To Lie with Lions (95 page)

Tobie said, ‘Before you go. What have you done about David de Salmeton? You know he has left Famagusta?’

‘I know. I have laid a formal accusation against him: abduction with intent to murder. Filipe’s deposition will support it.’

‘De Salmeton will have escaped by that time,’ Tobie said.

‘I doubt it,’ Nicholas said. ‘After this, the Venetians will want someone to blame.’

After this
. He added, ‘Would the King see me now?’

‘He has asked,’ Tobie said.

The room was empty of spectators this time. Zacco lay still, his
hair combed, his arms loose on the sheets. His lashes, always ridiculous, laid shadows like leaves on his skin. Nicholas approached, and knelt on the step.

The King said, ‘I hear that you were prevented from coming. They knew you might have saved me. Have you brought your magic with you?’

He had forgotten Zacco might know about that. The pendulum lay in his purse. Nicholas opened it, and laid the jewel on the bed. The King did not move. ‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Show me what it says.’

He knew what it said. Neverthless he lifted the thing on its cord, and held it suspended. The King’s eyes and Tobie’s were on it. It hung without movement, because he willed his mind to stay empty. Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry. There is no magic, sire. It merely finds what is lost.’

‘A soul? A country?’ the King said. His voice, sapped of all timbre, held a shadow of its old mockery.

The jewel glinted. Of its own volition it described a small circle, and then another. The movement was soft on the skin; far from the sharp angry flaying that tore the blood from the hand.

The King said, ‘It moves. What does it say?’

Nicholas said, ‘It says that birth and death are but rearrangements. It says that nothing is born, and nothing dies. It says that there is nothing to fear.’

‘I fear nothing!’ said Zacco.

‘Then neither do we,’ Nicholas said.

Their eyes held.

After a while, Zacco said, ‘I asked you to stay. Many times. You could have given to Cyprus all the riches, the labour you lavished on Scotland. Did you love that King James so very well?’

From Zacco, dying, a spear in the side.

Nicholas said, ‘There is only one James. There is only one Zacco, and I am his to command.’

‘Then we would have you command Death to go,’ Zacco said. ‘There are great things afoot; and we are too busy to leave.’

His face convulsed. Tobie said, ‘Go.’

Next day the Queen came from Nicosia in a litter, accompanied by her household and by her mother’s sister, the lady Violante. Nicholas watched Catherine approach, small, globular, pasty, progressing towards the royal apartments, evacuated to receive her. She looked frightened. Violante, catching sight of him, turned, her eyes wide. He saw the Queen flinch at the door of the bedchamber, and hoped they had dimmed the lamps, or found a way to deaden the King’s
sensibilities as well as his pain. He had been weaker this morning, keeping his voice and his rage for his doctors.

After the Queen there came from Nicosia a stream of officials and clerks, who were silently met and dispersed by the Constable. Among these was the royal chancellor and notary, accompanied by many strong boxes. The transfer of power had begun.

Last of all, there came to Nicholas a visitor of his own: Michael Crackbene. Nicholas greeted him tersely, for he felt angry, and Crackbene was coldly defensive and probably right. Even had he been brought back at once, Nicholas would have been too late to prevent what had happened. It wasn’t Mick’s fault that de Salmeton had been forced to leave his prisoner unattended. Filipe had done what he could, and was now in safe hands in Nicosia. And Crackbene had sent Tobie to Zacco.

Crackbene said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry about Zacco. Was it the Venetians?’

Nicholas looked at him in surprise. Then he answered, ‘I think so.’

Crackbene said, ‘The King’s mother is here. She came in a covered coach, with the children.’

And that was touching, as well as surprising. Famagusta was a Venetian fortress these days, guarded by Venetian ships. All the King’s friends, all the disaffected lived in Nicosia, the capital. Famagusta was a dangerous place for the King’s mother, as it had been for the King.

Crackbene said, ‘They will ask you to stay on the island.’

‘They will ask anyone to stay, who has money and arms. I want you to go to Julius at Rhodes, and bring him back here with a ship provisioned for a voyage to Venice.’

‘The gold?’ Crackbene said.

‘Tell him to bring it, of course, if he has it; but there is little chance that he will. This is going to change everything.’

‘And you are not staying?’

‘Bring the ship,’ Nicholas said.

