Race of Scorpions (22 page)

‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I certainly shan’t if they don’t.’

He watched the pale fawn frown on Loredano’s smooth face. Loredano said, ‘It will be difficult. I cannot speak for the King.’

‘But you could try to persuade the noble Martini?’ Nicholas said.

And Loredano said stiffly, ‘I shall speak to them.’

‘And hoping for a happy outcome, I in turn shall mention the matter to the serene King,’ Nicholas said. ‘I might even ask about dyeworks. I hear there is a yard in Nicosia, at present out of commission. Unless that, too, is already spoken for?’

Loredano said, ‘I think, Messer Niccolò, that you would find the sugar franchise, should you obtain it, would occupy as much of your time as you would wish. The dyeworks, it is true, have not recovered since the last fighting. But their management is traditionally Venetian.’

‘I wondered,’ Nicholas said. ‘And, of course, there is a great deal to be said for traditions. On the other hand, we should live in caves if tradition were not sometimes broken. Perhaps I should mention
this, too, to the King. I must commend your wine. It is the best I have tasted.’

He felt very pleased. He allowed Loredano, murmuring something, to pour him more wine, and watched him fill his own cup and quickly empty it. For him, the crux of the visit was over. Now, he didn’t mind drinking with Vanni Loredano.

Long after, just before he retired to his sumptuous chamber, Nicholas put some idle questions over the exhausted bottles of wine to a host no longer so dapper and almost equally exhausted. ‘So you manage the estates for Marco Corner. I am told you and he married sisters?’

The face of Giovanni Loredano was flushed and his lids sank now and then. He made an effort and opened them. ‘That is so. Marco – Marco will be sad to have missed you. He is often in Venice on business.’

‘Cyprus owes much to his family, and those others, like your own, that have been long settled here.’

Loredano laid his cup heavily on the table beside him. Its cloth was made of velvet fringed with gold, and a white lapdog was half-asleep in its shadow. A lute lay unstrung by the window, and some sheets of music beside it. Like every Venetian building, this one spoke of their women. Loredano made a visible effort. ‘Where would Cyprus be without Venice? We all have the East in our blood: Corner, Contarini, Duodo; Zorzi and Michiel; Bembo, Barbarigo and Loredano. We were traders in the Crusades, and we remained traders after the Mamelukes conquered the Holy Land.’

‘Zorzi?’ Nicholas said. ‘I knew two brothers once of that name. Bartolemeo, a farmer of alum mines, now in Constantinople. And Nicholai Giorgio, a Greek of Florentine origins with a wooden leg. He used a different version of the family name.’

‘Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli. I have heard of him. There is a third brother in Cyprus. Jacopo Zorzi owns vineyards. We all know one another. It is a century and a half since a forebear of mine sent the first shipment of sugar to England. Another Loredano was Bailie for Venice in Cyprus. Through us, Venice knows all that is happening in Constantinople: how the Emperor David fares in exile with his Empress and children; how his Great Chancellor Amiroutzes is amusing himself far from Trebizond. You know Trebizond. You are not still, as we are, in touch with it. Of course, we hear it all, Marco and I, through … through our families.’ He snatched a handkerchief from his sleeve and touched his lips with it.

‘Through the ladies Valenza and Fiorenza, your wives. I envy you both,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is not every man who marries a princess of Trebizond. You and Messer Marco never bring your ladies to Cyprus?’

‘When the children are older, perhaps.’ Loredano created a pause; then tucked the kerchief neatly back in his cuff. He looked up, smiling. ‘I forget. Of course, you know one of their sisters.’

‘In passing,’ Nicholas said. ‘There are so many daughters of Naxos. But if you are writing to the madonna Violante, greet her for me. In everything, she has shown herself a perfect Byzantine. I extend to her two sisters’ husbands all the respect that she commanded from me at our last unforgettable meeting. Tell her that, if you please.’

He neither knew nor cared whether Loredano could interpret the message. He saw from his eyes that he did, and that he had sobered. Loredano said slowly, ‘You foolish man. After all that has happened, you are treating this as a game?’

‘Of course. You invite me,’ Nicholas said. ‘Now I examine the board and the pieces. Then we make up the rules. And lastly, I decide whether to play, and what side I want.’

