Race of Scorpions (76 page)

Nicholas said, ‘After the duel, who can say? But it is my intention to attack Famagusta before the King even suspects it is happening. Do you dare join me?’

‘When?’ said Tzani-bey al-Ablak.

‘Within three days,’ said Nicholas.

‘And we’ll take it,’ said Captain Astorre. ‘With or without you, my lord. We’re asking no favours.’

‘That is fortunate,’ said the emir, ‘for I was of a mind to present you with none. Attack Famagusta, by all means. Indeed you must, for you have transgressed as well as I. The pious accusations of Captain Pesaro! Why do Latins profess outrage against poison? Every Frankish court uses it. In your time, Messer Niccolò, you have maimed and killed men in the flower of their youth: what disgusts you about murder in other forms? The King was glad enough to have Kyrenia delivered to him through fire and through illness: it spared lives, no doubt, in the end. Yet there raged the good captain, demanding satisfaction over a minor matter of bread, when I promise you that the King will pay far less heed to my action than he will when he hears of yours. I could not have poisoned the bread, my lord Niccolò, if you had not introduced it, against explicit orders. And if you take Famagusta, it will be because of these actions. These joint actions of yours and mine that have weakened it. The camel and the ass, Messer Niccolò. Do you not see now how we are being used? And how, by fighting each other, we are placing ourselves in Zacco’s hands? Everything you have ever done against the Venetians, against the Genoese, against me, has turned to Zacco’s personal benefit. When it is done, he will rid himself of us both. And you do not yet know what else you are losing.’

Nicholas smiled. He said, ‘How can you guess what I know? You are wise. If you shared this assault, you might lose control of your Mamelukes’ conduct, and for what they did, the King would have an excuse to retaliate. Also, we attack without the King’s knowledge. If we fail, my company will take the brunt, during and after.’

‘I fear,’ said Tzani-bey, ‘that whatever quarrel we have, there may be little chance after to settle it.’

Nicholas surveyed him gravely. ‘I might survive,’ he said. ‘But of course, you may not wish to meet another man, except with a whip and when he is manacled. In which case, I may have to seek you out. I felt I should warn you.’

The emir Tzani-bey laughed. He said, ‘I am warned. I am solemnly warned. How it rankles, that one small experience; that journey from Cape Gata to Zacco’s succouring arms! I expected you to pay me for such attentions, my dear. Zacco does.’

‘The slut!’ said Astorre, once they were outside the camp. ‘You should have let me nick them off him.’

‘Fine,’ said Nicholas. ‘But you were there to protect me, not get
us all slaughtered. At any rate, now we know the Mamelukes won’t be with us, and I feel a bit safer. Not a lot, but a bit. I wonder if Abul Ismail has got to him yet.’

‘Could you believe it?’ said Captain Astorre, who preferred dealing with certainties. ‘The little heathen thought you might combine against Zacco.’

‘That’s the point,’ Nicholas said. ‘It sounded as if Abul hadn’t joined him. But maybe that was just how it was meant to sound. He’s a tricky devil, our emir. Well, let’s see how our private war is progressing. If John doesn’t blow himself up, we have three days.’

John le Grant, when designing mines, had never been known to make a mistake, and he made none now, although he worked without sleep, as they all did. Until now, the siege plan had been orthodox. Now it had to be different. Despite the immense firing power of the city, they had to cease relying on simple blockade and long-range cannon. They had to breach the walls at close quarters and then scale them, using ladders and fighting-towers. For that, Nicholas had his own company, and another one hundred men picked for him by Pesaro. He had refused to take more. Whatever happened, the losses were going to be his responsibility. And if there were only two thousand living souls in Famagusta several days ago, there would be fewer now who were both soldiers and active. The men firing those guns, manning the walls, shooting from the high galleries might not amount to much more than half that number. Once they had been overcome, there would be no resistance. From inside, he or his men would open the gates, ready for Zacco.

