Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [158]
‘Nonsense,’ said Astorre. He was under his blanket. ‘We’re here to fight. He likes fighting.’
‘I think,’ said John le Grant, ‘that that is what Tobie is saying. And we ought none of us to forget. He likes meddling in business as well. Whatever is selling in Cyprus, you can expect Nicholas to corner it soon.’
Tobie grunted, and rolled into bed. ‘It looks to me,’ said the doctor, ‘as if Nicholas has been offered it free. But I’m damned sure it’s not a monopoly.’
Chapter 23
TO BE ALONE and sick among enemies wouldn’t trouble a man: it should not trouble, therefore, a woman of twenty-two years with a bastard son and a profligate husband. Nevertheless Katelina van Borselen came to consciousness to lie, her eyes closed, struggling with a remembrance of fear. Fear, and an enemy’s voice saying, ‘We are not far away.’ The voice of Nicholas. Claes.
Where had she heard it? On board ship, she supposed. Even here, in her cabin, since she had never left it. She recalled the storm on leaving Rhodes, and some of the subsequent misery. She remembered the small shock of finding herself in the care of the courtesan Primaflora whose attentions, unhesitating and detached, might (conceivably) have been those of a humane-minded mistress of Nicholas, or (if Fortune were kind) those of a spy of the Queen, concerned for the health of an ally. Katelina knew that Nicholas was being sent, heavily monitored, to fight for Carlotta. She understood, but at the time hardly cared, that there had been a sea battle. She didn’t know what had resulted. But she was presently awake, and in bed, and unmolested. So, whatever the outcome, the ship was proceeding calmly enough on its way, and she was recovering. And if Nicholas was near, she would, somehow, protect herself. She dozed. Her hearing brought her the slight, rumpled beat of a moth, and the kindred fizzings of sound that suggested that it was night, and that candles were burning. Or lamps. On a ship, as a rule, there were lamps.
She was not on a ship. The bed beneath her was still. Moreover, in winter the light drew no moths. Not yet alarmed, Katelina opened her eyes. She was in a firelit room, well proportioned and furnished, whose casement transmitted the paleness of a cool and overcast day. The chamber was warm, quiet and clean, and apparently empty. A convent. A hospice. The home of Genoese well-wishers, perhaps. A haven far away, she could hope, from the threatening presence of Nicholas. She closed her lids and lay thinking.
Always she had hated the sea, whether sailing to Scotland or south with her husband to Portugal. At sea, she lost Simon’s attention. On land, she had worn him down with her passionate desire for a second child. At first, he had partnered her avidly. Then, bit by bit, he had resumed the old ways of debauchery which came so easily to a man of his looks. A system of barren debauchery, she had discovered, which had never been known to bear harvest.
Of course, women had ways to check pregnancy. But Katelina came to understand, too, that the women Simon patronised were not unwilling to bear to her beautiful husband, and that it was a surprise and a disappointment that they did not. Observing his persistent philandering, she slowly realised that her husband’s virility was the point at issue; that their common infertility must be in origin his; and that the blight, whatever it was, must have struck him since his first fruitful marriage. They never discussed it. For him, such a flaw was inconceivable, and she gave thanks, every day, for his vanity. But for that, he might ask himself, and then her, who had fathered the heir she had given him. At the thought, her lips parted and, abruptly, she stirred in bed and tried to change her position.
‘She is not cured, sister,’ a man’s voice announced crossly. It was thick, and used adequate Greek-flavoured French. ‘We do not want her corpse here. Send her to Famagusta