Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [253]
‘But it may make no difference,’ Nicholas said. ‘It probably won’t. And I know what you’re thinking. Every gun in Famagusta is trained on the end of that trench, and Genoese archers are among the best in the world. But in the end, we may have to save the honour of Genoa the Superb by attacking her.’
Chapter 36
THE FOLLOWING day was the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas. Consumed with rage and anxiety, Tobias Beventini, physician, prowled through the warm, pretty villa of the loveliest woman in Nicosia, bumping into maids carrying baskets of linen and other maids bearing pressed robes and doublets, concealing himself from the man who wanted to trim the fluff round his scalp, and using long Latin words to the other man who wanted to polish his spurs and his jewellery.
He had no jewellery. The last time he had felt like this was in a house in Florence, when he and Julius had been about to visit Cosimo de’ Medici and extract a commission to represent the Medici in Trebizond. That time, Nicholas had arrived late as well. Tobie made to sit in a chair and then desisted, because it was inlaid and foreign and breakable. He noticed that John le Grant avoided the furniture too. There were cushions with long, voluptuous tassels, and in the master bedroom (he had looked) the quilt was of white silk brocade.
They had hardly ever been in this house belonging to Nicholas, and never since it received its new mistress. Tobie had previously met Primaflora on rare occasions only – during the search for Tristão and Diniz Vasquez on Rhodes; on the ambushed ship that brought them from Rhodes, and in the King’s hall at Kiti immediately after. In Rhodes he had seen a lot of her, right up to her thigh, and Nicholas was right: he was pea-green with envy.
She was still golden, and silken, and goddess-like, and had welcomed John and Astorre and himself with a kind of free, self-possessed amusement that had seemed to make them at once her long-established friends. The house, their chamber, the food were arranged to perfection, and after the brutish clangour of Famagusta they should have been in a state of bewildered gratitude. But John, he noticed, tended to wander outside as often as he felt tempted to do; while Astorre had set up house quite candidly in the kitchens. Primaflora appeared wholly unruffled, but every now and then someone in royal livery would appear in the yard and go away again. The King was arranging a feast tomorrow for Nicholas, and Nicholas wasn’t here yet.
Late in the afternoon, Loppe arrived, which frankly no one had expected, for Loppe was managing things at Kouklia just as Mick Crackbene was guarding the harbour at Famagusta. The surprise was mutual. Tobie explained about the Feast of St Nicholas with many and explicit adjectives, and Loppe clearly thought his exasperation well-founded while refraining, annoyingly, from any breath of criticism of the absent Nicholas. Loppe was, it appeared, expecting to join up with Nicholas on the battlefield, but on hearing the news, obtained Primaflora’s permission to stay. Being Loppe, he solved the problem of protocol by returning silently to his role of major domo, having made a small accommodation with Galiot whom, after all, he had trained. His previous incarnations seemed well known to Primaflora who had last seen him, presumably, crossing from the service of the Grand Commander Louis de Magnac to that of Nicholas with total aplomb. She had not seen Nicholas himself, Tobie learned, for five weeks.
He arrived after supper that evening, having spent the previous night, it transpired, at Sigouri. Why it had taken him all day to travel thirty odd miles was not explained. He came directly to the parlour shared by Astorre, John and Tobie, followed by servants attempting to rid him of his wet cloak. They were immediately replaced by Loppe, whose presence he appeared to accept without question and almost without greeting, as he did theirs. On his face, with its childlike planes and arrogant nostrils and affectingly large eyes, was