Race of Scorpions (69 page)

When the summons came from the Palace, she took care to dress neither as a lady of pleasure nor a noblewoman. A courtesan was a woman of gifts who attached herself to a great man, and expected to be displayed as a badge of his wealth. Marietta of Patras had come from the Morea in the train of Helen Paleologa, wife of John, King of Cyprus. Whether she came to Cyprus a virgin was unknown. What was patent was the King’s installation of her as his mistress, his delight in Zacco her son, and his habit of avoiding the febrile company of Carlotta, his legitimate daughter by Helen. Marietta of Patras was a woman of birth, honoured as a dead monarch’s permanent mistress. In status, she ranked as far above Primaflora as Primaflora above a public prostitute. Otherwise Helen, Carlotta’s mother, would never, of course, have felt impelled to bite off her nose.

In the dying heat of the day, Cropnose gave audience to Primaflora on her balcony. Muslin fell between arches which overlooked a garden of palms and fountains and citrus trees. Vines shaded it, and pots of brilliant flowers had been placed on the balustrade. At one end there stood a stand made of gold, upon which slept a red and blue bird, its chain hanging. Above, a smaller bird sang in a cage. A woman fingered a lute, and there were two others seated on cushions, one reading. A page behind the only fully-framed chair moved a long-shafted fan over his mistress’s head.

Because of the heat, the King’s mother wore none of her noses, but a Syrian half-veil, light as a kerchief. An embroidered cloth concealing her hair was bound with a complex gold fillet, and her robe was of Caspian silk woven in Florence. Clasped on her lap, her fingers were rose-tipped and heavily ringed. The upper part of her face was exquisitely painted, and her perfumes were slight, and varied, and seemly. Primaflora, who wore no scent at all, crossed her unadorned wrists and sank to the ground. After a considerable
space, the woman above her said, ‘You may sit.’ A low stool had appeared. Primaflora rose and bestowed herself naturally, so that her skirts fell with grace. The King’s mother said, ‘So. You are old for the boy.’

‘Niccolò, my lady?’ said Primaflora. ‘He is old enough to lead armies.’

‘He is young enough to inflame my son. It is your practice to come between lovers?’

Too well-informed to pretend shock, Primaflora evinced instead a form of gentle regret tinged with reproach. ‘Gracious lady, I knew nothing of that. Before we ever reached Cyprus, Niccolò had demonstrated where his desire lay.’

‘A year ago,’ said the woman. ‘He had not met the King then. On my advice, the King sent you off. What makes you so bold as to come back?’

Primaflora bit her lip without disturbing the paint. She said, ‘Knowing nothing of this, how can I answer? The parting was hard. You know that Ser Niccolò, to end it, came to fetch me. Was I to spurn him? My feelings for him were – are – fondly engaged.’

‘Are they?’ said the asthmatic voice with amusement. ‘That is dangerous, lady, for one of your calling. And marriage, I should have thought, is a false step you must have been well warned against. With such as you as his wife, how can a man prosper in public life, and earn the gold that you need? How can you leave, should his fortunes alter?’

Primaflora looked down.

‘Well?’ said the woman. ‘Bashful? Hardly. He has expectations you thought worth the venture? You made marriage the price of your body? He made marriage the price of his body?’

Primaflora shook her head and then spread her hands in a sudden gesture of confusion. ‘All I know is that he would not have left Rhodes without marriage. He had prospects, but for his friends’ sake, I shall not be endowed with more than enough for my needs. But his passion runs deep; and …’ She hesitated again.

‘What?’ said the woman, still entertained.

‘I would give him sons,’ said Primaflora.

‘Ha!’ said Marietta of Patras, ‘I thought there was something of the brood mare about you. You have some already, no doubt, being discreetly raised by their fathers?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Speak up! And daughters, as well?’

Then she looked up. ‘No. Only sons. A man such as Niccolò can find himself lonely. I would give him companions for the years to come. I would stay with him and rear them.’

‘It is true,’ said the old harridan, whining, ‘that presently your looks will leave you, and if you have amassed no property, no wise
investments, you must plan for your future. But I have to tell you that a man such as Niccolò needs sons less than he needs marriage, and needs a woman at present not at all. What may suit you would be folly for him. Get back to Rhodes.’