Being under no illusions, it had seemed quite likely to Nicholas that he would suffer a regrettable accident before leaving the Venetians’ residence. He thought that if Marco Corner had been there, he probably would not have left with his life. It was important to Venice, for a great many reasons, that he and Astorre should not enrol with Queen Carlotta. It was clearly known that he had Genoese involvements. Anselm Adorne, guide of Tilde de Charetty was, after all, a kinsman of the Doges of Genoa. And although, at Trebizond, Pagano Doria had been his enemy, Nicholas himself had not returned to Venice in any amenable mood. If they knew that my lord Simon was working with kinsmen in Portugal, it might seem feasible, even, that Nicholas might wish to join or compete with him. Finally, Astorre had not made for King Zacco’s harbours in Cyprus: he had landed on Rhodes, where the Knights were Carlotta’s supporters. Which could mean that Astorre knew his master’s mind better than anyone.

All that, of course, Zacco had also identified. Zacco meant what he said when he promised to attack and to kill any company belonging to Nicholas that attempted to sail to Kyrenia. It seemed to Nicholas that it would be remarkably difficult to tell whether a ship sailing southwards from Rhodes intended to put into Kyrenia or, for example, King Zacco’s saltflats at St Lazarus called Salines. It might be that Zacco had reached the same conclusion and, despite his promise, was prepared to sink Astorre wherever he went unless he turned straight for Italy, ten sailing days to the west. So that, whatever happened, Astorre had to be warned not to leave Rhodes until Nicholas managed to find his way there. And the safest way to get word to Astorre was through the Order. And the representatives of the Order stayed at Kolassi Castle, where Primaflora had
been put, passing as an innocent member of Carlotta’s household. Primaflora, to whom Nicholas knew he had given too little thought in the aftermath of what had happened to him—and that partly because, perhaps, of what had happened to him. Which was unfair. She was not a young girl, but she was not a man, either, and must be afraid.

Through the night, checking over all the moves he would make if he were Zacco, or Carlotta, or a Venetian, or even an unpleasant Mameluke from the Sultanate, he had been gathering himself to decide whether or not to take part in the game, since now he was free, and a player. Loredano had been shocked by his rapacity, and his seeming frivolity. Loredano did not know that he, too, was already part of a game begun in Bruges three years ago, or perhaps even before. And that the invisible players included a man with a wooden leg, and a woman who had invited Nicholas to do what the courtesan Primaflora would never have expected, or demanded, or allowed. Knowing that, you either escaped, or you let it frighten you, or you treated it as a game.

He had escaped for ten months, and had been brought back. He didn’t like the way he had been brought back. He intended to do something about it, even while he knew – he knew as if the Greek had told him, or Violante – that the violence used on him, the provocation offered at every stage had been quite deliberate. He realised, without being proud of it, that he no longer preferred, in any case, to be regarded by the world at large as a precocious apprentice. He was nearly twenty-two, and grown, with a great deal of experience, now. He should be equal, at least, to demonstrating that he did not care to be meddled with. After that, he might choose his own course, if only he knew what it was.

Meanwhile, he had made known to Giovanni Loredano the concessions he wanted from Venice before he would consider staying with Zacco. Loredano would report these to his fellow-Venetians, who wouldn’t be happy. He thought Erizzo the Bailie was strong enough to overrule them. Since the concessions referred to royal property, the other half of the equation depended, of course, on the King’s readiness to accede. Presently Nicholas intended to ride to the Dominicans’, and raise these matters with Zacco, and request the King’s written permission to send a message to Rhodes and thereafter, if he wished, to join Astorre there. Then he would leave for Kolossi Castle and make his first, tentative throw in the game the Venetians thought they were playing. Whether it was his game or not, remained to be seen.

The Knights of St John at Kolossi, vowed to chastity, had no idea they were housing a courtesan. Since the days of the Crusades, the Knights had had a presence there. When Acre fell, and there was no longer a Holy Land whose pilgrims needed Hospitallers to care
for them and Knights to defend them, the Order had made Cyprus its conventual centre for twenty years before moving to Rhodes. Cyprus it kept as a high military base, opposing the Turks from the third largest island of the Middle Sea, and one of the most fertile. The Commanderie of Cyprus was the richest of all the Order’s possessions, pouring thousands of ducats a year into the treasurer’s coffers at Rhodes from the sales of its wheat and its cotton, its oil and its wine and, above all, its sugar. And of all the Order’s properties on Cyprus, the estate of Kolossi was the largest, with its sixty villages and its acres of vineyards and sugarcane fields.

