Race of Scorpions (53 page)

Nicholas heard that, all right. He said,
‘Jesus Christ!
’ It came out muffled; rather like a short sneeze. Katelina said nothing at all.

Then she said, ‘You know. Who else has – has vander Poele told?’

A sense of disaster, clearly, had come too late to Tobie. He said, ‘Nicholas –’ in an uncertain way. Then, slowly, he pulled himself together. He said, ‘I’m a fool. I’m a fool. Demoiselle, I should never have mentioned it. Nicholas didn’t tell anyone. He wouldn’t. We found out by accident. He had a fever, and rambled. We guessed, and we were – distressed, and he swore us to silence.’

‘He told you and who else?’ Katelina van Borselen said. Her voice, descended in pitch and in volume, was now unnaturally steady.

‘Myself and a priest called Father Godscalc. We gathered – I had better tell you what we gathered. That Nicholas got you with child, and then married Marian de Charetty, as you married Simon. And that Simon believes this son of yours to be his own.’ He paused. He said, ‘Your secret will be kept by us and by Nicholas. You must know he doesn’t take this thing lightly.’

Nicholas said, ‘She knows nothing. We’ve been apart since it happened.’ His head swam, and his heart knocked his breath about. The speech he always ought to have made; the meeting they should have had long ago – both were upon him now; and, half-drugged
and in public, he must find the right words now or never. He tried to speak clearly and simply. ‘Given the chance, I should have said to her that I had no idea she was with child. She didn’t tell me. She could not, after all, bear the child of an apprentice. Later, I understood that.’

To Katelina, it must have seemed nearly as difficult. She looked at Tobie, then straight at the bed. It was the first time Nicholas had seen her look at him properly. Katelina said, ‘I was in Brittany.’ Her voice had altered again. ‘You knew I couldn’t reach you in time. You knew Simon wanted to marry me. You knew that, to save myself, I would marry Simon. And you knew I didn’t know the connection between Simon and you.’

He said, ‘Katelina. How could I know you were pregnant?’ He didn’t speak of the assurances she had given on the night she offered herself to him in Bruges. He had been the one to speak of the risk. She had been the one to dismiss it. But there had never been any doubt that the child was the product of their next night together, and his.

Perhaps she remembered. There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘I think you did. There was a woman in Brittany who suspected it. Antoinette de Maignélais, she was called. Is the name familiar? She was not unconnected, I think, with what happened to Jordan de Ribérac under the last King of France. His disgrace and exile, which seemed to suit you so well at the time. I am not surprised – I’m not wholly surprised that the seigneur de Ribérac has refused me a ransom. This family bears long-standing grudges. But anyway, what does it matter? Whether you knew you had succeeded or not, you married while I was in Brittany.’

Nothing would make him speak of Marian de Charetty. His eyes closed, and he made them re-open. He said, ‘I didn’t know of the child. It is all I can say to you.’

He saw her staring back. It seemed, for a moment, that something he said might have touched her. Then she sighed, and said, ‘Who else have you told?’

She had removed her gaze, turning a little; conveying the close of the matter between them. With a glance at Nicholas, Tobie took over the answering. He said, ‘No one. What he says is the truth. We learned of it, Godscalc and myself, by pure accident.’

She said, ‘But when will there be another accident? He is prone to fever. What future will Henry have then?’

Tobie said, ‘What do you want him to do? Drop dead for something that isn’t his fault? It takes two to make a son, demoiselle.’ He sounded angry, which was unfair on Katelina.

Nicholas, who realised his head was about to explode, nevertheless saw the humour in this, and thought he ought to explain it. He said, ‘Tobie! Don’t be silly. You’ve always believed to the depths
of your soul that I plotted it all. Of course I did. A bastard for Simon. Luxurious exile for David of Trebizond. St Hilarion at all costs for Zacco. And the events of today for us all, loving scions of a fortunate family. Who says I can’t plan?’ His heart ran like a wheel out of gear, and his senses screwed themselves to a pitch that made his breath falter. It seemed to him, from limited experience, that there was a certain finality about the situation. He said, ‘I think the future may be safe from me after all.’

An angry voice spoke from the doorway. It said, ‘Is this the talk of a man, or shall I take your doctors away? A man values his life, and thinks it worth fighting for.’

