Race of Scorpions

  ‘It’s a damned pity,’ said John, ‘that you weren’t called Stephen. It would’ve given us another month to play with at least. So what?’

  ‘So three things,’ Nicholas said. ’empty Kyrenia and Salines and Paphos and double the men on those trenches. Establish as heavy a bombardment as the cannon will stand against the walls and the guns by the walls. And let’s get rid of the powder. It’s bound to be in the fort, and that overlooks the harbour. Mick Crackbene is there sitting outside that harbour with the Doria and at least one galley at his disposal. So why not increase his artillery, and give him all the fire-missiles he can carry. Better still, get him to try and slip a man in through the sea-gate. A single explosion would silence their guns. Then we take by assault when the ditch is done. Or perhaps, if they’re starved and weary of waiting, by then the people will force Lomellini to a surrender.’ He stopped. ‘What else can you think of?’

  ‘Broadly the same,’ John le Grant said. ‘I’ve changed my mind, too, about something else. Tell the King. If you leave it till later he won’t forgive you, or maybe even believe you, if you have to expend soldiers on something he doesn’t think necessary.’

  Nicholas grunted.

  John le Grant said, ‘You don’t want to, but you’re better at it than most. In this game, every employer’s an eccentric. Tobie nurses a dream of spending his life in the field with Urbino, but he’d find he’s unpredictable too. He’s better off with you. At least you’re unpredictable in a more interesting way.’

  ‘And that’s a damned lie,’ Nicholas said. ‘You knew what I was going to say throughout this entire conversation.’

  ‘And that was what was interesting,’ John le Grant said. ‘You said only what I’d expect you to say. So what else is happening?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Nicholas said. ‘Maybe nothing at all. Come on. You’re right. We ought to tell the whole story to Zacco.’

  Zacco was told and threw himself, burning with zeal, into the new plans. The extra sappers were in place in a week, and the big hooped bombards and mortars, repositioned, were firing their three-hundred pounders as frequently as bombards were ever able to do, with a hundred balls beside each to do it with. Neither their range nor their alignment being of more than average accuracy, the damage they did was haphazard but promising. The medium bombards and basilisks, made by John in his wisdom with trunnions, now showed the virtues of his new two-wheeled carriages, which made them easy to move and regroup whatever the weather. They had powder enough – sixteen tons of it. In the hinterland, under cover, three new fighting-towers and several new engines were taking shape while Mick Crackbene, from his round ship, perfected his trajectories against the stout keep with its four corner towers that housed, they suspected, the city’s great store of powder.

  They had all grown used to the sounds of the camp: the low open-air roar of many voices, the lowing of cattle, the chiming of harness and smith-work, the continual creak of John’s water-pumps; the intermittent discharge of either cannon or handguns. Now there was an unremitting and thunderous noise of explosions punctuated by clanging and shouting, and the watchful discharge of small arms in a series of smoky thuds from the city walls. Napoleone Lomellini had discovered the absence of the Jew, and had ceased pretence, at least, of possessing no powder.

  Three tiring and deafening weeks passed with no obvious change. Once, the King sent a herald with banner, trumpet and tabard, to invite the captain of Famagusta to surrender. The captain replied that the city was well off, sound, and had no intention of relinquishing its hard-won rights to Monseigneur the Bastard who, as was well known, had usurped the legitimate claims of the true Queen, Carlotta. He added that any further approach would be greeted by gunfire. Ten days after the first herald, the King sent another man in, of slightly less seniority, to repeat the royal offer. The Genoese shot him.

  About then, word came from Salines, three hours away, to inform Nicholas that the Venetian sugar ship had reached Alexandria and would be leaving soon for Episkopi to pick up the combined Cypriot cargo. Nicholas went to the King and asked leave to absent himself for four days. Zacco gave it, impatiently. That day, the skies had clouded and, for the first time, the weather was cooler. Soon, it would take the better part of two days to pass between Famagusta and Kouklia. Loppe had made the awkward trip once since the siege began. Otherwise they communicated through their agent at Salines. But for the excellence of Loppe and his sugar-master, it would not have been very satisfactory.

