Race of Scorpions (94 page)

‘Well?’ said Zacco softly. He had sobered.

‘My lord King,’ said the clerk. ‘M. de Ribérac is not in his room. We have made enquiries. We have asked at the gates. We have met messengers on their way from the south. My lord King, M. de Ribérac has escaped.’

‘Without paying his ransom?’ said the angel.

‘He left nothing,’ said the clerk.

‘How?’ said the King. He lifted his fist and crashed it down on the lectern. The inkwell jumped to the floor, split and emptied. Quietly, the young man called David lifted the plan out of harm’s way and held it, folded neatly, at his side.

‘He had help. From one of Messer Niccolò’s men,’ said the clerk.

It was, of course, one of the possibilities. It was the only possibility. Nicholas said, ‘I know nothing of this. Tell me who?’ But he knew. He should have guessed. He should have prepared for it.

The clerk said, ‘Your sailing-master, Messer Crackbene, Ser Niccolò. He contrived to take the vicomte through the gates and found mounts for him. They left last night and were in Salines by morning. They have sailed.’

‘By what means?’ Nicholas said.

The clerk turned to him. His knuckles were white. ‘Messer Crackbene took him on the
Doria.
’

Naturally. The contract was over. Crackbene had been paid. Meticulous to the last, he had waited before switching masters, and the fault was not his that Nicholas had failed to foresee it. Nicholas remembered him on the same round ship sailing from Italy: a solid, fair, high-coloured man, put out because he had been forced by Erizzo to take the
Doria
to Cyprus. It had been easy to mistake his indignation for loyalty, and in its way, that was what it had been; for at that time Crackbene had been employed by the House of Niccolò. But now, that covenant was concluded. The ownership of the
Doria –
of any vessel – was not Crackbene’s business. He was invited, for a fee, to become master, and if the fee was large enough, he accepted. You could call him a rascal, or you could call him a master mariner without whom Famagusta would have been a condemned city. It didn’t matter to Crackbene that the vicomte had stolen the ship. He might not even have known that the
Doria
was once called the
Ribérac
.

Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry. I have lost a ship, and you have lost your ransom.’

‘At least,’ said the clerk, ‘the other ransom was paid.’

It was David who spoke, as was to be expected from the King’s creditor. He said, ‘One ransom had been paid? Whose was that?’

The clerk said, ‘A previous prisoner. Messer Niccolò paid it. It doesn’t fall into this calculation.’

‘Whose?’ said Nicholas. Again, he knew. He simply wanted to hear it, before he could bring himself to the task of believing it.

‘A youth called Diniz Vasquez,’ said the clerk. ‘The vicomte was his grandfather. He was not a prisoner, but the vicomte insisted he be found and compelled to go with him. They have left Cyprus, they tell me, for Portugal.’

‘I regret,’ said the person called David for the second time. He was smiling now: smiling at Nicholas.

Nicholas, too, regretted. Things nothing to do with the loss of his ship, which was a stroke only de Ribérac could have thought of. He regretted the implications of this news as it affected one stricken family. He regretted the harm done by Primaflora, out of ambition, jealousy, a dread of the future, all mixed and half defeated by the one attribute a courtesan should never permit herself: a passion for love.

She had forced Katelina to suffer. She had killed. Primaflora’s loss to himself was something that, as yet, he didn’t want to call in to measure. But he had used her as well. He had learned from her. And, as he had said, the King’s conscience had worked in his favour. She would not, therefore, endure the ultimate punishment
through any action of his, although he had taken exaction. Nothing extreme; nothing overt; nothing crude. The King required sons. He had simply sent the King’s mother a message, in which Sor de Naves was mentioned.

Regret did not describe what he felt about the death of a high-born, wilful girl who had borne him a son, and had lived only a twisted half-life afterwards. A girl not unlike Primaflora in natural ardour, but constrained and thwarted by the society that she lived in. He didn’t know what happiness Katelina had ever had since her childhood, but for the hours they had given each other. Now she had gone, leaving two sets of wounded people staring at one another over a gulf.

