Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [217]
He laughed suddenly, thinking. ‘Probably half as much as he charged you. You arranged it?’
‘I know those boats plying to Cyprus. He was told, if you hired him, to bring you to Lindos.’
‘He would have, eventually,’ Nicholas said. ‘But his mother wanted a cut from the Knights. I suppose Yiannis was in on it, too. It’s as well the sugar crop flourished this year, since we’ve ended up financing the natives of Apolakia. I’m too stiff to bath myself.’
‘I thought of that,’ said Primaflora. ‘Two of the men who brought you will help you. Afterwards, I shall bring you some oils. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas.
The smile was in her eyes, not her lips. She had not changed, that he could see. She said, ‘Amid the plenty of Cyprus?’
He said, ‘If you know the boats plying to Cyprus, you will have that news too.’
The smile had sunk from her eyes. She said, ‘Yes. But until I saw your face, I didn’t believe it.’ She turned. ‘There is my servant. Follow him. I shall come when you are clean.’ He wondered, obeying, what it was about him that gave that away. It irked him, because unless he knew, he could never simulate it.
Behind the low house was a garden too small for a fountain, but full of dark, watered earth and heavy flowers in strange marble troughs and the scent of fruit from the trees and the vines whose shadows lay on the couch where they brought him. It was still so early that the air felt like milk against his odourless skin, bare above virginal, darnfree white towels. He laid his brow on his pillowing arms and closed his eyes, waiting. Normally sparing of sleep, he knew he had had not quite enough to clear his head from the wine. Since it was not a good idea to think he let himself drift, aware of the small stirring sounds of awakening households; of the twitter of sparrows; of a ground-bass of bees. Somewhere, a good way off, a young child was crying. Primaflora said, ‘Stay where you are. Have I done this for you before? The oils come from Alexandria.’ Drops fell from her palms, teasing him. The liquid was warm, and contained scents he didn’t know. Random trails, slow as raindrops, started to contour his body unattended. Where her shadow had been was blank and dazzling sunlight. She said, ‘He did that? And you let him?’
There were five good stories he told in rotation about the wound on his shoulder. He realised she might have heard about an accident in the dyeworks. He saw that, of course, she knew the truth, because Katelina would have no reason, now, to conceal it. He said, ‘You heard?’ It seemed better to turn round and sit cross-legged, while the oil trickled down to his waist.
Her own palms were glossy and spilling. She leaned forward and smoothed their burden over his chest and his back, her eyes on the wound. She said, ‘Yes. It was the first thing the demoiselle told the Queen. How her brave nephew had tried to kill the mercenary leader who had sold himself to Zacco.’
Nicholas made considering shapes with his cheeks and his chin. ‘I didn’t exactly let him,’ he said. ‘He was a quick learner.’
‘But you didn’t tell Zacco. The demoiselle says that you meant to, once you’d humiliated the young man enough. Or perhaps you had another humiliation in mind.’
He followed her thought. He said, ‘Now that’s really tortuous, and you know what a simple Fleming I am. Anyway, he wouldn’t get to kill Tzani-bey. Where is the boy, anyway?’
‘In Portugal, I assume,’ said Primaflora. ‘He certainly told his aunt so, and he’s certainly not still in Cyprus, or she would never have left. I wondered, myself, why he abandoned her, but she says Zacco promised to free her at the end of the summer anyway. You know, of course, that she sent us reports on all that Zacco was doing?’
‘I thought she might. Then why did she leave?’ Nicholas said. She touched his good shoulder and turned him as he was speaking and he pressed his