Race of Scorpions

by Dorothy Dunnett

  The men who brought him had gone. He was lying in the inner hall chamber of a modest if well-to-do house, its plaster walls and timber ceiling painted; its windows open on greenery. He said, ‘No. They were too quiet. And they didn’t climb high enough. Why didn’t you send me a message?’

  ‘Would you have believed it?’ she said. He sat up and, rising in turn, she drew him to his feet and stood, both hands in his, her head to one side. She said, ‘Goats? Fish, certainly. And perhaps lice as well as fleas. I think, my Niccolò, I shall send you back.’

  ‘Water is all that it needs,’ Nicholas said. ‘You knew I should come for you.’

  She smiled and dropped her hands. ‘I knew you would come when your contract was finished. When I heard your Flemish demoiselle had appeared, I thought you might come before that. Did Boulaki charge you a great deal?’

  He laughed suddenly, thinking. ‘Probably half as much as he charged you. You arranged it?’

  ‘I know those boats plying to Cyprus. He was told, if you hired him, to bring you to Lindos.’

  ‘He would have, eventually,’ Nicholas said. ‘But his mother wanted a cut from the Knights. I suppose Yiannis was in on it, too. It’s as well the sugar crop flourished this year, since we’ve ended up financing the natives of Apolakia. I’m too stiff to bath myself.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ said Primaflora. ‘Two of the men who brought you will help you. Afterwards, I shall bring you some oils. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas.

  The smile was in her eyes, not her lips. She had not changed, that he could see. She said, ‘Amid the plenty of Cyprus?’

  He said, ‘If you know the boats plying to Cyprus, you will have that news too.’

  The smile had sunk from her eyes. She said, ‘Yes. But until I saw your face, I didn’t believe it.’ She turned. ‘There is my servant. Follow him. I shall come when you are clean.’ He wondered, obeying, what it was about him that gave that away. It irked him, because unless he knew, he could never simulate it.

  Behind the low house was a garden too small for a fountain, but full of dark, watered earth and heavy flowers in strange marble troughs and the scent of fruit from the trees and the vines whose shadows lay on the couch where they brought him. It was still so early that the air felt like milk against his odourless skin, bare above virginal, darnfree white towels. He laid his brow on his pillowing arms and closed his eyes, waiting. Normally sparing of sleep, he knew he had had not quite enough to clear his head from the wine. Since it was not a good idea to think he let himself drift, aware of the small stirring sounds of awakening households; of the twitter of sparrows; of a ground-bass of bees. Somewhere, a good way off, a young child was crying. Primaflora said, ‘Stay where you are. Have I done this for you before? The oils come from Alexandria.’ Drops fell from her palms, teasing him. The liquid was warm, and contained scents he didn’t know. Random trails, slow as raindrops, started to contour his body unattended. Where her shadow had been was blank and dazzling sunlight. She said, ‘He did that? And you let him?’

  There were five good stories he told in rotation about the wound on his shoulder. He realised she might have heard about an accident in the dyeworks. He saw that, of course, she knew the truth, because Katelina would have no reason, now, to conceal it. He said, ‘You heard?’ It seemed better to turn round and sit cross-legged, while the oil trickled down to his waist.

  Her own palms were glossy and spilling. She leaned forward and smoothed their burden over his chest and his back, her eyes on the wound. She said, ‘Yes. It was the first thing the demoiselle told the Queen. How her brave nephew had tried to kill the mercenary leader who had sold himself to Zacco.’

  Nicholas made considering shapes with his cheeks and his chin. ‘I didn’t exactly let him,’ he said. ‘He was a quick learner.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell Zacco. The demoiselle says that you meant to, once you’d humiliated the young man enough. Or perhaps you had another humiliation in mind.’

  He followed her thought. He said, ‘Now that’s really tortuous, and you know what a simple Fleming I am. Anyway, he wouldn’t get to kill Tzani-bey. Where is the boy, anyway?’

  ‘In Portugal, I assume,’ said Primaflora. ‘He certainly told his aunt so, and he’s certainly not still in Cyprus, or she would never have left. I wondered, myself, why he abandoned her, but she says Zacco promised to free her at the end of the summer anyway. You know, of course, that she sent us reports on all that Zacco was doing?’

