Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [38]
She knew Nerio. He was half Greek, and a year older than she was. She spoke shortly. ‘He couldn’t be your son. He’s far too good-looking.’
‘He had a good-looking mother. Did no one tell you I slept with Violante? Wife of Zeno of Venice. Nerio’s her by-blow. Here’s the raft. Paúel?’
She looked at Nicholas. A slow-swinging lamp in the dark lit his face. It was indifferent still, with a hint of impatience. Throughout, nevertheless, he had avoided her eyes. Now he called again, ‘Paúeli? Here is your ex-virgin brother. Show her over the silos and bring her, mulier intacta, back to her husband. Farewell in Christ.’ He waited to see Benecke hand her aboard, then moved away.
After two paces, he turned. ‘Where’s the watchman?’
‘Drunk. I kicked him on shore. Colà, stay.’
‘No.’
‘I meant you to stay.’
The dialogue reached Kathi as she walked inboard over the raft. It was only thirty inches in depth. They had laid matting over the timbers. There was a neat hooded cabin in front, and a larger one for the crew nearer the back. She went into the smaller. Benecke’s voice, by the shore, was still calling. ‘I meant you to stay. Three of us. You know you …’
She couldn’t hear the end, or the reply. She was not yet uneasy; merely weighing the advantages of opening these topics with two men instead of one. There was a pair of rolled mattresses and several boxes which doubled as seats; she sat on one of them. With the lamp lit, it was attractive enough, with a plank spread with platters of sweetmeats, and a flask of wine gently rolling from its hook. There was nothing she remembered as belonging to Nicholas. Benecke stooped and came in. ‘He wouldn’t stay. We’ll have to drink all the Gascony by ourselves. So, tell me: what has happened since Iceland? Or would you rather hear the real story of the San Matteo’s capture?’
It was what her uncle needed to know. She postponed, while he told it, all the questions she longed to put for herself. The account took some time, because Benecke often diverged into this anecdote or that of a mildly scurrilous nature. Indeed the saga of the San Matteo’s fate became extraordinarily muddled, so that she frowned into her wine, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. The cabin had become very warm but, instead of removing the brazier, her host sat down beside her and, encircling her in a friendly way with his arms, unpinned her cloak to make her more comfortable. His fingers, which had a familiar griminess, then slipped further down to the laces of her bodice and set to untying them. The air on her skin began to feel cool. This, added to a hazy recollection of distressing Robin on this score quite recently, made her objection tender rather than vehement. ‘All the same,’ Kathi said, ‘I don’t think you should do that. It’s too public.’
‘But you like it,’ said whoever it was. She was not even sure if it was the same person.
It was not something that Robin would say, although it was sometimes true. It was not true at the moment because, overwhelmed by the weariness of the day, she was going to disappoint him. It was why she had induced him, lovingly, to leave her the initiative. Because you are still training him? It had been cruel, that remark. ‘Dear little Kathi,’ someone said. ‘You need a real man. Two real men.’
And then she seemed to be on the ground; and something was being done, as well as being said, that was utterly foreign to Robin. And now Katelijne, dame of Berecrofts, wrenched her head sideways and started to scream.
The weight on and beside her disappeared. The whole raft tilted, throwing her on her side, her arms clasped round her body. Footsteps thudded. The man or men whose leap aboard had shaken the raft began to run towards the hut where she lay, cannoning into the man or men who had just left her. She could hear herself shrieking. As she struggled to rise, a whole group crashed backwards into the cabin beside her, all of them