Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [249]
Zacco was told and threw himself, burning with zeal, into the new plans. The extra sappers were in place in a week, and the big hooped bombards and mortars, repositioned, were firing their three-hundred pounders as frequently as bombards were ever able to do, with a hundred balls beside each to do it with. Neither their range nor their alignment being of more than average accuracy, the damage they did was haphazard but promising. The medium bombards and basilisks, made by John in his wisdom with trunnions, now showed the virtues of his new two-wheeled carriages, which made them easy to move and regroup whatever the weather. They had powder enough – sixteen tons of it. In the hinterland, under cover, three new fighting-towers and several new engines were taking shape while Mick Crackbene, from his round ship, perfected his trajectories against the stout keep with its four corner towers that housed, they suspected, the city’s great store of powder.
They had all grown used to the sounds of the camp: the low open-air roar of many voices, the lowing of cattle, the chiming of harness and smith-work, the continual creak of John’s water-pumps; the intermittent discharge of either cannon or handguns. Now there was an unremitting and thunderous noise of explosions punctuated by clanging and shouting, and the watchful discharge of small arms in a series of smoky thuds from the city walls. Napoleone Lomellini had discovered the absence of the Jew, and had ceased pretence, at least, of possessing no powder.
Three tiring and deafening weeks passed with no obvious change. Once, the King sent a herald with banner, trumpet and tabard, to invite the captain of Famagusta to surrender. The captain replied that the city was well off, sound, and had no intention of relinquishing its hard-won rights to Monseigneur the Bastard who, as was well known, had usurped the legitimate claims of the true Queen, Carlotta. He added that any further approach would be greeted by gunfire. Ten days after the first herald, the King sent another man in, of slightly less seniority, to repeat the royal offer. The Genoese shot him.
About then, word came from Salines, three hours away, to inform Nicholas that the Venetian sugar ship had reached Alexandria and would be leaving soon for Episkopi to pick up the combined Cypriot cargo. Nicholas went to the King and asked leave to absent himself for four days. Zacco gave it, impatiently. That day, the skies had clouded and, for the first time, the weather was cooler. Soon, it would take the better part of two days to pass between Famagusta and Kouklia. Loppe had made the awkward trip once since the siege began. Otherwise they communicated through their agent at Salines. But for the excellence of Loppe and his sugar-master, it would not have been very satisfactory.
On the way this time it rained, but despite his dragging cloak and the glum faces of the small train he took with him, Nicholas made the journey in a condition of numbness that amounted almost to happiness. The country was silent. That is, there was work going on everywhere, but the noise of it was dispersed in the mild cloudy air, no longer staring blue, with the brassy sun striking down on dry earth. The villages were noisy with smiths and coopers and loom-work, dicing and singing, but the noise was contained, and cheerful, and natural. Nowadays, quite a few recognised him, and seemed to bear him no grudges. He stayed the night at Salines, and arrived at noon next day at Kouklia. Only on the last part of his journey had he put his mind to questions of waxed cloth and canvas, cubic capacity and rates of exchange.
It was Advent again. It struck him then how long a year it had been. How last year the crop had meant nothing to him at all; how, without understanding, he had walked about the harbour and warehouses of Episkopi, and the misuse of the Order’s cargo of sugar had been simply a matter noted and used as a playing-counter. Now, arriving at his own manor of