Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [255]
Soon after that, when the rest had retired, Nicholas went alone to the Palace for his long-deferred interview. He found Zacco lightly intoxicated, and playing dice for high stakes among a circle of friends. He was greeted, berated and kept many hours, drinking very much more than he wanted. At no time did the King mention the progress of the war, and it was hardly the place or time to open the subject. At no time, either, did Zacco either seek to be alone with him or utter a word of reproach about his failure with Famagusta.
They parted eventually on the same curious, jovial note, and Nicholas returned to his villa. The torchlit streets, as he passed through them, were not given up as usual to the cats and the late-night lovers or revellers but were occupied by knots of busy, muttering men, putting up ladders and hoardings, clearing mud, hanging carpets for tomorrow’s Festival which was for St Nicholas and himself, not for the burghers of Bruges.
At home, he simply said to Primaflora, ‘It was a waste of time. He had drunk too much. So have I.’
They were alone in their chamber, but she was still fully dressed. She said smiling, ‘We shall see. Talk to me.’
He found he was too tired to unbutton his doublet. She came to help him, kissing him lightly and absently on the face, the neck, the hands as she unfastened it, and his belt, and the ties of his shirt. She said, ‘I have your dress prepared for tomorrow. You must look splendid.’
‘And you?’ he said. ‘Crimson satin and gold? Pearls and ermine?’
She smiled, her eyes on what she was doing. ‘No. A gown you will recognise, but fine enough. It seemed unwise, this time, to wear anything of Carlotta’s.’
He stopped her hands. ‘But you have money?’
She looked up, still smiling. ‘You left me a fortune. I didn’t need it. My own robe, and your jewels. Besides, the King has sent mantles. One in velvet for you, with the badge of your Order. One of tissue for me. Master Tobie’s robes and the dress of your engineer and your captain have presented a much greater challenge.’
‘We’re all invited?’ Nicholas said. He sat down and laid hands, with misplaced confidence, on his boots.
‘Even to Bartolomeo from the dyeyard, and his brother. And Nicholas –’
He heard her voice flatten and left his boots alone. He said, ‘What is it?’
‘Only some sad news from Bartolomeo,’ she said. ‘His partner from Constantinople has come. You know the Sultan has been imprisoning the Venetians and worse? This Messer Girolamo has escaped from Constantinople, with terrible news about Trebizond.’
There only remained one kind of news that could be terrible. Nicholas said, ‘The Sultan has broken his word? They have killed the Emperor-in-exile?’
‘Yes,’ she said. Her eyes were oval, and pain-filled and perfect. She had a classical nose with curled pink pads like a kitten’s; like Tobie’s. A short, deep channel introduced the fruit of her lips. She said, ‘Despite the surrender, the amnesty, the promises. They’ve killed David Comnenos and his children.’
‘Long live the lord Sultan’ said Nicholas. ‘All of them?’
‘There were seven sons and one unmarried daughter,’ she said.
‘I know how many there were. All of them?’ he repeated.
‘The girl Anna is … She stays where she was placed. The youngest son was kept alive, to be reared as a Muslim.’
‘He would be nearly four,’ Nicholas said. ‘And the six other sons, then, are dead.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You don’t ask me why?’
‘I am just about to. Why?’ Nicholas said.
‘It happened, he says, because of a prince of the Turcomans called Uzum Hasan whose wife was a princess of Trebizond. This lady, the Turcoman’s wife, sent a private message to Adrianople, inviting a son of the Emperor to join her. She was the exiled Emperor’s niece: it was possibly harmless. But the letter was intercepted by Amiroutzes the Emperor’s Chancellor, who deduced that the prince Uzum Hasan wished to rear