Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
‘You could put it that way,’ Nicholas said. ‘On the other hand, we alarmed the thieves and made them abandon it. I didn’t know it was sugar, and soluble. And the Queen was alive. I trust the Grand Master considers that of some importance.’
‘You think her life was under threat?’ said the Grand Master. ‘I conceived it was simply a matter of money. The Queen was raising funds to free Cyprus, and the Bastard Zacco wished to impede her. With your help, he might have succeeded.’
‘My lord,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am quite willing to concede that I may not have saved her from murder. I do affirm, however, that it was my intention to salvage her fortune.’ Incarcerated, he had not had his meeting with Primaflora. He knew how much she had wanted it, for he had wanted it for the same reason. So they had not talked. So he could not be sure of what she had said. So he had to invent. He continued, in the same reasonable voice, ‘The incident doesn’t seem to have shaken the faith of the lady who devised the subterfuge to save the sugar. It was she who travelled with me to Cyprus; and she who, as the Chancellor said, remained convinced I meant to join the Queen, and not Zacco.’
The Grand Master’s fingers disappeared inside his palm. The Chancellor spoke for him, drily. ‘The lady’s powers of judgement, we feel, may have been subject to some impairment. Without prejudice, you seem to have acted against the Queen’s interests.’
‘Without prejudice, the Queen herself did not think so,’ said Nicholas. ‘She subsequently asked me, on the most lavish terms, to join her faction. So did her brother in Venice. I refused both times. I was not ready.’
‘But,’ said the Chancellor, ‘You were ready when you sailed to Cyprus? You had made up your mind? You were going to offer yourself and your men to the Queen, or if not to the Queen, to the Order?’
‘That is so,’ Nicholas said.
‘Then why,’ said the Chancellor, ‘did you, sailing for Rhodes on a ship of the Order, bearing a cargo of sugar grown and milled by the Knights of the Order, pay a ship to intercept yours, to attack it, to board it and, having caused death and injury, to carry off all the goods of the Knights, to the damage of all who serve the Cross in the east?’
There was a rustle round the hall, under the chequers. They had not heard of that, most of them. Nicholas remembered the burgomaster of Bruges, replying to the latest accusation of Duke Philip’s Controller. His voice expressed hurt, as well as surprise. ‘I did? My lord, why should I waste money on such a thing? I remember the fighting, of course. I tried to protect the young Vasquez boy.’
‘You deny it?’ said the Grand Master.
‘Show me proof, my lord,’ Nicholas said. ‘Did the master of the attacking ship tell you? Where is the draft on my bankers that paid for it? What became of the sugar?’ Beside him, he could smell Tobie.
‘You want proof?’ said the Chancellor. ‘We did not trace the ship, but we traced the sugar. The Vatachino have many refineries: one in north Cyprus and one in Crete. The stolen sugar to the exact amount was sent to the Cretan refinery, and the man who sent it was Luigi Martini of Venice. Venice, the republic which, supposedly neutral, will do all it can to place the illegitimate Zacco on the Cypriot throne. You stole the sugar, and Zacco is your master.’
Nicholas waited. Then he said, ‘You are saying that, when this sugar was sold, the gold went to Zacco instead of the Order?’
The Grand Master, about to speak, was interrupted by his own Chancellor. The Chancellor said, ‘All we say is that the Order was deprived.’
‘But the money went to Zacco,’ said Nicholas.
This time, the Grand Master did not try to reply. The Chancellor said, ‘No. Not directly.’
‘Not directly?’ Nicholas said. He could hear the stir. He knew he did not need to ask the next question himself.
The Grand Master said, ‘Where did it go? Let us have it clear.’
The Chancellor said, ‘It went into the account of the Martini brothers in Venice.’
‘It did not go to the Bastard