Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett
‘Not entirely a failure,’ she said. ‘The lady escapes from the Manoir de Rébellion. But of course, the three enemies of Love trap her eventually. Shame, Fear and Denial.’ She smiled. ‘We have escaped them.’
The rest of his time, he spent with Abul Ismail.
The sick who had no one to tend them were spread through the inner, inhabited core of the city, in the monasteries, in the hospice of the Knights of St John with their double chapels. There they were tended by the Brethren of the Order, and elsewhere by those monks who had survived. Still, their strength and their knowledge were limited, and the physician in daily demand. Among the patients were the injured and sick of the army. Once they had had their own barracks, their own surgeons. Now they stood to the walls, and if they fell, had no more help than the civilians had.
The others in need were those still in the care of their families. The roofs were most often not their own: long since, the community had drawn in from its perimeter, sharing its water, its food and its warmth, and distancing itself so far as might be from the walls and the thud of the cannon.
All these people, Abul Ismail visited. He was given a boy, and two soldiers, and a handcart. In that, he took the box of his instruments, and the pills and plasters and powders which took Nicholas and himself half their sleeping time to boil, to mix and to stamp. Every second day, food and medicine were delivered from Zacco and, strictly watched, the doctor was allowed to speak with the courier who came with the convoy. Nicholas was never given that privilege.
For him were the heavy tasks. Now, with new carts, he could drag both water and food to where they were needed. He took the night soil and the corpses to the south wall, where the north wind would scour them, and ground off the flesh of his hands, digging trenches. He never lacked for both helpers and escort, but men on starvation diet take time to respond to good feeding, and their willingness far outran what was left of their strength. And even good food was not proof against the malignance that hung in the air, in the rotting soil, in the ill-washed vessels from which they ate and drank. Typhoid, dysentery struck every third household, and the marshes from the north sent their evil on the sharp, wintry wind. Once, Abul Ismail said, ‘You do not eat. I have been watching. You are subject to marsh fever?’
‘I am subject only to grief,’ Nicholas said. He would have said it to no one else. It happened to be true.
Christmas came, and High Mass in the Cathedral of St Nicholas. The last carts from King James had contained candles, and they stood in front of the altar: stout towers of wax that once would have been raided and eaten. Even so, their numbers seemed to have dwindled. Abul Ismail now had better stuff for his plasters than cobblers’ wax.
Katelina had shared in that Mass, carried there by Diniz and Nicholas on a stretcher of rafters and carpets. Latterly, a greyer tinge had coloured her skin; and the scented rosins Abul threw on her brazier disguised a different turn in her illness. But always, welcoming Nicholas, she was washed, combed and seemly, and had formed out of her obstinacy, it seemed, a frail steely courage that endured where others succumbed.
She returned silent from that communion, but roused to the dinner that Abul, Diniz and Nicholas spread in her chamber. She took, too, the first cup from the flask of good wine that Nicholas had found for her. ‘Droit de prémices,’ Nicholas said, clasping his hand over hers to keep the stem steady. ‘But then, we had that already.’ And she drew his hand closer and laid her cheek on it, so that he knew she, too, was thinking of Bruges, when she had allowed him that right, and of Ghent, and of a place by a waterfall. When he lifted his head, Diniz was looking at him. Then he looked away.
After that, he was commanded to the Citadel, to dine with the captain. With Napoleone Lomellini were other Genoese noblemen he had come to know, and sometimes find ways to baulk, when common justice appeared to be slighted. All were shabby; all had about them the cleanliness of icy well-water, spoiled and fetid with the reek of the city, that nothing but fire could dispel.
The meal was stiffly formal. At the end, the captain said, ‘I have had a message which concerns both of our hostages. Since this is a Christian festival, I have not sought, Messer Niccolò, the company of your colleague. I wish, therefore, that you will convey to him all I am about to say.’
