Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [260]
‘You wish to shrive him?’ said Zacco. He gave his most charming laugh. ‘You will be disappointed. A well-constructed artefact possesses no sins.’
‘If I believed you,’ said Ludovico da Bologna, ‘I would be the happiest man in Nicosia. But the sins are there, in small corners, to be hunted out. Come, my little lord Niccolò.’
Chapter 37
WHERE’S YOUR HOUSE?’ said the Patriarch of Antioch. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Too far away,’ Nicholas said.
‘And that concubine will be there. I thought she had a lover at Bologna? I’ve got rooms at the Dominicans’; that’ll do. There’s your doctor. And is that fox-headed fellow one of yours? Tell them to come.’
Nicholas stood stock-still, in a condition of protest, thought or even possibly refusal. The fox-headed fellow, in the interests of a deep intellectual curiosity, strolled up and said, ‘I’m John le Grant, my lord Patriarch. Everyone in the Levant has heard of Ludovico da Bologna.’
‘They ought to,’ said the Patriarch. ‘I’ve travelled about it enough. Leave it to the Greeks, and you’ll never get a Crusade. It needs Latin stomach to do it. This fellow’s been wrangling with Zacco. Didn’t think he had it in him. Not the way to keep your fief and your perpetual pension. Are you coming? What’s that blood-letter’s name?’
‘Tobias Beventini. He met you in Florence.’
‘I know he met me in Florence. A testy, petulant sort of fellow, they tell me, who bares his scalp instead of his buttocks. Ah, there you are.’
‘I’m going home,’ said Tobie briefly to Nicholas.
John le Grant put out a hand and pinched a stiff scarlet sleeve. He said, ‘You’re easy baited. Come on. You don’t want to miss this. And when you’ve time, take a good look at Nicholas.’
A flicker of angry impatience immediately manifested itself in Tobie’s face, and he fell into step with the engineer. There were times when John le Grant wondered how Tobie managed to be such a very good doctor and yet fail to ask himself primary questions about Nicholas. Such as, whether the expression you saw was what he wanted you to see, and was genuine. Or what he wanted you to see and was misleading. Or was what he wanted no one to see at all, and had failed to disguise. A sporting interest in pursuing such failures was one of the reasons John le Grant stayed with Nicholas. There were, of course, several others.
The room they were taken to was bare, panelled and had a stone floor, but had been hastily equipped with stools and benches and tables for the Patriarch’s visit. Against one wall stood a battered chest covered with donkey-skin, with several pairs of old slippers beside it and a patched travelling cloak thrown on top. On a side table stood a pitcher and beakers and a pile of washed linen, some darned and some not. In the centre of the room stood an extremely well-tended brazier before which sat two men in low conversation that broke off as the door opened.
One was the spare, bearded figure of Abul Ismail, the Arab physician. The other was a heavily-built, muscular man with a lobster nose and none of his sister’s lost beauty. Markios of Patras, the brother of Cropnose. ‘You all know one another,’ said Ludovico da Bologna, pushing Nicholas in with a hand like a bakery paddle. Tobie followed, and John le Grant just evaded the powerful thrust. ‘Oecumenical conference, except we’ve no Orthodox cantankerous Greeks and no clip-arsed, fornicating, drug-chewing bastards of Mamelukes.’ He glanced at Abul. ‘I make a distinction for Arabs.’
‘We thank you,’ said the physician politely. John le Grant sat with the others, casting a glance at the pitcher as he passed. It was full of water.
The King’s uncle said, ‘You mystify our friends from the West. Mamelukes are not a sect, merely children of any faith bought young, and reared as Muslims to serve and rule Egypt and Syria. Have you met the present Sultan in Cairo? The first of Greek birth. Purchased fifty years since, and began as a page in Damascus.’ He fixed the Patriarch