Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [242]
‘How kind,’ said the woman. She laughed, and the veil blew out like a flag. ‘And you think the King would accept that?’
‘I don’t know the King,’ said Primaflora in a thin voice. She had stopped her tears with the heel of her hand, and face-paint smeared it.
The King’s mother snapped her fingers. ‘A kerchief. To see you now, who would want you? Go to Rhodes.’
Primflora took the kerchief and drew it over her cheeks and then held it taut, staring at the damp blotches. She said, ‘I see you want me to go, for the King’s sake. For Niccolò’s sake, would you let the King arbitrate?’
The cloth blew reflectively, and again. The King’s mother said, ‘You think you can persuade the lion that he is not hungry?’
‘No,’ said Primaflora. She did not try, this time, to keep her voice steady. ‘But the quality of any man’s service depends on his wellbeing. My death, my banishment would deprive the King of contentment as well as my husband. And sooner or later, another would come in my place.’
Above their heads, the fan brushed the air; the coloured bird woke and stretched one indolent leg; the caged bird, which had been silent, suddenly launched into a piercing, rattling trill. Marietta of Patras turned her head, her breath whistling, and silent hands bore off the cage. The King’s mother said, ‘You are singularly mature for this boy, but I would not have him distressed before Famagusta is won. Very well. Stay in Nicosia and hold yourself ready. When he returns, I shall ask the King to receive you. Perhaps you will accept his dismissal. Indeed, my woman, you will have no other choice.’
The northern mountains were cool, and the King protracted his stay, taking up residence in St Hilarion, the summer palace of the Lusignans, in the airy apartments of the absent Carlotta and Luis her consort. Long ago, the broad tactics for the next and final stage of this war had been decided; all that remained were a host of small decisions and, of course, the normal government of his kingdom. During this brief interregnum, it pleased Zacco to call Nicholas to St Hilarion for disputatious council meetings which occasionally ended in concord. Problems were more often solved when, after a day of hard, heated riding, the King repaired with his shrewdest advisers to the cool belvedere suspended over the castle’s north precipice, with its stupendous view to the sea, and the mountains of Asia beyond. Then, with men of Naples and Sicily like Rizzo di Marino, or Conella Morabit; or with the excellent Bailie of Karpass, or the Venetian commander Pesaro, Nicholas could share the moulding of the King’s mind.
At the end of such evenings he found his own bed alone, walking through blackened courts where once Saracen climbers had run with fire among the poisoned and the dying. He had not forgotten. But now, with the campaign against Famagusta looming over him, and the palace full of the wild exhilaration of a conquering army, Nicholas was too occupied to be haunted by anything of the past.
Every day, he passed between the cliff-top fort and the captured castle at its foot, clearing the way not just for the King’s casual occupation, but to repair the defences of Kyrenia against the corsair, or Carlotta, or the Turk. More importantly, and as often as he could, he rode to Pesaro’s citadel west of Famagusta. The guns, under John’s supervision, were already on their way there, and the sutlers with the siege engines. Soon, the full army would move. Twice, he got to Nicosia and could hardly respond to the ardour he found in Primaflora. It was then, too, that he found that her meeting with the King’s mother was over – happily, as she told him, smiling; although her welcome would not be complete until the King himself left St Hilarion and sent for her. It seemed