Race of Scorpions (25 page)

With Martini’s man following, he began to walk over the yard. He turned. ‘The ship is coming in when and where?’

Primaflora said, ‘Tomorrow evening at Limassol. You can’t –’

‘Yes, I can,’ Nicholas said. He watched her move to the steps. If the priest had seen them together at all, it must have looked the most superficial of encounters. He turned again and advanced. ‘Master John! Do you remember me?’ He spoke in Flemish. No one employed by the Martini brothers would know Flemish.

The chaplain stopped. The lean face and spare body were muffled against the chill weather: the cuffs of his cassock showed under those of his gown, and over all he was wrapped in a black fustian cloak that reached to the ground. On top of his hood he wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a broken cord. His mouth opened, revealing crossed teeth and a lot of gum. He said, ‘Claes. It is indeed the varlet called Claes, from the dyeshop. Well, well!’ He grinned, showing where the teeth ended. ‘It’s well seen you’ve come into money!’

The tongue he used was not Flemish, but the Scots spoken in Fife. Twenty-four years before, John of Kinloch had been chaplain to the Hospitallers’ Master in Scotland. In more recent years, he had served the merchants’ Scots altar in Bruges, and had found no reason to be fond of a high-handed Scots lord, or an upstart dyeworks apprentice. In the hateful war between Simon and Nicholas, Father John would add fuel to both sides. Without knowing, of course, the real issue.

He was not a quick-witted man. At first, the implications escaped him. Nicholas said, ‘And what brings you here? Hospitallers’ business?’

The crooked teeth glittered. ‘Oh, you might say. The canon of Aberdeen had some annates for Rome. Young Scougal’s made Knight, and needed someone to come to Rhodes with him. I took the chance. And yourself?’ The frame of his face ceased to move. He said, ‘By my dear Christ. The lord Simon’s on Rhodes. It’s his Portuguese kinsmen you’re after.’

Nicholas said, ‘You are mistaken. We met here by chance.’ He hardly bothered to say it. No one, knowing his past, would believe
it. He trapped the eye of his helper, and looked away again. He said, ‘I mean Tristão Vasquez no harm: what do you suppose I could do? They needn’t even be told who I am.’

The priest’s face became hollow. ‘They don’t know? You haven’t told them? What devilment are you planning? Of course, you’re going to undercut what they grow in Madeira. Cyprus sugar, that’s what you’re investing in!’

‘Perhaps,’ Nicholas said. ‘I haven’t even decided. In any case, what could you tell Tristão Vasquez? He’s never heard of Nicholas vander Poele, or of Claes for that matter. He would think you eccentric. In fact, I should have to tell him you were.’

‘Tell away,’ said the priest. ‘I can tell them you tried to stab Simon at Sluys. I can tell them you ruined his business at Trebizond and fought him in Venice – I heard about that. If they want to know what sort of man you are, I can tell which of your mother’s kinsmen you ruined or murdered, and how you just failed to get the Charetty business when your wife suddenly died, and you found she’d willed everything to her older daughter. Won’t they wonder why? Won’t they wonder why the daughters drove you from Bruges for very fear of their lives? That’s the story going about.’

‘And you believed it?’ Nicholas said. ‘Next time, ask Father Godscalc. Meantime, I’m sorry, I don’t want to distress Tristão Vasquez for no reason.’

‘You’ve come here to kill him. I see it,’ said John of Kinloch. ‘You will not do it. I forbid it.’

He had the valour, if only the silly valour, of righteousness. Nicholas said, ‘All right. Come with me to the Lieutenant. Where are your saddlebags?’

They were on his horse, which somehow had found its way into the stables. Nicholas said, ‘I will wait for you.’ He waited until he heard the scuffle, and then slipped through the door after the chaplain. The Venetian was already kneeling, with the priest lying pinned on the straw. Nicholas said, ‘Father John? I’m sorry. I can’t afford to have my affairs damaged by gossip. You will come to no harm, nor will the Vasquez. You will be kept in a safe place and then allowed to go home as soon as possible. I know the offence is great, and I shall do what I can to make up for it. Do you understand me?’

‘Murderer!’ said John of Kinloch.

‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘we should bind something into his mouth.’

‘I think you should,’ said the low voice of Primaflora behind him. ‘What a villainous past! With whom have I been consorting?’

Nicholas finished knotting the rope-ends and turned. She waited, wrapped in her cloak, where John of Kinloch couldn’t observe her.
He said, equally softly, ‘With a man. What about our Portuguese friends?’

