Race of Scorpions (83 page)

‘She’s coming to rock,’ John le Grant said. ‘There’s a reef parallel to the shore. It joins all those islands. The galley behind her has pushed her in, and she’s got to change course and then turn, or she’ll overshoot the entrance to the harbour. But Mick is blocking her way. That’s why he left it so late. He couldn’t have done this while she had all that sea room. Look.’

The
Doria
had fired again. This time the ball made a hit. They heard the crash, and saw smoke rise from the forward quarter of the Genoese round ship. At the same moment, a rush of flame came from the rear, followed by a flock of fire-arrows streaming into the rigging. One of the sails burst into flame. ‘The second galley, in place at her rear,’ said John le Grant. ‘And there goes the first, firing into her flank. You see, because of the rocks, she can’t reply to Mick’s cannon. All she can do is tack forward and crash into him, which would be suicide for them all. He’s got her.’

‘Has he?’ said Tobie. ‘How many men will she carry?’

‘The Genoese? Less than fifty, most likely. That ship’s full of provisions, not soldiers. Good co-ordinated fire might have wrecked the two galleys, and she could have got on course before Crackbene arrived. But she didn’t. Listen. He’s hailing her.’

‘She won’t give way?’ Tobie said. ‘She can’t. She’s got to get in, or she throws Cyprus away.’

‘What do you think she is?’ said John le Grant. ‘A ship from Olympus, a martyr? She was sent by the Republic, and she’s made an honest effort. But behind her is a galley that can burn her down to the waterline, and beside her is Crackbene with a genius for sailing and guns he has hardly used yet. They can give in, or they can die. They have no hope of succeeding.’ He looked at Tobie. ‘Have you forgotten? They are the enemy.’

‘I think I had forgotten,’ Tobie said. Across the water, the loud hailers were blaring and squealing as they had in the winter, when Tzani-bey had caught and herded the Order. From the shore, they couldn’t hear what was said. But they saw, clearly enough, the galleys take their place on each side of the Genoese ship, and the big ship of Mick Crackbene approach and cast out its grappling irons, and then its nets. Soon the seascape seemed to be occupied by nothing but the two great ships clamped together, with a web of men and weapons passing glittering from the one to the other.
Then the
Adorno
’s sails rattled down, and the flag of St George on her mast trembled, and drooped, and slipped down its cords. Then, running free as a dart, the lion of Lusignan replaced it.

Zacco shouted. They could hear his great cry, and see the flash of his hat flung in the air, and the brown silk of his hair whipping free as a flag against his glistening eyes, and the bright joy-stained red of his cheeks. He swept his friends into his arms and the shouting multiplied and reverberated on and on, up and down the beach and through the distant war-broken theatre of Salamis. John le Grant’s powerful fingers dug themselves into Tobie’s arm. He said, ‘That’s it. That’s the only ship that’s ever going to arrive here. Come the end of the fourteen days, Famagusta surrenders. Nicholas emerges. We get paid. We can go if we want to.’

Tobie was watching Loppe, who had suddenly disappeared to the shore, and was now coming back rather more slowly. He said, arriving, ‘The
Doria
’s put off a skiff with a message. The Genoese ship has surrendered. With the King’s leave, Master Crackbene takes the captured ship and his prisoners to Salines. Six are dead. The rest will be dispatched north to Nicosia, to coincide with the official surrender.’ He broke off and stepped back, for the King had broken free of his friends, and was running alone down the strand to the messenger. He passed beside them all, seeing no one, his eyes fixed on the sea and the skiff, and the two great ships and the galleys beyond, all of them flying the Lusignan flag.

He had been weeping. He let the tears lie on his cheeks, and men cheered as he passed them, their young golden King who had won his crown at last. Who had seen enacted before him the last skirmish in the war which had now given him his own longed-for kingdom of Cyprus.

Loppe watched him go. Loppe turned his eyes from the victorious, the vibrant, the magnificent figure and looked instead towards the chill, battered walls of Famagusta. He said, ‘I would not like to be a man in that city tonight.’

Chapter 42

P
RIDE HELD SHUT
the gates of Famagusta until the fourteenth day after Epiphany had expired without bringing rescue. That night, they dug away the earth and drew the nails from the planks and removed the great bars that had closed all the formal entrances into the city, and completed the bridging of the ditch that led to the land gate. The next morning, in solemn cavalcade, James, King of Cyprus rode in to receive the keys of his city, and the flag of St George and the Dragon was dropped from the walls.

