Race of Scorpions

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Nicholas stood, ignoring the pain in his head, and let the implications of that burst like metal filings around him. His main emotion, he found, was one of exasperation. He walked to a stool, and sat down on it. He said, ‘The Queen’s brother approached me before. In Venice. His delegates failed with the Pope and, passing through Venice, came and spoke to me.’

  ‘The Bishop and Sir Philip Podocataro. Their approach to you was untimely,’ his captor said peaceably.

  ‘And again at Silla? Then it was her brother’s hirelings who attacked Queen Carlotta, and made off with the sugar? Of course,’ Nicholas said. He understood now the words of the Cypriot. Venetians? Genoese? They would have taken the sugar. Only one man would have destroyed it.

  And Queen Carlotta, without naming him either, had talked of the rival set up by her Egyptian enemies. A puppet … apostate from the Christian faith, who swears the Gospel is false, that Christ is not the only one, nor Mary a Virgin. Small wonder the puppet had failed to extract support from the Pope. The puppet who was James de Lusignan, her bastard brother and would-be usurper. In whose hands, at one remove, he now found himself. Nicholas said, ‘I refused him in Venice and fought against him in Silla. Is it reasonable to expect me to agree to work for him now?’

  ‘Men change their minds,’ said the other. ‘King James wishes to see you. He is merciful. If you insist, you need not fear he will keep you.’

  The spokesman glanced for the first time at the two men on his right. The older, his black hair mixed with grey, returned the look from under his brows, grimly silent. The younger shifted position and, as if compelled by the other’s taciturnity, said, ‘There are opportunities such as perhaps you could not imagine. But we know the King well. You may trust him.’

  Nicholas said, ‘Then let us save my time and his. No argument will persuade me. When you next touch land, I wish to disembark.’

  ‘I regret,’ said the other. ‘Not only my own life would be at risk. We have the lady, Carlotta’s servant, to consider.’

  So we had. Through his considerable headache, Nicholas considered the problem of the lady Primaflora, who had clung to Thomas for months and who had undeniably been attempting to rejoin himself. Why, he did not yet know. On the affirmation of the man in the chair, the girl had not knowingly led his captors to him. But his abductors were working for Carlotta’s rival and, though she denied it, Primaflora might still be attached to the Queen.

  He had a memory, suddenly, of a girl desolate in the snow with a dead man’s blood staining her breast. In Bruges, he had thought he saw truth in her face and had given the help that she asked for. Help to hide from a Queen who took it for granted that she would move from Ansaldo’s arms to his.

  She sat, her head downbent, without looking at him, while he weighed one thing against another. Nicholas said, ‘She has left Queen Carlotta. You must know that.’

  ‘To bring you back,’ said the other. Through the passable French ran a strain of amusement.

  ‘No!’ said the courtesan Primaflora. She stood.

  ‘Then why?’ said the man in the chair.

  Nicholas said nothing. The girl looked at him, and then at the man in the chair. She said, ‘The Queen ordered me to recruit him, but I only pretended to do so. I was escaping her.’

  ‘By following the man she had told you she wanted?’

  The girl said, ‘Because he understood, and was kind, and I had nowhere else to go.’

  ‘You have formed an attachment to him,’ said the man in the chair, for whom Nicholas was forming a respect several degrees short of liking.

  She did not answer at once. Then she said, ‘No. My lover is dead.’

  ‘So,’ said the man, ‘there is no feeling between you. On the other hand, Messer Niccolò is clearly a man of chivalrous impulses. I must tell him therefore that we intend to hold the lady as hostage for his good conduct. Any attempt to leave ship, and we kill her.’

  ‘Kill her! She’s a courtesan; a messenger; she earns her living by moving between men in high places. She has done nothing to deserve death,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘No. But there is a risk in moving between men in high places. You have incurred it yourself. She is aware of it. Nor is she in the least danger except for your actions. She looks to you for her life,’ the man said. ‘And now, we have spoken enough. You have suffered. You need food, fresh air, rest in a more salubrious cabin. We have one, at present occupied by the lady. She will not, I am sure, object to sharing it.’

  ‘There is no need,’ Nicholas said. ‘My own room will serve.’

