Race of Scorpions

  He had no jewellery. The last time he had felt like this was in a house in Florence, when he and Julius had been about to visit Cosimo de’ Medici and extract a commission to represent the Medici in Trebizond. That time, Nicholas had arrived late as well. Tobie made to sit in a chair and then desisted, because it was inlaid and foreign and breakable. He noticed that John le Grant avoided the furniture too. There were cushions with long, voluptuous tassels, and in the master bedroom (he had looked) the quilt was of white silk brocade.

  They had hardly ever been in this house belonging to Nicholas, and never since it received its new mistress. Tobie had previously met Primaflora on rare occasions only – during the search for Tristão and Diniz Vasquez on Rhodes; on the ambushed ship that brought them from Rhodes, and in the King’s hall at Kiti immediately after. In Rhodes he had seen a lot of her, right up to her thigh, and Nicholas was right: he was pea-green with envy.

  She was still golden, and silken, and goddess-like, and had welcomed John and Astorre and himself with a kind of free, self-possessed amusement that had seemed to make them at once her long-established friends. The house, their chamber, the food were arranged to perfection, and after the brutish clangour of Famagusta they should have been in a state of bewildered gratitude. But John, he noticed, tended to wander outside as often as he felt tempted to do; while Astorre had set up house quite candidly in the kitchens. Primaflora appeared wholly unruffled, but every now and then someone in royal livery would appear in the yard and go away again. The King was arranging a feast tomorrow for Nicholas, and Nicholas wasn’t here yet.

  Late in the afternoon, Loppe arrived, which frankly no one had expected, for Loppe was managing things at Kouklia just as Mick Crackbene was guarding the harbour at Famagusta. The surprise was mutual. Tobie explained about the Feast of St Nicholas with many and explicit adjectives, and Loppe clearly thought his exasperation well-founded while refraining, annoyingly, from any breath of criticism of the absent Nicholas. Loppe was, it appeared, expecting to join up with Nicholas on the battlefield, but on hearing the news, obtained Primaflora’s permission to stay. Being Loppe, he solved the problem of protocol by returning silently to his role of major domo, having made a small accommodation with Galiot whom, after all, he had trained. His previous incarnations seemed well known to Primaflora who had last seen him, presumably, crossing from the service of the Grand Commander Louis de Magnac to that of Nicholas with total aplomb. She had not seen Nicholas himself, Tobie learned, for five weeks.

  He arrived after supper that evening, having spent the previous night, it transpired, at Sigouri. Why it had taken him all day to travel thirty odd miles was not explained. He came directly to the parlour shared by Astorre, John and Tobie, followed by servants attempting to rid him of his wet cloak. They were immediately replaced by Loppe, whose presence he appeared to accept without question and almost without greeting, as he did theirs. On his face, with its childlike planes and arrogant nostrils and affectingly large eyes, was a distinct absence of the play of simple expressions that usually took place there. He looked tired, which he didn’t usually do. He looked – which Tobie in particular didn’t care for – uncommonly like the way he had looked more than two years before at a place called Skylolimne; and later at another place called Kerasous. Tobie looked at John, and their eyes met. Astorre, wiping peach juice from his beard, threw down his napkin and said, ‘Well, you took your time. We might have got this contract finished, but for your God-damned Feast Day. What were you thinking of?’

  ‘I wanted a good meal,’ said Nicholas.

  Primaflora appeared in the doorway behind him and by instinct, it seemed, he knew it and turned round. Or perhaps, thought Tobie, her scent had something to do with it. She said, without touching him, ‘Talk to them. Then find me when you are ready.’ Her face was smiling and apparently calm, unless you looked below the painted line of her brows. What it reflected of her husband’s face, Tobie couldn’t see.

  Then Nicholas said, ‘No. Please join us. And Loppe. I suppose I have to go to the King.’

  ‘He can wait,’ Primaflora said; and crossing the room, held the great chair by the brazier until Nicholas walked over and dropped into it. Then, restraining Loppe with a light hand, she fetched wine and a platter for Nicholas, and poured for them all before she sat down herself.

  Nicholas said, ‘The Feast Day wasn’t my idea. I want it over as quickly as possible.’

