Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [161]
Nicholas himself was in the north, and for a month was out of reach of his victims. Instead, he passed these first weeks undergoing a series of trials which Diniz Vasquez would have been hard put to it to equal. The trials were perpetrated by Zacco, and their aim was to kill or to captivate.
All winter, Zacco’s tents had occupied those plains in the north that spread from Nicosia towards the enemy forts on the coastline. Before the turn of the year the King, or so Nicholas suspected, had spent much of his time at the Palace, leaving to his Mameluke army a half-hearted blockade of the shore towns. Now, sweeping Nicholas with him, a reinvigorated Zacco led out Astorre and his men to the encampment; gave them horses, provisions and tents, and made them acquainted with the land and their fellows.
To such sensible practices, the King added, on whim, his own wayward pleasures. Having called for a council, he would cast his papers brusquely aside, demand his leopards, and sweep his companions for days to the mountains, flying hawks on the pinnacles and hunting the powerful wild sheep called moufflon among the snow-laden pines of the valleys. The leopards, packed snarling and blindfold in ox carts, were subject to the same whims as their master, who alternately struck their gold-harnessed muzzles and kissed them. Nicholas, quick as any to learn, was still novice enough to begin with, and brought back an upper arm rutted with claw marks. It was deadly play, if not without logic in moments of leisure. At such times, some of the Lusignan’s soldiers would die, or be maimed: there would be rivalries. But from such escapades men emerged hardened; exposed to rough weather; experienced in seeking food and adopting crude quarters. Those who failed were discarded. Those who survived were given other tests, more severe and more sudden, until they triumphed, or died, or were moved to rebellion.
Nicholas chose to rebel. Roused nightly to service some exploit – to capture a mule-train, set fire to a renegade’s house; judge a fierce, drunken horse race by torchlight – Nicholas didn’t return from the last to his tent but, without gown or armour, stood bareheaded in his plain pourpoint outside that of Zacco and requested admission.
He didn’t need the gleam of men’s eyes in the firelight to know who had seen, who was watching. His own corps would, to be sure, be among them. Chosen companion for weeks of this young and dazzling King, Nicholas had shared his sport, his forays, his pleasures, but he had not shared his bed. James de Lusignan gave himself to those lovers he had, of both sexes, and issued no new invitations. Nicholas, who also knew how to wait, had been glad of it, although his air of willing neutrality was misleading. Primaflora had gone, sent to Rhodes despite all he could do. Her physical loss had unsettled him to a degree he had not enjoyed or expected, but since then, he had taken no partners. Celibacy was a test, a reminder, a punishment, and he kept his bargain quite well with himself, with the aid now and then of the wine cask. Astorre liked it when he was in a carousing mood; Loppe did not.
Now, tonight he was sober as he entered the royal campaign tent, its brocade alcoves disfigured with overturned stools and spilled food and wry candles. The horse race had sprung from an argument here, so they said. Now there was no one within but the King, his long-lidded stare curtained by tangled, waving brown hair, his young-boned wrist poised on the arm of his seat with a painted map hung from its fingers. Zacco looked: the servant who had brought Nicholas vanished. Zacco said, ‘Well, Niccolò. You have come to resign?’
He had not been asked to sit, so Nicholas stood. ‘Do they all do that?’ he said. ‘My lord Zacco?’
The King’s eyes were like a Cathay’s, half open. He said, ‘Sometimes they shout, and throw down their shields. They are seen to talk in corners with priests, or the lords of my army. The lords, of course, listen and tell me. I am lenient in the death I give