Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [258]
His eyes rested on the Zorzi brothers. Jacopo, whom he had invited to Kouklia, and whose vineyards he still had not visited. Bartolomeo who managed his dyeworks, and Bartolomeo’s partner Girolamo, whom Nicholas had met also on his way to Trebizond, and who had brought the information he didn’t wish, at present, to think about. He didn’t want, either, to think of the third Zorzi brother, known to the world as Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli. The Greek with the wooden leg, whose machinations, he sometimes felt, ran as a dark undercurrent below all his own devices, robbing him of his belief in his will. In that message from Constantinople, sent here, and at this time, he saw the hand of Acciajuoli, not of this self-seeking merchant.
And Primaflora. She was admitted, now, to the feasting-hall of the King, and placed at the long women’s table presided over by Marietta of Patras, the King’s serene and excellent mother. His wife’s beauty, little adorned, seemed to draw the lamplight towards her: it shone on the latticework of her sleeves and the exact and regular folds that defined the slender bones of her body. He saw her glance at Ludovico da Bologna whom, of course, she had met in Rhodes, and further back, in the snow with Carlotta. In the snow between Porretta and Bologna, where Nicholas had been called to the rescue, and Ansaldo her lover had died.
Sor de Naves, here with his brother, had also bowed to Primaflora at her table and had taken the chance, stopping Nicholas, to congratulate him on his marriage. Civility was not his objective. ‘What habit of the brake or the burrow do you employ, Ser Niccolò, that you attract to yourself so many beautiful females? The Queen has lost her waiting-woman to you, and you have married her?’
Until bribed to surrender Kyrenia, the Sicilian admiral had been one of Carlotta’s closest advisers. ‘The Queen?’ said Nicholas.
‘A slip of the tongue. The lady Carlotta. The pity is that you married this lady, dear sir. But perhaps you have children enough, or see no need for them.’
‘I suppose,’ Nicholas said, ‘that like yourself, I believed the matter could wait.’ He turned his shoulder, but not quickly enough.
The Sicilian laughed. ‘I make a good target. The King’s daughter is six. But she is a virgin, be sure; and will bear to me when she bears. Whereas those who eschew bearing, or have too often found means to abort it may prove, like your wife, to be barren.’
‘And you think that concerns me?’ said Nicholas. ‘I must disappoint you.’
The man smiled. ‘You had been told. I might have known. At Carlotta’s court, it is common knowledge. Well, Ser Niccolò, let me end as I began, and wish you joy of your marriage.’
He hadn’t known. It didn’t matter. Now, it didn’t matter.
He got through the meal. He displayed gratification through all the entertainments that took place during and after the feast, and took the floor with the rest during the slow, formal dancing, in which he had been well taught by the various females attracted to his brake and his burrow. Towards the end, when the Palace was still filled with people, and wine, and hilarity he and Rizzo di Marino were chosen, as he had hoped, to attend the King when he withdrew from necessity. In the moment before they returned, Nicholas spoke. ‘My lord. To give me this day at your side was an unforeseen joy, but it oppresses me that it is undeserved: that Famagusta is not yet yours. Before we go back, my lord, might I put something to you, and to Ser Rizzo?