Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [150]
The salt lake which gave Salines its name was not in view from this, the only south-eastern port left to Zacco. Below a line of unremarkable hills rose an abrupt, minor height with the remains of an acropolis on it. Beneath the hill stood the triple domes of the church, next to the low roofs of a primitive hospice and the ruined stones of a tower. A two-storey building some distance off could have been a tavern, or an office, or both. Beside it was a scatter of huts of the kind used by porters, or boatmen or fishermen. A track crossed the flat land patched with palms to the shore, where had been erected a couple of warehouses and a short timber jetty. A number of boats lay on coarse sand.
Since the Genoese had taken Famagusta, the bastard King had no real harbours but Salines and Limassol, and none at all where a ship could lie up in all winds. You would think, none the less, that he would have tried to improve what he had. John le Grant said, ‘The Saracens burned all these shores forty years ago, and they’ve seen plenty of landings since then. All the good houses and the market are over that hill at Aliki. Safer, you see, from marauders.’
He spoke, as he always did, in factual terms, and with an engineer’s eye. John le Grant was familiar with Cyprus: the others knew less about it than Nicholas did. Yet they had volunteered, aware of the risk. The risk embodied in the two powerful galleys now at anchor beside them, from one of which a skiff had already put off for the shore. In the chill, clear air, Nicholas could see the brilliant clothes of the emir in the stern of the boat; and on shore, a cavalcade of armed men trotting forward to dismount and greet him. Astorre, of the single, far-sighted eye, said, ‘See that troop? That’s the Lusignan banner. A lean, swarthy fellow in front. Would that be the King?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. He remembered the Sicilian Rizzo di Marino, and the King’s quiet bedchamber in Nicosia, and receiving news of his army in Rhodes. He had thought, then, that di Marino distrusted him. He said, ‘It might be a lord, bringing orders.’
‘Such as whether to tear our livers out here, or wait till suppertime?’ said Tobie.
‘Something like that,’ Nicholas said. He was listening to a flourish of trumpets from the shore. It had been a signal. Men ran. Almost immediately, their own ship’s boat was lowered and Nicholas and his officers were thrust down the boarding-steps into it. As their skiff set off for the land, a second boat in its turn took its place at the foot of the gangway, and Astorre’s soldiers could be seen preparing to file down and board it. Tobie said, ‘Well. He keeps his word, this bold robber king. He said he’d make us sorry if we fought for the Queen, and he didn’t mean just you and me. Where’s his lair? Nicosia?’
They were near the shore. On the jetty stood the emir Tzani-bey with a line of horses and metal-clad men; the knight Rizzo di Marino, if it had been he, was no longer present. John le Grant said, ‘They’ll take us somewhere nearer, to start with. Maybe to finish with. The Lusignan have a house at Aradippou. There’s the monastery of St George. Or there’s a half-ruined castle at Kiti which the Bastard filched from one of his sister’s supporters. We could spend the night there.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Tobie said. ‘And if this is Salines, I don’t want it on my next egg, I can tell you. What’s the church?’
‘It’s called after St Lazarus. He settled here when he rose from the dead.’
‘Good,’ said Tobie. ‘Did he leave any notes?’
Nicholas had never been to Salines before. He had never been anywhere on Cyprus except the Cape of the Cats, to which the Venetians had brought him, and the adjacent land and estates of Kolossi Castle. And, of course, Nicosia, where he had promised a young man called Zacco his service or his neutrality. Nicholas avoided John le Grant’s blue, naked stare. He suspected that John le Grant, of them