Tobie felt very old. He said, ‘You don’t believe it.’
‘I believe that part,’ Crackbene said. ‘So will everyone else.’
He cleared his throat. He said, ‘I have something else to tell you. I know where Nicholas is. No one is going to kill him. And however disagreeable his circumstances, he is safer than he would be in Famagusta.’
‘You are saying,’ said Tobie, ‘that the King has been poisoned. And that, being absent, Nicholas will be free of suspicion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I am not going to tell you,’ said Crackbene. ‘And in case it has entered your head, I didn’t order his capture. I learned of it through a young friend. You make friends, at sea.’
As far as Tobie knew, Crackbene never made friends. He met people, and used them. He said, ‘A man held under duress may suffer as much as another with … dysentery. Tell me where Nicholas is. I am going to him.’
‘He wouldn’t wish it,’ Crackbene said. ‘If you were to ask him, he would beg just one thing. And since you can’t ask him, what you do will relieve his mind afterwards. Go to Zacco.’
‘He has a doctor,’ Tobie said.
‘A man called Gentile, who owes a great deal to Zacco, but also to Andrea Corner and his nephew. They have locked the door to the royal apartments,’ Crackbene said. ‘No one is allowed in. No friends, no courtiers, no royal officers, unless they are Venetian. You are a Pavia physician, the nephew of one of the great medical men of our time. They will not refuse you.’
‘You do not speak,’ Tobie said, ‘of the rewards I may garner for saving him.’
The solid figure in the window said nothing, and Tobie also fell silent, thinking of a young King: a lion, a leopard; violent, wilful, glorious in its courage and struck down on a whim.
Venice, Venice.
From the moment he opened his eyes, Nicholas de Fleury knew where he was; because ten years before, this place had been his.
His most profound recollections of it belonged to the spring, and were mixed with the scent of the sugar. The man who had caused him to be brought here of course knew all about that. Knew about Katelina and Fiorenza of Naxos; about Tobie’s early, earnest experiments; about Primaflora. About the young, courageous Diniz, who had attempted to kill him. The little Catherine, nine years old, had been here with her parents. Now St Mark was her parent and, plain still and very much plumper, she had a King and an isle in her grasp.
And a man he knew had stood on this spot: something which for the first time, for the very first time made it a place of remembered fulfilment and not of reproach. He did not know why, but he knew the change would have angered his enemy. His enemy who had had him hidden here, bound, in his sugar plantation of Kouklia.
The south coast was two days from Nicosia. He had no recollection of the journey but thought, as hunger broke through the drowsiness, that someone had drugged him as he had drugged Violante. He wondered what Violante would do, when she found her favoured partner had fled. He thought of Tobie trying to raise the alarm, and finding that the hunt had emptied Nicosia of all its principal officers.
It had been very well planned. It was only strange, to his mind, that he had not been unbound and fed, as one would do if expecting a ransom; or tortured, as one might be pleased to do to an enemy; or killed, as might be a convenient way to deal with a rival.
As time went on, he saw that simple neglect would achieve much on its own. As a human being and a man accustomed to armies, he knew that in a crisis, cleanliness equated with vanity: if one inescapably stank, then one stank. The thirst was something again. He was surely not far from water. He was lying in a chamber of the old grinding hall, outdated now by the new one at Stavros, built to acommodate John’s wonderful Syrian mill. In his day there had been a well-ordered viaduct, with troughs and channels, including one under this floor.
He could hear no water now. He wondered if the copper cauldrons were even still there, or had fallen to Zacco’s great melt-down programme, a defiant attempt to repair his fortunes with copper coinage. Zacco was never passive; he always tried to do something. He bought what help he could, with land where he couldn’t pay money. And the new owners looked for short-term profit, like this, but made no investments, for they knew how precarious his kingdom was.
Darkness came, and then light. It was, Nicholas thought, his second dawn here, which would make it four days since he was captured, and the last day in June. He hoped the grandson or granddaughter of St Mark hadn’t got itself born in his absence. Babies of seven months were viable, Tobie said. Tobie claimed to have seen one cut alive from its mother.