Zacco, straight from the banquet. In gold and jewels, ermine and satin he stood on the threshold, tall and glaring. Through darkening eyes, Nicholas witnessed a new and complex situation appear, over which he could have no control. With infinite weariness, he watched it develop. Katelina turned, her exhausted face pale with astonishment. Tobie flushed. He said, ‘My lord King, he has no wish to die. And, God willing, we shall prevent it.’ Zacco stared at him and then, glittering, swept past and knelt at the bed.

His jewels flamed, but no one ever looked at them. Instead, like Tobie, like Katelina, like himself, those in Zacco’s presence were mesmerised by the enchanting, remarkable face. Today, its vitality was repressed; the brows drawn under the swathe of hair that had fallen, again, from the cap of state he still wore. His warm hands closed about the cold fingers of Nicholas and he held them, gazing in silence.

Nicholas did not speak, but kept his eyes open. Across Zacco’s face passed the shadows of many thoughts, bringing him, presently, to some resolve. He released one of his hands and leaned forward. The light dimmed. There was a smell of soaps, and furs, and a warm, clean humanity. Zacco’s lifted hand touched his lips, his temple, his hair; then closing, calmly descended. Nicholas felt his palm smooth his lids, closing them. Blessed darkness returned. The palm lay, flat and weightless, prohibiting movement. The King’s voice said, ‘You need peace more than a friend. My purse is yours and your physician’s, and all that my kingdom can offer. I shall come every day.’

It was the kind of thing he did say. He might even mean it. The hands withdrew. Nicholas lay, his eyes closed. He heard the King leave, and Katelina’s steps apparently following. Tobie said, ‘I’m still here.’

Something had to be done. Nicholas twitched his lips, without opening his eyes. He said, ‘I hope Abul Ismail can take the piss out of ermine.’ With the last of his consciousness, he registered Tobie’s grunt of approval.

*

Outside, waiting as bidden, Katelina van Borselen raised weary eyes to the man gowned as a King who, it seemed, was young and comely and hardly older than Nicholas, for love of whom he had come here. The antechamber they stood in was private, and he did not ask her to sit. Instead he walked frowning to the window, and turned.

‘We have a few moments only. We were curious to see you. We are told there is some relationship, some estrangement, between your family and the lord Niccolò?’

The lord Niccolò. But he was, officially, a Knight of the Order. To him, Zacco had spoken as to a familiar. Now he used the royal plural, which should have seemed childish, but did not. She said, ‘That is so. But my nephew and I are here, my lord, through no fault of our own. We are anxious to leave.’

‘For Kyrenia?’ he said.

‘I have abandoned that plan. For home. For Portugal,’ she replied.

‘Indeed,’ he said. There was a jewelled chain round his neck, and his big-boned fingers played with the pendant. He said, ‘Our lady mother says she has seen you.’

‘Your lady mother, my lord?’ she said.

‘In the Palace, with the lord Markios, her brother. You were ill in your chamber,’ said Zacco.

She had only been visited once at the Palace. What had happened then she had thrust to the back of her mind hoping, perhaps, that it had been a delusion. The auburn-haired girl who had turned into a cynical, acid-tongued harridan. The melting face, speaking of locusts.
What then should I do to you? Skin you as the Mamelukes do, and makes hawsers out of the peelings
?’

It had been a real person. Her brain told her as much. But – this man’s
mother
?

‘She frightened you,’ Zacco said. ‘We are afraid that, in her zeal, she sometimes goes too far to protect us. But she is not harsh to those who are reasonable. She says we should be lenient, and should prepare to release you even without recompense for your lodging. We have agreed. We have said that if by autumn the gold has not come we shall send you away. Meantime, you will be lodged in the south, where you will have no temptation to incite your nephew, or communicate with Kyrenia or Famagusta. There are several families of good blood near Episkopi. You will take your woman, and stay with one of these. You will suffer no hardship.’

Her limbs were trembling, but she tried to keep her voice steady. ‘And my nephew, my lord?’

‘That is settled. He remains here, and works in the dyeshop. Messer Bartolomeo, we are sure, will be a good master. That is all.’

She said quickly, ‘I should prefer to stay with the Clares. Or at some –’

His eyes, full on her face, were brilliant hazel and colder than metal. ‘We have spoken,’ he said; and walked out.

