They had reached the gates, where their horses were waiting. Marco Corner said, ‘And when will Zacco be King of all Cyprus?’
‘Before next summer’s harvest,’ said Nicholas.
‘And,’ said Marco Corner, ‘do you rely on King Zacco to let you keep the proceeds of an estate returning so fast to profitability? The Lusignan are notorious spendthrifts. They once pledged the whole village of Kouklia with the sugar they’d leased out as lien.’
‘Just like the Knights,’ Nicholas said. ‘Whom can one trust? Except, I suppose, that even though Zacco is King of Cyprus, the threat of the Turk still lies over us. He may feel he still needs to sweeten his warband. I’m thirsty. Let’s go.’
Because she was close, she saw Corner halt, and cause Nicholas also to fall back. The Venetian spoke. ‘Why do you show me all this?’
For once, Nicholas returned the look soberly. ‘Because I think we should work together,’ he said. ‘I would rather have you with me than against me.’
‘But not to the extent of having me steal your sugar-masters?’ the Venetian said. His expression had eased.
Nicholas laughed. ‘Anything but that. But I have a ship, and good provisions. We can help one another. I bear you no grudges.’
‘I hear you bear one,’ Corner said.
‘But not for a Venetian,’ Nicholas said.
There were Moorish dancers to entertain them at supper, and a juggler, and acrobats who walked on their hands. The meal was taken at dusk under awnings, with torches burning all round the courtyard, and lamps set on the two oblong tables with their silver cups and white napery and big, childish bowls glazed and blurred with blue and brown patterns. Fiorenza, who missed nothing, had long ago given Katelina a small fan with which to protect herself. But someone, she saw, had lit pastilles, and the scent, not unpleasant, seemed to keep the air free of mosquitoes. It was mildly warm.
She was seated nowhere near Nicholas, who was properly in the centre, between the princesses. He was wearing an unusual expression which seemed to change with undue rapidity. Catching the sound of his voice, she realised he was relating some sort of tale involving mimicry. A cry broke from Fiorenza. It seemed to be of laughter.
‘He has set to work,’ said Jacopo Zorzi on her right. ‘You were surprised today? You were not so surprised as our Venetian friends were on shipboard. That unlikely young man attracts women.’
‘On shipboard?’ Katelina said. On her other side, a man in physician’s dress turned, and she saw it was the doctor whose saddle she had shared during a desperate evening in Rhodes. The man who had betrayed, in Nicosia, that he knew her secret.
Zorzi’s face, darkened with stubble, smiled at her and continued to talk about Nicholas. ‘Vanni and Paul Erizzo met our host for the first time on shipboard,’ he said. ‘Travelling with a lady they call Primaflora. You know the lady Primaflora?’
‘We do,’ said the doctor, speaking across her. ‘The lady Primaflora, happily, has gone back to Rhodes. You mean you thought she’d have Nicholas begging, and instead it was the other way round?’
Zorzi’s smile grew broader. He said, ‘It’s a crude way of putting it.’
‘I’m a crude man,’ said the doctor. ‘I don’t agree with you. I think she was a spy for Carlotta. Zacco got rid of her.’
Jacopo Zorzi observed a short silence, then said, ‘Yes. Well, of course. Gossip, demoiselle Katelina. In the Levant we all thrive on it. I wish I could be concealed in the chamber, for instance, when you and the ladies Valenza and Fiorenza dissect us. But you are acquainted with the princesses, Master Tobias? You met their sister in Trebizond.’
The doctor had curious, curled nostrils which he now inflated, and pale eyes like an innocent cat. He said, ‘Before that, in Bruges with her husband and later, on shipboard with her priest. I assure you, we all observed the niceties.’
‘And of course, in Trebizond, there was another King Zacco. How sad,’ said Jacopo Zorzi, ‘to hear the news from Adrianople. Is your Niccolò deeply distressed?’
‘What news?’ said the doctor. Katelina, in the middle, turned her head from one to the other.
Zorzi looked surprised. ‘You haven’t heard? David of Trebizond has been thrown in prison with all his young children. You recall, of course, that he surrendered the Empire in return for safe exile under the Sultan. Now, it seems, the Sultan has accused him of treason on the word of his false friend and former chancellor Amiroutzes.’
‘George Amiroutzes!’ hissed the doctor. Katelina gazed at him. He pulled off his cap, an unseemly gesture in company, and revealed a bald head congested with pink. He compressed lips equally pink and declaimed, ‘The bastard!’