One of them was Diniz Vasquez. If he had set out to find him last night, perhaps he could have stopped what had happened. Instead, the boy was at sea, in the grasp of that brutal, impenetrable man, and facing a vengeful, a bitter, a fatherless home. He did not regret, not at all, that Jordan de Ribérac had gone.

The young man called David was watching him. He said, ‘The ship that has been purloined was yours? It is a great loss, on top of all your other disappointments. You were not insured?’

‘It was mine,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was insured, by my lawyer in Venice.’

The dark eyes watched and watched. The young man said, ‘I heard of no such large transaction. With whom was the business placed?’

‘With the Vatachino,’ Nicholas said. ‘I employed a pseudonym. Happily, by the terms of your company’s bond, I stand to lose nothing.’

They faced one another. The young man called David said, ‘I am amazed. Of course, they will pay you in full. I must whisper to you, of course, that such a pretty opportunity will not come your way again.’

He laid the plan back on the lectern and picked from its groove the rings he had laid down when writing. They were expensive and heavy, and he assumed them like beads on an abacus. His nails were curved and worn long, and the skin of his hands was like satin.

He said, ‘We have a policy, Messer Niccolò. Small firms encroach on our trade, interfere with our plans, dilute our market. We are swiftly overcoming this problem. When the time comes, we shall offer you a reasonable price for your business. You and your colleagues. A man’s business colleagues, Messer Niccolò, quite often enjoy the feel of a coin in their palms. It is better than suffering frequent losses, long disappointments. There is only one Vatachino, and it is irresistible.’ He paused, almost smiling. He said, ‘We go to Africa next. You stay in Cyprus?’

Nicholas looked into the assured, agreeable face and said, ‘I have a home here, M. David. But like you, I have business in several places. I should expect to find myself, now and then, where you are. Or even, perhaps, there before you.’

He left the Palace soon after that, and within a week had moved his household out of Nicosia. The King wanted him gone from the capital, and he had no wish to cause further embarrassment. Kouklia could hold all his company, and once he and they had perfected their plans, he could instruct his agents, and take ship for Venice.

He returned to the King’s chambers once, for his formal leave-taking. Unwanted encounters had threatened to fill his last days at the villa: he had escaped all but two. In the first, he had been descended upon, close to suppertime, by the Patriarch Ludovico da Bologna who had lectured him on Prester John and the bee-land of Egypt, and to whom he had listened patiently, because of a procession that had come just in time and for which, he could see, he would be asked to pay many times over. In the second, he found himself summoned by the King’s mother who, overturning his formal excuses, sent a guard to his door with instructions not to come back without him. So Nicholas walked into the presence of Marietta of Patras as he was, in everyday pourpoint and boots, and stood to formal attention as a prisoner might.

He owed her nothing. The last time he was here, she had allowed Jordan de Ribérac to vilify his own grandson; she had announced that his marriage was ended. From the moment of his first arrival in chains, she had plotted. She had sent Katelina to Episkopi, hoping that he would win her away from Carlotta. Markios her bullying brother had dropped the hints that provoked the Mameluke rising, and in protecting himself and his sister had caused Abul Ismail to die. The escape of Diniz from Nicosia meant that Katelina, no longer useful, would be likely to follow him: in both departures, one could glimpse the hand of the King and his mother. And above all, because of this woman, Primaflora had been encouraged to come to the King – to appeal to the King, when the King’s mother appeared to dismiss her. He hoped she knew now what prize she had brought to her son. So far as he was concerned, that was her punishment.

The King’s mother received him unveiled. Above the velvets and jewels her painted eyes glittered. Below, she had left undisguised the raw carmine snout of her nose. She said, ‘Well? You have many things to accuse me of. Say them.’

He met her fierce gaze with his own, and said nothing at first, because whatever he might feel, there was no place here for an outburst of violence or spleen. It was why he had not wanted to come. He had always recognised her unshakable purpose. She fought for the King and for Cyprus; as in Persia, the lady Sara
served none but her son Uzum Hasan. Sara was Uzum’s courageous instrument, but Marietta of Patras was the rudder which kept Zacco’s brilliant career on its course. Nicholas said, ‘Ruthlessness will empty your hand, sooner or later.’