  The man raised his brows. ‘I am afraid the choice is not yours. You say Carlotta of Cyprus impelled you together. If that is your fate, then James of Cyprus will not reverse it.’

  Someone took his arm from behind. Someone else came, and gave the girl a push to the door. The man in the chair spoke sharply, ‘With courtesy! I will have no more unmannerly handling!’

  Nicholas turned to go, and then stopped. Approaching the master’s cabin, head down, was a newcomer: a fair, bulky man with a complexion of brick, against which his chin-bristles twinkled like bird-quills. Purposeful, light on his feet, he took the steps in a stride, like a man with a job he was good at. Then he looked up, and halted. He stared. From brick, his fair face turned scarlet. He said, ‘Master Nicholas? Lord of Mercy, you’re better!’ It was his own sailing-master, Mick Crackbene.

  They looked at one another. The man in the straw hat appeared suddenly at his back, speaking calmly. ‘Master Crackbene has work to do. Take Messer Niccolò to his quarters.’

  Crackbene said, ‘Have they told you –’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said the man behind Nicholas.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Nicholas said, without turning. ‘How does Master Crackbene come to be here?’

  Crackbene drew breath, but once more his abductor forestalled him. He said, ‘He is not here by his own choice. Don’t blame him. We found him near Manfredonia, in charge of a ship we felt would serve very well back in Cyprus. The King would also prefer that the vessel should not be sent, full of corn, to Carlotta. We were present in strength, and Master Crackbene had dispatched all his protectors to fight for Ferrante. We took the ship as she lay, and Master Crackbene and his officers with her. You will not lose by it. It will be paid for. It will be regarded, shall we say, as an indefinite charter?’

  Nicholas looked slowly about. The round ship pattern, so familiar to all of them. The big cabin, so like his own, except that it was newly painted. The place he had lain which, he now realised, was a cell of the round ship he had brought back from Trebizond. The Doria. He was in his own ship the Doria, a prisoner, and sailing to Cyprus. He said, ‘May I talk to the master?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ said the man. ‘Or not at present. It depends. All depends, as I have said, on your conduct. Agree, and there is nothing that is not within your grasp.’

  Passing Crackbene, Nicholas contrived, he hoped, to look both resigned and reassuring and Crackbene, in return, managed a faint worried smile. Nicholas supposed he had cause to be worried. Himself, he had lost his ship, the ship by which Astorre and the rest might have followed him. On the other hand, he knew all its officers.

  Later, there might be something to be done about that, when he felt less unsteady, and his head had ceased to ache. Meanwhile, he had the problem of the girl Primaflora.

  In the cabin which, embarrassingly, they were to share, Nicholas found a second pallet already made up, with his horse gear and satchel beside it. The clothes he had fought in were absent, and so were his sword and his knife. The room, wide and low, was wainscotted and pleasantly furnished. It had made a bridal chamber, only last year, for Pagano Doria and his step-daughter Catherine. Forget it. Forget it.

  The girl Primaflora stood by her bed until they both heard the lock turn in the door. Then she said, ‘They will bring us supper. We will talk after that. You should sleep now.’

  He still stood, though not easily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Yo
u’ve lost your privacy.’

  She looked as though she found him naïve. She said, ‘Through me, you have lost your freedom. You owe me no apology. Lie down. I don’t intend to nurse you or seduce you or slaughter you.’

  Nicholas let himself drop and stretched out. He felt his eyes close. He said, ‘Please yourself. Whatever you do, I’ll be asleep when you do it.’

  The promise on both sides was kept. She shook him awake, in the end, when the food came, and he demolished more of it than he had expected. The Lusignan family employed capable cooks. Astorre, who liked his food, would have enjoyed this. Astorre. Both he and Tobie would learn immediately of the pirating of the Doria. But if they did, would they connect it with his abduction? And would they link it with Cyprus, or be misled, as he had been, by the more personal danger from Anjou? Again, incoming ships would soon tell where the Doria was calling. Except that there were a lot of round ships at sea, and her name might have been changed. Or perhaps not. The Doria family were Genoese; and the Genoese sided with Queen Carlotta. On a ship called the Doria, this crew would get to Cyprus unmolested. The girl said, ‘Solemn thoughts.’

