‘Whether it is clean or not, they must eat,’ said Lomellini. ‘I want to speak to you.’ Leaning on the edge of his table, he let his hollow eyes rest on Nicholas. He said, ‘It seems that you are more our enemy than your master. You planned to attack, while he was planning his truce.’
Nicholas remained where he was. He said, ‘Neither of us knew what the other was doing. I believed he would not agree to a truce. I thought an attack the most merciful answer.’
‘Merciful?’ said Lomellini.
Nicholas said, ‘I knew you were starving.’
‘And he did not?’ said the captain slowly.
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘Or he wouldn’t have offered his truce. He will not do it again. He has only to wait.’ He paused and said, ‘This is not the time to discuss it, but if you will use me, I can help you. What you must do meantime is regain your strength. And I have to ask you a favour. I have a relative here. A youth. A boy called Diniz Vasquez. I would see him.’
The captain stood up. He said, ‘A room is being prepared. You will be taken there. And yes, the youth Diniz Vasquez has been to see me. He has asked me to send you to his lodging. It is in a house outside the Citadel. He has this privilege, since his kinswoman is dying.’
‘My lord, he has no relatives here. It is Diniz Vasquez, the Portuguese youth, I would see,’ Nicholas said.
‘I speak of Diniz Vasquez,’ said the Genoese wearily. ‘The vassal you chained to your dyeyard. He escaped, and was joined by the lady. You didn’t know of this? A young woman of good family who has not deserved, I am sure, the privation that she has shared with him. You know her, of course. She was a supporter of Queen Carlotta, and Genoa. She was on Rhodes when the father of Vasquez was killed. She came to Cyprus with us both on the ship that was waylaid by Mamelukes. I am not sure whether, as a hostage, you should be allowed near to these people who – although you claim them as relatives – have no cause that I can see to regard you as a friend. But I have placed the boy on his honour. He will not harm you. And the young lady, alas, has not the strength.’
Nicholas said, ‘What is her name?’
‘Are there so many?’ said the captain, his lip curling. ‘Her name is van Borselen. Katelina van Borselen, a married lady of Flanders.’
The young squire who led Nicholas this time through the city was rough and angry, but also sick. At the first sign of dissent or hesitation, he fetched his mailed fist full across his captive’s bruised face, splitting his lip and causing all his contusions to bleed again. Immediately after, he turned aside to a doorway and vomited. Nicholas smelt fresh meat and lemons. Unless Napoleone took care, the food he had given out would bring its own troubles. His mind noted this fact among others, ticking efficiently on like a water-clock. The rest of him was suspended in limbo. Diniz was here. Here and starving. That was catastrophic enough. But Katelina? Katelina?
He didn’t really believe it, all the time he was being dragged through near-empty streets which were no longer silent, but filled with curious brawls, or outbursts of squealing or, what he had just heard, the sound of terrified retching. He didn’t believe it up to the moment that he found himself outside a half-house that had once been graced by a classical loggia. Behind its wreck stood a fine double door with an architrave, and behind that an elegant courtyard, its fountain and pillars and statues smashed to splinters by heavy stone shot.
In one wall was a door, and a womanservant disappearing inside it. She gave them a terrified glance, and then bolted. The young Genoese picked his way over the wreckage and, gripping Nicholas, arrived before the same door as it opened again. The man who opened it was Abul Ismail the physician.
The squire said, ‘Zacco’s other fornicating fat hostage. I’ll leave you. Don’t think you can get out. I’ll be waiting.’
He retreated. Nicholas stood. The Arab said, ‘I am sorry.’
‘I am not sure,’ Nicholas said, ‘what you are sorry about.’
The brown, smoky eyes were not especially compassionate; merely lucid. The doctor said, ‘I am here attending a patient, and I have to tell you her story. You left the young lady Katelina van Borselen at Rhodes. She was about to sail home to Portugal. On the eve of her sailing, she learned from a spokeswoman of the Queen’s that news had come in from Cyprus: that Diniz Vasquez her husband’s young kinsman was trapped in Famagusta. She elected to join him. He survives. But her house was struck by a ball from your cannonades.’