  On the way this time it rained, but despite his dragging cloak and the glum faces of the small train he took with him, Nicholas made the journey in a condition of numbness that amounted almost to happiness. The country was silent. That is, there was work going on everywhere, but the noise of it was dispersed in the mild cloudy air, no longer staring blue, with the brassy sun striking down on dry earth. The villages were noisy with smiths and coopers and loom-work, dicing and singing, but the noise was contained, and cheerful, and natural. Nowadays, quite a few recognised him, and seemed to bear him no grudges. He stayed the night at Salines, and arrived at noon next day at Kouklia. Only on the last part of his journey had he put his mind to questions of waxed cloth and canvas, cubic capacity and rates of exchange.

  It was Advent again. It struck him then how long a year it had been. How last year the crop had meant nothing to him at all; how, without understanding, he had walked about the harbour and warehouses of Episkopi, and the misuse of the Order’s cargo of sugar had been simply a matter noted and used as a playing-counter. Now, arriving at his own manor of Kouklia, he recognised as if he had been bred to it the sound and smell and look of each component; each piece of equipment. At Stavros, the new grinding mill had been built. It was empty now, and so was the echoing hall of the old, its oxen safely stabled. In the yard, newly muddy, planks ran between vats, some empty and scoured, some still steaming. Over each, now, a wooden shelter was in place, already bleached by the sun. In the refining sheds, the last of the cones stood, cooling and whitening, and dripping their slow, golden molasses into their jars.

  There were not so many men about now. Some had gone back to their villages; some to the pottery; some to begin the maintenance tasks that would take place, at the yard or by the hearth, all through the winter. The rest were employed at present between Stavros and Episkopi, loading and transporting the casks to the warehouses to await the arrival of the all-important galley which was to take them to Venice. Later, he would have to go there. But first, Nicholas walked uphill back to the manor with Loppe, and in the office there read the ledgers and saw what had been done. Then he said, ‘Loppe, it’s a miracle. You’ve doubled it.’

  Loppe smiled. Throughout the tour, his bearing had been one of well-mannered gravity. It was not perhaps natural but it had served him well, Nicholas knew, from the beginning. Cyprus society did not readily recognise the management skills of a negro. Loppe knew better, of course, than to expect to enter any nobleman’s house as a friend.

  He never seemed to let it trouble him. But now, in private with Nicholas, Loppe said, ‘What’s this, a miracle? This is the result of my experience and your money and a touch of genius that follows me whatever I do. If you’d been quicker over the refining equipment –’

  It was an old story, and Nicholas did no more than pull a molasses-type face. Left under-equipped by the Martini, it had taken him too long to realise that copper vats were not now to be had; that all the pottery stores had somehow been requisitioned; that skilled men had been seduced away to serve elsewhere. Someone cleverer or luckier than he was had noticed that the way to make money wasn’t this way, risking the mice and the drought and the locusts, managing the men and the beasts and all the complexity of arrangements that ended here, in the yard, with crushed cane and coarse syrup fit for refining. Someone had noticed that the easy, clean way was simply to buy the end product and refine. He said, ‘How much do we have to send as unrefined sugar?’

  And Loppe said, ‘A quarter. We lose the profit of ha
lf the increased production. It will be better next year. I have three vats on the way from Damascus.’

  ‘And this one firm are refining?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘There are others, but their rates are far higher. These are moderate. It is a question,’ Loppe said, ‘whether it would not be cheaper to let them do all the refining. You could sell the vats, let the men go; run down the pottery. All that would offset their charges.’

  ‘For one year,’ Nicholas said. ‘After that, they could charge what they pleased. And what would all these people do? Not praise Zacco, at any rate. The Corner are still refining?’

  ‘They are in the same difficulty,’ Loppe said. ‘You will see them at Episkopi. What is happening at Famagusta?’

