Race of Scorpions (82 page)

‘I would have said farewell,’ Nicholas said.

‘The loss is yours and not hers,’ said the Arab. ‘She learned that the vessel had come, and was glad, for she said that the young man would speak for her. And she left you her soul, and her son. To hold such a cure, a man must aspire to the crown of humanity. You know, and only you, if you are worthy.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. He did not look up.

Her soul and her son. A boy in Bruges, he had been older in wisdom than Katelina. He had let himself fall in with her will, and had not seen that she had no will, but was calling, alone, for a friend. From that had come all this misery. All he had given her was bodily joy, and a life that had ended in pain, among strangers. He said, ‘I have destroyed her.’

And: ‘Look at her,’ said Abul Ismail. ‘When you die, you should wish to die thus.’ And Nicholas looked, and saw for the last time the face of Katelina van Borselen, into which Abul Ismail read contentment. And it was true, and in that lay the tragedy.

She lay, her eyes closed and smiling, surrendered to death like the moth, symbol of passionate love, which yields its life to the taper that lures it.

She had died, who was not his beloved, and he had killed her.

Outside the sealed city, the advent of the round ship
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roused the kingdom. One by one, the north-west balefires blossomed in warning, and St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara added their signals. The news came to the capital, where James of Lusignan struck the bearer to the floor. It was his mother, arching her brows, who said, ‘Zacco. Desist. I think you will find this has been prepared for.’

Outside a grand villa in the same city, a priest in an assortment of ramshackle clothing stopped his mule in the gateway, descended by lifting a leg and bellowed to the first person he met, which was Tobie. ‘Are your ankles too weak for your belly? There’s a Genoese ship on the way. Zacco’s off to the coast with his officers. If you want to see it, start riding.’ He retired, lifted a leg, and was carried bobbingly onwards.

‘What?’ said Loppe, materialising.

‘His lordship the Patriarch of Antioch,’ Tobie said, beginning to run. ‘There’s a rescue ship on its way to the Genoese. If it gets into the harbour, it’ll stop the surrender. Tell John. I’ll get the horses.’

‘I heard,’ said John le Grant. ‘What are you expecting to do about it?’

‘Get across to the bay, and watch what happens,’ said Tobie. ‘It’ll make a change. It isn’t really a day for the beach, but I’m tired of my sewing. And it would be nice to know who might be on board. Or hadn’t you thought of that?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said John le Grant. Then he said, ‘How is she coming?’

‘Round the Karpass, because of the wind. She’ll hold off as long as she can; we won’t get much of a view, and they are saying shore batteries couldn’t do her much damage. Zacco’s men will either catch her at sea, or not at all. And once in the harbour, she can unload all she’s got through the sea-gate.’

‘That’s about it,’ said John le Grant. ‘She would expect, maybe, to get into Kyrenia, then see the Lusignan flag on the castle. At any rate, our Genoese friend has a chance. Round ships can come fast on the north wind, and our galleys will have the worst of it, facing them.’ He paused, and said, ‘So it’s up to Mick Crackbene then, isn’t it?’

‘Against the wind?’ Tobie said.

‘We discussed it with Mick,’ le Grant said. ‘Of course, plans get changed.’ He didn’t say what he was thinking.
In Trebizond, Mick Crackbene worked for the Genoese against Nicholas, in the very same ship he’s now sailing
.

Loppe said, ‘The sea-tower in Famagusta is high. Lomellini will see a relief ship is coming. Master Nicholas will have some sort of warning. And he is a hostage, and sacrosanct.’

‘Right enough,’ said John le Grant. ‘Just let’s hope that no one forgets it.’

For a month, he had played a master’s game lacking a master. Released from Famagusta, he had retired to Nicosia, as Nicholas wanted. Astorre, denied his attack, had stayed with Thomas in camp, uneasily brooding. Philip Pesaro had remained in Sigouri, stupefied with relief, and only briefly touched, it appeared, by Zacco’s displeasure. That had been reserved for Nicholas and even there, le Grant wondered how far it was genuine.

The King had forbidden Nicholas to attack, and when defied, had found a method of saving him. His concern for Nicholas was possibly real. But there were, patently, other advantages. No one, knowing the Patriarch, could doubt that, after a day of his voice, Zacco was sick of him. By allowing the Church to intercede, Zacco had ended by pleasing almost everybody. It would not do, however, to let Nicholas think so. Nicholas, therefore, was stuck in Famagusta over Christmas, and needn’t hope that Zacco was going to miss him.