  ‘There is Mass tomorrow,’ said Primaflora. ‘Then a great feast at the Palace. All the Haute Cour will be there. The King has invited every great nobleman, every high officer of the church and the Knights of the Order from Kolossi. The Venetians, the merchants will be present, and even Sor de Naves and the abbot of Bellapaïs from Kyrenia. Only the Mamelukes will be absent. You couldn’t leave in less than two days. It is a mark of the King’s personal love and regard.’

  Astorre snorted. ‘He’s bored.’

  ‘I told you,’ Nicholas said, ‘to entertain him while I was away. Do your tricks. Turn somersaults and climb up the underside of a ladder with your armour on. Well, it’s too late now, so let’s make the best of it. I have something I want the King to agree to. There might be a better chance now than most times.’

  ‘You want to leave?’ said John le Grant. It was the first time he had spoken. Very often John le Grant disconcerted Tobie. With Julius, he had always felt more comfortable.

  Nicholas said briefly, ‘Something else.’

  Captain Astorre had been paying small attention. He said, ‘And anyway, what did Pesaro want at Sigouri? He said he’d sent for you.’

  ‘He was concerned,’ Nicholas said. ‘He says the whole army is unsettled because it’s known that Famagusta will never give up while it expects a relieving ship to arrive. He says that if the King persists in staying away, there will be mutiny if not now, then when the weather gets wetter and colder. No army expects to keep the field through the winter.’

  John le Grant said, ‘And so what’s his suggestion?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s what I want to put to Zacco. This is December, when truces are common. I want Zacco to invite four leading citizens from Famagusta to share the Feast of the Nativity with him, and to allow food and wine to be sent into the city between then and Epiphany. And during that time, I want those four Genoese to see for themselves, beyond all possible doubt, that there is no question of rescue arriving. Then, I hope and believe, they will surrender.’

  ‘Amid casks of wine and barrels of cheeses?’ said Astorre, scowling.

  ‘The food would stop on the sixth day of January. I don’t think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that anyone in Famagusta will have the strength of purpose left to starve to death after that.’

  Tobie said nothing nor, after a glance, did John le Grant. It was Primaflora who said, ‘Forgive me. This is not women’s business. But will starvation not bring surrender without the King being asked to make such concessions? They must be suffering now.’

  And Nicholas looked at her with his childish, bovine-eyed face and said, ‘You would think so, but no. They have been judicious in storage and, besides, many have died. They could hold out until spring. The King must agree, and then I will give him Famagusta.’

  Soon after that, when the rest had retired, Nicholas went alone to the Palace for his long-deferred interview. He found Zacco lightly intoxicated, and playing dice for high stakes among a circle of friends. He was greeted, berated and kept many hours, drinking very much more than he wanted. At no time did the King mention the progress of the war, and it was hardly the place or time to open the subject. At no time, either, did Zacco either seek to be alone with him or utter a word of reproach about his failure with Famagusta.

  They parted eventually on the same curious, jovial note, and Nicholas returned to his villa. The torchlit streets, as he passed through them, were not given up as usual to the cats and the late-night lovers or revellers but were occupied by knots of busy, muttering men, putting up ladders and hoardings,
clearing mud, hanging carpets for tomorrow’s Festival which was for St Nicholas and himself, not for the burghers of Bruges.

  At home, he simply said to Primaflora, ‘It was a waste of time. He had drunk too much. So have I.’

  They were alone in their chamber, but she was still fully dressed. She said smiling, ‘We shall see. Talk to me.’

  He found he was too tired to unbutton his doublet. She came to help him, kissing him lightly and absently on the face, the neck, the hands as she unfastened it, and his belt, and the ties of his shirt. She said, ‘I have your dress prepared for tomorrow. You must look splendid.’

  ‘And you?’ he said. ‘Crimson satin and gold? Pearls and ermine?’

  She smiled, her eyes on what she was doing. ‘No. A gown you will recognise, but fine enough. It seemed unwise, this time, to wear anything of Carlotta’s.’

  He stopped her hands. ‘But you have money?’

  She looked up, still smiling. ‘You left me a fortune. I didn’t need it. My own robe, and your jewels. Besides, the King has sent mantles. One in velvet for you, with the badge of your Order. One of tissue for me. Master Tobie’s robes and the dress of your engineer and your captain have presented a much greater challenge.’

