‘Ill-intentioned,’ said Nicholas. ‘Where is Jacopo? I thought he was coming north.’
‘You think Jacopo had something to do with this?’ said Bartolomeo. His teeth glistened. ‘No, my friend. You will find he has stayed in the south with his vineyards. We are simply three brothers, Nicholai, Jacopo and myself, earning a living as best we might – and putting an alum fortune in your way, as I remember. Over this matter of uncles and nephews, we cannot help you.’
It was what he had expected. What he had not expected, but could, on reflection, understand, was his complete inability to attain an audience with the lady Marietta, mother of Zacco. He stayed in Nicosia for three days in case he was mistaken; then took himself south.
The family Corner at Episkopi proved as unhelpful as Marietta. Correction: the family Corner were three-quarters absent, in that – the season now being hot – the princesses Valenza and Fiorenza and their children had returned to Venice under the supervision of Vanni Loredano, and Marco Corner could tell him nothing about his late guest except that she had ungraciously disappeared overnight while he and his staff happened to be somewhat preoccupied with a temporary difficulty.
The nature of the difficulty was apparent to anyone traversing the Episkopi cane fields. Nicholas made four dispositions. The first proved, as he suspected, that no ship bound for Portugal had recently called at Cyprus. The second took him (in Tobie’s absence) to the experimental benches Tobie had set up in Kouklia. The third instructed Loppe (in Loppe’s absence) that, as a service to Messer Corner, water from the royal viaduct should be provided, in reasonable measure, to assist in the irrigation of the Episkopi estate. The fourth and last ensured that there would be found, in a public place, messages from himself to Tobie, to Astorre, and to King James of Lusignan, to whose sole service he was irrevocably contracted.
Then Nicholas vander Poele, only deviser of the great game of Cyprus, left Cyprus.
Chapter 30
THIS TIME, the windmills of the jetty at Rhodes stood motionless in the heat, and no spume concealed the green and ochre pile of the City, with the Castello of the Knights on its crest. In the harbour, the fortress of Ayios Nikolaos was nearly finished without the help of an Aberdonian engineer, or of Nicholas the less saintly, now returning.
Last year, velvet-clad, Nicholas had arrived here by galley, and in the company of Tristão Vasquez and his lovesick young son. Here he had seen the winter weeks pass, and had kept his army alive, and got them off safely. And from here he had sailed for Cyprus in tatters, a prisoner of the Genoese and the Order, and without Tristão Vasquez.
His vessel now was a fishing-boat; and he made no attempt to leave when it tied up among the screeching gulls and screeching Rhodians in the fish-harbour. He worked with the rest, barefoot among the bream and mullet and octopus, his cotton drawers dripping with scales, his woollen hat pushed from his brow. Even when the baskets were full and the others had gone off to the tavern he was kept behind, swearing, to put the owner’s soup on the stove and light the lamp in the rigging.
It was the arrangement, when he bought the boat from its owner. The owner told no one, and the owner treated him as one of his crew. Nicholas whistled as he worked, and the sky and sea turned madder red, and he thought up new ways of answering the quips and invitations that fell his way now and then from the other boats or the jetty, using all the languages he knew and a lot of words he had lately learned. His skin was an even mid-brown from his face to his toes, and he felt as uncomfortable in his breeches as he supposed all the others were feeling. But he didn’t envy the others. He had food and freedom: he felt drunk with good cheer and well-being and, as soon as the skipper came back, he had food and a jar of tarry red wine in a basket to indulge in as well.
And news. As they sat back getting peacefully fuddled in the fish-stinking poop of the boat, and the moon came out of the sea, and far-off voices and laughter tickled the quiet between wave-falls, the skipper said, ‘And I asked after the woman. She’s on the island.’
Nicholas grunted. His lack of enthusiasm was not only prudent; it was genuine. It had, of course, been essential to pay this little visit to Rhodes, and not too difficult, with the game three-quarters finished behind him. Perhaps he had enjoyed the respite too much. Liberation without responsibility: he had had it before, for ten months. Had had it, in a way, all his childhood. Eventually clearing his mouth, he said, ‘The Flemish woman from St Pol & Vasquez? Where is she staying?’
