Race of Scorpions (72 page)

His last visit was to fulfil an invitation from Marco Corner to take supper with him at his house. It had happened on the last occasion as well, for Venice was delighted with Niccolò vander Poele, who had destroyed the plants and was freeing Cyprus, God be good, of the Genoese. Even his marriage to Primaflora in some way had charmed them although, of course, there had been no opportunity for her to visit either Episkopi or Kouklia.

This time, Loredano was there, the perfect Venetian; but not the perfect Venetian princesses. It was a relief; although again, naturally, the subject of Katelina van Borselen arose, and he had to explain, again, that he had seen her last in good health leaving Rhodes. ‘A charming guest,’ returned Marco Corner, lifting his bulk from a settle and signing a servant to light the small brazier. ‘Although her captivity chafed her and her disappearance, as the lord King has found cause to remind me, has deprived him of her considerable ransom. Nevertheless, one would not have wished her to be miserable. The countryside troubled her. Fiorenza observed it. She had a great fear of insects.’

‘The lady Fiorenza is sensitive to the feelings of others,’ Nicholas said. ‘I trust she and her sisters are well?’

‘Of course. Of course,’ said Marco Corner. ‘You will see them in Venice. Surely, when the King is in possession, you will allow yourself a small trip to Venice? It would be wise, in any case, to supervise this vile matter of refineries. You are suffering too? I am told they have touched pawning as well. The Order and Carlotta have cause to know it. You will have to look to your Bank.’

‘My Bank,’ Nicholas said, ‘is as well protected as I am.’

Slithering north in the rain the next day, he thought he ought to be commended for speaking the truth, for what it was worth, which was little.

He returned to find the Cross of St George still flapping from the walls of Famagusta and nothing obviously changed except the weather, which would, of course, put out the slow-matches and the fire-missiles and make it increasingly unlikely that the tower of Famagusta was going to prove combustible. On his way to his tent, he fell in with a captain who told him gloomily that three men had individually been sent in to find and blow up the magazine, and all had presumably died. Meanwhile, the firing from the walls was
undiminished, and the last stages of trenching had proved extremely costly. The city would now, in addition, possess some water. He then added the news Nicholas had least wanted to hear. The King had gone back to Nicosia, taking his whole Council with him.

In the most artistic way, Nicholas swore. The man grinned. ‘What have you to worry about? He sent a message for you. It’s in your tent.’

There proved, when he got there, to be two messages. The first, from the King, summoned him forthwith to Nicosia. The other, from Philip Pesaro, asked that no matter what time he arrived, he should ride on immediately to Sigouri.

The Château Franc at Sigouri was ten miles away. It was dusk, it was wet, and Nicholas had been riding all day. He sent for Astorre, and there appeared instead Thomas, who reported smartly that Captain Astorre had been called to Nicosia, and Master Tobie and Messer le Grant with him. He answered, when pressed, that he didn’t know why, but it was understood that the young fellow was mad, that is, Monseigneur the King was in one of his fits of impatience. The rumour was that they were to give up the siege and have their contracts revoked before Christmas.

Nicholas said, ‘Don’t believe it. All we need is a bit of good action. Wait till I get back from Sigouri.’

‘They say,’ said Thomas, ‘that you’re not coming back. That the King’ll keep you beside him at the Palace.’

‘And that’ll be nice and dry and warm for us both. I can see how the thinking is going. Well, tell them I’ll be back whether the King wants me or not. We said we’d take this damned city, and we’re going to.’

Thomas didn’t look immediately cheered, but might relay some of that, Nicholas thought, where it would help matters. He felt wet and cold and touched with foreboding. He sent for one man and Chennaa, swallowed some cold meat and wine and, wrapping himself in a dry cloak, went and mounted the camel, crooning love-talk as she rose to her feet and took up her soft, swaying gait. She was a racing-camel. Although booted and plastered with mud and out of temper with herself and with him, she deposited him at the drawbridge of Sigouri in just over an hour. Pesaro met him in the yard.

