Race of Scorpions (88 page)

John le Grant had been into a church himself that day. Inside the Cathedral of St Nicholas a Mass had been in progress: he found it difficult to get someone to show him the tomb that he looked for, and he walked slowly towards it, for he did not wish to meet Nicholas there. Although swept, the place kept the odours of all the uses to which it had been put these last years. It brought back to mind the church in the fort of St Hilarion; and all that he and Tobie and Nicholas wanted to forget of that day.

The coffin when he found it was new and cheap; one of those brought in by cart from Nicosia until the carpenters could provide a better. On the top was a little sheaf of white sweet-smelling cyclamen, and a wisp of dry, plaited reeds whose significance, if any, was beyond him. It told him at least that Nicholas had managed to get there. And whatever had happened between them Katelina had been bequeathed, in the end, to the shelter of this noble house of the saint of his name. John le Grant left the Cathedral with measured steps, thinking of something that Thomas had once told him, and experiencing an obscure unease of the spirit that could hardly be called dread.

Soon after he got back, Nicholas came, and they set off in silence. Fifteen painful miles on the road, Nicholas said, ‘What is the worst possible thing that could happen to you or to me at this moment?’

The dread was still there. John le Grant found his dourest voice and used it. ‘You tell me.’

‘Because it’s going to happen,’ said Nicholas. His eyes were on the road ahead. The engineer’s followed them. Waiting for them, his legs stuck out like semaphores on either side of his mule, was Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch.

‘Psimoloso,’ he shouted as soon as they came within earshot. It was incomprehensible.

‘Oh, Lord God,’ said Nicholas.

The Patriarch rode up.

Wherever he had been that morning, he had not taken time to shave. Beneath his conical hat with its veil his hair sprang out with its usual ferocious vigour. It merged with his thicketed brows and the cores of his nose and his ears. His face was pitted. He looked like a badly-stuffed, boiled leather cuirass. ‘And you smell,’ he said to John le Grant, as if he had spoken. ‘Even the King smelt, by the time he came away. Come on. That’s the estate over there. There’s a house of sorts. The villagers won’t pay their dues because this fellow keeps diverting the river. You’ll show me what to do about that, and Launcelot here will listen while I tell him what to do. Bring the men. There’s a barn.’

‘Where?’ said John le Grant.

Nicholas answered. A spark had appeared among the shadows of his bloodless face. ‘You heard. Psimoloso,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the casals of the Patriarchate. Over there, on the Pedhieos. Do you want to go there?’

What a moment ago had seemed appalling appeared suddenly to have a certain value. John said, ‘Why not? Who’s in a hurry?’ They turned off the road and progressed slowly, the mule trotting along at their stirrups.

‘You’ll get bacon for supper,’ said the Patriarch of Antioch. ‘They do well with pigs around here. Wheat, when the river behaves. Peas. Lentils. Chickpeas. Olives. Carobs. Onions. We do a big trade in onions. Nice, lush country up by Kythrea, too. If he’s giving you Sigouri and Prastio, hold out for Palekythro. Fine sugarcane round about there, and it’s upriver from me. You can keep these rascals away from my water rights. Of course, he may change his mind about where he wants you.’

‘The King?’ Nicholas said.

‘He’ll find out now how much help he’ll need in Nicosia. And William will need to be off, smarming over the Sultan in Cairo. We did a good job over Uzum Hasan,’ said the Patriarch.

‘We?’ said Nicholas.

‘Well, Venice worked like rats on a wheel to get Uzum to rise against Constantinople. That was last year. He didn’t. You got hold of him through Damascus and Karaman, and I did my bit. He didn’t fight for us either, but he might. A combined Turcoman and Ethiopian army would have given them all something to think about. Well, better luck next time. To get the Mamelukes done for was something.’

John said, ‘
Venice
was in parley with Uzum Hasan? So they might have … suggested the Trebizond letter?’

‘We’re all sobbing over the late pervert the Emperor David?’ The Patriarch jerked a soiled thumb at Nicholas. ‘Could be his fault. Could be my fault. Maybe Zorzi suggested it, the famous letter that killed him, or Corner, or one of these wives that our Niccolò can’t keep his hands off. Legitimate gamble: God allows you to use any tool against Turks. Look at Abul Ismail.’

John’s voice clashed with that of Nicholas, speaking softly. Nicholas said, ‘Who betrayed Abul Ismail? Was it Markios?’