The plan, therefore, had been made by John and Astorre, Pesaro and himself while the Mamelukes kept to their camp, and the King and his other officers prepared to hold Christmas at Nicosia. The weakest stretch of the walls had been identified. Stone and clods and faggots were brought and by day, under murderous fire, were projected at three different points into the great ditch that surrounded the city. By night they were added to, using the trenches. By day, the defenders shot fire-bolts into the rising piles of brushwood, causing them to burst into flame and reducing their height by half. Only on the south side, where his biggest battery of light cannon stood, did Nicholas build his bridge from the start almost entirely with stone. There, by the end of two days, the pile of rubble had reached two-thirds of the way to the top. Nearly high enough for an army to cross, or a siege-tower. The fourth day dawned, and wore through its hours of abrupt rain and mild, blustering wind. They all worked in scuffed brigandines and thick caps, most often with their helmets on top, and they were chilled with weariness, and grim and lewd by turns in the raw, brittle moods that went before battle.

John le Grant said, ‘They’re not fools, you know. Some of these fellows will be veterans of Caffa. They know what a feint is.’

‘But they don’t know what your little bundles can do,’ Nicholas said. ‘And they haven’t the strength for heavy digging. There hasn’t been a longbow on those walls for two days. Even if they suspect, they can’t cover all three places at once. And there remains double bluff. We can always attack from the south, at a pinch.’

‘At a hell of a pinch,’ said John le Grant. Tonight, two of the piles, including the highest bridge, would be offered nothing but brushwood. The third, already made half of stone, would be raised through the night to ground level and across that, the attack would be made in the dark just before dawn. But long before that, he and John and two chosen men would have planted the mines with their fuses. When the army attacked, they would attack a collapsed wall, over rubble.

‘If you’ve got your sums right,’ Nicholas said. ‘You don’t look as if you could get anything right. Go off and sleep. It’ll be dark soon enough. I’ve sent Pesaro away, and Astorre will keep the gunners at work.’

He watched John trudge off. On him and on Astorre had rested the burden of maintaining the guns, for the noise of the cannonade was vital to their stratagem. Even so, they might all be shot as they crossed the moat with their explosives, or wounded before they could leave, having planted them. Not a bad way to go, in a blaze of your own gunpowder. Either way, it would damage the walls, and Astorre and Pesaro between them might manage to scale them. John had made quite a serious attempt to stop him joining the mining expedition, and then had dropped it. After all, the work was done, and anyone could take Famagusta now who was willing to pay the price in lives from both sides. They would possibly attack with all the more force, to avenge him. Which was not to say that he intended to be a martyr tonight, if he could help it.

He slept a little, waking in his pavilion at dusk of his own accord. The rain had stopped its vibrating patter above him, although the air was laden with moisture and the planked floor of the tent moved on its bedding of grey sand and mud. It was not really cold. Except on the mountains, it never became cold in this island. It seemed a long way, though, from the summer perfume of myrtle and orange-blossom, the brilliance of white fluted marble, the wreathing steam, the orderly practices of the sugar-yards, the worksongs of the scything and the vintage, the glory of the sun setting, of the sun rising out of the sea. From a valley full of doubt and serpents and mischief, sunlight and another manner of glory.

He was glad that the design of his own life seemed, in the end, to be taking a shape that was not entirely haphazard. If, in the real
world, you couldn’t always realise the perfection of the model, the miniature, the diagram, at least the pattern had something in it to be pleased about. His friends would never lack: his Bank would see to that. Equally, his young step-daughters in Bruges would be protected. Here, if he didn’t return, Primaflora would receive his letter, and his parcel, and would understand why he had done what he had done. And far away, his child would grow, in peace henceforth, with a father who would never know he was not his own, and who, with Nicholas gone, would have no reason for spleen or for bitterness. To be his friend, the boy would have Diniz, who would think him his cousin, and who would grow to gentle manhood in the vineyards of Portugal, and honour Tristão his father. And for a loving mother the child would have Katelina, who would cherish him now, and make what she could of her marriage, for the sake of what she had found in Kalopetra.

For himself, nothing bound him. He was vaguely surprised that what sense of loss he did have seemed to be connected in some way with Cyprus. It was the first place he had come to in his own right, with something to give. He had had no time to acquaint himself with his fief, twice seen, and well enough served by its own. Two-thirds of the land he had never visited. He had done what the Phoenicians had done, and the Byzantines, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Genoese and the Mamelukes. He had come for his own ends to this island, and used it. Of his conscious will he had given it nothing, except a single ruler where there had been two. And a sugar factory.