He had been feeling cold for some time. Now he felt not only cold but quite bloodless. He said, ‘She is very ill? I would have brought her away. Why did Diniz not send me word when it happened?’ His voice, he noticed, remained perfectly steady.
‘Death has made an appointment with her,’ said the Arab. ‘Her heart is great: she might live to your Feast of Epiphany. Meanwhile she cannot be moved. She would find no better fate in Nicosia. She would not have you informed, in case it placed your own freedom in jeopardy. But now God has brought you; you are held here a captive, as she is. She fears for you, but is joyful, for now she will see you.’ He waited, and then said, ‘She will depend on you. Sit. Come in when you are ready.’
Aphrodite, Aphrodite. He said, ‘I must go, if she is waiting.’
Chapter 40
SHE LAY IN a room from which all the wood had been stripped, save for the pallet beneath her. What wouldn’t burn still remained: bare walls muffled with incongruous tapestries, flooring tamped over with carpets. There was a stand of bronze inlaid with silver, looted perhaps from a rich merchant’s house, and a cut of marble propped on an empty brazier and supporting the physician’s jars and boxes and bottles. There was a brazier newly in use, and still smoking a little. The air in the room was not yet warm.
From her throat to her feet she was covered in velvet and gold, furs and silk and jewelled embroidery. From her throat to her feet, the housings of her single, stark pallet were royal. The plain sheets that should have served it were also there, but torn into strips and padding and squares, and laid on a tray on the ground. The door closed behind Abul Ismail, and Nicholas looked at his father’s wife.
Her face was ivory. Upon those sturdy, well-defined bones the clear, even tint seemed translucent. The hollows under her cheekbones were sepia, and the skin which sank into the new, heavy arcs of her lids, and the shadows beneath ear and chin. Her brown hair, newly combed, coiled ash-dull among all the rich fabrics. But the eyes on him were shining as at Kalopetra, when he had been constrained to leave, and she, for a while, had stood to stop him; stood as close as the flesh on his body. The Fontana Amorosa. Whosoever drinks from that, they are thirsty for ever.
He said, ‘They have just told me.’
When he knelt, his eyes were level with hers; he saw them moated with tears. Her hand wanted to rise: he found and made a tent for it with his own. He said, ‘Are you in pain?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She smiled, arrogant eyebrows clenching, tears sliding into her pillow. She said, ‘I used to be. Not now. Not now.’ And her breath, as she smiled, began to catch in weak, involuntary sobs; so that he bent over her, his cheek against hers, his arms embracing hers in spectral and impotent comfort. Then he felt her lashes stir at his cheek, and raised his head and kissed the place where they lay, and then her brow, her throat and her chin, while her lips went on smiling. When he drew apart, she said, ‘Your face. Your face is marked. Have they hurt you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I would have come before. I didn’t know. You should have told me.’
‘How could you have come?’ she said. ‘They would have killed you. When I could walk, I would climb the wall and look across to your camp. Then so many fell sick.’ She stopped, and then said, ‘There were flies. I remembered what you said. Their lives were short, too.’
Nicholas said, ‘This should never have happened.’
Her tears had half closed her eyes. He cupped her cheek in his hand and pressed his kerchief under and over her lashes. She said, her eyes shut, ‘I chose to come. They told me Di
niz was here.’ She opened her lids. ‘I would rather be here than in Portugal.’
He shook his head, taking her hands again. She said, ‘Yes. When must you go?’
‘How could I go?’ he said, smiling. ‘For the length of the truce, I’m a prisoner. They can’t stop me seeing you. Unless you get tired of me.’
She had begun to weep again. She said, ‘It’s just weakness, I’m sorry. Diniz has been so good, and I am so happy. Is that wrong? Is it wrong, what we’ve done? Will you be punished?’
He knew what she was asking. He said, ‘You talked to someone?’
The weeping had stopped. ‘A priest,’ she said. ‘He is dead, now. He said that this is my reparation, and I need fear no other. But you –’
‘Simon will never know,’ Nicholas said. ‘If we’ve betrayed him once, he has betrayed you many times. And if some greater authority decides the offence requires atonement, then I can only say that I shall pay the cost of it willingly.’