Philip Pesaro was a good fighting man in a post that controlled all north-east Cyprus from Famagusta to the end of the Karpass. He took Nicholas into his office, shut the door and spoke as soon as the servants had gone. ‘I’ve got a report from inside Famagusta. Their food is virtually finished. There are only two thousand still alive in the city, and the survivors are dying off daily. But Lomellini and his men will not give up. They will starve to the end, because
they believe rescue is coming by sea.’ He paused and said, ‘The King is not here. He has offered honourable surrender, and his envoys have been killed or turned back. The responsibility for what is happening does not lie with us. But I must report it to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. He pushed aside, untasted, the food Pesaro’s servant had given him. He said, ‘Of course, the King has not heard this latest news.’ He looked at the window and said, ‘I’ll go to Nicosia tonight.’

Pesaro said, ‘You might as well have your night’s rest. I know what the lord King will say. It is no concern of his if the city is stubborn, and suffers. And until after your Feast, he will do nothing.’

Nicholas stopped in the act of rising. He said,
‘What
?’

‘The Feast of St Nicholas,’ said Philip Pesaro. ‘You had forgotten. He offered to hold it in Famagusta. Since you have failed to give him Famagusta, he proposes to celebrate it in his own capital. That is why you have to go.’ He paused, and said, ‘You won’t persuade him to do otherwise, Messer Niccolò. Don’t think that you can.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘I shall go, then. But there are some orders I should like carried out. I shall write them down and sign them. Then when this mad Feast is over, I’ll bring the King back.’

He wrote, and Pesaro watched. At the end, the captain said, ‘I shall do it, of course. But –’

‘But it may make no difference,’ Nicholas said. ‘It probably won’t. And I know what you’re thinking. Every gun in Famagusta is trained on the end of that trench, and Genoese archers are among the best in the world. But in the end, we may have to save the honour of Genoa the Superb by attacking her.’

Chapter 36

T
HE FOLLOWING
day was the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas. Consumed with rage and anxiety, Tobias Beventini, physician, prowled through the warm, pretty villa of the loveliest woman in Nicosia, bumping into maids carrying baskets of linen and other maids bearing pressed robes and doublets, concealing himself from the man who wanted to trim the fluff round his scalp, and using long Latin words to the other man who wanted to polish his spurs and his jewellery.

He had no jewellery. The last time he had felt like this was in a house in Florence, when he and Julius had been about to visit Cosimo de’ Medici and extract a commission to represent the Medici in Trebizond. That time, Nicholas had arrived late as well. Tobie made to sit in a chair and then desisted, because it was inlaid and foreign and breakable. He noticed that John le Grant avoided the furniture too. There were cushions with long, voluptuous tassels, and in the master bedroom (he had looked) the quilt was of white silk brocade.

They had hardly ever been in this house belonging to Nicholas, and never since it received its new mistress. Tobie had previously met Primaflora on rare occasions only – during the search for Tristão and Diniz Vasquez on Rhodes; on the ambushed ship that brought them from Rhodes, and in the King’s hall at Kiti immediately after. In Rhodes he had seen a lot of her, right up to her thigh, and Nicholas was right: he was pea-green with envy.

She was still golden, and silken, and goddess-like, and had welcomed John and Astorre and himself with a kind of free, self-possessed amusement that had seemed to make them at once her long-established friends. The house, their chamber, the food were arranged to perfection, and after the brutish clangour of Famagusta they should have been in a state of bewildered gratitude. But John, he noticed, tended to wander outside as often as he felt tempted to do; while Astorre had set up house quite candidly in the kitchens.
Primaflora appeared wholly unruffled, but every now and then someone in royal livery would appear in the yard and go away again. The King was arranging a feast tomorrow for Nicholas, and Nicholas wasn’t here yet.

Late in the afternoon, Loppe arrived, which frankly no one had expected, for Loppe was managing things at Kouklia just as Mick Crackbene was guarding the harbour at Famagusta. The surprise was mutual. Tobie explained about the Feast of St Nicholas with many and explicit adjectives, and Loppe clearly thought his exasperation well-founded while refraining, annoyingly, from any breath of criticism of the absent Nicholas. Loppe was, it appeared, expecting to join up with Nicholas on the battlefield, but on hearing the news, obtained Primaflora’s permission to stay. Being Loppe, he solved the problem of protocol by returning silently to his role of major domo, having made a small accommodation with Galiot whom, after all, he had trained. His previous incarnations seemed well known to Primaflora who had last seen him, presumably, crossing from the service of the Grand Commander Louis de Magnac to that of Nicholas with total aplomb. She had not seen Nicholas himself, Tobie learned, for five weeks.

