Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [214]
‘No,’ said Nicholas. It was practically true.
‘Neither can I. Pity,’ said the man called Boulaki. ‘I once had three here together. Never could afford more. But I expect you’re saving yourself.’
Nicholas began to laugh again, this time unintentionally, and a little later they found they had between them quite a repertoire of good tavern songs. They kept it up until someone climbed across five different boats and tipped a pail of seawater over them.
Boulaki’s mother, when Nicholas met her, was cleaning a platter of fish in her yard, under a rickety trellis of vine. The sheets and small-clothes of the Knights of Monolithos were spread on the bushes all the way from her house to the shore, most of it needing darning. Monolithos Castle itself stood to the north on its abrupt rocky headland, hazy in the afternoon heat. Boulaki’s mother was very like Boulaki: big-featured and sweaty with a black moustache and a twisted scarf bundling her hair. She handled her knife like an embalmer and her tongue like her knife. Nicholas lingered outside, where the goat was tied up, until Boulaki’s voice began to drop out of the contest. The woman’s Greek rattled on like a wagon-train. Then she screamed, ‘The man!’
Nicholas left the goat and advanced. ‘The man?’ she said. She had planted a fist on each knee. The knife glinted upright in one of them.
‘This is Nikko,’ said the fishing-boat’s former owner. He was nearly sober.
Her eyes were round, and fringed with stubby black lashes. ‘You fornicate with some woman?’ she said. ‘Some poor Greek woman?’ She sounded like Cropnose.
Nicholas said, ‘Do I look such a wretch? What would my wife and five children say? Lady, my mistress wants news of her cousin. A Flemish lady called Katelina van Borselen. And maybe also, of a young boy her nephew. It is to help them.’
The black eyes ran him up and down. The woman said, ‘My son has a brain like a fish. You bought his boat. What did you pay him?’
He could see, lying beside her, the bag of silver Boulaki had brought from the boat. He named, with humility, the sum it contained. He did not mention the other bag, equally heavy, about which Boulaki had sworn him to silence. The woman said ‘Huh!’ in a tone of disgust which might have concealed gratification. She said, ‘And for that, do I have to feed and conceal you until I get news of this woman? And will you want it when it arrives? If the Knights have not raped her, the Turks will.’
He said, ‘No. She is worth money.’
‘And your mistress has money? Well, I am glad. Boulaki, your cousins have come. They will show this old married man where to go. The cabin next to the stackyard. It’s been out of use since the mule died. Unless, of course, you want to sail on and seek elsewhere?’
It had been a long, sunny day and, like Boulaki, he was not entirely sober. Nicholas said, ‘Do you think you could get news?’
‘By tomorrow,’ said the woman, turning away. She picked up a grey, leathery fish and slit it so that its entrails began to emerge. They were Turkey-red and vermilion.
‘He’ll stay,’ Boulaki said. ‘And I’ll find him somewhere better to sleep than the stable.’ He gripped Nicholas by the shoulder and drew him, ducking, towards the low house and its doorway, and through the house, and out the other side where other houses had settled at intervals into the dust, each with a cistern, an oven, a rectangle of edible greens, a smother of nets, floats and creeper, a heap of baskets, a stack of paddles, a scatter of washing and a smell of fish and goat, lard and badly-dug privies. Further along, a group of men in straw hats were sitting crosslegged in a huddle, drinking and betting on dice. ‘This,’ said Boulaki, ‘is Nikko.’
No one looked up, except when his hand came out and placed a coin on the pile. Then, in due course, the dice were tossed in his direction, and shortly after, a wooden cup was lowered over his shoulder, full of greenish raw wine which he was thirsty enough to drink right away.