The company of Nicholas were among those who rode with him. This was not the triumphal procession which one day would beat a noisy and brilliant path to a swept and garnished city, but a military operation, to do with the handing over of power. Riding through the battered gates, unarmed, with nothing but the richness of his furs to identify him, James of Lusignan looked like a King, with the youth gone from his face along with the high-spirited waywardness.

Prepared as they were, the reality of what had happened to Famagusta struck silence from them all. The tumbled buildings. The abandoned houses. The places blackened with fire. The intact ghosts, deeper into the city, of the splendid Frankish villas and lodgings and trading loggias, the fine-cut bulk of the church of St Peter and St Paul, the towering buttresses of the great convent of St Francis, with its empty gardens and cloisters. The disused markets. The silent streets of the craftsmen. And over all, the smell of sickness and death.

To wait for their enemy, the ordinary people of Famagusta had made their way to the heart of the city, where the Cathedral soared like a vast triangled reliquary, flanked by princely buildings and faced, across the piazza, by the handsome, doorless shell of the Palace. They stood in silence: two living hedges of worn and stinking humanity between which the cavalcade passed with no
sound but the tinkle of harness. They were Greeks. The uplifted hand of the Archbishop of Nicosia meant nothing to them.

And then, ahead, were the walls of the Citadel, with its drawbridge down, and the portcullis updrawn to give entry. In its doorway, awaiting them, was a figure in rich, damaged velvets which must be Napoleone Lomellini. Within the court of the castle no doubt attended the garrison, and the Genoese lords, and their former hostages.

One of whom was Nicholas. For several weeks, Tobias Beventini had found it impossible to speak of the apprentice he had chosen to follow, to dissect, to guide, in a medical way, towards the real, adult world. Long ago, he now realised, Nicholas had slipped from his grasp. Alone of all the men who now surrounded him, Tobie carried the knowledge that the son of Katelina van Borselen belonged to Nicholas. He knew what had already befallen every kinsman with whom Nicholas had come in contact. He now knew, too, what had happened, through the contrivings of that tortuous, ingenious mind, to the last exiled Emperor of the dynasty of Byzantium, and all his grown sons. He knew that Katelina van Borselen was in this city, along with the sister’s son of Simon, her husband, while alone in Nicosia was Primaflora, the lovely woman Nicholas had taken in marriage after Marian, the simple widow who had founded his fortune.

Once, in the wake of the St Hilarion assault, Tobie had said to John, ‘Would you follow vander Poele? After this?’

And the engineer had raised his sandy eyebrows and said, ‘After what? You were in Trebizond with him. He hasn’t altered, that I can see, since he came away a rich man.’ Little that John le Grant said was ever reassuring, no matter how right he might be. It didn’t strike Tobie that John, too, had had no wish to talk about Nicholas.

The Great Court of the Citadel of Famagusta was one hundred and sixty feet long, and built to accommodate the grandest of ceremonials. A third of it was occupied by the surrendering forces. Placed to the rear of the Lusignan retinue, the company of Nicholas barely heard the clipped and formal exchanges demanded by protocol, or the clink of the keys as they were handed over, or the flourish of trumpets that heralded the raising of the Lusignan banner on every wall. Behind Napoleone Lomellini and his noblemen; behind the Pallavicino, the Doria, the families of Gentile, Verdure, Archerio, de Pastino and the ranked faces, filled with hate, of the soldiers, there stood the men hitherto guarded as hostages. The Arab Abul Ismail, erect and gaunt and impassive in turban and robes. And beside him, a strong, familiar frame unfamiliarly reduced, on which hung the soiled and ill-fitting clothes of a labourer. But the colourless face of Nicholas vander Poele with its rarefied structure had nothing in common with the dimpled
joker of Bruges. His hair, untended, curled thick as a dog’s at his neck under a shapeless wool cap, and his mind was turned patently inwards; far from seeking, or even thinking of the men from whom he had been parted for six weeks.

Towards the end, he lifted his eyes, and looked directly at Tobie and his companions. The next moment he had turned and, by the King’s command, had re-entered the Citadel. His gaze had not been blank: he had seen them. But there was in it neither greeting nor welcome. Astorre said, ‘He’s under orders. Plenty to do. The King’ll want him. I’ve to get the prisoners ready for Nicosia. Why don’t you go into the Citadel? Or the Palace. They’re making it habitable.’