‘Of course. It was time to get rid of the Mamelukes. The Palace knew you could help them to do it. They didn’t expect you to deal with Uzum Hasan, but they knew you’d make for the emir as soon as Famagusta was free, and whatever you did might be worked up into some sort of rising.
His head in a pig trough
, rumour has it. Well, you got the doctor’s skull off as well, but don’t pine over it. He’d already made his preferences clear, and Tzani-bey wouldn’t have let him survive. Also, there are worse ways than taking off heads. I’ll tell you some of them, when we’re not having bacon.’

They arrived shortly after; and had the bacon in the course of a remarkably good meal, during which Nicholas fell asleep. His host, continuing to talk, paid no attention to him. At the end he slammed down his knife and said, ‘Bed. I hold prayers at dawn. Then I’ll go with you to Nicosia.’ His eyes followed John’s to the table where Nicholas remained among the darkened candles, his head resting on his crossed arms.

The Patriarch said, ‘Leave him. He’s warm, he’s in shelter, he’s got food inside him. Zacco says he’s got himself surrounded by grandmothers. You’ve got better sense.’

‘We have a working partnership,’ said John le Grant.

‘Then keep him stretched,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘Make him work that busy mind till he sweats. Oppose him. Challenge him. Fill him with acid. Then no one will make a meal of him before we find out what he’s good for. Have I wakened you?’

A hazy sound emerged from the table. Without enthusiasm, Nicholas slowly unfolded, set his elbows apart, and propped his head on his hands with his eyes shut. He said, ‘I got to where he had to stretch me in acid.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re awake,’ said the Patriarch of Antioch. ‘Prayers at dawn, did you hear? Then we go to Nicosia. Master John can go straight to the villa, but I have to take you to the Palace. After, on second thoughts, you’ve been to the villa. In those clothes, you’d stink the place out.’

Nicholas had opened his eyes. He said, ‘
You
have to take
me
? Who arranged that?’

‘I could make you guess, but I won’t. The lady Marietta, crudely referred to as Cropnose. She wants to talk about the
Adorno.
’

Nicholas took down his hands. ‘What about the
Adorno
?’

‘That man Crackbene of yours, he’s a hero,’ said the Patriarch. He seized the one remaining lamp and lit a candle from it. ‘You’ll need that for your room. Rang all the bells in Nicosia for him when Crackbene came back from Salines, and last night the King gave him a feast and a gold cup. Twelve prisoners he brought back, apart from the crew. The King expects to collect a good ransom.’

John le Grant remembered why he hated Ludovico da Bologna. He said, ‘Were all the men on the
Adorno
from Genoa?’

‘Most of them were,’ the Patriarch said. ‘One of them wasn’t.’ He was looking at Nicholas. Nicholas said absolutely nothing.

The Patriarch said, ‘But then, you were expecting that. So was the Portuguese boy. Vasquez. Diniz Vasquez. The boy thought you should go into hiding. But the lady Marietta said of course not; she’d send for you.’ He grinned at Nicholas. ‘Do you want to go into hiding? I could tell her.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘But tell me his name. The name of the man from the
Adorno
who wasn’t Genoese.’

The priest lifted his immense, black-clad shoulders. The candle flared in its wax and his hatted shadow loomed on the white plaster behind him. He said, ‘Should I remember? I saw the man. I got a look at him once in St Omer. I made no note of the name.’

Nicholas said, ‘What did he look like?’ His voice was what you might expect, from a man just awakened from sleep.

The Patriarch lifted the ridge of his brows and surveyed both of them. ‘Had she more than one relative, the poor young Flemish lady? Who would you expect to travel to Cyprus, with the boy’s father killed, and now his aunt in her grave? I can only tell you that he is a rich man, or he would never have got so much flesh on him. A powerful man, because he treated the servants like vermin and addressed the King as if he were close to an equal. And a malicious man, because he said he had come to marvel at the King’s latest protégé, who had made his son a widower and his daughter a widow and himself groom to a strumpet, and all in the space of a twelvemonth.’

Nicholas looked at him, his face totally blank. John thought cautiously,
his son
. This could not, then, be Simon de St Pol, husband of Katelina. Simon de St Pol had been in Venice, and had tried to kill Nicholas then. Without being present, John had heard all the stories and he knew what Simon looked like, which was an Adonis. Nicholas had expected Simon. He had expected him on Rhodes as well. But Simon hadn’t come. He had been prevented, or had sent someone else, or had been forced to give way to someone else. And the someone else must be Simon’s father.