Since he became first their prisoner and then their enforced guest, Nicholas had rarely met all his present masters; and had thought it best not to seek their company. Today, he had suspected that something was brewing. It was possible, of course, but not likely that Zacco had grown tired of his Christmas truce. His clemency had earned him the regard of the West and would, surely, last until Twelfth Night. It was likelier that Zacco had grown uneasy over his own unforeseen absence. Nicholas had asked to remain. He had been held, in the first place, because he had been caught carrying out what must now appear an ill-judged and irresponsible foray. An act of defiance, in Zacco’s terms. So now, perhaps, Zacco wished to replace and recall him. In which case, Nicholas meant to refuse.
Napoleone Lomellini drew out a paper. The labours of his protesting stomach had corroded his dark skin with pustules; he was still sharp of bone and languid in movement, but something of the family vigour was visible. His voice, as he continued, was brusque. ‘You will know that James of Lusignan is passing Christmas at Nicosia with four ambassadors from this city. We have heard from them. Talks have taken place. A document has been drawn up, and has been sent here to me for consideration. My colleagues and I have discussed it, and we propose to recommend that its terms be accepted. It will be signed on the sixth day of January. Since it affects you, I shall read you its contents.’
So suddenly it had come, all they were working for. Talks. A document. And acceptance. Nicholas sat perfectly still, his heart shaking him. ‘Yes, my lord?’ he said.
‘I am glad to tell you,’ said Napoleone Lomellini, ‘that it is the Bastard’s intention to lift the siege of Famagusta. This will be done fourteen days after this treaty is signed, and will be followed by a truce of one year.’ He looked round at his companions, and then at Nicholas. He had kept triumph out of his voice but not, perhaps, a shade of justifiable satisfaction. ‘That is the gist of this document, and I have instructed our envoys to agree to it.’
Nicholas felt as if turned to stone. In all his plans, he had never let himself contemplate an outcome as vicious as that. Zacco had tired of the siege. Zacco had thrown the Genoese twelve months of a truce. St George and the dragon still flew from the walls of Famagusta. For another year, the Genoese could continue to squat in the wreck of the city, clutching the rights to their ruined, foundering colony; promoting nothing; permitting nothing to flourish, either of theirs or the Bastard’s. Another year for the divided island to suffer. For himself, another year of detention, at Zacco’s whimsy. And at the end of the year, the siege to start all over again.
He realised that he had not thought of it before as detention. He said, ‘The lord Abul and I are therefore expected to return to the King at Epiphany?’
‘That is for your employer to say,’ the captain said. ‘Under the terms in this document, two of the Lusignan’s men will stay here, and four of the city’s will stay in Nicosia until the rescue fleet comes. We are allowing our four men to remain at the Palace. The Bastard may wish you to stay, or to replace you. I shall now read –’
‘Rescue fleet?’ Nicholas said.
The captain looked up. ‘That is the condition of the truce,’ he said.
‘Rescue fleet?’ Nicholas repeated.
The Genoese looked angry. He said, ‘Do you interrupt your own lord? Ours is a Republic which cares for its citizens, and will support them against a common enemy. There is a relief expedition on the way; carracks which bring arms and soldiers, as well as provisions. It will arrive here before the testing span of this treaty has ended. And when it has come, the armistice will begin, and the hostages on both sides will be freed. That is all, surely, that concerns you?’
‘But –’ Nicholas said. He drew a long
‘What do you know of the Republic?’ said Lomellini. ‘If one single vessel enters the port of Famagusta in the fourteen nights that follow Epiphany, the siege will be lifted. That is what this document says.’
‘And if no ship comes?’ Nicholas said. ‘Or coming, cannot enter in time?’
‘It will not happen,’ said Lomellini.
Nicholas waited. ‘It will not happen,’ said the captain once more, and less fiercely. ‘But if no ship enters, then Famagusta surrenders to Zacco.’
He could not, at first, even think of his regular call to Katelina. He walked round and round his small chamber, haranguing the walls. Abul Ismail, who had come for news, retired to a cushion and sat, his hands on his lap. At the end, having exhausted himself, Nicholas looked at him, stopped, and then with a groan, dropped to the opposite corner and put his head in his hands. He gave a laugh. ‘I apologise.’
