Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [201]
‘No,’ she said. The moth shifted, and she stood up quickly. She said, ‘While Diniz is here, I am here. I won’t beg.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if you did,’ Nicholas said. ‘Do you know who he is?’
‘She knows,’ said the Venetian patiently. He had recovered himself.
‘She knows,’ Nicholas said, ‘that Bartolomeo of the dyeworks is your brother. She doesn’t associate you as yet with your other brother. Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, who once shared your journey from Scotland, demoiselle, and whose good advice sent me to Trebizond. The Greek with the wooden leg. I broke it at Sluys. You must remember that, Katelina.’
She remembered. She remembered the crazy, joyous apprentice whose name was not yet Nicholas. She remembered a tall, elegant Greek of Florentine descent whose affairs she had always known, vaguely, to be involved with those of the Charetty company; with its great new ventures; with the marriage, even, of Nicholas and Marian, his employer and wife. She said, ‘Do you mean to destroy his brothers as well?’
The thing on the table moved. Following her eyes, Nicholas picked up a napkin and, leaning forward, placed it over the live moth and pressed on it. He said, ‘I don’t destroy everyone who hurts me. You know that better than most. I don’t even know whether the Zorzi wish me well or the opposite.’ He lifted his hand, leaving the crumpled cloth on the table. Nothing moved. He said, ‘What do you think?’ to the Venetian.
‘I think it’s dead,’ said Jacopo Zorzi, ‘whether it harmed you or not. And the Zorzi family? You blame us, I cannot think why, for the loss of your alum monopoly. Because I am a friend of Giovanni da Castro, does it mean he finds mines with my help? And today, I know of no insidious plot against you, nor will you think it likely once you’re sober. Bartolomeo is making a gold mine for you out of the dyeworks. Nicholai, cripple that he is, can hardly be an opponent. And I – I merely live in Cyprus and work honestly in my vineyards. You must come and visit them some time.’
‘Are they near?’ Katelina said. She tried and failed to capture Zorzi’s eyes. He had offered help of a kind against Nicholas. She had had no idea then that some real quarrel existed between them.
Zorzi said, smiling not at her, but at Nicholas, ‘Not too far. In the hills, at a place called Engedi. You have heard it sung of, in the sweetest words in the world.’ He stopped, and waited. Distantly, someone plucked a stringed instrument and voices spoke, idly, over the courtyard. The supper tables were empty and, for a moment, around them was silence.
Nicholas said, ‘I shall send …’ and stopped.
‘Go on,’ said Zorzi softly. She moved, and without speaking, the dark man reached and restrained her.
Nicholas said, ‘I shall send gems of lapis lazuli: I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards. My beloved …’ He stopped again. It was, Katelina thought, as if he were remembering something from long ago, or listening to someone telling him something he had not known. Nicholas said, ‘My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi …’ He stopped again, and said, ‘My beloved is dead.’
Zorzi lifted the lamp. By its flame she saw the face of Nicholas vander Poele, and it had no identity. Then he said, ‘I must see to my guests,’ and walked away.
Katelina found she was standing, looking after him. Zorzi’s hand dropped and, turning, he laid the lamp slowly back on the table. Then he drew breath and looked at her, his unprepossessing, half-shaven face full of thought. He said, ‘My beloved is dead? Who?’
Katelina