  He looked up. ‘A sobering matter, abduction. Why do you think they brought you on board? Once they had me, there was no need.’

  ‘I think I know,’ she said. ‘You heard them. They hoped by threatening me to keep you quiet, and prevent you escaping. And, too, they thought I still served the Queen, and they don’t want the Queen to know what has happened. I don’t know which they want more – to use you, or simply to deny you and the ship to the Queen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nicholas.

  She frowned. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are very young, and you have wasted almost a year.’

  ‘So have you,’ he said.

  She lifted one shoulder. ‘What do you expect me to say? All my life is a waste? I enjoy my life. Or did. I shall enjoy it again.’

  ‘In Cyprus?’ said Nicholas. ‘I thought we might do better than that.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I can’t jump ship without you.’

  She said, ‘You won’t get a chance to jump ship. This is a round ship, remember. She sails, she doesn’t have to rest oarsmen, and her holds will carry all the provision that’s wanted. She need hardly call anywhere. They will lock that cabin door, and they will keep your friend Crackbene under guard, and all his officers. In any case, I wouldn’t come with you.’

  ‘No?’ said Nicholas.

  She said, ‘Would you keep me with you when we had escaped? I rather think not. And what would I do on some remote Venetian island? If I am going anywhere, it might as well be to Cyprus. And you heard what he said. If the King himself cannot persuade you, then they are prepared to let you go.’

  ‘And risk my crossing to Queen Carlotta? Of course not. If I don’t agree, it will be prison, or worse.’

  ‘Perhaps. But not for me,’ said Primaflora.

  ‘No. Not for you,’ said Nicholas slowly. ‘You don’t mind that? You’d rather join King James’s Egyptian court than escape with me?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Primaflora. ‘Perhaps, after all, you should try to escape. Did you believe their threats against me? Of course not. If you go, I expect I shall pass between those two or three Cypriot-lovers up there. Then they will take me back, a prize for the Lusignan. If you see a chance, leave. Shall I play to you?’

  ‘What?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘You are puzzled and weak. There is wine. I have my lute. Lie down, and let me play for you. Has music a place in your life?’

  Hearty folk song in Bruges, and obscene versifying in the dyeyard. Consorts, scratchily playing at some big house where merchants were tolerated. Violante, once heard to sing. And in Trebizond.… In Trebizond, the anthems that had come through the doors of the church of the Chrysokephalos, and the song of the nightingale, drowning them.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I know nothing of music.’

  The tunes she played him were French, and once or twice she sang, playfully, making the words teasingly clear. They were a courtesan’s songs about dalliance, and quite specific. He thought that she didn’t expect him to understand all the words. But although his working language was Flemish, he had been reared in Burgundy, and his mother tongue was the same as hers. He lay and listened, the empty wine glass beside him, his eyes shut. He heard, but gave no sign, when the sound came nearer and when, still singing and playing, she stooped and sat, gently, on the edge of his bed. He heard his own breathing, and opened his eyes.

  ‘You have a dimple. Two,’ she said.

  If he smiled it had been in self-mockery. She lifted a hand from the strings and touched his cheek. ‘And a scar.’

  In the lamplight, she looked like a painting; a pristine confection of tint and line drawn from the ether. Her brows were fine as threads; the twisting forms of her hair echoed the curl of her lips and the little curve between nose and cheek, with its exact carmine crescent. Below each underlid, he observed a fine crease: part amusement, part exhaustion, partly the mark of something, he thought, that was inexhaustible. Queen Carlotta had been married and widowed at fourteen. No one, probably, would know when Primaflora was first wakened, or how.

  Her hair was yellow as butter. Silver, with the radiance all round about it. It clasped her head like a shell. He began to wonder, and stopped himself. He said, ‘I have never heard anyone play so skilfully.’

  She laid the lute slowly down, and straightened again. ‘And I have never seen a worse actor. So you understood all the words?’

  ‘So you didn’t mourn him long,’ Nicholas said.

  Her back straightened. She sat without answering, studying him. Then she said, ‘Do you think I am offering love?’