‘You received a fright,’ said the Arab in his judicial way. ‘It is natural. If you now set your mind to do so, it will tell you all the components, reasonable and unreasonable, of your fury. This in turn will render you able to master your body. Tell your hands to be still.’
Around the knot of his stomach, everything seemed to be shaking. He told it to stop, and it didn’t. The Arab said, ‘Why do they think a fleet is coming?’
‘Because they don’t know what is happening out there,’ Nicholas said. ‘Their precious Republic has ruined itself over the Naples war. The Fregoso and the Adorno are tearing Genoa apart with their rivalry. The Bank of St George have already advanced Famagusta all they can spare: they have nothing left. And the seas are blocked anyway with the Turkish fleet. They’ve signed a treaty of surrender, and they don’t even know it.’
‘It isn’t signed yet,’ said Abul Ismail.
‘It will be, in eleven days,’ Nicholas said.
‘You are confident,’ the Arab said. ‘But what you have told me will now be known to these four Genoese in Nicosia. Indeed, is this not what you advised in the first place? Convince them no fleet is coming, and they will bow to surrender? And if that is so: if they are so convinced, why does this document talk of fleets and of truces?’
‘They are surrendering,’ Nicholas said. ‘But they have to obtain the leave of the Commander of Famagusta, who still believes in a fleet. Hence the conditional clause. It will make no difference.’
‘Unless a fleet comes,’ the Arab said. ‘Come. The times have been hard on you, these last weeks. To a mind delighting in tactics and devices, grief is not a familiar factor, but it cannot be excluded from any man’s calculations. In the simplest of games, one person at least knows the pain of doubt, or defeat. It can be of high value. Success seldom teaches what is worth knowing.’ He waited, but did not seem disappointed that Nicholas made him no answer. The Arab said, ‘Visit your lady, and then I will prepare you some easement.’
There was nothing of that Nicholas wished to discuss, so he answered only the question. ‘Thank you, no. I have seen Tzani-bey so reduced.’
‘That remedy I do not offer,’ said the Arab. ‘Although I should advise you not to scorn it. Unreasonable tasks sometimes need unreasonable tools to perform them. No. I think you deserve other excesses.’
It proved to be some extremely strong wine he had hidden. It allowed Nicholas a long, hard night’s sleep, followed by a splitting headache in the morning.
Chapter 41
ON THE DAY after Epiphany, Famagusta heard that the treaty had been sworn before the Haute Cour in the Royal Palace of Nicosia, and that the fourteen days of extra truce had begun. A year of peace with the city would follow, provided that, as the city expected, a relief ship or ships arrived before the end of that period, passed the chain and entered the harbour of Famagusta.
If such a ship or ships failed to enter, the city would capitulate by the time January entered its twentieth night. In that event, the ambassadors stipulated that Famagusta would be governed henceforth by James of Lusignan and his Christian lieutenants, and not by Mamelukes, Moors or other infidels, who were to have no authority over Famagustans. The lord James had undertaken that the Sultan in Cairo should not contravene any article of the pact, and his emir Tzani-bey al-Ablak had been asked to give his word to that effect. The Genoese city of Famagusta did not intend to be at the mercy of Mamelukes.
By then, released from stricter vigilance, Nicholas had been able to move from the Citadel to the house of Katelina, and soon Abul Ismail was permitted to join him. As the life of the city began, haltingly, to achieve some simple routine, Nicholas spent his time more and more on the business of medicine. He was good with patients, as he was good with children. He watched Abul Ismail in silence, and helped without flinching. He learned, among other things, what alum served for, besides dyeing. The rest of the time he spent with Diniz, and Katelina.
Once, it had seemed that the candle of her life would burn only till Christmas, and that it was towards that single point that she was spinning out the last hours of her life. Then it became apparent that she was holding to some other lodestar.