  ‘We’re all invited?’ Nicholas said. He sat down and laid hands, with misplaced confidence, on his boots.

  ‘Even to Bartolomeo from the dyeyard, and his brother. And Nicholas –’

  He heard her voice flatten and left his boots alone. He said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Only some sad news from Bartolomeo,’ she said. ‘His partner from Constantinople has come. You know the Sultan has been imprisoning the Venetians and worse? This Messer Girolamo has escaped from Constantinople, with terrible news about Trebizond.’

  There only remained one kind of news that could be terrible. Nicholas said, ‘The Sultan has broken his word? They have killed the Emperor-in-exile?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Her eyes were oval, and pain-filled and perfect. She had a classical nose with curled pink pads like a kitten’s; like Tobie’s. A short, deep channel introduced the fruit of her lips. She said, ‘Despite the surrender, the amnesty, the promises. They’ve killed David Comnenos and his children.’

  ‘Long live the lord Sultan’ said Nicholas. ‘All of them?’

  ‘There were seven sons and one unmarried daughter,’ she said.

  ‘I know how many there were. All of them?’ he repeated.

  ‘The girl Anna is … She stays where she was placed. The youngest son was kept alive, to be reared as a Muslim.’

  ‘He would be nearly four,’ Nicholas said. ‘And the six other sons, then, are dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You don’t ask me why?’

  ‘I am just about to. Why?’ Nicholas said.

  ‘It happened, he says, because of a prince of the Turcomans called Uzum Hasan whose wife was a princess of Trebizond. This lady, the Turcoman’s wife, sent a private message to Adrianople, inviting a son of the Emperor to join her. She was the exiled Emperor’s niece: it was possibly harmless. But the letter was intercepted by Amiroutzes the Emperor’s Chancellor, who deduced that the prince Uzum Hasan wished to rear a child of the blood to lead armies one day against Trebizond. He told the Sultan. The Imperial family were thrown into prison …’

  ‘We knew that much,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘… and in the Sultan’s present mood, he has evidently thought them now better dead. I am sorry,’ said Primaflora. ‘It was not until I saw how Messer Bartolomeo’s news was received by your friends that I realised its importance for you.’ She paused. ‘You were fond of the Emperor?’

  Nicholas said, ‘I was in Trebizond, as I am here, with an army. The Turk proved stronger. One can feel responsibility without feeling love, otherwise the world would be uninhabited. My face feels green.’

  Primaflora sat back on her heels. She said, ‘If your stomach ails you, blame Zacco. Perhaps you should go and deal with it. Shall I help you?’

  ‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m good at this. So long as you don’t arrange a leopard-hunt afterwards. Will you wait? In the hope that there’s something worth waiting for?’

  But in the end when he went back she was asleep, and he didn’t wake her because there were few enough hours before dawn, and he had to get through a day – a series of days – that would put to the test the most dangerous set of manoeuvres he had ever conducted. Nicholas Thaumaturgas, worker of miracles. In any case the blame, as she had said, was most certainly Zacco’s.

  Of the company of Niccolò, the only truly happy person next day was Captain Astorre, who relished parades and believed in dressing up for them. The weather, though chillier than in Famagusta, was dry and even intermittently sunny. The captain assembled with his fellows in the Dominican monastery next to the Palace, watching bright-eyed as the notables arrived for the procession that would march eastwards from the Porta Santo Domenico to the Cathedral of Santa Sofia. Nicholas, who had missed the victory Mass for Kyrenia for the sake of an axe in his shoulder was present today, in body if not especially in mind, from the look of him. His face was the same colour as that of the King when the royal cohort arrived from the palace. Astorre chuckled. ‘So it was like that!’ said the captain. ‘Well, the poor lady. She wouldn’t get much good of him last night.’

  Tobie gritted his teeth. Unlike Astorre, who recovered as quickly from his rages as he fell into them, Tobie had not forgotten what lay behind them suspended at Famagusta. He had not forgotten, either, the story Bartolomeo Zorzi had regaled them with last night, and which he supposed had now been repeated to Nicholas. He had tried once already to talk to Nicholas about it, and had been kicked on the ankle by le Grant. He walked all the way to the Cathedral brooding about that inside his new scarlet robe, with the blue mantle and golden links of the Order of the Sword on the shoulders of Nicholas before him. C’est pour loïauté maintenir. Well, Queen Carlotta had given him it, and her bastard brother-usurper had confirmed it, so he either had it twice or not at all.

