Race of Scorpions (50 page)

‘Yes. Loppe has been reporting to me from the cane fields. I sent for six experts from Sicily. One of them sleeps half the day, and one acts as if drunk. Loppe experienced this in Granada. He says they die.’

It should have been no surprise. Courting Zacco, preparing for battle, Nicholas had long since taken the reins of his business in secret. And Loppe, the Guinea slave with Portuguese owners, had been his factor. Tobie said, ‘I suppose you have the dyeworks running as well?’

‘Not as well,’ Nicholas said. ‘Until now, we’ve been without management. But now I have hopes of a solution. I have someone to see.’

‘When?’ Tobie said. He stopped at the door of the stable.

‘Tomorrow,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m going back to Nicosia tomorrow with Zacco. We control the Pass; they can start the blockade now without me. When they have the ships and the cannon, they can break Kyrenia down.’

‘Or burn it out,’ Tobie said. He halted, painfully. He said, ‘I have work to do.’

‘I know that,’ said Nicholas. ‘But when it’s done, think of what I have said. I’ll go straight from my house to Kouklia. Unless, that is, something grisly turns up.’

‘Because of Zacco?’ said Tobie.

‘Because of Katelina van Borselen,’ Nicholas said, ‘whose hands are two equal swords, and who should be in Portugal.’

Chapter 25

I
T WAS NOT
, however, the two equal swords of Katelina van Borselen that Nicholas found waiting for him on his return, at long last, to the capital. Before night fell on the cooling ashes of St Hilarion, victory bells began to clang in Nicosia, and news of the triumph reached Diniz Vasquez, toiling in the mud and stink of the Lusignan dyeworks.

A prisoner of war has nothing to celebrate, and is wise to display no emotion when, from isolation, he hears his friends have been beaten. They said the Bastard would come back tomorrow, and before nightfall would proceed to give public thanks at the Cathedral. If the Bastard returned, he would bring Niccolò vander Poele with him. And vander Poele, surely, would come to his house, which was also the prison of Diniz.

As a place of confinement, it was not wholly unpleasant. Diniz was allowed in the kitchen and garden. He had even explored the master apartments, with the notion of returning one night with a hammer. It would give the bastard a well-merited shock to find his marble wall panels cracked, his flooring smashed, his inlaid Syrian couches all splintered, with their embroidered silk cushions in tatters. On mature reflection, however, he decided the dyeworks first deserved his attention. With the discreet advice of the under-manager, who resented his new employer but, being inefficient, stayed with him, Diniz had learned very quickly the vulnerable parts of the dyeing process and how to attack them: how to pollute a boiling, or lower the temperature of a vat, or crack a pipe or a cooling vessel.

Then, without warning, the under-manager had been removed, and the two or three habitual troublemakers who had been happy to help him, and a new man was brought in, a Florentine with an interest in gold thread who knew little enough about dyeing, but could tell well enough when trouble was threatening, and stop it. Then Diniz realised that if he went to extremes, he risked being
shut up altogether, or removed from the house to a place of much less advantage. So, although from time to time he wandered through his enemy’s rooms, and opened his chests, and turned over, with contempt, his fine clothing, Diniz applied his excellent brain to studying the work in the yard, learning what the old slaves and workmen could tell him, and lifting himself thereby from the menial tending of tubs to the preparing of dyes, the timing of fine operations, the mastery, finally, of the ledgers where, in time, the damage he could inflict promised to be invisible, and wholly satisfactory.

Now the days passed, he found, much more quickly. He learned the patois of the trade, and the mixture of terms, part Arab, part Italian, part Greek, that made up common intercourse, on top of the tongues he already had – the French, the Flemish, the Scots of Lucia his mother, and the Portuguese of his father, who would never again teach him or take him travelling.

His father had made several countries his home, and had been respected and made welcome everywhere. Once, he had stayed briefly in Scotland and, of course, had found there his bride. He no doubt had hoped, as any man would, for many sons from his golden Lucia, but only Diniz the first-born had lived. Some years later, his father had made occasion to take him back to the land of his mother. Of the King, Diniz had no recollection; but he had brought back from Scotland a child’s dazzled impression of his mother’s brother, fair and slim in the tiltyard. He had, as a boy, worshipped Simon his uncle. It was the duel between his uncle Simon and the scheming brute vander Poele that had caused the death of Tristão Vasquez, for which Niccolò vander Poele was to pay. Payment was due, also, for other acts of inhumanity. For the betrayal of Carlotta, to whom the Fleming had pretended to give his allegiance. And for the seduction of the lady Primaflora, whose fate, in other hands, might have been very different. Diniz dreamed, very often, about Primaflora.