‘So I have been told,’ Cropnose said. She was not surprised by his moderation, he saw. She had not, therefore, brought him here to foment a quarrel. She said, ‘It is not an argument I should have expected from you. To turn the tables upon Tzani-bey, you sent to Uzum Hasan, and as a consequence, the Emperor of Trebizond and his children died. Because you took no heed of a family feud, the lady Katelina came to these islands, and she and the Portuguese paid the penalty. The cause of all these deaths was neglect and self-interest and pure, petty vengeance. And you criticise me?’

If it was true (and it was), she was the last person to whom he would acknowledge it. ‘Who else dare criticise you, magnificent lady?’ Nicholas said. ‘You are saying that you wish the Mamelukes were alive? You should complain to your brother, not me.’

She was silent for a long time. Finally, she stirred. She said, ‘I am saying, look to your own motives. Soon, no one will dare gainsay you either, and you will be the worse for it. I wish I had the training of you.’

He caught the note in her voice before it hardened. She was not thinking of him, but of bright, wilful Zacco, the indulged son of his father, who would not accept training or censure. He was not sure what to say. In the end, he said, ‘I expect to return. They say I am teachable.’

‘You will keep a foothold here,’ she said. ‘If you are allowed. But the rest of your equipment for life you will no doubt pick up from parasites. Is your mother alive?’

‘No, lady,’ he said. He tried not to show that she had startled him.

‘No. I would have told her,’ said Marietta of Patras, ‘that she made a child of the wrong sex. But since you cannot give birth to sons, you are better gone from the Palace.’

Travelling south, the others thought they understood his long silence, and made few attempts to distract him. He was riding to Kouklia, but it was not of Kouklia he was thinking. It was three years since he had gone to Bologna, and had fought among men made of sugar. He had chosen war, and had been oppressed by what he had found. He had not looked for love, but had been offered it in many different guises and had tried to deal with it wisely, but had not always succeeded. He had experienced the bereavement of others and had suffered from it himself. All that had happened since Bologna seemed to be bracketed between two silent coffins: one that named him, and the other on which his name had no right to appear.

He had no regrets that he had turned his back on Carlotta, for of the two Lusignan scorpions, she was the lesser. It was Zacco who ruled Cyprus now – Cyprus, island of love and fertility and divine prostitution. Cyprus, the perpetual colony, the perpetual mistress and battlefield. Now James was her master, and would rule as well as any had, despite all that worked against him: even though pulled this way and that by his court, his mother, his temperament. And now, by his new friends the Vatachino. In his distrust of Venice, Zacco had called in a predator; and it would please Nicholas to find him and challenge him.

So he might indeed keep a foothold in Cyprus. Here was the first earth he had owned. Here, he had learned something of what he wanted, if not all of it. Now he must acknowledge responsibilities from which he couldn’t escape, for there was no one else left who could carry them. Chief among them, of course, was accountability for his own crazy actions. He thought it a pity, at the back of his mind, that at twenty-three, he should be fettered. He knew that it was generally held that control of his own ingenuity was beyond him. He preserved an open mind on the subject.

In his last meeting with Zacco, the charming broker David de Salmeton had not been present. Nevertheless, it had been very public. James de Lusignan had taken leave of the one-time friend of his soul in open court with the Archbishop and his Chancellor about him. He had thanked Nicholas royally for his services to the throne, and hoped for his speedy return, to enter into his estates and lend the kingdom his counsel. Primaflora was neither there, nor referred to, for which Nicholas was silently thankful.

He didn’t expect to forget her, or their union. Wherever he walked, the echo of it stayed with him.
So may thou love me like a branch full of honey, and only me. Around thee I have girt fields of sugarcane to banish all hate; so that thou may adore me, my darling, and never depart
. The words were hers, and not his. He was departing. He had made her no avowals of love, for she had killed Katelina.

At the end, the King came to his side and walked with him out to the yard, where Chennaa was waiting. Then Zacco had laughed. ‘Your fondness for that elegant animal! If you had shown us half such tenderness, what might we not have accomplished together?’

‘But,’ said Nicholas, ‘with a beast there is no communion except the bond between rider and ridden. We are a King and a King’s loyal companion, and the regard we have for each other will always be greater than that, and endure longer.’