  He deserved an answer, and Nicholas gave it. He supposed his reserve was apparent. John le Grant had viewed him, it was obvious, as a child enjoying rough play, and brought up suddenly short by reality. He had meant to point out to John le Grant that they had both engaged in extremely rough play at Trebizond, and if he chose to carry out another war contract, he was not doing it blindfold. But it was true that he had forgotten, in the turmoil of Famagusta and Sigouri and the turbulent wake of the Bastard, that there was another régime which lay entirely under his hand, orderly, productive and satisfying to heart and head. He had felt the same, momentarily, stepping into the dyeyard at Nicosia, but put it down to a foolish nostalgia. Or perhaps he was quite mistaken, and what his nature called for was both. At the moment, he would have given quite a lot to stay here, and never return to the other cities again. Even though his wife Primaflora was there and it was four weeks since he had touched her.

  This train of thought led to another. He finished his story and said, ‘I can’t stay long. I’d better go down to Episkopi. Then I’ll come back and we’ll talk. When this ship has sailed, can you come to Famagusta? Will it run well enough in your absence?’

  ‘How long an absence?’ said Loppe. ‘Perhaps the siege is over. Perhaps the magazine has blown up already.’

  ‘But that’s why I want you there,’ Nicholas said. ‘Not for the siege; but what’s going to happen after it.’

  For the rest of the time, they spoke only of business. At Episkopi, he found one of the Martini brothers down by the warehouses. He had met him before, since his second coming from Rhodes, and on both occasions the Venetian was civil, if not effusive. Nicholas supposed honour was partially satisfied. The Martini had helped free the Flemish lady from Zacco. And Nicholas, as was now known, had prevented the acquisition by Madeira of the best vine and cane cuttings in Europe. That of course had not been his prime reason for going to Rhodes. Indeed, he had no proof, until he reached Rhodes that Katelina had taken cuttings with her. But no one but himself happened to know it.

  The Order, when he came across its several agents down by the waterside, was civil for no doubt the same reasons. Zacco, as King of all Cyprus, would have the Venetian fleet on his side. So the Knights would have orders to smile on him; forgetting any small item such as the kidnapping of their ship and their cargo. Nicholas, in the course of these encounters, failed to meet John of Kinloch whose regard for him, he rather feared, would be unaltered.

  His last visit was to fulfil an invitation from Marco Corner to take supper with him at his house. It had happened on the last occasion as well, for Venice was delighted with Niccolò vander Poele, who had destroyed the plants and was freeing Cyprus, God be good, of the Genoese. Even his marriage to Primaflora in some way had charmed them although, of course, there had been no opportunity for her to visit either Episkopi or Kouklia.

  This time, Loredano was there, the perfect Venetian; but not the perfect Venetian princesses. It was a relief; although again, naturally, the subject of Katelina van Borselen arose, and he had to explain, again, that he had seen her last in good health leaving Rhodes. ‘A charming guest,’ returned Marco Corner, lifting his bulk from a settle and signing a servant to light the small brazier. ‘Although her captivity chafed her and her disappearance, as the lord King has found cause to remind me, has deprived him of her considerable ransom. Nevertheless, one would not have wished her to be miserable. The countryside troubled her. Fiorenza observed it. She had a great fear of insects.’

  ‘The lady Fiorenza is sensitive to the feelings of others,’ Nicholas said. ‘I trust she and her sisters are well?’

  ‘Of course. Of course,’ said Marco Corner. ‘You will see them in Venice. Surely, when the King is in possession, you will allow yourself a small trip to Venice? It would be wise, in any case, to supervise this vile matter of refineries. You are suffering too? I am told they have touched pawning as well. The Order and Carlotta have cause to know it. You will have to look to your Bank.’

  ‘My Bank,’ Nicholas said, ‘is as well protected as I am.’

  Slithering north in the rain the next day, he thought he ought to be commended for speaking the truth, for what it was worth, which was little.

  He returned to find the Cross of St George still flapping from the walls of Famagusta and nothing obviously changed except the weather, which would, of course, put out the slow-matches and the fire-missiles and make it increasingly unlikely that the tower of Famagusta was going to prove combustible. On his way to his tent, he fell in with a captain who told him gloomily that three men had individually been sent in to find and blow up the magazine, and all had presumably died. Meanwhile, the firing from the walls was undiminished, and the last stages of trenching had proved extremely costly. The city would now, in addition, possess some water. He then added the news Nicholas had least wanted to hear. The King had gone back to Nicosia, taking his whole Council with him.

