Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [105]
‘Would you tell her? Would you? And warn her?’ said the boy. But the father shook his head at her, frowning.
She ignored him. Her mind was on Primaflora, who had spent days, perhaps weeks, perhaps months in the company – in the bed, she knew it – of Nicholas. From that, a woman would emerge believing anything that he told her. Nicholas, she was sure, had been convincing, in bed and in throne room. But it would be Primaflora, her own trusted attendant, who persuaded the Queen that Nicholas was truly the loyal knight that he seemed. Katelina looked at Diniz. She said, ‘We are traders. We cannot interfere with the affairs of a royal household. A lady-in-waiting must obey her Queen. But perhaps, away from the Palace, one might do something. I shall send the lady a message. This is an evil man, and no woman deserves to be tied to him.’
When the message arrived from Katelina, Primaflora took it at once, smiling, to Carlotta her mistress.
Since she returned to Rhodes, Primaflora had taken care to prove herself once again the most elegant, the most amenable, the most useful of all the Queen’s servants, and never again had she given the Queen reason to doubt that her mistress was the object of all her solicitude. She had betrayed her private feelings once, with Ansaldo, and knew now what a mistake it had been. She had also absented herself for an extremely long time, although she had taken care, while in Italy, to send reassuring messages to keep Carlotta from interfering.
The result, naturally, had been a loss of trust between herself and the Queen, and she couldn’t guess how long it might take to restore it; or to restore it to the same degree as before. Carlotta never truly placed her trust in anyone. Since their reunion, the Queen had seldom let her former attendant, graceful, complaisant Primaflora, out of her sight.
With Luis there, on the other hand, the task of making herself indispensable was made easier for the same attendant. The Consort and his courtiers crowded the Palace, filling it with witless clamour. To his royal wife, the understanding presence of Primaflora was both soothing and a source of mild stimulation. The Queen enjoyed testing the girl, and Primaflora tolerated the malicious fencing. Of the two, she thought she was the better swordsman.
So, presenting herself in the Queen’s chamber, she disregarded its disorder, and the high colour in the Queen’s sharp young face. The kingdom needed an heir, and after courting the princes of Europe, Carlotta’s severest trial, her servants thought, must be the duty of courting her own cousin and husband. So Primaflora entered, curtseyed, and standing before the royal chair said, ‘You foresaw correctly, Serenissima. The Flemish lady is disturbed by the favour shown to Messer Niccolò. She wishes a meeting with me. After the marriage contract is signed, the serene Queen might permit me to agree to this?’
The Queen stretched out her little ringed claw. ‘Show me. No, translate it into Greek.’ Primaflora drew up a stool and sitting, read smoothly aloud, while the Queen’s nails dug into her shoulder. Then, finishing, she was silent as the Queen considered.
The room was crowded with ikons. By the shrine in the corner, a relic encased in silver stood below the jewelled cross. Everyone fleeing from infidels bought their way into a pension and grace by purveying holy bones of some sort. Cathedrals all over the west were filling up with apostolic skulls, and Carlotta was never one to bypass a marketable commodity. She was also devout. But she was less devout than she was shrewd.
Waiting, Primaflora thought of her last audience, when the knighthood for Niccolò had first been mentioned, followed immediately by the news that the Queen intended to marry her to the young man.
The proposal had disturbed Primaflora. It was true that Niccolò was a lover she liked. She was, of course, accustomed