The fisherman, who came from Apolakia, didn’t know him by sight and – in the absence of other advice – seemed to think he was being paid to play Cupid to some decadent Knight of the Order. Until set discreetly to rights on the voyage, he had seized with gusto the role of taskmaster. He still enjoyed giving orders, which Nicholas did not mind within limits; and used towards him the name of Nikko, which Nicholas had suggested himself and which, in the past, others had called him by, too. Now the man said, ‘A Flemish woman called Borselen? She’s not in the City. Was. They had her up to Carlotta. The word goes that she’s waiting to sail but her firm doesn’t have credit; so she was told to take the charity of the Order so long as it was outside the City. Not much of a catch there, eh Nikko? Is that why she’s leaving her husband? Thinks you’ll get a good job in the fish-market and keep her?’
‘Where d’you think she’s gone?’ Nicholas asked, when he could speak without laughing.
‘They said the Genoese Langue took her over. They’ve got a castle at Salakhos, but I doubt if it’s in a state for a lady. The Knights at Monolithos could take her, or the fortress at Pharaclos. Each of them has a commander from Genoa. If you want to know any more, you’ll have to ask in the City,’ said the man. ‘Or down the coast. They know all the gossip down the coast. Depends how much of a hurry you’re in.’
‘Not all that much,’ said Nicholas. ‘Who would know down the coast?’
‘My mother,’ said the fisherman, whose name was Boulaki. ‘She does the laundry for Monolithos. My aunt Persefoni. She has the best roasting-ovens in Pharaclos. I was thinking of going to see both of them. But it’s your boat.’
The wine-vat was empty. Nicholas shook out the last drop over the side and thumped it down. ‘I’d like,’ he said, ‘to meet your lady mother. But what do we do for a crew?’
A smile appeared, dispensing a mist of dental decay and pure alcohol. ‘Trust Boulaki,’ said the man. ‘So long as you’ve got the coins, there’s nothing you can’t buy in Rhodes. Can you walk?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. It was practically true.
‘Neither can I. Pity,’ said the man called Boulaki. ‘I once had three here together. Never could afford more. But I expect you’re saving yourself.’
Nicholas began to laugh again, this time unintentionally, and a little later they found they had between them quite a repertoire of good tavern songs. They kept it up until someone climbed across five different boats and tipped a pail of seawater over them.
Boulaki’s mother, when Nicholas met her, was cleaning a platter of fish in her yard, under a rickety trellis of vine. The sheets and small-clothes of the Knights of Monolithos were spread on the bushes all the way from her house to the shore, most of it needing darning. Monolithos Castle itself stood to the north on its abrupt rocky headland, hazy in the afternoon heat. Boulaki’s mother was very like Boulaki: big-featured and sweaty with a black moustache and a twisted scarf bundling her hair. She handled her knife like an embalmer and her tongue like her knife. Nicholas lingered outside, where the goat was tied up, until Boulaki’s voice began to drop out of the contest. The woman’s Greek rattled on like a wagon-train. Then she screamed, ‘The man!’
Nicholas left the goat and advanced. ‘The man?’ she said. She had planted a fist on each knee. The knife glinted upright in one of them.
‘This is Nikko,’ said the fishing-boat’s former owner. He was nearly sober.
Her eyes were round, and fringed with stubby black lashes. ‘You fornicate with some woman?’ she said. ‘Some
poor Greek woman?’ She sounded like Cropnose.
Nicholas said, ‘Do I look such a wretch? What would my wife and five children say? Lady, my mistress wants news of her cousin. A Flemish lady called Katelina van Borselen. And maybe also, of a young boy her nephew. It is to help them.’
The black eyes ran him up and down. The woman said, ‘My son has a brain like a fish. You bought his boat. What did you pay him?’
He could see, lying beside her, the bag of silver Boulaki had brought from the boat. He named, with humility, the sum it contained. He did not mention the other bag, equally heavy, about which Boulaki had sworn him to silence. The woman said ‘Huh!’ in a tone of disgust which might have concealed gratification. She said, ‘And for that, do I have to feed and conceal you until I get news of this woman? And will you want it when it arrives? If the Knights have not raped her, the Turks will.’