Since being brought to Nicosia, Diniz had seldom set eyes on his adversary, either in the house or the yard. The swine’s movements were well enough known, as were the Bastard’s. With the Bastard to cling to, vander Poele was unlikely to bother himself over a house, a business, a prisoner. Once or twice people talked about seeing a man wandering about in the yards late or early, in darkness, and lamps had been found warm in the sheds. The slaves who slept there even claimed to have talked to him. But it was hardly likely to be vander Poele himself, who would come, if he came at all, with a club, in daylight, and bullying.

In any case, it was not easy to enter or leave Nicosia at night. Once, Diniz himself had escaped over the walls of the villa and tried to leave with the throng through the western gate, but the
guard had stopped him immediately, for his clothes had given him away, and the stains on his hands. His yellow clothes, and his blue hands. After that, they escorted him everywhere, but he had already realised how slim was his chance of escaping. Thirty-four open miles, ringed with troops, lay between him and Famagusta. He had no money, and the nuns had none either, although his aunt Katelina had begged them to help.

He was sorry for his aunt Katelina, but also annoyed with her over the fuss she made about the girl in the kitchens and the other one who came with ash to the yard. As it turned out, he caught nothing and Andrea the new under-manager, less bigoted than he thought, got him a clean little whore to the house. Once he took her through to Niccolò’s chamber and engaged her several times just as she liked until her pretty skin was pink, front and back. The quilt was white silk brocade. Afterwards, he went back and smoothed it, ashamed. The stolen knife in his room was a worthy instrument of his vengeance, not this.

On the morning after the bells, no one worked as they should except himself, for the man they liked to call King James had arrived, so they said, and was to ride to the Cathedral with his captains that afternoon. Already those who could afford carpets had hung them out of their windows, and picked spring flowers to throw. Diniz saw them as he helped carry ladders out to the street, to hoist the strings of dyed cloth higher than normal, as the law demanded during processions. He wondered if he might try to get away then, but Andrea’s man had a grip on his elbow. At noon they parted for dinner, and he was escorted back, as usual, to the villa.

He saw, as soon as he got near, that the gates were open, and there were sumpter-mules in the yard, and several horses, one of them with the brand of the Lusignan stud. They seemed restive. Then he heard a shiver of bells and saw that against a far wall another animal stood, moving delicately into its tether. He saw a flank like spun silk, and four spindle-fine legs and a neck like the arch of a longbow. A racing-camel. A dream of a racing-camel. It looked at him in disdain, lashes lowered.

So he had come. Only one man could own that.

Diniz walked into the house, his face white. The house was empty. Dust on the terrazzo showed where spurred feet had trod, and in the inner court lay some saddlebags. From the private apartments there came a faint odour of horseflesh, and burned wool, and sweat. Prompted by distant noise, and wavering lines of spilled water and the sound of hurrying feet, Diniz turned and made for the kitchens.

The household staff were all there, and the tables were heaped with raw food. He stepped back from the heat into the arms of the
new steward, the man who had come after the negro freeman had left. The new steward, who answered to the French name of Galiot, remarked, ‘You’ll eat well tonight. As you see, Messer Niccolò has returned.’

‘I don’t see him,’ said Diniz.

‘He’s in the cooking-pot,’ cried one of the women, without stopping work.

The man Galiot said, ‘He’s with the King. He’ll be back. Find yourself something. There’s bread, and a cheese.’

‘There’s no hurry,’ Diniz said. He knew that, from pale, he had flushed. He said, ‘The yard is closed. I can stay.’

The steward paused. Then he said, ‘If they told you that, they were wrong. My lord has left orders. You are to return to the yard after dinner and work there.’

‘My lord
?’ said Diniz. ‘Who is this? I know a Flemish base-born apprentice called Niccolò.’

The steward stiffened. The woman who had spoken before scooped up the bread and the cheese and, turning to Diniz, thrust them into his arms. She said, ‘Go and eat, son, and do as you’re told. Lord or ’prentice, I wouldn’t cross that Flemish brute after what he’s done in St Hilarion.’

‘And that’s good advice,’ Galiot said. ‘Over there. Find a place to eat over there. Here, they’re busy.’

Diniz moved, but not very quickly. He said, ‘I thought the castle surrendered.’

