Race of Scorpions (80 page)

‘Well, you too!’ the boy said. ‘We’re the same, even the women. Thank God we have water. Come with me, and we’ll see to it. Fresh food on empty stomachs, I’m told. I’ve made them eat everything I do, so I can tell you the food isn’t tampered with. We have a doctor, though. Senhor Abul?’

‘An old story,’ said the Arab. ‘Sweat and blood, a true bath of honour. Should starvation be any less honourable? What did the lady your mother have made for flux in her household? Elder flowers in vinegar? Rue in breadcakes? I have something as useful. Come with me. Messer Diniz, I will need you. Messer Niccolò …’

Nicholas knelt by the body. He said, ‘I will deal with it. Is the woman his wife?’

‘She won’t mourn him,’ said the Arab. ‘She will stay. She has seen worse, I dare say, these many months.’

As he had done on the journey to Rhodes, from that time onwards Nicholas gave up his will, his designs, and his planning, and lived from hour to hour simply to work as he was bidden.

Each day he came twice to the banker’s house and sat in the sickroom, warm and better furnished now, and kept his lover company; sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. With the coming of fresh food, and the medicines that Abul had sent for, she seemed to rally her strength. She slept, with something of her old determination, in order to be awake when he came; and often she wanted to talk: about Bruges; about the past; about all the foolish exploits that had made Claes the apprentice notorious – the jokes with the gun and the waterwheel; the chases, the skating; the escapade with the ostrich. The first time they had met, he had fished her headgear out of the canal. She had been nineteen, and affronted. ‘You were so kind with the children,’ she said. ‘And Felix. You have that gift, to be liked. Gregorio, the lawyer who fought Simon for you. Your engineer and your doctor. Diniz is ready to take you as friend, or will be soon.’

Once, she spoke of the day of the bombardment. ‘The balls didn’t often come quite so far. I expect you aimed at the walls.’

‘Wherever we aimed, they always fired in another direction,’ Nicholas said.

‘It was a marble ball. They showed it to me later. There were inscriptions half buffed from the surface, but you couldn’t see what shrine they came from.’

Whichever it was, it had brought death to her. ‘Aphrodite or Pallas Athene?’ Nicholas said lightly. ‘I think I prefer either to the Heart as Love’s Captive. Since you spoke of it, I’ve found out the story. The Knight Coeur is a failure. And the lady Sweet Grace is never liberated.’

‘Not entirely a failure,’ she said. ‘The lady escapes from the Manoir de Rébellion. But of course, the three enemies of Love trap her eventually. Shame, Fear and Denial.’ She smiled. ‘We have escaped them.’

The rest of his time, he spent with Abul Ismail.

The sick who had no one to tend them were spread through the inner, inhabited core of the city, in the monasteries, in the hospice of the Knights of St John with their double chapels. There they were tended by the Brethren of the Order, and elsewhere by those monks who had survived. Still, their strength and their knowledge were limited, and the physician in daily demand. Among the patients were the injured and sick of the army. Once they had had their own barracks, their own surgeons. Now they stood to the walls, and if they fell, had no more help than the civilians had.

The others in need were those still in the care of their families. The roofs were most often not their own: long since, the community had drawn in from its perimeter, sharing its water, its food and its warmth, and distancing itself so far as might be from the walls and the thud of the cannon.

All these people, Abul Ismail visited. He was given a boy, and two soldiers, and a handcart. In that, he took the box of his instruments, and the pills and plasters and powders which took Nicholas and himself half their sleeping time to boil, to mix and to stamp. Every second day, food and medicine were delivered from Zacco and, strictly watched, the doctor was allowed to speak with the courier who came with the convoy. Nicholas was never given that privilege.

For him were the heavy tasks. Now, with new carts, he could drag both water and food to where they were needed. He took the night soil and the corpses to the south wall, where the north wind would scour them, and ground off the flesh of his hands, digging trenches. He never lacked for both helpers and escort, but men on starvation diet take time to respond to good feeding, and their willingness far outran what was left of their strength. And even good food was not proof against the malignance that hung in the air, in the rotting soil, in the ill-washed vessels from which they ate and drank. Typhoid, dysentery struck every third household, and the marshes from the north sent their evil on the sharp, wintry
wind. Once, Abul Ismail said, ‘You do not eat. I have been watching. You are subject to marsh fever?’

