Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [233]
‘And then? Be happy, Katelina,’ he said. ‘If you think, now, that you know what happiness is. It can be found without me.’
There were tears on her cheeks. She said, ‘I know. I know what you’ve said. But Simon may die. What if Simon should die? I could marry you then.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I have tied myself too, as I told you. I have to pay the rest of my fee to Primaflora. Here, she has all she wants. To persuade her to leave, I couldn’t suggest less than marriage.’
He made to shake the reins, but her hand on his held the horse still. Her face had filled with incredulity, with alarm, with dismay. ‘A courtesan!’ Katelina said. ‘When the Queen suggested it, that was an insult. We can escape, you and I, without your having to wed Primaflora.’ She hesitated in a way that once she would never have done. ‘Unless you want it. I have no right. I am married, and you are not.’
‘I am married,’ he said. ‘Whether I want it or not is irrelevant. It was the price of my life, as well as yours.’
For a long time, she sat motionless within his embrace. He freed the reins and motioned the horse to a walk, then a trot. After a while he heard her say, ‘You are married. When did you marry her?’
‘At Lindos, before I came to the castle. Without her, I should never have reached you.’
‘So you were in no danger?’ she said slowly. ‘Even though I raised the alarm?’
In his turn, he took a long time to answer. Then he said, ‘I shall never know. I hope I shall never know.’
She looked round at him then with pain in her face. She said, ‘But one day, you may have a son. Another son.’
He smiled at the fierceness in her voice, and shook his head, and said, ‘Primaflora is not my family, only my escort. I have the only son I need, and he is in good hands. Rear him well for me.’ After that, there was only a short way to go, and she didn’t speak.
He helped Katelina to dismount just out of sight of the monastery, but it took much longer to persuade her to free him.
At the last, they stood, their hands still engaged, and faced one another in silence. It was then, resting his eyes on her face, that he saw how it had altered. The resentful anger had gone, and the desperation; and the beauty that had always been there had come to full flower. Her eyes shone like the pool of the waterfall, and her lips were tender with kissing. He recognised the radiance of love given as well as love received, and felt abashed, and thankful, and anguished. She had made the crossing for him. She had opened her heart, and delight should reward her.
They parted. He watched the gate close behind her and, turning his horse, set it at a slow, steady pace to his rendezvous. The country behind him was darkening, but ahead the sky flared with the lakes of evening and soon, topping a rise, he saw before him the sea, with the red disk of the sun sinking into it.
He had come to Lindos at dawn. It seemed a long time ago. Some way off, a donkey brayed; frogs were croaking, and the bushes around him were ghostly with moths. He picked up the reins, and rode downhill to the bay, and the boat, and the ship with Primaflora his wife waiting in it.
Chapter 33
THUS, FOR THE second time in a far from long life Nicholas, returning to Cyprus, had to devise how to ingratiate himself following an unsuitable marriage. He ought to have been in practice; but the circles he was moving in now – and their relationships to him – were both different from the first time and more dangerous. He dealt with the problem, as usual, by maintaining a vast and docile calm in the face of all provocation.
In the fishing-vessel leased by his wife, he landed at Salines. There, he ensconced Primaflora briefly while he paid a swift visit to Kouklia to check progress, and to face Loppe, the first but by no means the easiest of his forthcoming confrontations. He broke the news of his marriage in private, after a round of sugarfield inspections and meetings which had ended with a convivial company meal in the courtyard where, once, they had entertained the family Corner. After the others had left,