‘They are safely at table,’ she said. ‘Are you going to kill the poor man?’

‘Not immediately,’ Nicholas said. ‘We are taking him, in the form of a sack of flour, to a house this fellow knows of. You can ask your questions later.’

‘I shall ask one now,’ said Primaflora. ‘Is this why you prefer James to Carlotta? Because you have a vendetta against someone on Carlotta’s side? This man Simon, now waiting in Rhodes?’

The horse trampled. ‘Let us say,’ said Nicholas breathlessly, ‘that someone with interests in Genoa and Portugal has a vendetta against me.’ They were thrusting the priest, a threshing bundle, into a pannier.

She still stood in the doorway. ‘Twice, in Bruges, someone mentioned a woman called Katelina.’

Damn Colard. ‘Yes. Well,’ Nicholas said. ‘You now appear to have heard about Simon. Vasquez married his sister. Katelina is Simon’s wife. His second wife.’

‘And you hate them all?’ said Primaflora.

‘No,’ said Nicholas in sudden anger. He turned, breathing heavily. ‘I don’t hate anyone. Well, Tzani-bey al-Ablak I do make an exception for.’

She watched them lead the horse over the drawbridge and out into the road. Then she went back and was particularly charming to Diniz.

Chapter 13

N
ICHOLAS EMBARKED
for Rhodes at dawn the following morning, accompanied by Primaflora his mistress. The Vasquez, father and son, went on board with them, and no screaming, dishevelled priest appeared to warn them that they were sharing their trip with a murderer. Before he left, Nicholas met once again the man Martini had loaned him, and sent him back to the Venetian with both advice and information. He hoped, as a result, that John of Kinloch would be securely kept and well treated until he need no longer fear him. He not only hoped, he felt confident.

The galley, flying the Cross of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller of St John, had come straight from Rhodes. It seemed, interestingly, to be already loaded. Nicholas, who had spent some time on the roof of the seventy-foot citadel, had observed no bustle of exodus the previous day from the storehouses. The spreading fields, on the contrary, had appeared singularly peaceful, stretching to the south, and the sea. There had been a smudge of smoke above the distant monastery of Ayios Nikolaos, and a streak of rose-tinted white told of the saltflats, with the winter flamingoes on them.

It occurred to Nicholas that he had never seen Cyprus, except in autumn and winter. He had never really seen Cyprus at all. The birthplace of Venus was unknown to him; and the vineyards of Engedi. He had inclined towards coming back, if Astorre agreed, for a number of reasons. Now, because of Simon, he didn’t know. Whatever happened, he had deceived the Knights, and could never return to Kolossi.

He had formed an inexact strategy, as yet, for dealing with Simon, waiting on Rhodes for Tristão his partner. Astorre should be on the island as well, with his company. He had been told to remain, by the messages the Order had undertaken to convey to him. He had been told Nicholas was arriving from Cyprus. Fishing boats carried such intelligence. Nicholas only hoped that the
warning had reached him. If, unwittingly, Astorre took his army to Kyrenia, Zacco would intercept and destroy him.

Meanwhile, wherever Astorre and the others might be, it was unlikely that Simon had not come across them. Rhodes was a small island: it would fit eight times into Cyprus. It seemed to Nicholas that, very likely, the die was already cast, and that both the Queen and the Order would have been told he was working for Zacco. Simon would expect him to come, to extract Astorre and his force from the island. Simon would perceive (and tell the Order), that Astorre was wrong in assigning Nicholas to the Queen’s faction. If Simon’s company favoured the Queen, then Nicholas, surely, would choose the opposite side. So Simon would reason. Simon, who loathed and despised Nicholas, because Nicholas had been born to his first wife.

Of that, Primaflora knew nothing; or Tristão Vasquez, whom he might have called uncle; or Diniz, whom he might have called cousin. Nicholas did not enlighten her, or them. Only he gave in to the tempatation, now and then, to talk to the boy, who had lost some of his jealousy, since the exchanges between Nicholas and the lady Primaflora were so markedly formal. The lady travelled in state, as befitted her rank as Queen’s lady of honour, and spoke as often to Diniz as she did to anyone else. It amused Nicholas, although the locked door of her quarters did not. She knew how to tantalise. He ended, for his own sake, by avoiding her.

