Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [130]
The boy’s face was swollen with tears. With his medical eye, Tobie studied the young Portuguese, and was troubled. This gave way to an emotion less worthy. Tobie said, ‘And that wasn’t part of the plan.’
‘What?’ said Astorre. Surrounded by bits of a handgun, he was discussing something with John le Grant. Their hands were black, and so was the engineer’s nose, which he tended to pinch when expounding.
‘The boy didn’t sail. He was supposed to,’ Tobie said. ‘Nicholas expected the Borselen woman to stay. She’d want to see us disposed of. But the boy was to sail with the coffin.’ Tobie’s pink lips curled unkindly. ‘Nicholas is going to be cross.’
‘Wherever he is,’ said John le Grant.
They didn’t know where Nicholas was. He had been parted from them unexpectedly, at the gates of the Grand Master’s Palace, and immediately after their audience. Since Nicholas had been committed to the custody of Queen Carlotta it was reasonable, on reflection, that he should be given a guard of his own and marched straight from the audience to her residence, leaving his officers behind in the courtyard. They watched him go. He made no effort at resistance, and indeed, threw them a grimace in passing that implied complaisance, if not absolute joy. A moment later, an angry crowd had run upon him, and stones were being hurled.
It happened outside the gates and, surrounded by soldiers, Astorre and the other three officers could only shout, and try ineffectually to beat their way through to help him. From the language they could hear, the attackers appeared to be of Portuguese nationality. For a worrying interval, Nicholas seemed to disappear in the crowd, while the Grand Master’s soldiers stood back and did nothing. Then the noise came to an abrupt end, and before they could find out the reason, the escort arrived for Astorre and the rest, and tried to march them out in their turn. It was Astorre who planted his booted feet firmly in the Grand Master’s courtyard and refused to move until told what had happened.
The captain of the escort had been dismissive. ‘The Portuguese gentleman Tristão Vasquez was killed, and your friend is thought to be somehow responsible. It is untrue, no doubt. But the Portuguese are an excitable nation.’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ had said Captain Astorre, ‘if this is all the restraint they are ever put under. Who stopped them? Not any men of the Order, that I could see.’
‘I hardly know,’ had said the soldier. ‘May we move, sir? I believe a beneficial intervention may have been made by some passing Genoese gentlemen. Your friend, I am sure, is quite safe.’
‘Is he?’ Astorre had said. ‘I would feel better, none the less, if you would be so kind as to make certain.’
They had received an assurance of sorts, and had been forced to leave it at that. From there, they had been marched to join the rest of their men at the Arsenal, where the padlocks were bigger, as John le Grant said, and where there existed the anvils, the workshops, the furnaces with which (under supervision, and with no grant of powder or shot) they could adjust and refurbish their weapons. For after all, they had not had a good fight since Troia, and they wanted to start off in Cyprus with their swords sharp.
Thomas, even when harangued in English, remained mystified about their Cyprus commitment. Working outdoors with the men, he kept his doubts to himself. On the day the cog left, he sat with Astorre and the rest round the dismantled handgun and doggedly returned to his worries. ‘All those things they complained about. Nicholas did them, not us.’
John le Grant possessed the most patience. He tweaked his nose again, blackening it further. ‘That’s right. Katelina van Borselen told the Queen what she knew about Nicholas. Katelina van Borselen, knowing Nicholas, smelled a rat over that pirated cargo. She reckoned there was a lot more to be found out, and presumably set someone to doing it. The missing sugar was tracked down to Crete. That