A voice said, ‘Senhores.’ Before them stood the bloodless figure of the boy they had last seen, blotched with indigo, in the dyeyard at Nicosia. Diniz Vasquez said, ‘The lord Niccolò has been commanded to attend on the King. He asks if you would care to wait for him in our villa. It is not far from here. He asks if you will forgive the discomfort.’

The discomfort. Everyone in this city, including the boy, including Nicholas, looked as if they had been in purgatory for months. Astorre said, ‘There you are. Go. I’ll tell you if I have to leave the city. Tell him I’ve got a cook who’ll soon fatten him up. He shouldn’t have stayed. There was no need for him to have stayed.’

Tobie had never seen Astorre flushed in that way before, with distress or with guilt. It was John who said to the boy, ‘He made us leave him.’

‘I know,’ said the boy. Frighteningly, his eyes had filled with sudden tears.

John said, in French, with his flattest Aberdonian accent, ‘She is dead, then.’

The boy looked at him. John said, ‘Go on. Take us to the house. Someone will tell us. It will save Nicholas having to do it.’

The rites attending the handing over of a city are not quickly completed, and Nicholas, who had not been invited to attend them, waited a long time apart before Napoleone Lomellini left the King’s presence and the Citadel of Famagusta with the escort of honour which would accompany him on the long ride to the capital. His successor was already in the room: Conella Morabit, fellow countryman of Rizzo di Marino, knight and loyal servant of Zacco’s whose service went far back, as did that of Rizzo and Goneme and Markios, the brother of Cropnose. Only when all the orders had been given and all the discussions ended did the King dismiss his companions, and Nicholas was admitted to the inner room of the citadel which James had made his own.

‘Ah,’ Zacco said. ‘Aesculapius, son of Apollo. You didn’t think I
had so much learning, did you? So you have found you prefer nursing to fighting, my Nikko?’

The use of the private name was either good news or bad. Jorgin the page, kneeling to draw the King’s boots, gave the visitor an inclination of the head without pausing. He had already relieved the King of his jacket and his hat lay fallen, where he had flung it.

Nicholas said, ‘My lord King means to stay in the Citadel?’

The splendid forehead was scored with lines and there were others which might be interpreted as reproach, or bitterness, or even menace. The King said, ‘Answer my question.’

Nicholas said, ‘The Knights Hospitaller excel at both, my lord. But there were not enough here at the time.’

‘They are here now,’ said the King. ‘Kolossi is empty. You disobeyed orders twice. Is the boy still here?’

‘My lord?’ Nicholas said.

‘The Portuguese boy. He escaped from your dyeyard, I understand, to join the enemy. You wish me to put him to death?’

‘He hardly deserves it,’ Nicholas said. ‘I had already ransomed him. He was merely impatient to return home to Portugal. Now I hope he can do so.’ He paused. ‘The lady his kinswoman is dead.’

‘In your care, I am told. That was what kept you in Famagusta?’ Already, some of the severity had left the King’s face.

Nicholas said, ‘That among other things. The lord King’s clemency in these past weeks not only led to the treaty, but will make his rule more acceptable. So will the work Abul Ismail performed for the sick, with what help I could give him.’

‘I have noticed,’ said Zacco. He kicked Jorgin absently with his toe. ‘That is enough. Later. Yes. Your name commands respect. Lomellini mentioned you. I have appointed Conella Morabit to govern the city. How would it please you to be appointed his deputy?’

His face today was not capable of a great range of expression. Nicholas looked up eventually and said, ‘My lord. I am more than sensible of the honour.’

The hazel eyes rested on him thoughtfully. ‘You have served me for twelve months. Kyrenia is mine. Yours was the shipmaster, obeying your strategy, who helped to give me Famagusta. You and your company have been well rewarded, but a sugar estate, surely, is hardly enough to occupy you. Then there is the difficulty about the dyeworks.’

So it came. ‘It is not run to the King’s liking?’ Nicholas said.

Zacco rose and, passing Nicholas on stockinged feet, poured wine with his own hands and brought it over. Nicholas had risen. Zacco gave him the cup and said, ‘Mother in heaven, you smell. Everyone does. Sit down. The yard is superbly well run, and you know it. No. I owe favours. I cannot leave it with you, much as I’d
like to. Nor the villa. I had in mind something else. Have you been to your fief? Does it suit you?’