A pang ran through him, indistinguishable from the pangs of cramp and of hunger. He had been trussed as extravagantly as if someone were going to weave from him: nothing he could do would shift the cords, and he had been reduced to bad-tempered movements to try and keep his muscles from deadening. He had got rid of the gag, but not the chain which manacled him to the wall. And now, his voice dried to a croak, he could not shout. He wished very badly that he could reach his pendulum, and had fingers to work it. And all the time he was sending exhortations, mingled with impatient curses, to the absent Mick Crackbene.
His visitor came that afternoon, with a footfall so soft that he almost missed it. Then he smelt the jasmine, pervading even the horse sweat.
Which?
He opened his eyes. ‘Ah. Filipe,’ he said.
On the fourth day of Zacco’s illness, the clamour in the royal antechamber in Famagusta was such that the Venetians could no longer bar the way, and the door of the sickroom was burst open.
Five minutes later, Rizzo di Marino pushed his way out and called. ‘Dr Tobias!’
The tone of his voice was enough, even had Tobie not heard the change in the chorus from within: the ragged shift from anger, jubilation, greeting, to muted distress, and then silence. He walked through the door as the circle round the bed shrank, muttering.
Gabriel Gentile said, ‘I asked for no other physician.’
‘No,’ said Rizzo di Marino. ‘But you have one.’ The servant Jorgin stood at his side, his eyes running with tears.
James the Second of Lusignan, King of Cyprus, lay, his eyes closed, upon silken sheets stained with blood, in an atmosphere in which pastilles of scent strove with the smells of ordure, of blood and of vomit. On the pillow, the tangled yellow-brown hair was dark with sweat and the bronze skin was yellow and shadowed, the imperious nose jutting, the mobile lips slack. The physician Gentile, in his stained apron, was breathing quickly.
Tobie said, ‘I have no wish to usurp you. Only I have had long experience of the bloody flux in the field, and there are different ways of treating it. Allow me to help you.’
It was not only the flux. He was almost sure of it. But he did not want to alienate this frightened man, who had seen the sickness from the beginning, and could tell him how it had been treated. He did not think Gentile, favoured for more than five years, would have taken part in a plot; but he could have turned a blind eye; or he could have been placed here to serve as a scapegoat. In which case he might be glad of help, even so late. Even so very late.
He thought, as he moved to the bed, that it was as well that the doors had been broached, and that men had at last seen their King as he was. No one could blame the Banco di Niccolò’s doctor. No one could blame Nicholas now By tonight, word would have reached Nicosia, and Crackbene might well act at last to retrieve Nicholas. Tobie, looking down at the withdrawn, suffering face, found himself hoping that Nicholas was safe, but a long distance away.
After that, entered wholly into his chosen profession, Tobias Beventini took no account of time passing, or of food, or of sleep as he worked for his patient. He had to commit the cruelty first of allowing the opiates to fade unrenewed, in order to see what he had, and what could be done for the poison. But it had had four days to work. And the answer came plainly enough through the night, in Zacco’s feverish mumbles and uneven scree
ches of protest.
Through it all, Tobie let it be known, unwillingly endorsed by the Venetians, that any man of standing might enter the room, provided he sat in silence and out of his way. The courtiers of a lesser King would have been forbidden the chamber, to spare the dignity of their lord in this most degrading of afflictions. For four whole days, that had served as an excuse to isolate a man who would have been astounded at the presumption of such an idea: at the assumption that his subjects could embarrass him.
All his friends came. David de Salmeton was not among them, nor were the relatives of his wife. At times, through the night, he saw and recognised the dim faces. Between the bouts of pain, when the fever allowed, he would stop snarling abuse at his doctors to call to one or other of the stricken men on the bench, asking a question, demanding a service, indulging with malice in some barbed joke in a brilliant exhibition of pride. When the exhaustion started to show, Tobie prepared the potion that would send him to sleep, knowing that there was nothing to be gained, now, by stimulation.