That Diniz Vasquez was also in Famagusta was not common knowledge, although le Grant had told Astorre, Loppe and Tobie. Specifically, neither the King nor the court had been informed. Tobie, back in the villa and cascading with loud, screaming sneezes, had proposed marching at once to the dyeworks and shaking Bartolomeo Zorzi by the hand: le Grant dissuaded him. ‘No. The boy did well at Famagusta, and Zorzi had no right to do what he did. Nicholas wants us to let it alone. He’ll have it out himself with the Venetians.’

‘And when will that be?’ Tobie had asked. ‘After he’s had an axe sunk in the opposite shoulder? What can he do for anyone in that graveyard of a city except catch their rot and pass it on to us in the long run? If he’d talked hard enough, they’d have exchanged him.’

John le Grant had said nothing. He had seen some of the men of Famagusta. He had been appalled, as had the rest of the court, at the emaciation of the four ambassadors sent them by the city, but he had not been surprised. He was not surprised, either, when all of them took to their beds within a day of arriving at the Palace.

He hung about the Palace a good deal himself, as he was entitled to do, being the King’s only contact with Astorre’s army. He called
on the Latin Patriarch of Antioch and had a brief, one-sided exchange. Occasionally he saw Primaflora who, from serving Carlotta, had turned her training to attendance on the King’s mother. On their first encounter, she had drawn him abruptly into her chamber and asked him to tell her about Nicholas. He had told her the story, and reassured her as far as he was able.

After that, she didn’t seek him out, having no doubt more direct news from Zacco. In Loppe’s care, the villa ran smoothly without her. After a week, Loppe handed the task back to Galiot, mentioning that business required him in Kouklia. Tobie had been inclined to object, but le Grant helped him pack and assemble his travelling party.

Loppe had had least to say about the incarceration of Nicholas. His journey, John assumed, was either because of genuine business, or because he found it trying to wait in the capital. It irked John himself, the easy carousing of the long, sprawling festival, the noisy pastimes of the court, the King’s sudden tempers. He wondered how Loppe would know if Nicholas was sent back before Epiphany, or if there were news of a worse kind. Then he realised that Kouklia was in daily touch with Salines, and Salines, unobtrusively, with Nicosia. He wondered, again, who or what Loppe was eluding.

Then the ambassadors found their feet, and were to be seen at table, and occasionally with the King’s special officers. Returning to the villa one day, John le Grant said, ‘Something’s happening. The Bailie of the Secrète has been with them twice, and Podocataro, the lawyer.’ The next day, he said, ‘There’s rumour of some sort of pact. If the King lifts the siege, I’ll mine his privy.’

‘We could go home,’ Tobie said. ‘He’ll have broken the contract.’

‘I’ll leave you to tell him,’ said the engineer.

Then the terms became known, and the day the treaty was sworn, they retired to the villa and drank all night to celebrate. Surrender in fourteen days, unless a ship got in. And Nicholas had been sent for. The King regarded his penance as over.

Next day, as silently as he had gone, Loppe returned. The day after that, Tobie was commanded to the Palace and returning, seized Loppe by the arm and marched him into the workroom John le Grant had devised for himself, where he scowled at them both. ‘All right. Did either of you know about this?’

John le Grant laid down what he was working on. ‘About Nicholas? What? You know all I do.’

‘He’s written asking to stay in Famagusta for two weeks. The King knows the boy Vasquez is there. He’s livid.’

‘I didn’t tell him,’ said John.

‘Nicholas told him. In the letter. He also said he felt responsible
for the Flemish lady who, being royally connected, ought to be well looked after.’

‘What Flemish lady?’ said John le Grant. Loppe stirred, then said nothing.

‘You didn’t know. Katelina van Borselen. Famagusta is full of God-damned Flemings. She’s been trapped there as well as the boy. Simon’s wife as well as his nephew. He says she’s ill. I say it’s a trick to persuade him to stay. I think they’re trying to hold him.’

Loppe said, ‘He can’t be harmed, he’s a hostage. What is the King going to do?’

‘Well,’ said Tobie. ‘It began with striking his spurs off for disobedience, but ended more on the lines of he could stay and rot for two weeks for all Zacco cared. I thought the Flemish woman was sailing for Portugal? That was the point. So that Simon wouldn’t come looking for her.’

Soon after that, the news of the round ship arrived: the round ship called the
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.