From the place occupied by Nicholas, an amused voice said, ‘Tobie!’
The doctor made no effort to replace his cap. He said, loudly, ‘That turd Amiroutzes has got the Emperor David flung into prison. And his family.’
‘I hear, six children,’ said Zorzi helpfully. ‘And their cousin, Alexios. His daughter Anna, of course, went as a concubine to the governor of Macedonia. The sons were all put in chains except for the three-year-old, George. Wasn’t it Amiroutzes who engineered the Emperor’s surrender?’
Across the table, Katelina saw the eyes of the negro, Loppe, meet those of the doctor who, in turn, engaged the apparently resistant attention of Nicholas. The doctor said, with the same pointed belligerence, ‘We were all in Trebizond when Amiroutzes was Chancellor. How, Messer Jacopo, did you hear of all this?’
Jacopo Zorzi betrayed, and indeed rather overdid, an air of surprise. He said, ‘Of course, from my cousin Bartolomeo who came straight from Constantinople. Messer Niccolò knows. It was Messer Niccolò here who invited him to manage the dyeworks.’ He turned and beamed at Katelina, who responded with half her attention.
The doctor said, ‘Of course.’ The lamplight on his flushed face turned his eyes bright as crystals. Perhaps he remembered, as she did, the voice of Nicholas rambling in Nicosia. You’ve always believed I plotted it all. Of course I did. Luxurious exile for David of Trebizond … Nicholas had known about this. Nicholas who, carefully enjoying his wine, was saying nothing. He was saved, in any case, from an unusual quarter.
‘How kind you are,’ said Fiorenza of Naxos. ‘We respect your reticence: we have felt your unspoken sympathy for our great-uncle the Emperor and his family. Messer Jacopo, these sad affairs should not intrude on our host’s hospitality. Messer Niccolò: I hear flutes. Are we to be given some music?’
Nicholas then emptied his cup and turned, saying something, and in a moment the performers arrived and began. They were reasonable enough; they were indeed the players the princesses invited when they wished to entertain: there were not so many artists on the island. But what they played was appropriate, and their manner of presentation was correct, and the behaviour of Nicholas equally so. He was talking, now, in a civilised way to Valenza, and she was leaning at ease, replying coolly with a bantering undertone. Jacopo Zorzi said, ‘He knows proper conduct. He trained at their court and has read the same books.’ The doctor beside her suddenly rose and went out. Zorzi said, ‘About Diniz.’
Katelina turned. The Venetian looked earnest and a little sorrowful. She said quickly, ‘The princesses told me. Your brother employs him. On the other hand, there are special difficulties in asking for his release. I should not trouble you.’
His eyes shone in the lamplight. ‘I was not sure if you had been told. My brother is discreet, but it is important, of course, that the truth of the incident does not reach the ears of King James. The fact, that is, that Messer Niccolò was not injured by accident. Naturally, Messer Niccolò himself is the last person to ask to free your nephew. On the other hand, my brother is sympathetic.’
Katelina said, ‘That is the best news I could have. But no one can help. If Diniz escapes and is caught, everyone will suffer, for Zacco is bound to find out the truth from Messer Niccolò.’
Zorzi said, ‘You have not thought of persuading Messer Niccolò you
rself? Forgive me.’
Her outrage turned to acid amusement. She said, ‘He would hardly believe, I’m afraid, an attempted seduction by me. In any case, as you have said, I might find myself the victim, like Primaflora.’
‘Of that young man?’ Zorzi said. ‘Surely not. He is an amalgam of replicas: a composite of dubious models. You are your own person. If you ever do fear for yourself, it is not hard to get off the island. The Alexandria galleys pass and call, at Episkopi, at Akhelia, at Salines. There are always responsible men such as Luigi Martini who would help you. On the other hand, you have been promised freedom at the end of the summer.’
She said, ‘Do you think I should wait?’
And Zorzi said, ‘I think you should do what you say is impossible. I think you should speak to friend Niccolò. You underrate your charm, demoiselle; but it was not a persuasion of that kind I was thinking of. Our generous host did not mean to lose that delightful lady Primaflora when he did. He might be prepared to do a great deal to get her back.’
‘In the face of the King and his mother?’ said Katelina.