The boy’s company was almost as testing, since Nicholas had to make his way with such care. He had guessed already the bond between the high-bred, reticent father and the lad only now out of the schoolroom. He didn’t ask about the boy’s mother Lucia, but stored the fragments he learned. He knew she had been put early to royal service and had assumed her more worldly, he saw, than she was. Tristão Vasquez had rescued his wife from a duty she hated, and had given her peace and a tranquil family life away from her wild brother Simon and their domineering father, de Ribérac. The boy would have continued, but suddenly Nicholas felt like an eavesdropper. He said, ‘Sometimes strong fathers make wild sons, until they find what it is they want to do. What do you want for the future? To follow your father?’

Diniz was not to be immediately diverted. He said, ‘My uncle Simon is not very wise. My father blames his father, as you do. Also, he has a very young bride who cannot control him. My mother says his conduct with other men’s wives is nothing short of disgraceful.’

Simon’s wife Katelina was twenty-two, and some months older than Nicholas. Poor Katelina. Poor Katelina, who wanted to ruin Nicholas quite as much as her husband. Nicholas said, ‘Do you want to stay in the East and serve your company? Some agents do,
for experience. After a year or two, there is more to be learned at the centre.’ He stopped himself talking of Bruges. They didn’t know where he came from: Simon must never have mentioned him. They knew his Bank was in Venice, and about Trebizond.

It was about Trebizond that the boy was most curious. In the end, Nicholas briefly explained. ‘You know Constantinople was the capital of a great Byzantine empire, and that it fell to the Turks eight or nine years ago? Trebizond was a Byzantine empire as well, with rulers sprung from the same race. When Constantinople was taken, Trebizond was left exposed to the Turks. It was very rich, because of its trade with the East, and Venice and Genoa and Florence all had an interest in keeping it safe. So had its non-Christian neighbours, like the Turcoman tribe of the White Sheep. Because of its allies, and because it was built between mountains and coast on a rock, it was thought Trebizond would be safe, and the Imperial family would come to no harm. To make sure, they asked mercenaries to come and help them, and I took my company there, and also a commission to trade, both for myself and for Florence. We arrived there the spring before last.’

He paused. The boy said, ‘But the Turks attacked and took it. How did they do it, if you were there? If it was between the mountains and the sea? If all these races were anxious to help them?’

A voice said, ‘What causes such solemn conversation? Diniz, you are tiring our friend.’

It was the boy’s father. The boy said, ‘No! He is telling of Trebizond.’

‘Ah,’ said Tristão Vasquez. ‘I am glad not to have been there.’

The boy was disappointed. ‘You would have fought!’

The nobleman hesitated. Nicholas said, ‘Your father means that he was glad not to be there, and to have to discriminate. It wasn’t simple, you see. The Empire was magnificent, but the blood of the line had run thin, and the barons were self-indulgent and treacherous. They had grown too weak-willed to fight, and too spoiled to face privation. The western traders hated each other, and the White Sheep, who might have become its protectors, were not quite strong enough to take the Empire away from the Turks. Even Georgia, which might have helped, didn’t. There was a moment when anything might have been possible, and a decision one way or the other might have resolved its fate. For no reason except that I was there, I played some part in what happened.’

Tristão Vasquez was silent. The boy said, ‘What did you do?’

Nicholas said, ‘It hardly matters now. In the long run, the Emperor was recommended to surrender by his own Great Chancellor, George Amiroutzes. For money, the Emperor sold Trebizond into slavery and was allowed to go into exile on a
pleasant estate at Adrianople. He is still there, with his younger children. The older members of his family were given to the harem, or the Viziers.’

He had told it as painstakingly and accurately as he could. He had not mentioned the friendship he had struck with the mother of Uzum Hasan, prince of the Turcomans, which might have saved Trebizond if the Turcoman strength had been supported. He didn’t talk of the other, attempted treachery by a man paid by Simon de St Pol to follow and challenge him. The man had died, and he now possessed his vessel, the
Doria
.

What happened at Trebizond had taught Nicholas a lesson about his fellow men he had been unwilling to learn. He did not, normally, choose to resurrect it. At the end, the boy didn’t speak for a while. Then he said, ‘I’m glad I wasn’t there. Who would have known what to do?’

Then Nicholas said, ‘Someone has to do something, even if it is wrong. We did the best we could, and when it was taken out of our hands, we saved ourselves, and our goods, and as many Western lives as we could. What we did was possibly wrong. I don’t know. But at the end, only the Emperor could have changed events.’