A few hours before dawn, he dispatched Gentile to rest. As the King slept, one by one the observers also left until Tobie was alone in the lamplit room with his patient and the nursemaid who served him. When he saw the King stir, he sent even the woman away. He was not sure, but he thought he was wanted.
Between awakening and pain there existed sometimes a space where the mind reigned as it once did. Now the magnificent hazel eyes unclosed, and the King said, ‘You are Nikko’s small excrescence. A doctor.’
‘Yes, roi monseigneur,’ Tobie said.
‘He was too nice in the stomach to come himself?’
‘He would be here, if he knew the King was ill. He has been sent for.’
The eyes frowned, and closed, and opened. The King said, ‘Have I been poisoned?’
A doctor’s training is long and hard, and consists, in the main, of learning what answer to choose. Tobie said, ‘I believe so, roi monseigneur. I believe it will never be known precisely by whom. I believe you will know what good might be done by accusations.’
‘And will I survive?’
One could count on that question as well. With a man like this, there was no need to use words. Tobie kept still, and allowed his face to be read. The King studied him, saying nothing. Presently he asked, ‘And how is my Queen?’
Tobie said, ‘You should send for her, sire. And you should rest content. Whatever happens, the succession is secure.’
‘Content!’ the King said. It was a scream. The nurse outside heard, and quickly entered. Others came. They were in time to see their indomitable lord caught, blaspheming and shouting, in the fresh spasms of a new agony. Tobie worked as he did in the field, fast and accurately and in full awareness of all that he was doing, and what would result from it. He decided then that Nicholas ought to be allowed to come, for Zacco’s sake, while his presence had meaning. It was then the second day of July.
*
Late that same afternoon, white and weary at the end of a feat of dogged persistence, Nicholas de Fleury dismounted at the marble portico of the royal palace of Famagusta, in face of the soaring Cathedral. Behind that was the Citadel, and behind that the blue water, full of Venetian ships.
Filipe had freed him, and found him a horse and brought him part of the way. Now the youth was riding to Nicosia to fetch Crackbene quickly. Nicholas understood, he supposed, why Crackbene had been in no haste to mount a rescue operation himself, even when informed by Filipe where to find him. It was fortunate that Filipe, unaware of these subtleties, had made his own way to Kouklia to save him.
Filipe had little personal cause to be interested in the survival of Nicholas, under whom he had suffered as an inadequate ship’s boy nine years before, off the African coast, on the San Niccolò. But he had wished very much to please Mick, the big Scandinavian master, who had helped to protect the little fool after the voyage; and had since contrived him a post in Nicosia. And then, when David de Salmeton had moved there from Cairo, the boy had been engaged as his servant.
Nicholas hadn’t known that: had been astonished to notice the youth standing scented and curled at de Salmeton’s side on his arrival. But Master Crackbene had been told about his new position, the boy had volunteered. They had exchanged messages now and then.
Nicholas wondered what the messages had been. He had never liked Filipe very much. But now he probably owed him his life, and perhaps something else. If Zacco still lived.
They were not entirely willing to admit him. He was wasting his momentum on anger when Tobie suddenly appeared, and took him by the arm and led him in and sat him down in a room somewhere. ‘He’s very sick, but he’ll last till you’re fit to see him. Tell me what happened.’
Tobie, being a grandmother. He told him, and was given something sweet and rather invigorating to drink while in turn he listened to Tobie. Then he said, ‘When can I see him?’
‘Now,’ Tobie said. ‘Sit with the rest. He will single you out, to show his confidence in you. Then you will have to wait here until he’s alone.’
Nicholas said, ‘He has survived for five days. I think you underrate yourself, Tobie.’
‘You want to think so,’ said Tobie. Tobie, being ruthlessly honest.
*
He applied to the sickroom very soon after, and entered through the heavy carved door, and was met by a second barrier of odour, thick as a rug.
He had been entertained often enough in Zacco’s personal chamber in Nicosia, but not here. The ornate Venetian bed stood on a platform laden with sickroom basins and tables and trays. The great cortinaggio still spread its covering wings, hung from its cords in the ceiling, but the silken bed curtains had been lifted and knotted, and the gold-embroidered pillow and sheets had given way to plain lawn. The doctors moved back and forth, and the nurses. There were several now.