  ‘I thought she might. Then why did she leave?’ Nicholas said. She touched his good shoulder and turned him as he was speaking and he pressed his face again on his arms, smelling the oil as she opened the bottle.

  ‘She was frightened,’ Primaflora said. ‘Perhaps you frightened her. Perhaps she gave up all hope of getting rid of you. Perhaps she thought Simon needed her, or that alone she couldn’t break down you or your business. Perhaps she knew that Zacco would force her to leave empty-handed, and the Genoese would be more sympathetic.’

  Empty-handed. Her small hands eased and pressed over his skin, and the fumes hung in his brain. His eyes suddenly opened.

  Primaflora laughed. ‘Are you so tired? The sugarcane cuttings, my dear, that are going to ruin your business and Zacco’s. That was why she threw herself on the mercy of the Genoese. They are all up there, in the castle at Lindos, being watered daily by order of Imperiale Doria until a ship comes to take her to Portugal. Why else are you here?’

  ‘For you,’ he said. ‘If you will come.’

  The hands smoothed and smoothed without faltering. She said, ‘As your mistress?’

  His eyes remained open, lowered on his own hands. ‘As my wife,’ he said. ‘If that did not demean you.’

  The hands stopped. She said. ‘Niccolò?’

  He turned and the sun, catching his body, dazzled into his eyes. She stood in a thumbprint of light and said, ‘There is no need.’

  He lay, his arms at his sides and said, ‘I must go back. Zacco would honour you. Only the plants must be destroyed, and the Flemish woman made free to leave on the first boat that arrives. Otherwise her husband will come, and cause trouble.’

  She opened her rouged palms above him, and let the supple fingers drift down, wayward as the trickling oil. She said, ‘For this?’

  He moved involuntarily; and stilled; and smiled with tightened lids. ‘Lady? Of course.’

  She said, ‘I require no fee of marriage. I shall come back with you to Cyprus.’

  ‘When?’ he said, selecting a breath. He opened his eyes.

  She withdrew her slow, trailing hands and stood, studying him. ‘When you are less indolent, my dear,’ said Primaflora. ‘When you have done what you came to do. I can guide you into the castle. I can find you a boat to take us to Cyprus, once the demoiselle has sailed for home. But that may take a long time.’

  ‘Guide me to the castle,’ Nicholas said. ‘And when I am less indolent, find us a boat to take us to Cyprus. Katelina can find her own way home.’

  By then, he knew he could expect nothing more, having given her, he thought, what she wanted. He turned on his face when she left him, and in time his body obeyed him; and he lay as still as if he were sick in a pawnshop in Sluys, and had just met Simon of Kilmirren, and had just been introduced to a punishment from which there seemed no release.

  Chapter 31

  IT WAS TRUE that Katelina van Borselen was frightened. Her fear had followed her here, to the sea crag at Lindos where the Castle of the Knights of St John shared its perch with the stones of Byzantium and the temple blocks of the Sanctuary of Athene, which were more ancient still. Her fear was not for Simon, or Diniz, or the destiny of her child. She was afraid of the black cone in the sanctuary of Paphos, and of what she had felt there.

  Now Fate had set before her another altar. There, in the sunlight alone, while the Knights slumbered or prayed and the sounds from the village below hardly rose above the hiss of the cicadas, Katelina gazed down
the gnarled rock to the sea, and wondered how either Athene or Aphrodite would have fared with a sharp-tongued mother she hated; and a sullen sister, and a hot-tempered, infertile husband. It would have reduced Aphrodite, for a start.

  To her right, past the boat-crowded pool of St Paul, the sea stretched blue to the next misty headland and disappeared south into haze. Below the rock on her left lay the white scimitar of a strand, with beached boats cocked along it, and antlike figures asleep in their shade with the floss of netting around them. The sea, seen from above, was of a blue deep enough to be purple, paling as it washed to the beach over patches of grape-coloured rock. In other places, it was blue-green as malachite. A dyer’s labourer would know how to mix up the colour. A trickle of sweat reminded her why she was here and she turned to go down the glassy, worn steps from the temple. She saw, as she lifted her skirt, that the marble was heaped, thick as needles, with lizards; and when she began to walk quickly she caught sight of another, big as a dragon, on the crumbling roof of the stoa above her, its head stiffly erect, its throat gulping. It fled before she did.

