriot shrugged. ‘Venetians? Genoese? They would have taken the sugar. Only one man would have destroyed it. We know him.’

‘Who?’ Nicholas said.

‘That is our affair,’ said the man.

They took the carts back to the farm, where the Queen was, and instead of her sugar they carried her dead. Waiting outside the gate was the girl Nicholas had already noticed. She had been there a long time: her face was white with cold. He reined in his horse and dismounted. ‘Demoiselle? I am sorry.’

Her eyes were on the wagon. She said, ‘Would you help me up?’

Heads turned. Nicholas said, ‘Yes. Take my hand.’

Running out from the house, the Queen met their tale with a torrent of questions and cries, rounding in anger on the men who had stayed with her, the major domo and the man she called Pardo. In the middle she walked sharply across to the carts and examined them. The girl Primaflora looked up.

It had stopped snowing. Her yellow hair was no longer neatly coiled in its pleatings and her paint had all gone. At her knee was a dead man in half armour. The Queen said, ‘Ansaldo! But what a tragedy! I cannot bear it! What shall I do without him, after all this?’

‘Find another,’ said the girl. The men who had been with her in the barn were silent. She looked at them, and then about her. She said, ‘Now the children can come back and finish their snowmen. Imagine how many they made!’

Reaching up, the Queen patted her cheek. ‘Come, girl. They will warm you and give you dry clothes. One will help you down.’

She turned, to find whom to command, and saw Nicholas. She frowned, searching her memory. Since there was no hope of avoidance, Nicholas took off his helmet and gave a short bow. She said, ‘We have met.’

‘Niccolò vander Poele, madama,’ he said. ‘Of course, at your service.’ His Greek was pure Trapezuntine. He knew she would recognise that, before anything. He saw, as her face sharpened, that she did.

She said, ‘Ser Niccolò. You have my gratitude. Pray help my poor lady descend.’

He turned, obeying, and lifted the girl to the ground. She was heavy, weighed down with soaked stuff. She said, ‘Let me show you the snowmen.’

The Queen shook her head, her face pitying. Nicholas said, ‘Show me.’

His hand was taken. The young woman led him, as a child
might, round the side of the house, and to the yard and the barn at the back. It was as she said. The snow was littered with playthings and crude, buttoned figures with eyes and noses and hands. Nicholas stood. The girl at his elbow said nothing. One or two of the Cypriots had drifted over to join them.

The biggest and best of the figures stood just within reach. Nicholas put out a tentative thumb, rasped its cheek, and then broke off an ear-lobe and sucked it. She watched him, her face stiff but not so frozen as it had been. He lowered the fragment and considered it. ‘Five ducats’ worth?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’ll pay you when I can afford it. What was in the boxes then?’

The girl said, ‘We filled them with snow. It was Ansaldo’s idea.’

‘We in the barn, we all helped,’ said one of the Cypriots. ‘You can mould sugar with damp into anything. We planted a fortune in snowmen, knowing no one would steal it.’

‘And sent us to chase a caravan full of snow?’ Nicholas said.

‘There were men with it,’ said the Cypriot. ‘Men who gave their lives as a decoy to draw the attack from their Queen.’

‘I hope she is grateful,’ said Nicholas.

‘To those who serve her,’ said Primaflora, ‘she is always grateful.’

‘To those who serve me,’ said Carlotta, by the grace of God Queen of Jerusalem, Cyprus and Armenia, ‘I show my gratitude. You may consider yourself already a knight. You may choose what fiefs in my country you wish.’

Since she was speaking in Bologna, not Cyprus, the pronouncement had its comic side, and once Nicholas would have staggered out of the meeting, repeating the words, in perfect parody, to the delight of Julius, or Tobie, or Felix. Now, it was not even an irritation but something to be endured, on the heels of an equally arid visit to Sante Bentivoglio at his mistress’s house in Porretta. There, there had been a similar interest, well shrouded, in his immediate plans.

He had no plans. He had, however, respect for rank and position, and so had called on the Queen, as he’d promised. She had given him a casket of sugar and the prospect of endowments in an island she had yet to conquer.

The Queen continued to talk, with animation. He remembered listening in Venice and thinking that, as a commoner, she would have learned how to moderate her manner to men. Her physical vehemence – the beaked nose, the high complexion, the vigorous, well-jointed hands – was as alarming as the impact of her mental agility. She knew something, if Sante did not, of his history. She cupped her chin, leaning forward, and said, ‘You have no objection, I take it, to a woman who runs her own business?’

‘My wife did so,’ he said.