John le Grant said, ‘Nicholas? We would go. They’ve broken through, and the tunnel is ready.’ And very willingly, he got up to prepare.

They wore brigandines and soft boots and dulled metal helms strapped over a coif of thick wool. Each had a heavy satchel, a pick, and a knife sheathed at his belt. In addition, Nicholas carried a short bow at his shoulder, with a quiver. They entered the trench, leaving Astorre and Thomas and Pesaro standing silently at the entrance. Then they made their way crouching along it, their feet splashing through muddy water. The way was lined with long narrow carts, each piled with stone, ready for its last journey. They avoided them by touch, for here there was no glimmer of light. Overhead, the nightly bombardment had started.

The night was so dark that the end of the trench was perceptible only as a lightening of the murk, where the ditch of the town lay ahead. Before that, on their left, was a speck of light that didn’t come from ditch or cutting, but from the tunnel so laboriously bored, and whose end John’s sappers had now finally opened. The men who had pierced the final aperture were waiting to greet them: identifiable as a body of sweat, and heat and small movements that
resolved into a murmur, a clink of spade and a clap on shoulder or back. Then they withdrew, leaving the task force of four at the foot of the ditch of Famagusta.

This was immense, and hewn out of bare rock, although clothed now with dirt and bushes and rubbish. Walking to the right in its shadowy depths, one would come sooner or later to one of the three great heaps of rubble that now patched it. Further south was another, and bigger one. But to reach the third, Nicholas bent low and, crossing the ditch like a lizard, reached the base of the wall and, in its shadow, followed it round to the left, John and the other two following.

No challenge came from above. The wall towered, impossibly high, its profile distorted by the hide-covered galleries. Designed long ago, the defences of Famagusta consisted of towers and wall-walks, battlements and arrow slits, without proper seating for cannon, or for the ventilation that cannon demanded. And on this stretch, in particular, there was no provision for crossfire. So the wall here was stronger and higher, and the manning of its towers stretched thinnest. Especially when the defending force was painfully slight. And especially when all its fire was being drawn to the southern stretch. All the time he was running, Nicholas was half deaf from the open-air thud of Astorre’s guns, maintaining their pre-arranged and regular sequence. In response, there came the pop of fire from the battlements. Against that noise, their presence would hardly be heard, or the stealthy sounds John would make, sinking his petards. Or, later, the manhandling of the carts and the completion of the bridge that, sooner or later, would conduct the whole army across to a ruined wall.

Before he expected, his feet met blocks of stone, and he realised that he had come to the edge of the great sprawling tip of the infill. He waited, and stopped John and the others. Then, keeping close to the wall, they began the swift, careful climb over the rubble. Then John gripped his arm briefly and left him. One of the sappers went with him. The other went on and up, his hand holding his satchel. Nicholas stood, watching the place where the wails met the sky, and the towers, and the galleries, and unslung his bow and bent it.

They had practised this, through these last days. Pesaro knew Famagusta, and had found others who could describe the walls, and their thickness, and their character. From as close as he dared, John had surveyed them himself, over and over. He knew exactly where he wished to slot his explosive, and how long a fuse he needed to give it. The largest explosion would take place at the base, where he was now working and that, too, would take the longest to plant. The guns continued to fire. There were men, Nicholas saw, on the wall-top above him, although not many.
Twice, he saw the glint of metal and once, when the cannon fell silent, he heard distant voices. Beyond the opposite rim of the ditch lay the stretch of rutted wasteland that lay exposed and empty between Famagusta and the bivouacs of his army. Within it, grey and white in their sockets, lay balls fallen short of their target. They reminded him of his puzzles. He looked up suddenly at a noise.

Someone or something had tumbled. Someone. One of the sappers, from a precarious perch a third of the way up the wall. Nicholas could see where he lay, his limbs cocked and black against the paler stone of the wall. Whoever he was, he had had the guts not to shout. John? John?