  In the shed where the plants were it was stifling, despite the open windows and the awning the Genoese squires had helped her put up. The trays would have been better deep in the palace, but Imperiale Doria was away, and the other brethren cared more for Kolossi than for saving the vineyards and sugarcane fields of other Knights in the colonial west. Without her, the duty of watering would have been little attended to.

  Today, someone for once had forestalled her. The rich smell of soaked earth and warm steaming leaves pressed upon her as she stepped into shade, and when she lifted the casting-bottle, her thumb over the top, she saw it was damp still, but empty. A voice said, ‘I’ve given them all they need. Don’t be afraid, Katelina. I want to speak to you, nothing more.’

  She didn’t need to strain her sun-dazzled eyes to put a name to the speaker. After a moment she saw him, or his fuzzed mess of damp hair, and the peeled-open whites of his eyes, and his broad, accommodating shoulders draped today in anonymous black. He stood against the farthest wall of the shed, beyond the trestles of green, and barred by them from the door. The clay of the bottle cracked between her two hands. He said, ‘Watch. You’ll break it. How can I harm you? You’ve only to call, and I’m dead.’

  First, the shock of finding Nicholas, here. Then the shock when she saw the truth of his words. She said, ‘Then I’ll call.’ Her heart thudded.

  He said, ‘Give me five minutes first. I had no need to leave Cyprus. I had no need to come here.’

  She said, ‘Five minutes, why? Diniz is safe. He’s on his way home. I’m going home, too.’

  ‘Is he safe?’ Nicholas said. ‘Are you sure?’

  A wash of fright, anger, nausea, swept over her. She said, ‘Do you think I’d leave Cyprus before I was sure? I heard he had gone. The man who helped him sent a message. They found him a ship going west.’

  ‘Who?’ said Nicholas.

  She said, ‘Is that why you came? To find out?’

  ‘To find out if he was safe, that was all. He should have stayed. So should you. I would have seen that you got home, Katelina,’ he said. He drew a breath and didn’t use it.

  She said, ‘You were going to say, Wherever home is?’

  ‘No,’ he said sharply. After a moment he said, ‘I was going to say, Unless you were anxious to wait for Simon. Didn’t you know he was planning to come for you?’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t believe it.’ Then she said, ‘Or no, I do. He found out we were captured because of you. Is that why you want to make sure you’ve got rid of us?’

  He was collected again. ‘You’ve guessed it,’ he said. ‘And by the time your husband could arrive on Cyprus, the Genoese will be the King’s prisoners and it might be difficult to get you both away. Or all of you, if Diniz had stayed.’

  The plants dripped: the air was thick as pulped mash. She laid down the bottle and leaned her hands on it. ‘You really think the Genoese will surrender? You should talk to Imperiale Doria. He has ships. He has money. The Dominican friars gave the Queen all their plate and Piozasque pledged it to Doria for silver.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Nicholas. ‘The rumour I heard was that Doria himself was having to borrow.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But he has security, and he uses reliable bankers. A firm who are ready with money enough, when it suits them.’

  The bitterness must have showed. ‘But not for St Pol & Vasquez?’ said Nicholas slowly. ‘Are the bankers called Vatachino?’

  Despite the heat, her terror lessened. She said, ‘Ah! You, too!’

  ‘I knew that would please you,’ said Nicholas. He ran his fingers over the plants, his eyes following them. ‘Is Simon in trouble, Katelina? The death of Tristão, how difficult will that be?’

  ‘As difficult as you meant it to be, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You know Simon. You met Tristão. Lucia is frightened of her own shadow. Which would you choose to kill, if you wanted to weaken a business?’

  His eyes lifted. He said, ‘I’m in Rhodes, among other things, to find out who did kill Tristão. If someone tries to spoil my business, I don’t mind retaliating. But not in that way. And if I’d known it would happen, there are some things I would have done differently. As it is, the best asset Simon could have is yourself. You’re free. Go home quickly. Go home and take Tristão’s place.’

  She gazed at him. He spoke as if nothing lay between them; with the earnestness of a brother giving advice. He had left Zacco in Cyprus to come where he would be killed in a moment if recognised. And he had come here, where she was, as if he had nothing to fear. As if he thought she believed all those protestations made on his sickbed in Nicosia just before Zacco came and bent over him. Zacco, who had sent her to Episkopi from which it had proved so simple to escape. Zacco, who had disliked, perhaps, the fact that Nicholas had paid Diniz’s ransom. Zacco, who had got rid of Primaflora …

  Katelina said, ‘Why did you come to Rhodes?’