‘Over there,’ said the steward again. ‘Yes, it surrendered.’ The Frenchman pushed him out of the door, a jug of watered wine in one hand. The woman followed him with a cup. She said, ‘Aye, you would surrender if your women and children were poisoned, and your men burned to cinders with naphtha. He made sure, that young heathen, that those poor mites would never fight for Carlotta.’ She gave him the cup. She said, ‘If he says go back to the dyeyard, go back. And if he comes, say please and thank you and lick the salt from his toes if he asks you.’

Diniz found she had gone, and he was still standing. The steward said, ‘They’re frightened. I’ve met him. He’s no worse than anyone else. Eat your food. You’d better get to the yard before the procession starts.’

‘The victory procession,’ Diniz said.

It needed two of them to push a way for him back to the yard, the press was so great. There they closed and locked the yard gates behind him. It was a big enclosure, with sheds and an office and scaffolded shelters over the winches and dyevats. He had never seen it deserted before: an oasis of quiet, while the crowd roared like the sea outside all the walls. The King … the Bastard must
have ridden out with his train from the Palace. If he stood on a ladder, he might see the tops of his officers’ heads as they went down the road to St Sofia.

The biggest space in the yard was occupied by the well with its wheel, and the cistern. The ground was always swilling. He went to the shelf where the clogs were and strapped them under his shoes. Before the Venetians came, the cold steeping had been done in clay-lined pits just sunk in the ground, and every winter flood water diluted them. Now they had copper vats. This morning, they had let the under-fires die, since they needed long tending if the colour was not to spoil.

He remembered his first days in the yard, and the havoc he had created. If there was a part of him that had enjoyed it, as the young louts who helped him enjoyed it, he had grown out of that now. He was seventeen, and a man who stood, now, for his aunt and his father. He wondered what Niccolò vander Poele –
my lord –
might be wearing. Cloth of gold, no doubt, and silver armour, and harness and plumes set with diamonds. They would throw roses to him, and comfits. The clergy would wait, in their robes, at the Cathedral and the cheering would stop, and the chanting, the prayers begin. He would know by the silence when they entered the church.

Because of the noise, he didn’t hear when behind him the yard gates unlocked. It was the sound of their closing that turned him.

Across the mud of the yard, two men stood at ease, looking about them. One, black-bearded and short, was a stranger. The other he knew, although the man didn’t wear cloth of gold but a travel-stained shirt and serge pourpoint, and his sword was sheathed in unjewelled shagreen. Under the cuff of his soft-crowned felt hat his hair looked brittle and frizzed; and the fine scar on his cheek stood among a curious mottling of pink. Diniz said, ‘You did use naphtha.’ Halfway through the words, his windpipe blocked for a second.

Niccolò vander Poele said, ‘Let us leave that for later. Bartolomeo, this is the boy I was speaking of.’

Diniz frowned. The man Bartolomeo, in whom he had no interest, wore velvet which, though dusty, was certainly jewelled, as was the drape of his headgear. Diniz observed, without fully looking, that the cut of his doublet was almost Venetian. Below a thick trunk, the calves of his legs jutted like oak galls. The man said, ‘Introduce me.’

‘Are you not in the procession?’ said Diniz. ‘Has the Bastard disowned you?’

The stranger said again, ‘Introduce me.’

‘If I can,’ vander Poele said. ‘This is Bartolomeo Zorzi, a Venetian merchant from Constantinople. He has agreed to manage
the dyeworks. You will show us around.’ He waited. Then he said, in the same agreeable voice, ‘You can do nothing from the Palace prison.’

Diniz felt his eyes swim from pure anger. Then he pulled himself up and addressed the bearded man Zorzi. ‘Messer Bartolomeo managed a dyeworks in Constantinople? He must have been thankful to escape.’

Above their furzy black rim, the man’s jowls and cheeks were healthily brown; his nose was snubbed and broad, between widely spaced eyes. He said, ‘A shrewd fellow, this. Yes. It’s a good time for Venetians to get out of those parts. I was in the alum business myself. Alum and silks. But I looked after the interests of a dyeshop your master here knows of. Owned by one Giovanni da Castro, godson of Pope Pius and rival to Messer Niccolò.’ His eyes, polished and black as obsidian, moved from Diniz to his companion. He said to the Fleming, ‘Took your trade, Niccolò, didn’t he, the inquisitive Messer da Castro? Found the alum at Tolfa that broke your clever monopoly.’