He looked at her thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘Perhaps even then. He is in a position of strength, and is young, and greedy for women.’ He smiled and, relaxing, passed her a dish. ‘In which case, he has made his home in a singularly appropriate place. Look. People are rising. We leave in an hour. Will you allow me to arrange a meeting –’
‘With me?’ said the voice of Nicholas behind him. Zorzi, half risen, stood and turned. Katelina subsided. A moth, substantial as brown rotted fruit, advanced through dying smoke and opened and closed its wings on the table. Nicholas, his doublet caught on one shoulder, was a blur of white, below shadowy features. He said, ‘Young as I am, and greedy for women? If she wants to exchange her services for her murdering nephew, she should come back to Kouklia tomorrow. Today and tonight, I am suited.’ She saw the heaviness of his eyes, turned towards her, and heard the one clumsy word in that speech. He said, ‘Did he persuade you to escape?’
‘No,’ she said. The moth shifted, and she stood up quickly. She said, ‘While Diniz is here, I am here. I won’t beg.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if you did,’ Nicholas said. ‘Do you know who he is?’
‘She knows,’ said the Venetian patiently. He had recovered himself.
‘She knows,’ Nicholas said, ‘that Bartolomeo of the dyeworks is your brother. She doesn’t associate you as yet with your other brother. Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, who once shared your journey from Scotland, demoiselle, and whose good advice sent me to Trebizond. The Greek with the wooden leg. I broke it at Sluys. You must remember that, Katelina.’
She remembered. She remembered the crazy, joyous apprentice whose name was not yet Nicholas. She remembered a tall, elegant Greek of Florentine descent whose affairs she had always known, vaguely, to be involved with those of the Charetty company; with its great new ventures; with the marriage, even, of Nicholas and Marian, his employer and wife. She said, ‘Do you mean to destroy his brothers as well?’
The thing on the table moved. Following her eyes, Nicholas picked up a napkin and, leaning forward, placed it over the live moth and pressed on it. He said, ‘I don’t destroy everyone who hurts me. You know that better than most. I don’t even know whether the Zorzi wish me well or the opposite.’ He lifted his hand, leaving the crumpled cloth on the table. Nothing moved. He said, ‘What do you think?’ to the Venetian.
‘I think it’s dead,’ said Jacopo Zorzi, ‘whether it harmed you or not. And the Zorzi family? You blame us, I cannot think why, for the loss of your alum monopoly. Because I am a friend of Giovanni da Castro, does it mean he finds mines with my help? And today, I know of no insidious plot against you, nor will you think it likely once you’re sober. Bartolomeo is making a gold mine for you out of the dyeworks. Nicholai, cripple that he is, can hardly be an opponent. And I – I merely live in Cyprus and work honestly in my vineyards. You must come and visit them some time.’
‘Are they near?’ Katelina said. She tried and failed to capture Zorzi’s eyes. He had offered help of a kind against Nicholas. She had had no idea then that some real quarrel existed between them.
Zorzi said, smiling not at her, but at Nicholas, ‘Not too far. In the hills, at a place called Engedi. You have heard it sung of, in the sweetest words in the world.’ He stopped, and waited. Distantly, someone plucked a stringed instrument and voices spoke, idly, over the courtyard. The supper tables were empty and, for a moment, around them was silence.
Nicholas said, ‘I shall send …’ and stopped.
‘Go on,’ said Zorzi softly. She moved, and without speaking, the dark man reached and restrained her.
Nicholas said, ‘I shall send gems of lapis lazuli: I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards. My beloved …’ He stopped again. It was, Katelina thought, as if he were remembering something from long ago, or listening to someone telling him something he had not known. Nicholas said, ‘My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi …’ He stopped again, and said, ‘My beloved is dead.’
Zorzi lifted the lamp. By its flame she saw the face of Nicholas vander Poele, and it had no identity. Then he said, ‘I must see to my guests,’ and walked away.
Katelina found she was standing, looking after him. Zorzi’s hand dropped and, turning, he laid the lamp slowly back on the table. Then he drew breath and looked at her, his unprepossessing, half-shaven face full of thought. He said, ‘My beloved is dead? Who?’
Katelina said, ‘No one. I know of no one.’ She thought, disjointedly, of the life of Claes, and the life of Nicholas. He is young, and greedy for women. Perhaps. But none of his lovers was dead.
Jacopo Zorzi said, ‘But surely. He has lost his wife?’