Primaflora stood up. She said, ‘I am married.’

‘That is soon cured,’ the woman said. ‘With a hatchet. It is your choice.’

So all she had heard of this woman was true. Primaflora remained standing still, although she knew she had blanched. She said steadily, ‘You would lose your commander. The King would lose his friend. I know Niccolò.’

‘And I know Zacco,’ the King’s mother said. ‘Do you think your Niccolò would ever know how you died? Make some excuse and go back to Rhodes. Once you are there, have your death proclaimed. It will be more convenient, I promise you, than the alternative.’

The woman’s eyes over her veil were black as gun-tubes. Primaflora had confronted jealous women before; angry women; threatening women; but none with the power of this one. She said, ‘Parted like that, what good would he be? What good would I be?’ Then, under the steady stare of the eyes, she said with sudden despair, ‘I would share him.’

‘How kind,’ said the woman. She laughed, and the veil blew out like a flag. ‘And you think the King would accept that?’

‘I don’t know the King,’ said Primaflora in a thin voice. She had stopped her tears with the heel of her hand, and face-paint smeared it.

The King’s mother snapped her fingers. ‘A kerchief. To see you now, who would want you? Go to Rhodes.’

Primflora took the kerchief and drew it over her cheeks and then held it taut, staring at the damp blotches. She said, ‘I see you want me to go, for the King’s sake. For Niccolò’s sake, would you let the King arbitrate?’

The cloth blew reflectively, and again. The King’s mother said, ‘You think you can persuade the lion that he is not hungry?’

‘No,’ said Primaflora. She did not try, this time, to keep her voice steady. ‘But the quality of any man’s service depends on his wellbeing. My death, my banishment would deprive the King of contentment as well as my husband. And sooner or later, another would come in my place.’

Above their heads, the fan brushed the air; the coloured bird woke and stretched one indolent leg; the caged bird, which had been silent, suddenly launched into a piercing, rattling trill. Marietta of Patras turned her head, her breath whistling, and silent hands bore off the cage. The King’s mother said, ‘You are singularly mature for this boy, but I would not have him distressed before Famagusta is won. Very well. Stay in Nicosia and hold
yourself ready. When he returns, I shall ask the King to receive you. Perhaps you will accept his dismissal. Indeed, my woman, you will have no other choice.’

The northern mountains were cool, and the King protracted his stay, taking up residence in St Hilarion, the summer palace of the Lusignans, in the airy apartments of the absent Carlotta and Luis her consort. Long ago, the broad tactics for the next and final stage of this war had been decided; all that remained were a host of small decisions and, of course, the normal government of his kingdom. During this brief interregnum, it pleased Zacco to call Nicholas to St Hilarion for disputatious council meetings which occasionally ended in concord. Problems were more often solved when, after a day of hard, heated riding, the King repaired with his shrewdest advisers to the cool belvedere suspended over the castle’s north precipice, with its stupendous view to the sea, and the mountains of Asia beyond. Then, with men of Naples and Sicily like Rizzo di Marino, or Conella Morabit; or with the excellent Bailie of Karpass, or the Venetian commander Pesaro, Nicholas could share the moulding of the King’s mind.

At the end of such evenings he found his own bed alone, walking through blackened courts where once Saracen climbers had run with fire among the poisoned and the dying. He had not forgotten. But now, with the campaign against Famagusta looming over him, and the palace full of the wild exhilaration of a conquering army, Nicholas was too occupied to be haunted by anything of the past.

Every day, he passed between the cliff-top fort and the captured castle at its foot, clearing the way not just for the King’s casual occupation, but to repair the defences of Kyrenia against the corsair, or Carlotta, or the Turk. More importantly, and as often as he could, he rode to Pesaro’s citadel west of Famagusta. The guns, under John’s supervision, were already on their way there, and the sutlers with the siege engines. Soon, the full army would move. Twice, he got to Nicosia and could hardly respond to the ardour he found in Primaflora. It was then, too, that he found that her meeting with the King’s mother was over – happily, as she told him, smiling; although her welcome would not be complete until the King himself left St Hilarion and sent for her. It seemed satisfactory. He would like to have had Cropnose’s version, but their paths didn’t cross, and there was no reason, meantime, why he should seek the King’s mother.