He said, ‘No. She is worth money.’
‘And your mistress has money? Well, I am glad. Boulaki, your cousins have come. They will show this old married man where to go. The cabin next to the stackyard. It’s been out of use since the mule died. Unless, of course, you want to sail on and seek elsewhere?’
It had been a long, sunny day and, like Boulaki, he was not entirely sober. Nicholas said, ‘Do you think you could get news?’
‘By tomorrow,’ said the woman, turning away. She picked up a grey, leathery fish and slit it so that its entrails began to emerge. They were Turkey-red and vermilion.
‘He’ll stay,’ Boulaki said. ‘And I’ll find him somewhere better to sleep than the stable.’ He gripped Nicholas by the shoulder and drew him, ducking, towards the low house and its doorway, and through the house, and out the other side where other houses had settled at intervals into the dust, each with a cistern, an oven, a rectangle of edible greens, a smother of nets, floats and creeper, a heap of baskets, a stack of paddles, a scatter of washing and a smell of fish and goat, lard and badly-dug privies. Further along, a group of men in straw hats were sitting crosslegged in a huddle, drinking and betting on dice. ‘This,’ said Boulaki, ‘is Nikko.’
No one looked up, except when his hand came out and placed a coin on the pile. Then, in due course, the dice were tossed in his direction, and shortly after, a wooden cup was lowered over his shoulder, full of greenish raw wine which he was thirsty enough to drink right away. In due course, he found himself in someone’s yard eating fried fish and grey bread and melon in between a lot of laughing and talking. Later, there was singing as well, and they showed him how to dance on his hands. A good deal later, he was led to the shed belonging to Boulaki’s mother’s late mule by Boulaki’s cousins, who were much bigger than Boulaki, and much younger, and who had played no part in the singing or laughing.
The last thing Nicholas saw as he rolled into the straw and the lantern was withdrawn was the gleam in Boulaki’s eyes. He had seen them gleam with cupidity, amusement and tears. Tonight, it seemed to him that he detected anxiety. Then the fleas started to bite, and Nicholas sighed and, dismissing it all, tried to settle to sleep, but not so thoroughly that he couldn’t be roused if Carlotta, the Knights or the Genoese turned up to kill him. He remembered distinctly, afterwards, settling to sleep with that intention.
The next thing he remembered was Boulaki’s spread hand digging into his shoulder. Next, Boulaki kicked him. Nicholas sighed again and, rolling over, lifted his sword. Boulaki flinched back, and the light went out. ‘No!’ said the fisherman. ‘Christ, I wish I’d never brought you. Listen. The boys are telling the Knights. They’ll be down for you first thing in the morning. You’ve got to go.’
‘Your cousins?’ said Nicholas in the dark. He had his roll pulled together already.
‘Filth,’ said his saviour in a hoarse whisper. ‘And my old mother’d sell her old mother for silver. I got it out of her later. The Flemish woman’s at Lindos. That’s on the opposite coast, twenty miles over the mountains. It is not far from Pharaclos, where my aunt lives, who is an angel as my mother is a devil. You lost money to Yiannis last night?’
Nichlolas had been careful to lose money to Yiannis; the spokesman, it was clear, among the dice players. He nodded, and Boulaki continued. ‘He says you are a good man. He will sell you his mule, and lend you his grandson for guide, for the right sum of money. You must go now.’
For the right sum of money, Nicholas found himself presently padding barefoot from shadow to shadow until, at a safe distance from the village, a voice hissed, and a shadow resolved itself into a boy leading a mule. ‘Lord?’ said the boy. ‘For much money I run beside you to Lindos?’
Nicholas tied his roll on the saddle and then, mounting, bent and scooped up the boy to perch behind him. He said, ‘For much money given to your grandfather Yiannis you ride with me to Lindos, and we get there before dawn, and without being seen except by the goats. Is it understood?’
‘And then I have much money?’ said the boy.