He couldn’t tell whether it was enough to comfort her. She smiled, her eyelids heavy. He studied them, smoothing the fragile skin of her hand, and saw them falter shut, and heard her breathing soften and settle. There was no other sound, outside or inside the room. After a while, he let his head sink on his arms, deep among the chilly, metal-chased velvets.
Perhaps he slept. He roused to a touch on his shoulder and Abul Ismail stood at his side. The Arab said, ‘Come. Eat and share some of our wine. Your escort will wrench you away soon enough.’
This had been the house of a banker. There were two servants still: the woman he had glimpsed, and a steward more frail and more sullen. The Arab said, ‘They blame me for guarding the food. But if they gorge, they will die. The boy Diniz is wiser, though weak. All his food has gone to nourish the lady, and to placate the woman, so that she would stay here and nurse her.’
‘And the lady?’ Nicholas said.
Long ago, outside Kyrenia, he and this man had come to know a little of one another. He would never be able to read Abul Ismail, as he found he could decipher so many. It had pleased him, that discovery. He had wondered, also, how much the mediciner had been able to guess about his own mind and nature. Whatever it was, he knew he would receive the truth now, however unpleasant, and was aware of nothing but thankfulness that it should be Abul Ismail here to tell him.
Abul Ismail said, ‘She was starving before the beams fell on her body. Her limbs lack feeling: she would never have walked. Now she seems to have little pain, and little hunger, although she takes what the boy gives her, and today, we have improved upon that. You must not blame the lad either. He tells me he implored her to let him beg her release, but she refused. She wished to share his fate. She wished to die under the flag of St George, and not the flag of the Lusignan. She is loyal to the allies of her husband, however weak a provider her husband has been. But she has said nothing of that. I am only guessing.’
Nicholas said, ‘For what you are doing, I hope God or Allah will reward you. Tomorrow, I will have her taken to Nicosia.’
‘No,’ said the physician. ‘Forgive me. I have said this to the boy. She will die very soon. Such a move would cause her pain, would shorten her days, would deny the stout heart that has kept her here all these weeks. Now you are here, she has all she wants. Take her to Nicosia, but only if you will not do her the service of remaining here, in this town, at her side.’
In face of that, there was no question, now, of disturbing her. The questions he had to ask now were practical ones, to do with comfort and nursing, and the mediciner answered them. Presently Diniz himself, released from duty, walked into the kitchen. The boy said, ‘You came.’ He paused. He said, ‘Senhor Abul will not permit me to dine quite so lavishly.’
‘You know what would happen if you did,’ the doctor said equably. ‘Here is soup. Sit. How are the pains?’
‘Worse,’ said Diniz. He looked at Nicholas. He said, ‘It is a crude business, starving. Did you not know we were here?’
Nicholas said, ‘No. I was told you had escaped. Your note said you had gone home to Portugal. I thought you were at home, and the demoiselle also.’
‘Your manager helped me,’ said Diniz. ‘The Venetian, Zorzi.’
The food he had eaten burned in his throat. ‘Not by my orders,’ said Nicholas.
‘No,’ said Diniz. ‘She said that would be so. You saved her in Rhodes.’
Diniz Vasquez was like a drawing of himself, done by Colard in black ink and white powder. There were sores of malnourishment at the edge of his mouth, and his skin was crossed with premature folds and lines, like a map of the face of his father. Upon it were visible the prints of many different thoughts, and some conflict. Nicholas said, ‘Whatever she has told you, it is true. What you would do for her, so would I.’
‘But,’ said the boy, ‘you married Primaflora?’
‘Do you want her?’ said Nicholas.
The silence stretched. The boy said, ‘Who would want her now? She is alive?’
Nicholas said, ‘But for Primaflora, the food would not have come today.’ It was the truth, in its own macabre way. Stiff with disbelief, the boy’s dark eyes stood in their hollows. Nicholas went on talking persuasively. ‘So the apportioning of blame, as you see, is not simple. If you wish to go to Nicosia, I could arrange it. I will stay with her.’
A smell of hot soup filled the room. Like the mark of a slap, an arc of pink sprang across each of the boy’s whitened cheeks. He watched the bowl, and seized it, and then, meeting the physician’s eyes, took the spoon and fed himself, slowly. After a very short time, he stopped, and laid the bowl down. He bent his head, his arms hugging his body. The Arab shook his head, and then rising, touched his shoulder. ‘Have patience. Let it cool. Eat as if it were poison.’
