Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [197]
‘No!’ said Katelina. ‘No. It will be pleasanter in the shade.’ She didn’t turn her eyes either, although she knew the pearly shell-faces were watching.
Kouklia was ancient Paphos. Kouklia was the island’s name for the shrine and temple of Paphian Aphrodite, the goddess of spring and gardens and love. The roots of the island were here, where Nicholas was; and of course, the princesses had known it.
Part castle, part fortress, part palace, the manor of Kouklia had been built over many periods, by many hands. On the east, the yellow masonwork blocks belonged to the great Frankish castle, two hundred years old, with its great gothic hall and its airy upper quarters. The north held the guardrooms and deep chambered archway, by which they had entered. To the west and the south were the kitchen offices and also the private quarters, recently rebuilt, Katelina could see, with open windows and long wooden balconies to invite the sea airs of the plateau. Presently, when they had eaten and talked in the coolness of the hall, they took their ease, as they wished, in these chambers. Then, as the sun lost its heat, their horses were brought and Nicholas conducted them through his domain. No one had yet spoken of Diniz.
Katelina watched not Nicholas but Corner and Loredano as they passed through the well-ordered fields in the shade of the eight-foot solid viaduct, whose high limestone troughs fed into the fields and the factories from distant springs in the Oridhes forest. Soon, they began to ask questions and without effort, Nicholas answered them. He showed them devices: deterrent mouse-walls of clay and chopped straw; tar-doctored water to guard against caterpillars. He willingly entered discussions. The lady Fiorenza said, ‘But, Messer Niccolò, you show us all your secrets.’
And he, smiling, replied, ‘But, lady, you would discover them anyway.’
‘Of course, you are lucky,’ said Zorzi. ‘The aqueduct. Also, the river Dhiarizos is yours, and in flow through the summer. Whereas the Kouris –’
‘We have different problems,’ said Marco Corner heartily. ‘Now. This development you speak of at Stavros. It was a farm. I remember little but a small farm.’ And Nicholas smiled and led on, and in a short time, the ground levelled and distant sounds, now familiar from yesterday, became loud and compelling. Soon, a high wall appeared, and a well-trained gatekeeper, and they were within a big compound where everything looked new.
‘The mill is Syrian,’ Nicholas said, ‘with Sicilian refinements. John could tell you more about it than I, but he’s had to go back to Kyrenia. The aqueduct leads into here – if you will come down the slope – and becomes a covered channel narrowing into the mill-house. The jet from that, as you see, operates the horizontal wheel turning the millstones. The floor is braced over a vault, and the tailstream comes out there. You see the mash being dealt with. The canal – over there – passes under the grinding hall, where the cane gets its first pounding. I’m building a second mill for next season. Do the ladies want to come into the hall? It is not very salubrious.’
‘I should like to see it,’ said Katelina.
The building was vast, with a flat roof supported on arches, beneath which oxen plodded. They were forcing a stone to revolve on a millbase the length of two men. It was poundingly noisy, and malodorous. Nicholas clapped a man on the shoulder, and the fellow stopped working and grinned as Nicholas, raising his voice, began to explain.
Katelina left the party. She went and stood on the edge of the juice-pit, and watched the greenish-black liquid rushing and swirling below. There was more juice in cisterns outside, and clean water, and places where men and women were washing vessels and