The following day, in the presence of the court, the King made his will:
‘Si Dieu fait sa volonté de moi, et si je meurs, je laisse ma femme, maîtresse et reine de Chypre, laquelle se trouve enceinte. Et, en outre, si elle met au monde un héritier, mon enfant aura la royaume.’
 … ‘If God hath his will of me, and if I die, I leave my wife Queen and Mistress of Cyprus: she who carries my child. And if she gives day to an heir, my child shall inherit my kingdom.’

He directed that, failing this, his heir should be chosen from his other three living children. He asked that on his death, all those
imprisoned for rising against him should be released; and all his galley-slaves freed.

Those who left the chamber were weeping. There remained, now, only the nominal doctors whose task was to make his death easy, and the priests who filled the chamber with incense, and the murmurs of intercessory prayer.

Nicholas saw him once more, in a slow procession of men who entered the room and knelt to kiss the King’s hand. He did not think that Zacco recognised him.

Late at night on Tuesday, the sixth of July, 1473, James of Lusignan died.

Earlier that evening, in a quiet rumble of wheels, a wagon set out, carrying three sleeping children back to Nicosia, escorted by the King’s personal guards. After the death, no bells were rung. Only the lights remained burning all night in the tall windows of the King’s marble palace; and in the Latin Cathedral of St Nicholas the painted glass glimmered, and the divine chant of ritual music, hoarse and low, hung on the warm scented air. In the stables, a lévrier whimpered.

Freed at last, Tobie went to the room of his partner and said, ‘I have to take you somewhere.’

Marietta of Patras was not weeping. She had been making preparations to leave: servants ran to her command, struggling with painted chests and stiff leather boxes. Dismissed, they closed the door, leaving Tobie to usher in Nicholas, as she had asked.

She had come from her son’s death-bed, but the kohl round her eyes was untouched. Only she had torn off her veil, so that they looked at the obscene crimson stump of her mutilation, and no illusion remained of the looks she once had.

She said, ‘You will, of course, forsake us at once.’

Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry, nobildonna.’ Tobie didn’t look at him.

The lady said, ‘Quite.
Pour loïauté maintenir
. If the King failed to win you, who else could? Doubtless you will also abscond with the treasure.’

There was a pause. Nicholas said, ‘Honoured lady, I know of no treasure.’

‘Indeed?’ said the King’s mother. ‘Yet my son referred to it in his will. A great treasure, gathered with pains and kept secret. But he did not say where it was.’

‘I cannot help you,’ Nicholas said.

She looked at him. ‘You think not. Well, perhaps we shall see. Come with me. I have something to show you.’

In a locked room, his hands bound, sat a man.

David de Salmeton of the Vatachino was not now, Tobie was gratified to see, the superb miniature beauty of Cairo and Cyprus: the curling dark hair was tangled; the pure jaw bruised; the long fingernails broken. His eyes, darker than Zacco’s, were sunken.

His voice, none the less, was successfully sardonic. ‘You, too! Come and join me. Now the goose is dead, all will wish to quarrel over who killed it.’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said Marietta of Patras. ‘You yourself, in your greed, have ensured that while you hunted, M. le baron did not. They may not have thought of blaming you now, but they will very soon. Especially since you are held here, and impotent.’

‘They?’ said David de Salmeton calmly. But his fingers were tight.

‘The Venetians. You killed the King, and tried to kill this merchant, they will say, out of jealousy.’

‘So why are you here?’ said the prisoner. His knuckles were torn, Tobie saw. However effeminate he liked to appear, David de Salmeton was well made, with a compact, muscular body. And yet …

The King’s mother said, ‘I am here to ask a service of this man, your rival. It is for my son, not for myself. I am going to ask Lord Beltrees to drop the charges against you, and let you leave Cyprus.’

‘The papers are already lodged,’ Nicholas said. ‘My deposition, and that of the former page-boy Filipe.’ It was the first time he had spoken since entering.

The cropnosed woman lifted her hand. In it were two folded documents. She said, ‘In such confusion, it was not very difficult to have them abstracted.’

‘I have copies,’ Nicholas said.

‘You should keep them. But I propose to destroy these.’

‘Why?’ said David de Salmeton. ‘To have me fall into some accident as soon as I leave? Assuming Ser Nicholas were simple enough to allow me to leave?’