‘Is it?’ said the boy.
‘No,’ said Abul Ismail. ‘I have tasted it. Since I came, I have tasted all I have been asked to. Messer Niccolò has offered, I’m sure, to do the same. Your body will grow whole again. Why not do as he says, and let him send you to Nicosia as an envoy?’
Diniz Vasquez looked up. ‘To spend Christmas with Zacco?’ he said. His eyes went to the door and returned. He said, ‘I would stay where she is. You will be under guard, for your own safety.’
‘Ser Niccolò will be kept, as I am, in the Citadel,’ said Abul Ismail. ‘But I am allowed in the streets, with my escort. Once I am known, and my work, they are unlikely to harm me.’
‘I can pull weights,’ said Nicholas. ‘And carry loads that men here are too weak to manage. I can be your assistant, unless my presence would harm you. Food will strengthen their anger. They know I planned to attack them.’
‘They know that if they harm you, their food will stop,’ said the Arab in his precise, guttural voice. ‘Work, and they will not resent the food you eat. On the other hand, there will always be hotheads. There is one.’
A handgun had fired in the house. Diniz sprang up, but Nicholas reached the door before him, wrenching it open. Outside, smoke and stench met him together. The body of their steward lay on the floor in a pumping fountain of blood. Beyond it stood the young squire who brought him, the smoking tube in his hand, his face stamped with rage and with loathing. The reek of ordure voided from all his clothing. Then he saw Nicholas, and flung the hackbut away and drew his sword with a wet, shaking hand. ‘Poisoners!’ he said. He took a cumbered step forward, and Diniz Vasquez strode into his path and stood unarmed before him.
‘Well, you too!’ the boy said. ‘We’re the same, even the women. Thank God we have water. Come with me, and we’ll see to it. Fresh food on empty stomachs, I’m told. I’ve made them eat everything I do, so I can tell you the food isn’t tampered with. We have a doctor, though. Senhor Abul?’
‘An old story,’ said the Arab. ‘Sweat and blood, a true bath of honour. Should starvation be any less honourable? What did the lady your mother have made for flux in her household? Elder flowers in vinegar? Rue in breadcakes? I have something as useful. Come with m
e. Messer Diniz, I will need you. Messer Niccolò …’
Nicholas knelt by the body. He said, ‘I will deal with it. Is the woman his wife?’
‘She won’t mourn him,’ said the Arab. ‘She will stay. She has seen worse, I dare say, these many months.’
As he had done on the journey to Rhodes, from that time onwards Nicholas gave up his will, his designs, and his planning, and lived from hour to hour simply to work as he was bidden.
Each day he came twice to the banker’s house and sat in the sickroom, warm and better furnished now, and kept his lover company; sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. With the coming of fresh food, and the medicines that Abul had sent for, she seemed to rally her strength. She slept, with something of her old determination, in order to be awake when he came; and often she wanted to talk: about Bruges; about the past; about all the foolish exploits that had made Claes the apprentice notorious – the jokes with the gun and the waterwheel; the chases, the skating; the escapade with the ostrich. The first time they had met, he had fished her headgear out of the canal. She had been nineteen, and affronted. ‘You were so kind with the children,’ she said. ‘And Felix. You have that gift, to be liked. Gregorio, the lawyer who fought Simon for you. Your engineer and your doctor. Diniz is ready to take you as friend, or will be soon.’
Once, she spoke of the day of the bombardment. ‘The balls didn’t often come quite so far. I expect you aimed at the walls.’
‘Wherever we aimed, they always fired in another direction,’ Nicholas said.
‘It was a marble ball. They showed it to me later. There were inscriptions half buffed from the surface, but you couldn’t see what shrine they came from.’
Whichever it was, it had brought death to her. ‘Aphrodite or Pallas Athene?’ Nicholas said lightly. ‘I think I prefer either to the Heart as Love’s Captive. Since you spoke of it, I’ve found out the story. The Knight Coeur is a failure. And the lady Sweet Grace is never liberated.’