  There was a long pause. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No. I am offering this. Release. Relief. Oblivion. You need not take it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take it,’ he said. He didn’t look at her hands.

  There was a pause. ‘But?’ she said. She swept him from head to foot with her eyes, and then returned her gaze to his face. She was not smiling. She said, ‘But you need to receive it. So the blame would be mine. You betray nobody.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that either,’ he said. ‘If you heard my friends: it is my lifetime’s interest, plotting.’

  She said, ‘So, say it.’ She withdrew slowly and stood, always watching him. Her fingers, slipping down her own body, parted one by one the fine fragile clasps of her gown. The garment lingered and fell.

  ‘But I need to receive it,’ he said.

  She stood in her chemise. Then, raising her arms, she drew the fine voile steadily over her head. She knelt, then lay on his bed. Her breasts, suspended, were oval. Her calves and thighs were perfect, as if moulded and grown from ripe peaches. Her head came to rest on his arm. He bent his wrist, and touched the tightly-bound cap of her hair. His hand stood away. She said, ‘Let me do it for you,’ and lifted herself and, sitting beside him, disengaged the ribbons and cords and unfolded her long, silken hair with her fingers.

  It was yellow, not chestnut; and the breasts lifted below it were perfect spheres with unused nipples, soft as bruised fruit. She said, ‘Close your eyes. This is my profession, not yours.’

  His hands sprang to grip her, smiting the breath from her lungs. He said, painfully smiling, ‘You think so?’

  Chapter 9

  ESCAPING CAME naturally to Nicholas, for it required youth, strength and agility and he had all of those, as well as the kind of mind that solved puzzles. It failed to solve this one. Someone, somewhere, knew very well what kind of animal they had lured to their trap, and nothing he did, from the time he recovered his health, enabled him to take over his ship, or to land.

  He was prepared, if escaping, to abduct Primaflora, if only to preserve her from the perils of her own philosophy. He was equally prepared, if he got off alone, to return in some fashion and rescue her. He was not at all sure that she would thank him for either effort. He did not, of course, have her affec
tion. He doubted if he had even her friendship. He felt responsible for her for other reasons. Perhaps even because of a look on her face, caught sometimes unguarded.

  Extraordinary precautions were taken to secure them both. In port, they were locked in separate cabins. When sailing, they were each allowed on deck closely guarded, but never together. Primaflora’s servant attended her, and he was served, cheerfully enough, by the man in the rough leather jerkin. He cherished his moments under the sky, if only because he knew every quirk of the Doria, and could assess the wind and the sea, and judge the set of the sails, and set his hand on the sheets he had learned so swiftly to work in two dangerous voyages. He had no chance, however, to direct his ship now. He hardly glimpsed Michael Crackbene, and was never permitted to speak to him.

  He could, if he wished, have dined daily in the great cabin with those three well-dressed seigneurs, his captors. They had expressed disappointment at his first refusal, but soon had ceased to send messages. He had no interest in Cyprus, and no wish to add to his prejudices. He felt, however, some slight gratitude that they had not compelled him to attend, as they might well have done. As far as the route went, they made no secret of it, and much of it doubled the way he had taken himself, last October. They rounded Greece, calling at Corfu and Modon. He knew the Venetian Bailie at Modon, and had thought that there, if nowhere else, he might slip ashore. But nothing worked: bribes, ruses, or cajolery. And Crackbene, he heard after, had been shut away bound like himself when the ship sailed into harbour. He himself was not only bound, he was gagged.

  Lying helpless, he realised why, from the commotion. They had invited the Bailie on board. His name was Bembo, and Nicholas had met his cousin in Venice. Another of the same name had married a girl from the house of Corner, one of whose former palazzi had been presented to Nicholas by a grateful Republic. He still owned it, he supposed, and Gregorio his lawyer should be presiding there, conducting the Bank of Niccolò without Niccolò. The family Bembo, in other words, could begin a campaign which, with any luck, would bring the Signory of Venice to his rescue. It was unfortunate, therefore, that Nicholas was locked in the Doria, and the Bailie’s voice, in time, receded; and there came the clank of the anchor chain coming up, and the first tug of the oars, and then all the running about to get the sails ready. And then Modon was behind them.