‘I am subject only to grief,’ Nicholas said. He would have said it to no one else. It happened to be true.

Christmas came, and High Mass in the Cathedral of St Nicholas. The last carts from King James had contained candles, and they stood in front of the altar: stout towers of wax that once would have been raided and eaten. Even so, their numbers seemed to have dwindled. Abul Ismail now had better stuff for his plasters than cobblers’ wax.

Katelina had shared in that Mass, carried there by Diniz and Nicholas on a stretcher of rafters and carpets. Latterly, a greyer tinge had coloured her skin; and the scented rosins Abul threw on her brazier disguised a different turn in her illness. But always, welcoming Nicholas, she was washed, combed and seemly, and had formed out of her obstinacy, it seemed, a frail steely courage that endured where others succumbed.

She returned silent from that communion, but roused to the dinner that Abul, Diniz and Nicholas spread in her chamber. She took, too, the first cup from the flask of good wine that Nicholas had found for her.
‘Droit de prémices
,’ Nicholas said, clasping his hand over hers to keep the stem steady. ‘But then, we had that already.’ And she drew his hand closer and laid her cheek on it, so that he knew she, too, was thinking of Bruges, when she had allowed him that right, and of Ghent, and of a place by a waterfall. When he lifted his head, Diniz was looking at him. Then he looked away.

After that, he was commanded to the Citadel, to dine with the captain. With Napoleone Lomellini were other Genoese noblemen he had come to know, and sometimes find ways to baulk, when common justice appeared to be slighted. All were shabby; all had about them the cleanliness of icy well-water, spoiled and fetid with the reek of the city, that nothing but fire could dispel.

The meal was stiffly formal. At the end, the captain said, ‘I have had a message which concerns both of our hostages. Since this is a Christian festival, I have not sought, Messer Niccolò, the company of your colleague. I wish, therefore, that you will convey to him all I am about to say.’

Since he became first their prisoner and then their enforced guest, Nicholas had rarely met all his present masters; and had thought it best not to seek their company. Today, he had suspected that something was brewing. It was possible, of course, but not likely that Zacco had grown tired of his Christmas truce. His clemency had earned him the regard of the West and would, surely, last until Twelfth Night. It was likelier that Zacco had grown uneasy over his own unforeseen absence. Nicholas had
asked to remain. He had been held, in the first place, because he had been caught carrying out what must now appear an ill-judged and irresponsible foray. An act of defiance, in Zacco’s terms. So now, perhaps, Zacco wished to replace and recall him. In which case, Nicholas meant to refuse.

Napoleone Lomellini drew out a paper. The labours of his protesting stomach had corroded his dark skin with pustules; he was still sharp of bone and languid in movement, but something of the family vigour was visible. His voice, as he continued, was brusque. ‘You will know that James of Lusignan is passing Christmas at Nicosia with four ambassadors from this city. We have heard from them. Talks have taken place. A document has been drawn up, and has been sent here to me for consideration. My colleagues and I have discussed it, and we propose to recommend that its terms be accepted. It will be signed on the sixth day of January. Since it affects you, I shall read you its contents.’

So suddenly it had come, all they were working for. Talks. A document. And acceptance. Nicholas sat perfectly still, his heart shaking him. ‘Yes, my lord?’ he said.

‘I am glad to tell you,’ said Napoleone Lomellini, ‘that it is the Bastard’s intention to lift the siege of Famagusta. This will be done fourteen days after this treaty is signed, and will be followed by a truce of one year.’ He looked round at his companions, and then at Nicholas. He had kept triumph out of his voice but not, perhaps, a shade of justifiable satisfaction. ‘That is the gist of this document, and I have instructed our envoys to agree to it.’

Nicholas felt as if turned to stone. In all his plans, he had never let himself contemplate an outcome as vicious as that. Zacco had tired of the siege. Zacco had thrown the Genoese twelve months of a truce. St George and the dragon still flew from the walls of Famagusta. For another year, the Genoese could continue to squat in the wreck of the city, clutching the rights to their ruined, foundering colony; promoting nothing; permitting nothing to flourish, either of theirs or the Bastard’s. Another year for the divided island to suffer. For himself, another year of detention, at Zacco’s whimsy. And at the end of the year, the siege to start all over again.