In any case, he was busy. If he felt, sometimes, that he had heard too little of that interview of Primaflora’s, and that there was something of desperation now in her love-making, he didn’t pursue it for once; and even the matter of Katelina remained only as an anxiety held well in check. The Levant was in arms: there was
danger in every voyage, and no way of telling how a half-Portuguese youth or a Flemish woman would contrive safely to make their way home. From his days as a courier, Nicholas had many sources of information, and had asked them all to report. Venice and Ancona, Naples and Sicily, Florence and Bruges would watch and listen and notify him in due course of their passage, as well as of other things. His Western network for other news was wider even than that, not to mention the other more extravagant system he had discussed with no one except, of course, Loppe. But, of course, there had not been time yet for anyone to report on Katelina, even had shipping been normal. Venice had placed an embargo on Bosphorus trade and was hesitant even over her Alexandria fleet. The Order would keep its vessels for safety at Rhodes. Florence would also be circumspect. It affected his own supplies, as well as the carriage of news, and forced him to make secondary plans, among other things, for the sale of his new sugar crop. But planning was what he liked, and he had contingency plans, too, for whatever news he had in the end of Katelina, good or bad. He had, now, friends in many places, or people who owed him a favour.

He worked through his programme meticulously yet with the flamboyance that entranced Zacco, and invigorated even the sluggish. He somehow managed to pound down to Kouklia on Chennaa, half by night and half by blazing day, and crossing the island was able to see for himself that it had been a more settled and prosperous year. Smitten by war, the plains of Kyrenia were barren, and the sponge-divers of the Karpass had made barely a living. But cistern-drenched wheat and barley had burst yellow over the plain of the Messaoria, and the sickles twinkled and chimed as, booted and belled, harvesters strode to their work among serpents.

The pods of the carob trees dangled, black and leaking rank gum, ripe for cropping. There were pomegranates in baskets and gourds drying on roof-tops. In every village, it seemed, a donkey circled its trough of crushed olives, and the press thudded down, helped by many brown arms, as the mash yielded its oozings through wicker. Where the scent of orange had deadened the senses in March, the resinous odour of olives weighed down the humid, hot air of this journey. Instead of flower-infused silence, the air was filled with the clamour of autumn: the cries, the chaffing, the folksongs, the team-songs of the villages; the chinking of blades; the rumble of flint-studded boards driven over the threshing-ground. The objecting bray of working donkeys. The shuddering tramp of the oxen spinning the Persian wheels set over every deep well, so that the jars came up, roped with pomegranate wood withies, and tossed their icy water into the stone channels that fed the fields and the housewife’s wood buckets. Vines and almonds, lemons and oranges, pomegranates and sugar. In the fields around Kouklia
and Akhelia his second crop of cane was strong and healthy and promising; the men in good heart; Loppe full of plans. For a moment Nicholas, too, saw the future as something splendid and bright; a fertile island, well run and blooming, and owing nothing to all the nations that warred round about it. Then he stopped himself and Loppe and said, ‘I am glad. This is what we all wanted. But we are not alone on this island. And of all the lands of the world, this is a place armies covet.’

‘This and your land,’ Loppe had added, after a silence.

‘Bruges?’ he had surmised solemnly after a moment.

‘I was thinking of Simon’s island,’ had said Loppe. ‘The sugar ships should be due in November. Will Famagusta have fallen by then?’

And Nicholas had said, ‘More to the point, will the Turkish fleet have gone back to Gallipoli by then? It doesn’t matter. We’ll get the sugar out somehow. Then our Syrian friend might like a short visit home. Is that why you asked?’

‘You know as well as I do,’ said Loppe, ‘that when Famagusta surrenders, this island will split into flame like a fireball. Nor will it be between brother and sister.’

‘I can stop it,’ said Nicholas.

‘With a cataract that will flood them?’ said Loppe. ‘The Venetians have bested you once already at least.’

‘Ah,’ said Nicholas. ‘But it’s the last time that counts. I agree, the taking of Famagusta will be the signal for a great deal of treachery. But if all goes well, James might end up King of Jerusalem again. Think of all those Syrian cane fields.’

‘You’re talking rubbish,’ said Loppe. ‘That will never happen.’

‘Of course it will never happen,’ Nicholas said. ‘But a lot of other things might. There’s no sense in letting things become dull.’