The Song of Songs, and Marian de Charetty. She found tears had filled her eyes – of fear, of pain, of disbelief. Zorzi saw them and said, ‘Demoiselle. I’m sorry. We frightened you. One forgets. Wine acts quickly after an illness. He was not himself.’ He was smiling; his face blotted and crawling with shadows from the insects that covered the lamp. Katelina said something and, stumbling, fled.
The other guests spent their final hour in the gardens. Pleading weariness, Katelina passed it indoors, in darkness. I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards. Here, washed clean of blood stood the altar and here, obedient to the goddess, maidens came once a year … How tedious we are, talking of love!
Katelina van Borselen had taught herself not to talk or think of love. She had thought so much of it, once, that she had refused the man her parents had chosen as husband. Because it had not come to her as she wanted – noble, adoring, irresistible – she had, from a kind of fear, a kind of defiance, bought herself the experience. That is, she had – twice – laid a small part of her pride in the blue-stained hands of a decent, trustworthy workman. But the workman had betrayed her, and she had resorted to the least of all the choices she now knew she had had. She had married a sulky Adonis who had dragged her into a land of mean landscapes, not the high peaks of delight and adventure.
She lay breathing quickly in the hot, infested darkness, but what she wanted was not Simon, or the careless traffic of a Cypriot night.
She sat up when someone knocked on her door, and after waiting a man came in bearing a torch. The doctor. The doctor who had been moved to stride from the table in anger. Who was not the dupe of Nicholas, as the others were. The man said, ‘Nicholas. Do you know where he is?’
‘No,’ said Katelina.
The doctor remained, looking at her. He had resumed his professional hat. He said, ‘It was an extremely severe injury. On occasion …’
‘He was drunk but not helpless,’ Katelina said. ‘I don’t know where he went.’
He left. After a while she went out herself and, avoiding the torches, sought the cool air where, on the horizon, an indigo band met a paler one, and the scent of the roses was paired with the
salt of the sea.
Between herself and the sea stood tall pillars, an arch and a cornice, underlit by a herbaceous glow, pink as peonies. She sensed warmth, and an odour newly familiar. But she was not in the sugar yards. She stood on the pictured pagan terrazzo of the Sanctuary of Venus, where sweet oils were fetched by the Graces to cauldrons like the ones she now saw, wreathed in silvery vapour, glowing apple-gold from the fires of their hearths.
The coals were real. The fires throbbed, like the fires of Hephaistos. In their light she saw the white broken steps and the avenues and the pale half-hidden plinths, with their curious statues bending, kneeling, formally upright. Venus in the arms of the crippled god. Venus couched with her lover Adonis. She could hear the island speaking under her feet, and trembled, listening to it.
Without a plinth, a god with a pure, Attic body stood, his curling head bent. Sweet in the night, a man’s voice murmured in Greek. ‘Who dare pasture his cattle in the lord’s fold?’ The fires flickered. The sea breathed in the distance. The same voice said, ‘Whose then is the sacrifice? Male blood is all the altar will drink.’ Then softly: ‘Don’t speak.’
Katelina knew by then whose the voice was; but could only guess who reclined at his feet. Then a woman said, ‘You are foolish. First, my dear, you must learn. Marco and Luigi Martini are in dispute. The Knights and Martini have diverted the Kouris.’
‘How sad,’ Nicholas said, still in Greek. The glow from the fire lit his skin, and the linen draped over his shoulder and the still, classical line of his body. He said, ‘You should have rope in your hair. Aphrodite will not accept it.’
‘It is not, I hope, being offered to Aphrodite,’ said Fiorenza of Naxos.
Chapter 29
NEXT MORNING, Nicholas received the rough awakening that no doubt he deserved. The second time, Loppe made quite sure that he couldn’t remain on his mattress so he got up, and made with his eyes shut for the privy, and was sick; which presumably made everyone happy. Then he went back and slid himself into linen breeches and a loose tunic with a scarf round his waist, and a sleeveless robe over that, which was all his skin could bear without buckling. There was some blood about, where his newly-healed wound had come apart, not surprisingly under the circumstances. He said nothing about it and neither did Loppe. Tobie made no appearance. A little later, John le Grant arrived, an event he had forgotten to prepare for and about which no one had reminded him. By then he was sitting with Loppe in his office, going over essential figures for the day’s work. John came in like a red-headed sparrow and said, ‘Well? How did it go?’ He looked again and said, ‘Christ. It turned into an orgy?’
Race of Scorpions Page 45