For love of Nicholas, he had come. Katelina thought of what she had heard, and the caress she had seen. She had always assumed that one kind of love precluded the other. She had held herself firmly apart from the plebeian tangle of this apprentice’s conquests – from the serving-wenches of Bruges to his elderly wife; and from there of course, to Primaflora. There had been a rumour from Venice. There had been another, which she discounted, from Trebizond. But now, slowly, she began to consider whether or not there were reasons for this strange inconstancy which had nothing to do with simple lust or base blood or ambition.

She went back to the Clares, and could neither pray nor go to a friend, for she had no friend to turn to, here or anywhere.

Chapter 27

W
HAT HE SAID
and did when ill, Nicholas had learned, often ran counter to his own diligent planning and was capable, sometimes, of messing it up quite considerably. While recovering, therefore, he obeyed Tobie to the letter, and received no calls until he was sure of himself. The exception was, of course, Zacco, who came, as he had promised, every day. Each time a servant preceded him, bringing fruit, or pastries, or little birds pickled in vinegar.

Once the King brought his own gift: an offer to fetch Primaflora. Since she was in Rhodes with Carlotta, the gift would have been as expensive, in cost and in lives, as any he could have devised. On those grounds, but not only on those grounds, Nicholas declined with due deference. The day after that, to Tobie’s outrage, Zacco sent a charming girl-child to the sickroom, explaining in an oddly spelled message that, to satisfy Flemish chivalry, he had had her used first. ‘But,’ reported Nicholas, ‘he said he was willing, if wrong, to replace her.’

‘Barbarians!’ exclaimed Tobie, whose imagination in respect of Zacco was fortunately not of the strongest. He added, ‘It’s too soon, anyway.’

Lying alone, Nicholas exercised himself on affairs of the mind, such as an evaluation of profit and loss. Recognising what he was doing he would pull a face, remembering Tommaso Portinari, with his rings and his ledgers; or Metteneye’s wife and her books. Or, without smiling, would think of Anselm Adorne. Or Jaak de Fleury. Or Julius and Marian, who had taught him all they knew. All they knew, not all he knew.

His profit and loss he weighed on scales slightly different from theirs. Profit, that he had impressed Queen Carlotta sufficiently for her to send Primaflora after him. Profit, that he had mercenaries again under his hand. Profit that, after he had chosen to fight in the right place at the right time, the Venetians working for Zacco
(whom he had also impressed) had used his own ship to bring him to Cyprus. Profit that, in return for himself and his army, he had land, money, a title and the franchise of the Nicosia royal dyeworks. Profit that he had bought the skills of Bartolomeo Zorzi, who knew all about non-Papal alum … and who of course, had brought him back Chennaa, his camel. And finally in the balance of profit – the lure, the prize, the object of all he was doing – the right to earn whatever money he could from the richest franchise in Cyprus: the royal sugarcane fields of Kouklia and Akhelia, bestowed on him by Zacco.

There had, of course, been losses, of which the most distressing was time. But if he could not immediately travel, he could conduct operations very soon from his bed. He had, after all, been exploiting both franchises from the day he landed at Salines. In any game, application was of the essence.

Soon, he was able to call a war meeting for sugar, as he had induced the King to do for St Hilarion. For that the key figure was Loppe, who arrived in Nicosia almost before he was sent for, bringing with him Michael Crackbene and Umfrid, his excellent round-ship accountant. By then, Nicholas could sit for spells at his board with his boxes, which contained variously the receipts, the bills and the lists for his war, his dyeworks and his sugar business. Joined to them recently were the reports now reaching him often from Venice. Quite soon, Tobie had noticed one. ‘That’s from Gregorio!’

Tobie, with his pink inquisitive face, was the one person he couldn’t keep out of his chamber. Nicholas said, ‘I’m quite glad to hear from him too, considering he’s sitting on top of our money. He seems to be lending it out at exorbitant rates. I must ask which army he’s backing.’

‘He’s well?’ Tobie said. He appreciated Gregorio for himself, and for what he had done as the company’s lawyer. Nicholas, who owed Gregorio rather more, considered again, and dismissed again, the thought that he would like him in Cyprus. He would like him in Cyprus, but he depended still more on his link between Venice and Bruges.

Nicholas said, ‘He must be. He’s operating from the Corner mansion down from the Rialto. The House of Niccolò now. He’s got quite a staff. They’ll soon be almost as big as the Charetty company.’