On the hard, muddy ride to the shore, no one spoke very much. They joined up with others: Philip Pesaro and a group from Sigouri and later, a familiar glitter of feathers and armour – Astorre, pounding across from the camp with Thomas behind him. Every villager who had a mule seemed to be making his way that day to the beach north of Famagusta, by Salamis. The King was already there, with half the court and the Mamelukes; and a tent, shivering in the wind, had been set up but was not so far in use. For in view, over the ruffled grey sea, was the round ship from Genoa.

She was large, and low in the water, and the size of her guns showed quite clearly, as did the red and white flag of St George, glinting in occasional sunlight below a cloud ceiling harried by blustering wind.

The wind was strong, and from the north. When Zacco’s two war galleys appeared, they seemed hardly to move. The long shells of the hulls were wiped from view by the heave of the sea, so that the prow platforms and tents of the poop could no longer be seen, and only the pennanted masts told where they were, until they rode into view once more, in a steam of spume from the bite of the oars. The round ship raced towards them, her canvas taut. Her bows plunged, shouldering aside streaming seas upon which the galleys slid and swooped and plummeted like seal pups caught in the wash of a bear. The
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fired, and the watchers saw two patches of smoke, and heard the flat thuds, and saw the dash of white water between the galleys. One of them had broken away and appeared to be attempting to struggle upwind. ‘They’ll have naphtha,’ said John. ‘And they’ve got guns. But with that sea and that wind, the round ship’ll outrun them. She’ll be in Famagusta before they can touch her. So where in God’s name is Crackbene?’

‘There,’ said Loppe’s quiet voice. He was looking neither to the right nor the left but out to sea, where a round ship was coming in from the south-east, her sails shuddering, her course designed to intersect with the Genoese just outside the harbour. The
Doria
, their own ship, brought by the Venetians and Zacco from the Abruzzi, and a veteran now of the war for which she had been chartered. On the mast flew the red lion of Lusignan, and at the helm, they knew, was Mick Crackbene.

Tobie said, ‘Will he do it?’

‘Look at his guns,’ John le Grant said. ‘We designed them for this. They can even be trained upon galleys.’

The crowded strand where they stood was full of noise. It beat about them on the wind as men shook their fists and shouted, faces shining. Zacco stood on high ground, his hat pulled off, his hair blown free of his sable-lined cloak. Beside him, the face of Rizzo di Marino was as intent. Beyond them was the emir, Tzani-bey. Captain Astorre, surveying them all, turned back and caught what they were talking about. ‘Crackbene?’ he said. ‘Knows his job. Knows his mind. And sticks to the rules. A contract’s a contract.’

And John le Grant said, ‘But if the
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gets in, the contract falls to be renegotiated, wouldn’t you say?’

The
Doria
fired. She let off a salvo of three guns, spaced so that the first ball fell well in front of the Genoese ship. The last was much closer. The Genoese ship replied, firing wide. She was taking in canvas. One of the galleys had vanished from sight. The other had turned and was waiting for the Genoese, standing off on the landward side with her crossbowmen and hackbutters lining her port rail, fore and aft. The Genoese round ship turned to present her poop guns to Mick Crackbene, and the galley sprang into action. In a sequence of thuds, the galley fired into the round ship, her shot exploding into the broad flush planks of the prow; arching over the tumble-home curve that should have protected the gunners. At the same time, her oars sent her spinning into a turn, so that her iron beak pointed outward, ready to gore the towering sides of the Genoese.

For a moment it looked as if the classic capture was about to take place: the low, lean greyhound was about to sink its teeth into the boar. Then the prow guns of the
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spoke in unison with those of her poop. To seaward, the ship of Mick Crackbene shuddered within a column of smoke which blossomed into red flame. To landward the Lusignan galley disappeared behind a column of spume and of fire.
‘Christ!
’ said Tobie.

‘Look,’ said John. ‘Look what they have done.’

The galley now limping to landward had been bait. While she presented herself as a target, the second galley had rowed against the wind north. Now she had turned. Now she swayed on the
towering waves to the north, and glittering on her prow were the slim copper tubes that had faced the ship of the Order that had brought them all from Rhodes to Cyprus. She had the wind, and the fire. At a spark from her tinder, a sheet of flame could envelop the Genoese. And advancing steadily from the east, limping a little, but with the lines of his guns unimpaired and intact, was Mick Crackbene on the
Doria
. Tobie said, ‘The Genoese. She’s slowing. She’s not making a run for it?’