He realised that he had not thought of it before as detention. He said, ‘The lord Abul and I are therefore expected to return to the King at Epiphany?’

‘That is for your employer to say,’ the captain said. ‘Under the terms in this document, two of the Lusignan’s men will stay here, and four of the city’s will stay in Nicosia until the rescue fleet comes. We are allowing our four men to remain at the Palace. The Bastard may wish you to stay, or to replace you. I shall now read –’

‘Rescue fleet?’ Nicholas said.

The captain looked up. ‘That is the condition of the truce,’ he said.

‘Rescue fleet?’
Nicholas repeated.

The Genoese looked angry. He said, ‘Do you interrupt your own lord? Ours is a Republic which cares for its citizens, and will support them against a common enemy. There is a relief expedition on the way; carracks which bring arms and soldiers, as well as provisions. It will arrive here before the testing span of this treaty has ended. And when it has come, the armistice will begin, and the hostages on both sides will be freed. That is all, surely, that concerns you?’

‘But –’ Nicholas said. He drew a long breath. ‘You expect a fleet? What fleet? Genoa has nothing to spend. There is no fleet moving or building elsewhere. Every port, every chance ship confirms it.
What fleet
, Ser Napoleone?’

‘What do you know of the Republic?’ said Lomellini. ‘If one single vessel enters the port of Famagusta in the fourteen nights that follow Epiphany, the siege will be lifted. That is what this document says.’

‘And if no ship comes?’ Nicholas said. ‘Or coming, cannot enter in time?’

‘It will not happen,’ said Lomellini.

Nicholas waited. ‘It will not happen,’ said the captain once more, and less fiercely. ‘But if no ship enters, then Famagusta surrenders to Zacco.’

He could not, at first, even think of his regular call to Katelina. He walked round and round his small chamber, haranguing the walls. Abul Ismail, who had come for news, retired to a cushion and sat, his hands on his lap. At the end, having exhausted himself, Nicholas looked at him, stopped, and then with a groan, dropped to the opposite corner and put his head in his hands. He gave a laugh. ‘I apologise.’

‘You received a fright,’ said the Arab in his judicial way. ‘It is natural. If you now set your mind to do so, it will tell you all the components, reasonable and unreasonable, of your fury. This in turn will render you able to master your body. Tell your hands to be still.’

Around the knot of his stomach, everything seemed to be shaking. He told it to stop, and it didn’t. The Arab said, ‘Why do they think a fleet is coming?’

‘Because they don’t know what is happening out there,’ Nicholas said. ‘Their precious Republic has ruined itself over the Naples war. The Fregoso and the Adorno are tearing Genoa apart with their rivalry. The Bank of St George have already advanced Famagusta all they can spare: they have nothing left. And the seas are blocked anyway with the Turkish fleet. They’ve signed a treaty of surrender, and they don’t even know it.’

‘It isn’t signed yet,’ said Abul Ismail.

‘It will be, in eleven days,’ Nicholas said.

‘You are confident,’ the Arab said. ‘But what you have told me will now be known to these four Genoese in Nicosia. Indeed, is this not what you advised in the first place? Convince them no fleet is coming, and they will bow to surrender? And if that is so: if they are so convinced, why does this document talk of fleets and of truces?’

‘They
are
surrendering,’ Nicholas said. ‘But they have to obtain the leave of the Commander of Famagusta, who still believes in a fleet. Hence the conditional clause. It will make no difference.’

‘Unless a fleet comes,’ the Arab said. ‘Come. The times have been hard on you, these last weeks. To a mind delighting in tactics and devices, grief is not a familiar factor, but it cannot be excluded from any man’s calculations. In the simplest of games, one person at least knows the pain of doubt, or defeat. It can be of high value. Success seldom teaches what is worth knowing.’ He waited, but did not seem disappointed that Nicholas made him no answer. The Arab said, ‘Visit your lady, and then I will prepare you some easement.’

There was nothing of that Nicholas wished to discuss, so he answered only the question. ‘Thank you, no. I have seen Tzani-bey so reduced.’

‘That remedy I do not offer,’ said the Arab. ‘Although I should advise you not to scorn it. Unreasonable tasks sometimes need unreasonable tools to perform them. No. I think you deserve other excesses.’