He arrived after supper that evening, having spent the previous night, it transpired, at Sigouri. Why it had taken him all day to travel thirty odd miles was not explained. He came directly to the parlour shared by Astorre, John and Tobie, followed by servants attempting to rid him of his wet cloak. They were immediately replaced by Loppe, whose presence he appeared to accept without question and almost without greeting, as he did theirs. On his face, with its childlike planes and arrogant nostrils and affectingly large eyes, was a distinct absence of the play of simple expressions that usually took place there. He looked tired, which he didn’t usually do. He looked – which Tobie in particular didn’t care for – uncommonly like the way he had looked more than two years before at a place called Skylolimne; and later at another place called Kerasous. Tobie looked at John, and their eyes met. Astorre, wiping peach juice from his beard, threw down his napkin and said, ‘Well, you took your time. We might have got this contract finished, but for your God-damned Feast Day. What were you thinking of?’

‘I wanted a good meal,’ said Nicholas.

Primaflora appeared in the doorway behind him and by instinct, it seemed, he knew it and turned round. Or perhaps, thought Tobie, her scent had something to do with it. She said, without touching him, ‘Talk to them. Then find me when you are ready.’ Her face was smiling and apparently calm, unless you looked below the painted line of her brows. What it reflected of her husband’s face, Tobie couldn’t see.

Then Nicholas said, ‘No. Please join us. And Loppe. I suppose I have to go to the King.’

‘He can wait,’ Primaflora said; and crossing the room, held the great chair by the brazier until Nicholas walked over and dropped into it. Then, restraining Loppe with a light hand, she fetched wine and a platter for Nicholas, and poured for them all before she sat down herself.

Nicholas said, ‘The Feast Day wasn’t my idea. I want it over as quickly as possible.’

‘There is Mass tomorrow,’ said Primaflora. ‘Then a great feast at the Palace. All the Haute Cour will be there. The King has invited every great nobleman, every high officer of the church and the Knights of the Order from Kolossi. The Venetians, the merchants will be present, and even Sor de Naves and the abbot of Bellapaïs from Kyrenia. Only the Mamelukes will be absent. You couldn’t leave in less than two days. It is a mark of the King’s personal love and regard.’

Astorre snorted. ‘He’s bored.’

‘I told you,’ Nicholas said, ‘to entertain him while I was away. Do your tricks. Turn somersaults and climb up the underside of a ladder with your armour on. Well, it’s too late now, so let’s make the best of it. I have something I want the King to agree to. There might be a better chance now than most times.’

‘You want to leave?’ said John le Grant. It was the first time he had spoken. Very often John le Grant disconcerted Tobie. With Julius, he had always felt more comfortable.

Nicholas said briefly, ‘Something else.’

Captain Astorre had been paying small attention. He said, ‘And anyway, what did Pesaro want at Sigouri? He said he’d sent for you.’

‘He was concerned,’ Nicholas said. ‘He says the whole army is unsettled because it’s known that Famagusta will never give up while it expects a relieving ship to arrive. He says that if the King persists in staying away, there will be mutiny if not now, then when the weather gets wetter and colder. No army expects to keep the field through the winter.’

John le Grant said, ‘And so what’s his suggestion?’

‘It’s mine,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s what I want to put to Zacco. This is December, when truces are common. I want Zacco to invite four leading citizens from Famagusta to share the Feast of the Nativity with him, and to allow food and wine to be sent into the city between then and Epiphany. And during that time, I want those four Genoese to see for themselves, beyond all possible doubt, that there is no question of rescue arriving. Then, I hope and believe, they will surrender.’

‘Amid casks of wine and barrels of cheeses?’ said Astorre, scowling.

‘The food would stop on the sixth day of January. I don’t think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that anyone in Famagusta will have the strength of purpose left to starve to death after that.’

Tobie said nothing nor, after a glance, did John le Grant. It was Primaflora who said, ‘Forgive me. This is not women’s business. But will starvation not bring surrender without the King being asked to make such concessions? They must be suffering now.’