‘And then perhaps I will not beat you,’ said Nicholas. ‘And if I feel like it, there may be a little money as well. Now, go! Go! Go!’
The mule was slow and steady, like a bored man, and, climbing, followed unseen tracks among rocks whose hot dust rose into the still air about them. Sometimes they came to a level place and broke into a trot between thickets of thorn, or heath or broom; sometimes they skirted a dark forest of pine or cypress or oak, or descended to wind among olive trees and across a dry stream. Goats rustled and the mule shuddered at the squawk of a frightened bird. Moths passed like thistledown and he smelt a fox, once. After the steepest part he stopped to rest the animal, and the boy produced cheese and a flask from a saddlebag, and they sat and shared it, speaking almost not at all. The boy seemed uneasy, or frightened, or perhaps merely apprehensive of what the big stranger might do. After obtaining a few unwilling answers, Nicholas left him alone, although he never let him out of his sight. If the plan had been to run away, the grandson of Yiannis was given no chance. Then they resumed their silent journey.
Soon after that, Nicholas became conscious of the first change. The thick warmth of the night seemed here and there diluted, veined with something like freshness, and ahead, for the first time, he thought he could distinguish hill from hill, earth from sky; sky from something else.
He saw they had crossed the island. A single line, fine as a scribe’s, ran across his vision, and sharpened. Above and below it hung something that was not colour at all, except perhaps a deep pigeon-grey; or grey mixed with mother of pearl, or pearl mixed with rose madder, or all of that mixed with shearings of silver and gold.… Mixed, thickened, ribboned, oh God, with vermilion. By God, Who could afford all that vermilion, as He could afford ultramarine, and love, and revenge, and never get hurt.
The boy said nothing. Below where they had halted, the hills ran unevenly down to the coast. Against the luminous veil of the sea stood a headland crowned with steep rock, and upon the crown floated a palace made of fine columns, pink as the light on the face of the boy riding behind him; pink as the insubstantial light on his hands, on the path, on the boulders about them. ‘That is Lindos!’ said the boy, loudly and clearly.
And immediately, it seemed, the rocks about them grew figures, black against the pellucid vapours behind – for, of course, now that he could see clearly, so he could be seen. Three men or four, and another below, holding horses. They threw themselves at him together. He fought in silence, with bitterness, but they said nothing, except to mutter directions among themselves as they flung a blanket over his head and, dragging him from his mount, wrapped him in it. Then, tied at elbow and knee, he was slung over someone’s tall horse, and was held there, a broad hand on his back, as the animal jolted its way down the hill. Above and behind, he heard the light scramble of the little mule’s feet, and the boy’s voice, receding. The boy who, of course, had made no effort to help him.
Before very long, he felt his mount reach level ground, and then move from baked earth to something man-set that gave back discreet echoes. A sligh
t difference in sound and in temperature told him he was among buildings; and then the hand on his back tightened as they began climbing again, steeply this time. When his horse turned abruptly, he was all but shaken off: the hand that shoved him this time came from behind. He realised that he had passed through a gateway, and that the small cavalcade had quietly come to a halt. A cock crew distantly and a dog barked somewhere twice. Nearer at hand, someone dismounted and he heard low voices, indistinguishable through the cloth. Then the hand on his back was replaced by many hands, heaving, rolling and lifting. He was half carried, half dragged across a carpet of pebbles, and then allowed to drop on a floor, which did his bruises no good but which at least felt smooth and appeared clean and might not be full of fleas. Someone cut the rope at his knees and his elbows, and someone else grabbed the blanket and tugged it off him. Their boots retreated, and were replaced by a small, high-arched slipper, and a knee draped with extremely fine taffeta and a hand, which stretched out and touched him. Above was a face that he knew, painted with art, and framed in hair half loosened today, in informal style, and half pleated into its little jewelled caul. ‘Well, my dear?’ said Primaflora.
He closed his eyes from sheer relief, and then opened them and began to laugh, for the same reason. He raised his own hand, with some trouble, and fingering hers, kissed and held it. She said, keeping the initiative, ‘Did you think Carlotta had captured you? Or the Knights?’
Race of Scorpions Page 48