  The procession filled all the space there was between buildings, so there were few people about in the street, except peering over shop-ledges or within doorways. The upper windows and galleries were full enough, however, although the faces were more respectful and curious than ecstatic. Trumpets blew all the time, and drums were beating. A smell of incense grew strong as they approached the immense triple portico of the Cathedral, begun in the French style two hundred years ago. He noticed the King stepping forward with a firming of the step. He ought to feel at home. Without the help of the Pope, his royal father had made Zacco Archbishop of Nicosia when he was thirteen, and he had lived in the Archbishop’s Palace with Cropnose for years. The present more orthodox incumbent was a tough man as well as an Augustine; accustomed to risky assignments in Cairo. Tobie spared a thought for Cairo, and Mamelukes, and Tzani-bey, and wondered if Nicholas knew what the emir was doing in the Mameluke camp outside Famagusta. One thing for sure: Tzani-bey hadn’t been asked to the Feast of St Nicholas, although the Arab physician was here. He had seen him in the city.

  Once inside the nave, Tobie’s ankle reminded him that if Nicholas was thinking of anything, it was probably another service not unlike this one. That had taken place two years ago, in Trebizond; and had celebrated the Feast of St Eugenios, not St Nicholas; and instead of James, Dei gratia Jerusalem, Cypri et Armenie rex illustrissimus, the chief celebrant had been the dead Vice-Regent of Christ, David Comnenos, twenty-first Emperor of Trebizond, accompanied by his Grand Chancellor and betrayer, George Amiroutzes.

  The liturgy began and Tobie moved, craning uneasily. Behind the fountain of plumes that arose from Captain Astorre’s headgear was the shining head of Primaflora, its hair looped and plaited under the horns of a cap, and a cameo on a gold chain round her throat. Admiring her, Tobie didn’t feel impelled, for a while, to look further. Then he did, and saw Nicholas.

  If painful reveries of any kind had once overwhelmed him, they did so no longer. Nicholas was
standing so still that the thick painted glass struck motionless light from his chain, and his face was glazed like a jug with mixed colours. Tobie followed the line of his scrutiny. Beside the King and the Archbishop, the Bishops of Paphos and Limassol, the several abbots, the Knights Hospitaller of the Order and the ecclesiastical officers of the Cathedral, stood a thick, black hairy fellow in a battered conical cap with a veil, below which an assortment of robes vaguely Greek and vaguely Coptic did not quite cover the stained brown habit of a Franciscan friar.

  Tobie recognised him. A hundred years ago, this man had stamped into the Medici Palace in Florence and nearly wrecked the whole Trapezuntine expedition. He had interfered in the snow by Bologna, so Nicholas said. He had been in Rhodes, and indeed his ship had transported home the body of the Portuguese whom Nicholas had said he hadn’t had murdered. Even without hearing the ineffable pitch of his bellow, it was possible to pick this man out in any circle.

  It was Ludovico de Severi da Bologna, the Latin Patriarch of Antioch; and Nicholas, animated once again, was bestowing one of his broad, well-meaning smiles on the fellow. The friar returned a light scowl, after which they paid no more attention to one another. Tobie, who regarded the Patriarch with undiluted horror, felt thankful.

  The head of the House of Niccolò, who had considerable reservations himself about Father Ludovico da Bologna, was content enough to remain unmolested through the Mass, and the procession back to the Palace, and even the banquet itself, although that presented different pitfalls.

  Knowing the King, as he believed, Nicholas had always assumed that now, through his placing at table, Zacco would take his chance to belittle in public this favoured commander who had failed to give him his kingdom as promised. But instead, in a table filled with knights of his name, Nicholas was placed on the King’s right, and Nicholas (Conella) Morabit, on his left. Through the meal, it was the same. The King recounted past adventures, selected meats for him, joked about the abstemious habits of the baby St Nicholas, who refused the breast every Wednesday and Friday. The jokes, if coarse, were quite good.