Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [202]
Jacopo Zorzi said, ‘But surely. He has lost his wife?’
The Song of Songs, and Marian de Charetty. She found tears had filled her eyes – of fear, of pain, of disbelief. Zorzi saw them and said, ‘Demoiselle. I’m sorry. We frightened you. One forgets. Wine acts quickly after an illness. He was not himself.’ He was smiling; his face blotted and crawling with shadows from the insects that covered the lamp. Katelina said something and, stumbling, fled.
The other guests spent their final hour in the gardens. Pleading weariness, Katelina passed it indoors, in darkness. I shall make her fields into vineyards, and the field of her love into orchards. Here, washed clean of blood stood the altar and here, obedient to the goddess, maidens came once a year … How tedious we are, talking of love!
Katelina van Borselen had taught herself not to talk or think of love. She had thought so much of it, once, that she had refused the man her parents had chosen as husband. Because it had not come to her as she wanted – noble, adoring, irresistible – she had, from a kind of fear, a kind of defiance, bought herself the experience. That is, she had – twice – laid a small part of her pride in the blue-stained hands of a decent, trustworthy workman. But the workman had betrayed her, and she had resorted to the least of all the choices she now knew she had had. She had married a sulky Adonis who had dragged her into a land of mean landscapes, not the high peaks of delight and adventure.
She lay breathing quickly in the hot, infested darkness, but what she wanted was not Simon, or the careless traffic of a Cypriot night.
She sat up when someone knocked on her door, and after waiting a man came in bearing a torch. The doctor. The doctor who had been moved to stride from the table in anger. Who was not the dupe of Nicholas, as the others were. The man said, ‘Nicholas. Do you know where he is?’
‘No,’ said Katelina.
The doctor remained, looking at her. He had resumed his professional hat. He said, ‘It was an extremely severe injury. On occasion …’
‘He was drunk but not helpless,’ Katelina said. ‘I don’t know where he went.’
He left. After a while she went out herself and, avoiding the torches, sought the cool air where, on the horizon, an indigo band met a paler one, and the scent of the roses was paired with the salt of the sea.
Between herself and the sea stood tall pillars, an arch and a cornice, underlit by a herbaceous glow, pink as peonies. She sensed warmth, and an odour newly familiar. But she was not in the sugar yards. She stood on the pictured pagan terrazzo of the Sanctuary of Venus, where sweet oils were fetched by the Graces to cauldrons like the ones she now saw, wreathed in silvery vapour, glowing apple-gold from the fires of their hearths.
The coals were real. The fires throbbed, like the fires of Hephaistos. In their light she saw the white broken steps and the avenues and the pale half-hidden plinths, with their curious statues bending, kneeling, formally upright. Venus in the arms of the crippled god. Venus couched with her lover Adonis. She could hear the island speaking under her feet, and trembled, listening to it.
Without a plinth, a god with a pure, Attic body stood, his curling head bent. Sweet in the night, a man’s voice murmured in Greek. ‘Who dare pasture his cattle in the lord’s fold?’ The fires flickered. The sea breathed in the distance. The same voice said, ‘Whose then is the sacrifice? Male blood is all the altar will drink.’ Then softly: ‘Don’t speak.’
Katelina knew by then whose the voice was; but could only guess who reclined at his feet. Then a woman said, ‘You are foolish. First, my dear, you must learn. Marco and Luigi Martini are in dispute. The Knights and Martini have diverted the Kouris.’
‘How sad,’ Nicholas said, still in Greek. The glow from the fire lit his skin, and the linen draped over his shoulder and the still,