He could see, just, the dusky figures seated on the banquettes against the glimmer of revetted marble, but all the light seemed absorbed by the bed and the slow-tossing figure upon it. The young lion whose place, impatient foot swinging, was customarily on the sill of his window, his sinewy shoulders turned to the moat and the gardens, his mocking voice offering friendship and treachery. Careless joy, careless abuse, careless love.
Now Zacco lay, his eyes burning, his body abandoned to the slow flicking movements of fever and pain, his flesh and tissue and blood seeping from him. He said, ‘Ha! Nikko the lascivious he-goat, fervens semper ad coitum. Who are you ravishing now?’
‘I shall save her for you, roi monseigneur,’ Nicholas said. ‘I wish I and my doctor had come earlier.’
‘So do we,’ the King said. ‘We wished to play cards, before you had spent all your money. Your gyrfalcon pleased us.’
‘I am glad, sire,’ Nicholas said. Tobie signed. He bowed and, recreating, sat down with the rest by the wall. They looked at him, but none spoke. After a while the King’s lids closed, and Nicholas rose quietly and left.
Most of the night, he sat by the window. When Tobie came he rose, his eyes on the round smooth-skinned face, all its colour faded from tiredness.
Tobie said, ‘Before you go. What have you done about David de Salmeton? You know he has left Famagusta?’
‘I know. I have laid a formal accusation against him: abduction with intent to murder. Filipe’s deposition will support it.’
‘De Salmeton will have escaped by that time,’ Tobie said.
‘I doubt it,’ Nicholas said. ‘After this, the Venetians will want someone to blame.’
After this. He added, ‘Would the King see me now?’
‘He has asked,’ Tobie said.
The room was empty of spectators this time. Zacco lay still, his hair combed, his arms loose on the sheets. His lashes, always ridiculous, laid shadows like leaves on his skin. Nicholas approached, and knelt on the step.
The King said, ‘I hear that you were prevented from coming. They knew you might have saved me. Have you brought your magic with you?’
He had
forgotten Zacco might know about that. The pendulum lay in his purse. Nicholas opened it, and laid the jewel on the bed. The King did not move. ‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Show me what it says.’
He knew what it said. Neverthless he lifted the thing on its cord, and held it suspended. The King’s eyes and Tobie’s were on it. It hung without movement, because he willed his mind to stay empty. Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry. There is no magic, sire. It merely finds what is lost.’
‘A soul? A country?’ the King said. His voice, sapped of all timbre, held a shadow of its old mockery.
The jewel glinted. Of its own volition it described a small circle, and then another. The movement was soft on the skin; far from the sharp angry flaying that tore the blood from the hand.
The King said, ‘It moves. What does it say?’
Nicholas said, ‘It says that birth and death are but rearrangements. It says that nothing is born, and nothing dies. It says that there is nothing to fear.’
‘I fear nothing!’ said Zacco.
‘Then neither do we,’ Nicholas said.
Their eyes held.
After a while, Zacco said, ‘I asked you to stay. Many times. You could have given to Cyprus all the riches, the labour you lavished on Scotland. Did you love that King James so very well?’
From Zacco, dying, a spear in the side.
Nicholas said, ‘There is only one James. There is only one Zacco, and I am his to command.’
‘Then we would have you command Death to go,’ Zacco said. ‘There are great things afoot; and we are too busy to leave.’
His face convulsed. Tobie said, ‘Go.’
Next day the Queen came from Nicosia in a litter, accompanied by her household and by her mother’s sister, the lady Violante. Nicholas watched Catherine approach, small, globular, pasty, progressing towards the royal apartments, evacuated to receive her. She looked frightened. Violante, catching sight of him, turned, her eyes wide. He saw the Queen flinch at the door of the bedchamber, and hoped they had dimmed the lamps, or found a way to deaden the King’s sensibilities as well as his pain. He had been weaker this morning, keeping his voice and his rage for his doctors.
To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 73