She believed in the ship, and was waiting for it. Abul Ismail had said that she was loyal to Genoa, and it seemed this was true, whatever Carlotta had done to her. She had lived among Genoese merchants in Bruges: Anselm Adorne had her respect and affection. Genoa was the home of Simon’s company, and he owed his start in Madeira to Genoese money and skill. And through Genoa, the ally of Portugal, she could repay her debt of indifference to Tristão Vasquez, who had married Simon’s sister, and her gratitude to the boy Diniz, on whom her eyes rested, half sleeping, in a strange, touching pride.
In the sickroom or with Diniz, Nicholas never threw doubt on the arrival of Katelina’s dream fleet. Nor, in the long hours of her sleeping, when he and Diniz shared the same room, did he say more than he thought might reassure the young Portuguese. Any plan for the future depended on the term of the girl’s life now ending, and neither could speak of that. Sometimes, though, the boy would now talk of the past. ‘You were in Rhodes. The demoiselle spoke of it. She said my father was killed because of her.’
‘Because of me,’ Nicholas said. ‘We had a misunderstanding, the demoiselle and I, and, for a while, she wanted to punish me. The Queen thought my life was in peril, and she should get rid of my enemies. She thought too, she would recover Cyprus. She didn’t want Madeira to rob her of vines and of sugar, and your father had tried to do that once. So she had no compunction, I think, in allowing your father to be lured into danger, so that the demoiselle would leave the City to follow him. The assassins meant to kill her. They didn’t care whether or not they killed your father or you.’
Diniz said, ‘The demoiselle said my father was killed by the Queen and someone else. She didn’t say who it was. She said the Queen and somebody else made sure she knew I was in Famagusta. She said you went to Rhodes to find out who killed my father.’
‘They were only hired assassins,’ Nicholas said. ‘Astorre helped me kill two of them. The Queen was behind most of it. She needed mercenaries.’
‘But you were already with Zacco when they tried to kill the demoiselle at Kalopetra,’ the youth said. He paused. ‘Was that why you married the lady Primaflora? Did she warn you of the new plot, and needed protection?’
‘She told me where to find Katelina,’ Nicholas said. ‘I should have stayed, then, to make sure she left safely for Portugal. But I was being hunted as well.’
‘But you didn’t love Primaflora?’ the boy said. ‘You wouldn’t have married her otherwise?’
‘I shouldn’t have married her otherwise,’ Nicholas said. After a moment he said, ‘What do you think you’ve been watching, these weeks?’
The boy’s eyes were dark and level, dense as the Arab’s. ‘Compassion?’ he said. Leaving, Nicholas crashed the door open and then, remember
The following day, Diniz apologised. Nicholas heard it in silence. She was worse, today; her breathing irregular, her words sometimes confused. Latterly, she had been in pain. Today, Abul Ismail had stayed at her side, and now Nicholas had been banished from the sickroom.
Diniz also had stayed, and had found his way out into the yard, and the broken pillars of the loggia, where he had found somewhere to sit out of the wind. Today it was cloudy but bright, and the thick, accustomed smell of the city was better than the hospital smell in the house. Coming out for the same reasons, Nicholas found him there and heard him make his excuses.
His mind was not especially on Diniz. He said, ‘You needn’t be sorry. None of this is your fault, and a good degree of it is mine, which is why I lose patience easily. I have nearly insulted you, several times, by promising that you will forget all this when you are home again.’
The boy’s eyes fell. Nicholas dropped to sit on a block, and picked up a stone, and took out the knife he had been given back. Diniz said, ‘You made carvings in Bruges.’
‘It passed the time,’ Nicholas said.
A short silence followed. Diniz said, ‘Katelina says you think we are cousins.’
Both his hands stopped. ‘Katelina?’ he said.
‘She asked me to call her that. She says your mother was Simon’s first wife. I call him Simon,’ he added.
‘He is your uncle,’ Nicholas said. He had resumed carving again. ‘Did she say anything else?’
‘She said that Simon denied he had fathered you, and this was the cause of the feud, and that it would get worse, unless something stopped it. She said that when she was … that Simon would think you had killed her. Would think that you had killed my father. That unless something was done, he would kill you.’