Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [13]
The chests lay all burst open below him, some overturned, some floating and empty; one of them tranquilly sinking. He watched it. It contained a seam of grey, glistening silt which rose groggily, clouding the water. Beneath the boxes was nothing but river. There never had been a boat. The contents of the chests had not been stolen: they lay, presumably safe, on the bed of the river. So why had the men cheered?
Nicholas said, ‘What was in them?’
One of the Cypriots came up, walking slowly from where the carts stood. ‘What was in them? Sugar,’ he said.
Diamonds, he might have said. It was nearly the same. Nicholas looked at him without speaking, and then at his companions. ‘Sixteen loaves a box, and how many boxes …? For Bologna?’
‘For the refineries at Bologna,’ another of the Queen’s entourage said. ‘The robbers couldn’t do anything with it, you see. It had to be refined. They couldn’t do such a thing secretly. So they brought it to the river and ruined it. All that money lost to the Queen; the gold she needed to win back her throne.’
‘Who were they?’ said Nicholas.
The Cypriot shrugged. ‘Venetians? Genoese? They would have taken the sugar. Only one man would have destroyed it. We know him.’
‘Who?’ Nicholas said.
‘That is our affair,’ said the man.
They took the carts back to the farm, where the Queen was, and instead of her sugar they carried her dead. Waiting outside the gate was the girl Nicholas had already noticed. She had been there a long time: her face was white with cold. He reined in his horse and dismounted. ‘Demoiselle? I am sorry.’
Her eyes were on the wagon. She said, ‘Would you help me up?’
Heads turned. Nicholas said, ‘Yes. Take my hand.’
Running out from the house, the Queen met their tale with a torrent of questions and cries, rounding in anger on the men who had stayed with her, the major domo and the man she called Pardo. In the middle she walked sharply across to the carts and examined them. The girl Primaflora looked up.
It had stopped snowing. Her yellow hair was no longer neatly coiled in its pleatings and her paint had all gone. At her knee was a dead man in half armour. The Queen said, ‘Ansaldo! But what a tragedy! I cannot bear it! What shall I do without him, after all this?’
‘Find another,’ said the girl. The men who had been with her in the barn were silent. She looked at them, and then about her. She said, ‘Now the children can come back and finish their snowmen. Imagine how many they made!’
Reaching up, the Queen patted her cheek. ‘Come, girl. They will warm you and give you dry clothes. One will help you down.’
She turned, to find whom to command, and saw Nicholas. She frowned, searching her memory. Since there was no hope of avoidance, Nicholas took off his helmet and gave a short bow. She said, ‘We have met.’
‘Niccolò vander Poele, madama,’ he said. ‘Of course, at your service.’ His Greek was pure Trapezuntine. He knew she would recognise that, before anything. He saw, as her face sharpened, that she did.
She said, ‘Ser Niccolò. You have my gratitude. Pray help my poor lady descend.’
He turned, obeying, and lifted the girl to the ground. She was heavy, weighed down with soaked stuff. She said, ‘Let me show you the snowmen.’
The Queen shook her head, her face pitying. Nicholas said, ‘Show me.’
His hand was taken. The young woman led him, as a child might, round the side of the house, and to the yard and the barn at the back. It was as she said. The snow was littered with playthings and crude, buttoned figures with eyes and noses and hands. Nicholas stood. The girl at his elbow said nothing. One or two of the Cypriots had drifted over to join them.
The biggest and best of the figures stood just within reach. Nicholas put out a tentative thumb, rasped its cheek, and then broke off an ear-lobe and sucked it. She watched him, her face stiff but not so frozen as it had been. He lowered the fragment and considered it. ‘Five ducats’ worth?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’ll pay you when I can afford it. What was in the boxes then?