Nicholas said, ‘You are speaking of Jordan de Ribérac’

‘You have it!’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘Ribérac. Land of troubadours.
I am Arnaut who gathers the wind; And hunts the hare
with the fox; And swims against the incoming tide
. The vicomte de Ribérac. Not a troubadour. Friend of René of Anjou. Financial adviser to the French King. Doesn’t like you. Perhaps you ought to go back to Famagusta.’

‘Or to sleep,’ said Nicholas. ‘Prayers at dawn?’

‘I’d advise it,’ said the Patriarch of Antioch.

Chapter 45

A
MONG THE MANY
who feared and detested the vicomte de Ribérac was his Portuguese grandson Diniz Vasquez. The news of de Ribérac’s presence in Cyprus reached Diniz in Nicosia on the same day that Nicholas heard it. Nicholas, immobilised under the Patriach’s roof at Psimoloso could, as yet, do nothing about it. Diniz, on the other hand, took immediate action.

Once, a child in Portugal, Diniz had feared this cold, obese man for the sake of his mother, who was de Ribérac’s daughter. Now he was afraid for other reasons.
I can’t wait
, Katelina van Borselen had said in her anguish; expecting her husband to come hunting vander Poele; fearing that without herself to mediate, murder would follow. But instead of Simon, Simon’s father had arrived on the relief ship
Adorno
. This gross man who spoke of her husband his heir with contempt; who had welcomed the proposition that a son of René of Anjou should kill Niccolò, the family bane, in the Abruzzi. Or so Katelina had said.

In those months in Famagusta during which he had been forced into manhood, Diniz Vasquez had learned to understand Katelina, the odd, impatient second wife of his uncle, as he had learned to know Niccolò vander Poele, the unacknowledged son of the first. The bond between the two was now plain, and he could at least guess at some of its history. Also, alone of survivors, Diniz knew why she had come to Famagusta, and why she had stayed there. And he was prepared, as she had been, to protect so far as he was able the man whom he now, in his thoughts, called Niccolò.

He was afraid of his grandfather, but he was not a coward. He had left Famagusta in good faith, persuaded by the doctor Beventini that vander Poele would be better off without both of them. On entering Nicosia and the villa, his first resolution, almost forgotten now, had been to challenge Bartolomeo Zorzi, the Venetian who had made his escape from the dyeyard so simple.

The doctor had restrained him. ‘Nicholas wants to interview Zorzi himself. If you’d like to watch an artist at work, go and listen to him when he does it. If he lives to do it. When are you leaving?’

Diniz had flushed. ‘I can get a room somewhere else.’

‘No,’ the doctor had said irritably. ‘To go home. You’ve got a mother, haven’t you? If she doesn’t know that poor girl is dead, she can’t take steps to help with her baby. What will happen to it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Diniz. ‘She left letters for Simon and my mother. I haven’t opened them.’

‘Well, the longer you languish about here, the longer it’ll be till they open them.’ The doctor’s words might be harsh, but Diniz saw he was worried, not angry. In any case, he himself would never leave before vander Poele came. He had no idea, then, that Niccolò intended to settle his score with the Mameluke. He had been stunned, as had all Nicosia, by the news of the massacre at the Mamelukes’ camp. He had been terrified by the news from Famagusta, brought by Beventini, who had bounded into the room in a swirl of medical oaths. ‘I knew it! The stupid, vindictive young dummy! While Rizzo di Marino was clearing out Mamelukes, Nicholas was engaging Tzani-bey in a cut-throat fight to the death in Famagusta.’

The big negro called Loppe was in the room. He looked up and waited. ‘What happened?’ said Diniz.

‘He chopped off Tzani-bey’s hand. Delightful. The emir’s dead, and Nicholas is at the Franciscans’ getting patched up.’

‘You’d better tell his lady wife?’ said Loppe after a moment.

The doctor said, ‘She knows. She told me. They’re all in a state at the Palace. And Crackbene’s back from Salines. They’ve crowned him with flowers and assigned him a royal apartment. They don’t know whether they’re ringing the bells for the surrender of Famagusta or the happy demise of the emir. The King is expected to ride in today to give Crackbene his victory medal. I’d better get on the road and see to that damned fool in Famagusta. They killed Abul Ismail.’

‘What?’ said Diniz.