‘And successfully. But a man of the Muslim faith would have denied her her right to manage any such venture. In Muslim countries, the male is supreme; the illegitimate son takes precedence over the legitimate daughter. When we, Queen of Cyprus, sought help from the Sultan of Egypt, the robes of our envoy were ripped and the Mamelukes set up a cry. “What, deprive the male, and give the lordship to the female?” But perhaps you think that is just?’

‘I have no vote, madonna,’ said Nicholas. ‘In a perfect world the fittest would rule, irrespective of sex.’

‘Then you agree with me,’ said the Queen. ‘Yet my enemies have driven me from all but a patch of my island. Set up a puppet who has become apostate from the Christian faith, who swears the Gospel is false, that Christ is not the only one, nor Mary a virgin; who denies John the Forerunner and is already oppressing the Church of my people. Is such a blasphemer a fit person to rule?’

‘What people would accept such a person?’ Nicholas said.

She took down her hand. ‘Accept? You have seen their valour. They fight. They die. Those who are left are here with us, or defending our lord and husband the King in his castle. We, a woman, are here to claim help. Without men and artillery, without ships and horses the infidel will rule over Cyprus, and the Middle Sea be lost little by little to Christendom. You have a troop of skilled men.’

‘I had. It is under contract,’ said Nicholas.

‘The Holy Father himself would absolve you,’ she said.

‘It is fighting for the Holy Father,’ said Nicholas, ‘in his league against Anjou in Naples.’

She pursed her lips, which were shapely. ‘You need his indulgences more than rank, estates, a pension?’

He said, ‘The matter is out of my hands. The force and its captain are part of my late wife’s estate.’

‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘You said nothing of this in Venice? Your captain is Astorre, is he not?’

She was clever. ‘Yes, madonna,’ he said.

‘A famous name. A man known for choosing his employer. If he elected to leave your late wife’s business in Bruges and pay his soldiers himself, or select another patron, who could stop him?’

‘No one, I suppose, provided he repaid what was owing.’

‘My advisers tell me that this he has done,’ said Queen Carlotta. ‘So he is now paid by you?’

‘No. He is independent,’ Nicholas said.

‘But he has a respect for you? He must. After all, you made him a rich man after Trebizond. Unless it is Venice he no longer cares for? We are told you are high in favour in Venice.’ She let her tone
become reflective. ‘In the matter of Cyprus Venice is, of course, neutral.’

‘I owe nothing to Venice,’ said Nicholas. ‘I may not come back to Italy. It is possible that I will stay in my home town, in Bruges. You must forgive me, my lady. I do not wish another commitment, either to a cause or a country.’

‘That is because you have a pilgrimage before you,’ said Carlotta. ‘We, a woman, understand and forgive. But you cannot mourn for ever. You must build. Build your lady a monument. Let her monument be a throne for womanhood and Christianity both. Does she not deserve this?’

He released some high-pressure breath and said, ‘Perhaps. Your magnificence will allow me to consider these things after … after my pilgrimage.’

‘Of course. Of course. We shall be in Savoy at the court of our uncle. We shall be in Lausanne. We may even visit our cousin of France. And when our ships sail, Niccolò vander Poele will be with us. May God go with you till then.’

He left, without meeting anyone he recognised, and set off with Thomas next morning. He knew, from the thunderous silence, that Thomas rather fancied the trim little Queen, and would have enjoyed sitting in Cyprus with Astorre and the rest of the boys, sucking grapes and killing Egyptians. He knew that Thomas needed a leader, and was suffering. He thought of his last encounter with the Observant Franciscan Ludovico de Severi da Bologna at a table in the tavern at Silla, after the Queen and the prisoners had left. The monk had been drinking water, but he had not. Nicholas had said, ‘Brother Ludovico. Who paid them? The mercenaries?’

The Franciscan had pointed a calloused forefinger to the ceiling. ‘He knows. I don’t. The leaders escaped, and the sprats are never told anything. I hear the old woman is dead?’

He had asked the question quite suddenly, and got an answer as sudden. ‘What old woman?’ Nicholas had said.

The monk, without shifting his eyes, had put some meat in his mouth, chewed and swallowed it. He osculated a shred from an eyetooth. He said, ‘I suppose that forty’s the springtime of life. But don’t let us argue. You didn’t inherit. You’re going to check that she’s dead, but you know that she is. So why are you going to Bruges, if you have a fortune in Venice?’

Nicholas said, ‘Who told you that? Yes, I have a fortune in Venice. Do you want it?’

The monk had a profile like a plucked fowl, and black hair in every rut of the rest of him. He said, ‘Have I said so? You are alive and presumably know what shrine to thank for it. It’s a pity, of course, that Christian Trebizond fell to the Turk.’

‘The Christian Emperor gave it up to the Turk,’ Nicholas said. ‘Ask him for silver, if you should need it. He has plenty.’