  And he said, as if in direct response to her thoughts, ‘Primaflora is here.’

  It was too pat. She recognised, now, that all Primaflora had told her in the merchants’ basilica had been false. Primaflora had abandoned the Queen to escape to Cyprus with Nicholas, and but for Zacco’s jealousy they would be together in Cyprus now. But Katelina knew, if anyone did, that Nicholas was not the slave of a courtesan. She heard again the murmur of the cauldrons, and saw the steam, and saw the wife of Marco Corner move into his arms. Katelina said, ‘But you have been taught to love men.’

  He had been about to say something else, and stopped short. Then he said, ‘James of Lusignan?’

  ‘And David of Trebizond,’ said Katelina. ‘I saw your men’s faces, when they heard the news of his capture. You make use of women, that’s all. At Kouklia, you wanted to show Marco Corner who was master. You continued to prove yourself master in ways he would never even know. You made him a victim, like Simon. If Fiorenza has a child, I suppose it will pass as Corner’s?’

  Outside in the courtyard the cicadas hissed in the broken shade of the colonnades, and the olives and date palms stood still in the heat. Nicholas drew a short breath. He said, ‘You’re not as unworldly as that, Katelina. The princesses of Naxos play games, and the games require partners. And I doubt if it’s your concern, but I am not the King’s lover.’

  He was angry. She looked at him bemused, because he was not only angry, but had failed to conceal it. She said stubbornly, ‘But he wishes you to be.’

  He had begun to recover. In one cheek a dent appeared, of exasperation, perhaps, or self-mockery. He said, ‘Perhaps. But his mother doesn’t. You were not sent to Episkopi in the hope that you would escape. Don’t you know it yet? I was supposed to take advantage of you, not Fiorenza of Naxos, at Kouklia.’

  She gazed at him, feeling sick, her eyes filmed. He moved impulsively and she flinched. He said, standing still, ‘You’re unwell. It’s the heat, I’m sorry. I’ll go. I just wanted to be sure
you were safe, and the boy. And to tell you to go home as soon as you can. You’ve nothing to fear from me, Katelina. Nothing. Nothing.’ And, perhaps feeling that his words had been too intense, he smiled suddenly and said, ‘Anyway, you shouldn’t water plants until evening. Didn’t they tell you?’

  She remembered that comforting smile. Claes. Claikine, Marian his wife used to call him, before she became his wife; when she was just his employer. Around the smile, his face glittered with drops from the screws of his hair. The garment he wore, swung by the movement, offered a glimpse of a scratched and sun-coloured forearm, shaped and rounded by labour, the hairs on it bleached like boar-bristles. The young and powerful arms, and the hands, and the broad shoulders. Her mind emptied, until all that was left was an echo. She shivered, and found the echo still there.

  You shouldn’t water plants until evening. But he had given them water, from the casting-bottle he had made her lay down, and from which rose a slight acrid odour, barely evident. There was another scent, too. It came from his skin: a tinge of costly sweet oils she had met only once, on a woman.

  A black cone, and sweet oil, and sugar. She had nothing to fear from him, it was true. She said, ‘I told someone to come for me. Wait. I’ll send them away.’

  Outside, the white pillars swam in the heat. She had, of course, tried to water the plants in the evening, but only once. Her servant had brought her a lamp, and the Hospitallers had come, black and white, treading two by two from the church of St John, so that incense and myrtle mingled in the acropolis, and taper light touched all its columns. There, where Athene, born of a hatchet-blow, had once received sacrifice, she had been invited to stand with the Knights to observe the birth of the moon from the sea. In their robes, they had watched it in silence, from the appearance of the first unlikely rim until the whole monstrous disc floated up, gold and washed-grey and rust in a night of no colour. When it hung high, a moon-path appeared on the water, with chains of glittering wave-light swirling across it, sensual as Nubian dancers wrapped in gold tissues. Dancers ravishing as a princess of Naxos, or a scion of Trebizond, or James, King of Cyprus, King of Scorpions. And round the lamps, other dancers had fluttered.