  In the most artistic way, Nicholas swore. The man grinned. ‘What have you to worry about? He sent a message for you. It’s in your tent.’

  There proved, when he got there, to be two messages. The first, from the King, summoned him forthwith to Nicosia. The other, from Philip Pesaro, asked that no matter what time he arrived, he should ride on immediately to Sigouri.

  The Château Franc at Sigouri was ten miles away. It was dusk, it was wet, and Nicholas had been riding all day. He sent for Astorre, and there appeared instead Thomas, who reported smartly that Captain Astorre had been called to Nicosia, and Master Tobie and Messer le Grant with him. He answered, when pressed, that he didn’t know why, but it was understood that the young fellow was mad, that is, Monseigneur the King was in one of his fits of impatience. The rumour was that they were to give up the siege and have their contracts revoked before Christmas.

  Nicholas said, ‘Don’t believe it. All we need is a bit of good action. Wait till I get back from Sigouri.’

  ‘They say,’ said Thomas, ‘that you’re not coming back. That the King’ll keep you beside him at the Palace.’

  ‘And that’ll be nice and dry and warm for us both. I can see how the thinking is going. Well, tell them I’ll be back whether the King wants me or not. We said we’d take this damned city, and we’re going to.’

  Thomas didn’t look immediately cheered, but might relay some of that, Nicholas thought, where it would help matters. He felt wet and cold and touched with foreboding. He sent for one man and Chennaa, swallowed some cold meat and wine and, wrapping himself in a dry cloak, went and mounted the camel, crooning love-talk as she rose to her feet and took up her soft, swaying gait. She was a racing-camel. Although booted and plastered with mud and out of temper with herself and with him, she deposited him at the drawbridge of Sigouri in just over an hour. Pesaro met him in the yard.

  Philip Pesaro was a good fighting man in a post that controlled all north-east Cyprus from Famagusta to the end of the Karpass. He took Nicholas into his office, shut the door and spoke as soon as the servants had gone. ‘I’ve got a report from inside Famagusta. Their food is virtually finished. There are only two thousand still alive in the city, and the survivors are dying off daily. But Lomellini and his men will not give up. They will starve to the end, because they believe rescue is coming by sea.’ He
paused and said, ‘The King is not here. He has offered honourable surrender, and his envoys have been killed or turned back. The responsibility for what is happening does not lie with us. But I must report it to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. He pushed aside, untasted, the food Pesaro’s servant had given him. He said, ‘Of course, the King has not heard this latest news.’ He looked at the window and said, ‘I’ll go to Nicosia tonight.’

  Pesaro said, ‘You might as well have your night’s rest. I know what the lord King will say. It is no concern of his if the city is stubborn, and suffers. And until after your Feast, he will do nothing.’

  Nicholas stopped in the act of rising. He said, ‘What?’

  ‘The Feast of St Nicholas,’ said Philip Pesaro. ‘You had forgotten. He offered to hold it in Famagusta. Since you have failed to give him Famagusta, he proposes to celebrate it in his own capital. That is why you have to go.’ He paused, and said, ‘You won’t persuade him to do otherwise, Messer Niccolò. Don’t think that you can.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘I shall go, then. But there are some orders I should like carried out. I shall write them down and sign them. Then when this mad Feast is over, I’ll bring the King back.’

  He wrote, and Pesaro watched. At the end, the captain said, ‘I shall do it, of course. But –’

  ‘But it may make no difference,’ Nicholas said. ‘It probably won’t. And I know what you’re thinking. Every gun in Famagusta is trained on the end of that trench, and Genoese archers are among the best in the world. But in the end, we may have to save the honour of Genoa the Superb by attacking her.’

  Chapter 36

  THE FOLLOWING day was the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas. Consumed with rage and anxiety, Tobias Beventini, physician, prowled through the warm, pretty villa of the loveliest woman in Nicosia, bumping into maids carrying baskets of linen and other maids bearing pressed robes and doublets, concealing himself from the man who wanted to trim the fluff round his scalp, and using long Latin words to the other man who wanted to polish his spurs and his jewellery.