Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [136]
She had come to the end of all she intended to tell him. She said, ‘How else can we reach the free world, and capture its conscience? You will go as soon as the weather allows. You have an oath to keep.’
He had forgotten that. He had forgotten his bruised face for the moment as well. He was thinking that he had recently received a number of very good offers although, of course, they were no more than he expected. You didn’t go into the game without having worked out, at least, what the prizes were.
Before the storm had blown itself out, the company of Niccolò the banker left Rhodes on a round ship commanded by Louis de Magnac, the Grand Commander of Cyprus, with the best seamen of the Order serving under him. Marching down to Mandraki Harbour, the hundred picked soldiers tramped in a dazzle of cuirass and helmet. In front, Astorre and Thomas were shaken by wind-battered plumes, and even John le Grant, walking with scarlet-clad Tobie, glistened in his suit of tooled German armour that Thomas, privately, had tried to buy from him twice. Behind came their clerks, their grooms and their servants, and behind that, the well-packed wagons with their arms and their baggage.
Nicholas was missing still. It was presumed that the head of the Bank of Niccolò had spent the week locked in the Palace of Cyprus. The mercenaries who fought for him tended to believe, on the other hand, that the lucky bastard was in bed with the blonde, and would be found spent on board when they got there. Astorre had done nothing to destroy this conviction, which might even be sound. It surprised him, the regard in which the young fellow was held by his army. It was natural enough, he supposed. The boy had a brain. He was friendly. He made money. He’d come a long way since Bruges, that was certain.
On board, there was still no sign of Nicholas, nor any news of him that they could gather. The ship, they found, was heavily loaded, although the only other passengers in evidence were some three dozen soldiers, armed as they were not. Their own weapons, armour and harness were locked away as soon as they arrived, and the hundred men of their company equally bestowed under lock and key in a different part of the hold. The four officers of the House of Niccolò were given a cabin. Travelling with them, they gathered, were officials bound for the royal garrison at Kyrenia, some merchants, and a Genoese called Tomà Adorno, at whose name Tobie brightened. Attending this assortment of voyagers was a full complement of servants and some women, who might or might not have been wives. These shared the space below deck with a full cargo of arms and gunpowder and food, destined for the Queen’s remaining strongholds on Cyprus. Also aboard, but presently confined with his shipmaster, was Louis de Magnac, who was to command the voyage. With him, they fervently hoped, was his useful black servant called Lopez.
They had proceeded so far with the inventory when a sequence of thuds from above indicated that the time of departure was now close. It was John le Grant who asked for, and received, permission for the four to take the air on deck until sailing-time, a privilege no one else begged since the rain at the time was horizontal. They stood by the deck-rail and gazed all about them. Rhodes, for four months their prison, was about to relinquish them at last. They should have been joyful. The wind screamed and the sea surged, slate and white to the misty horizon. There was a sequence of celestial mutters, and a white vertical crack appeared between heavens and sea, followed by a thorough-going crash. Astorre’s eyelashes shook in the downpour like groundsel. Astorre said, ‘So where is the madman?’
It was the urgent question in all their minds. If Nicholas was already on board, no one would admit to it. If he was not on board, then something was seriously wrong, and no one except Astorre wanted to think of it. In silence, therefore, they watched the wharf, the pier, and all the distant traffic out of the city. In rigid