Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [212]
In Nicosia, Bartolomeo Zorzi strode into the villa with three impeccable ledgers under his arms and a string of justifiable complaints. ‘Are we to dye everything crimson? I know we have madder, but look at what your blockade is doing to imports! And all the shore workers down south are servicing war galleys, who bring in nothing but metal and powder and arms. What about the boy? He tried to kill you!’
‘Well, his uncle’s going to kill me if I don’t produce him,’ Nicholas said. ‘The lord Simon is coming from Portugal, and I want to lay my hands on that boy. Where did he go?’
‘Portugal, if you believe the note that he left,’ said Bartolomeo. ‘And that’s what he wrote to his aunt: but I don’t see what ship could have taken him. At any rate, someone helped him get out of Nicosia.’ The slight pallor he had brought from Constantinople had left Bartolomeo Zorzi: above the rim of black glossy beard his skin was roseate brown. ‘He couldn’t get clear so fast to the coast without something to carry him. Someone got him a mule, and money, and clothes, and food, and helped him over the wall. One of his father’s Genoese friends, it might be? No one saw him. Why worry? If Zacco had found out what that boy tried to do to you, he’d be dead. You should go back to Zacco. Keep your employer happy. The boy is of no consequence. What is an uncle?’
‘Ill-intentioned,’ said Nicholas. ‘Where is Jacopo? I thought he was coming north.’
‘You think Jacopo had something to do with this?’ said Bartolomeo. His teeth glistened. ‘No, my friend. You will find he has stayed in the south with his vineyards. We are simply three brothers, Nicholai, Jacopo and myself, earning a living as best we might – and putting an alum fortune in your way, as I remember. Over this matter of uncles and nephews, we cannot help you.’
It was what he had expected. What he had not expected, but could, on reflection, understand, was his complete inability to attain an audience with the lady Marietta, mother of Zacco. He stayed in Nicosia for three days in case he was mistaken; then took himself south.
The family Corner at Episkopi proved as unhelpful as Marietta. Correction: the family Corner were three-quarters absent, in that – the season now being hot – the princesses Valenza and Fiorenza and their children had returned to Venice under the supervision of Vanni Loredano, and Marco Corner could tell him nothing about his late guest except that she had ungraciously disappeared overnight while he and his staff happened to be somewhat preoccupied with a temporary difficulty.
The nature of the difficulty was apparent to anyone traversing the Episkopi cane fields. Nicholas made four dispositions. The first proved, as he suspected, that no ship bound for Portugal had recently called at Cyprus. The second took him (in Tobie’s absence) to the experimental benches Tobie had set up in Kouklia. The third instructed Loppe (in Loppe’s absence) that, as a service to Messer Corner, water from the royal viaduct should be provided, in reasonable measure, to assist in the irrigation of the Episkopi estate. The fourth and last ensured that there would be found, in a public place, messages from himself to Tobie, to Astorre, and to King James of Lusignan, to whose sole service he was irrevocably contracted.
Then Nicholas vander Poele, only deviser of the great game of Cyprus, left Cyprus.
Chapter 30
THIS TIME, the windmills of the jetty at Rhodes stood motionless in the heat, and no spume concealed the green and ochre pile of the City, with the Castello of the Knights on its crest. In the harbour, the fortress of Ayios Nikolaos was nearly finished without the help of an Aberdonian engineer, or of Nicholas the less saintly, now returning.
Last year, velvet-clad, Nicholas had arrived here by galley, and in the company of Tristão Vasquez and his lovesick young son. Here he had seen the winter weeks pass, and had kept his army alive, and