Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [188]
‘Surely,’ said Squarciafico, with gentle amusement, ‘there is no medical condition that precludes eating candied fruits? For the last time, my man. Take and eat, if you please.’
‘I cannot,’ said Nicholas.
‘Then shall we make you?’ said the Genoese sweetly. And stepping forward, he seized Nicholas suddenly by the hair and, scooping a handful of fruits, dragged his head back and made to force his lips open.
Nicholas twisted aside. Against his thrust arm, the whole box tilted and fell, scattering sugar over the floor. Two of the soldiers wrenched him back and dragged his hands behind his back while Squarciafico, lifting his palm, delivered a blow to the side of his face. A third soldier, his eyes on the glistening delicacies, stepped forward as if he would collect them.
Squarciafico laughed. ‘Lift them up if you like. But don’t lick your fingers after, and above all, my friends, don’t think to eat them. Or you will suffer what our friend here and his dead accomplice came to inflict on someone else.’
He turned to the Governor. ‘Why do you think the man de Marchena contrived to be captured and brought here in the first place? Why should this man trouble to come and interpret for him? They both wished to enter the citadel. They wished to find their way to the prisons. These sweetmeats, these singular Trapezuntine, Gothian sweetmeats, were to be offered to the two brothers of Mengli-Girey. Had they been eaten, the Khan of Qirq-yer could flout us all as he pleased, for his older brothers, his rivals would be dead and could no longer oust him. They would be dead, because these fruits are poisoned. And this man would not eat, for he knew it.’
And that, at least, was true, Nicholas thought. He had known, because he had seen them before, these pretty sweets, which he might so easily have obtained, but had not, from Abdan Khan, the Circassian general. Will this food harm me? He had not needed the pendulum, this time, to warn him.
Someone had been very clever and yet, surprisingly, not clever enough. He felt not sick but suddenly mortally tired. He did not even listen to what Squarciafico was saying. He thought, gratefully, that at least the imam was safe. When they took him from the room, he expected that they would kill him immediately. Then the clamour of voices rose behind him, and someone shouted angrily, and he was stopped, and held where he stood at the top of the stairs. But by then he knew what had happened, for he had heard Anna’s voice.
Chapter 26
ANNA WAS THERE when they brought him back to the Governor’s room, in her anger more commanding than he had ever seen her before. And Squarciafico, standing before her, exhibited below his overt annoyance a shadow of something else which might have been discomfiture.
She glanced at Nicholas once, an assessing glance such as any mistress would bestow on her property, and then returned her gaze to Squarciafico and the Governor standing before her.
‘Do I hear aright? I permit my servant to come and help you with some pitiful difficulty over a prisoner; the prisoner escapes, and rather than admit to ineptitude, you attempt to implicate an unfortunate Muslim? Offending, of course, the whole race on which you will depend to agree to your choice of Tudun?’
‘We have explained,’ said Squarciafico. ‘The poisoned sweetmeats …’
‘You have explained. Your explanation is ludicrous. Was or was not this man searched when he arrived at Soldaia? No such sweetmeats were found. Was his pack not searched for a second time, here in the citadel? I am told that it was, and again, no sweetmeats were found.’
‘Then why,’ said Squarciafico swiftly, ‘did he refuse to eat them?’
She could not answer that. She turned to Nicholas. Her eyes were storm-dark and anguished.
Nicholas said, ‘Because, lord, I had seen such sweetmeats before, on a voyage to Alexandria. They originated in Trebizond, from where the formula seems to have travelled to Gothia. A boy