There had always been a citadel, supplied with deep wells and watered by the River Kouris, with good flat ground for the stables and offices, the guest houses and gardens, and the little Byzantine church of St Eustathios which was open-minded enough to serve the knights for their worship. There had been sugar, too, for a very long time, brought by the Arabs before the days of the Knights. The crop had not always been successful and, in later years, the Knights had found it expedient to share out the costs. That is, a so-called Magnifico from some Venetian firm of growers and dealers would buy the crops for several years in advance, pay for their packing and transport to harbour, and see to all the troublesome business of shipping and selling.

So when Constantinople fell to the Turks and the Order, delving into its pocket, financed the erection of a new, strong keep at Kolossi, built foursquare of pale yellow stone and dominating the saltflats, the plains and the seashore of all the land around Limassol, they took good care as well to see to the sugar plant. They repaired the viaduct that brought river water to the fields and the stone-crushing mill. They refurbished the vast, vaulted white factory and made watertight the warehouses where the sugar cones stood in their chests. They also built new hospices, because powerful men often came to Cyprus as guests of the Order, and they had a small hospital and a good armoury and, below the new castle, vaulted cellars to hold supplies for a siege. In their time, they had suffered a siege or two in the old castle from the Genoese or the Mamelukes, but had never been taken. In their time, there had occurred only events of minor mismanagement: a few killings, an over-indulgence in wine (they made it, after all) and, of course, the occasional girl from the village. Quite often, the girl from the village. But never a courtesan imported with the knowledge of the Grand Commander (now absent) and welcomed, in his bluff innocence, by Brother William, the castle’s Lieutenant.

The guest house was not palatial, though sufficient for the lady Primaflora and her maid, the nun and the two serving girls who attended her from the monastery of Ayios Nikolaos six miles away. An honoured attendant of Carlotta, by the grace of God Queen of
Jerusalem, Cyprus and Armenia did, however, deserve better. Brother William was happy, therefore, to have the lady Primaflora and Sister Eudocia join himself and his twenty brethren frequently in the painted room adjoining the kitchen; and walk in their garden when the late autumn rain sometimes allowed, and play her lute, and take wine and chat when they sat indoors nodding on chilly evenings. From time to time she took part in their devotional processions and knelt with simple piety before the altar of St Eustathios, although not quite as often as they did.

The rest of the time, the brethren tended to be in the warehouse, or the office, or shouting at somebody in the factory, because it was the busiest time of the year; the time when the sugar cones from the Order’s Kolossi estates were weighed, counted, and placed into chests, each of which must be wrapped in canvas and roped, ready to deliver on shipboard. Eight hundred quintals of sugar, reserving fourteen for the use of the Commander.

Lieutenant William de Combort, a middle-aged, active man with a vigilant eye and a few worthy scars, was the youngest of all the Knights at Kolossi; which did not mean he was young. Cyprus was not far from the Convent of Rhodes with its army. Between waves of war fever, when Sultan Mehmet emerged beating drums from the Bosphorus, Kolossi tended to harbour those Knights who were best suited to crop-growing, building and desk-work. You could not say, of course, that peace reigned in Cyprus itself, what with the Mamelukes and the Genoese and the developing conflict between the unfortunate Lusignan siblings, culminating in the return two years before of the Bastard James with his conquering Egyptian army. Recently, the Hospitallers had preferred to appoint as lieutenant a man who could take a military decision if need be, and know when to send for some help.

So far, he had not had to do so. Whenever southern Cyprus changed hands, the Order’s practice was the same. It made a strong representation, demanding that the leaders and officers of the Commanderie should be allowed to conduct their affairs without let or damage, in return for which it promised the same obedience it had shown to the previous ruler. It worked rather well every time. King Zacco had been delighted to agree, and so had the Sultan of Cairo. On Cyprus, the brethren came and went between Kolossi and Rhodes and, on occasion, up to Nicosia and even Kyrenia under safe conduct. In the south, King Zacco knew they were spies, and was well able to keep track of them. In the north, Queen Carlotta used them as messengers and, occasionally, to relay misleading information which her brother immediately discounted. On Rhodes, the Grand Master knew perfectly well that if he let them overstep the mark in Cyprus, he would lose all the money they sent him. The situation was not therefore ideal, but so long as
the Knights made more money than trouble, no one wished to upset them.