‘That is for him to decide,’ said the woman. ‘If the Venetians cannot be made to pay for their crime, I am determined that at least they will lose their chief scapegoat. If you live, of course, you can never come to Cyprus again, and will forfeit everything here that is yours.’

‘The sugar?’ said David de Salmeton. ‘You would give Kouklia to the Banco di Niccolò?’

‘The Banco di Niccolò,’ said the woman, ‘may name its own price for any position, any property, any business it may desire on this island. But I gather that it would decline.’

The bound man laughed. ‘He knew he could never rely on you.’ The laugh caught.

‘Ah yes,’ Nicholas said. Tobie looked at him. He had spoken quite softly. His eyes, steady and sober, rested on the other man’s face. He said, ‘Tear up the papers, my lady.’

‘Why?’ It was de Salmeton’s voice, sudden and shrill.

‘For his sake,’ Nicholas said.

Chapter 45

L
ITTLE BOATS CARRYING
cherries, or cheeses, or sprats bring the world its bad news, long before the dispatch of solemn embassies. So rumours spread to the marketplace. But before even that, fast-beating pigeons and riders and swift, secret galleys make sure that the world’s leaders know what there is to know, even though they may conceal it.

Thus the news of James of Lusignan’s fate crossed the Middle Sea many weeks before the black-robed ambassadors formally presented their tidings to Pope Sixtus and the Republic of Venice, or the Knights of Rhodes and the late King’s half-sister Carlotta, or the Sultan Qayt Bey in Cairo; and long before an arrow borne by a racing dromedary reached a distant Persian battlefield and changed the fortunes of a prince.

One of the swifter ships, although not the swiftest, belonged to Nicholas de Fleury. The Banco di Niccolò conveyed its own first-hand account to the West; while behind, the body of a King was gutted, embalmed, and consigned in a funeral of little ceremony to the Cathedral of St Nicholas, Famagusta, denied even the marble sarcophagus his friends had tried to acquire. In Nicosia, the oaths of allegiance to the Daughter of Venice were taken, although the Venetian Bailie was unwilling to walk in the streets until supplied with a guard. A military parade was arranged, at which the spectators were to shout, ‘Long Live Queen Catherine!’ Queen Catherine herself clung to the safety of Famagusta, and refused to leave for the capital until her father, Marco Corner, winkled her out.

The journey to Venice was unlike any other Nicholas had undertaken in recent years. It had more in common with that long-ago voyage from Trebizond when all three, Nicholas, Tobie and Crackbene, had sailed home like this, repeating their news without respite; reminded everywhere that they were leaving behind a land open to darkness and violence.

Julius was not with them. Crackbene had beaten his ship into Rhodes to find that Julius had left the island three days before, embarked empty-handed for Venice and Germany. Anna his wife had gone with him.

‘Germany?’ Nicholas had repeated.

‘Well, someone had better be there, if you want to know what Duke Charles will do next. And the lady Anna could help; she’s a German.’ Crackbene had been in a bad temper.

They sailed into Venice on Saturday, the seventh day of August, after a voyage in which Nicholas had been uncommunicative throughout, except when he had been required to repeat, yet again, the news of Cyprus. Sometimes Tobie did it for him, experiencing always the same disbelief and despair. Approaching Venice, he found to his dismay that they were bringing evil tidings to a Republic already in mourning: their stuttering Doge, just two years in office, had died.

For themselves, Tobie did not know what to expect. He shrank from the reunion with Gelis and the child, and with Gregorio and his little family. He remembered that the nurse, that self-opinionated termagant, would be there.

Through the heat of June and July, Jodi had made Venice his playground, while his mother waited, and worked. Then Julius had come, bronzed and smooth with contentment, and brought his black-haired Anna, wed but unchanged, with her light, pointed wit and amiable manner. She played with Jodi, and spoke to Mistress Clémence of her own daughter, left in Cologne. When it was time for Julius and Anna to leave, Gelis almost shared Margot’s regret.

A little time later, a fast ship swept into the San Marco Basin by night and, dropping anchor, put ashore a man in a hurry, who went straight to the black-mantled Palace. By morning the galley had gone. On the surface, nothing had changed; but Gregorio came late from the Rialto that day and, instead of joining the family, went at once to the counting-house. Returned at length, he could only explain that the Bourse was uneasy, no one could quite say why. It was a question of waiting.