Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [267]
‘But they don’t know what your little bundles can do,’ Nicholas said. ‘And they haven’t the strength for heavy digging. There hasn’t been a longbow on those walls for two days. Even if they suspect, they can’t cover all three places at once. And there remains double bluff. We can always attack from the south, at a pinch.’
‘At a hell of a pinch,’ said John le Grant. Tonight, two of the piles, including the highest bridge, would be offered nothing but brushwood. The third, already made half of stone, would be raised through the night to ground level and across that, the attack would be made in the dark just before dawn. But long before that, he and John and two chosen men would have planted the mines with their fuses. When the army attacked, they would attack a collapsed wall, over rubble.
‘If you’ve got your sums right,’ Nicholas said. ‘You don’t look as if you could get anything right. Go off and sleep. It’ll be dark soon enough. I’ve sent Pesaro away, and Astorre will keep the gunners at work.’
He watched John trudge off. On him and on Astorre had rested the burden of maintaining the guns, for the noise of the cannonade was vital to their stratagem. Even so, they might all be shot as they crossed the moat with their explosives, or wounded before they could leave, having planted them. Not a bad way to go, in a blaze of your own gunpowder. Either way, it would damage the walls, and Astorre and Pesaro between them might manage to scale them. John had made quite a serious attempt to stop him joining the mining expedition, and then had dropped it. After all, the work was done, and anyone could take Famagusta now who was willing to pay the price in lives from both sides. They would possibly attack with all the more force, to avenge him. Which was not to say that he intended to be a martyr tonight, if he could help it.
He slept a little, waking in his pavilion at dusk of his own accord. The rain had stopped its vibrating patter above him, although the air was laden with moisture and the planked floor of the tent moved on its bedding of grey sand and mud. It was not really cold. Except on the mountains, it never became cold in this island. It seemed a long way, though, from the summer perfume of myrtle and orange-blossom, the brilliance of white fluted marble, the wreathing steam, the orderly practices of the sugar-yards, the worksongs of the scything and the vintage, the glory of the sun setting, of the sun rising out of the sea. From a valley full of doubt and serpents and mischief, sunlight and another manner of glory.
He was glad that the design of his own life seemed, in the end, to be taking a shape that was not entirely haphazard. If, in the real world, you couldn’t always realise the perfection of the model, the miniature, the diagram, at least the pattern had something in it to be pleased about. His friends would never lack: his Bank would see to that. Equally, his young step-daughters in Bruges would be protected. Here, if he didn’t return, Primaflora would receive his letter, and his parcel, and would understand why he had done what he had done. And far away, his child would grow, in peace henceforth, with a father who would never know he was not his own, and who, with Nicholas gone, would have no reason for spleen or for bitterness. To be his friend, the boy would have Diniz, who would think him his cousin, and who would grow to gentle manhood in the vineyards of Portugal, and honour Tristão his father. And for a loving mother the child would have Katelina, who would cherish him now, and make what she could of her marriage, for the sake of what she had found in Kalopetra.
For himself, nothing bound him. He was vaguely surprised that what sense of loss he did have seemed to be connected in some way with Cyprus. It was the first place he had come to in his own right, with something to give. He had had no time to acquaint himself with his fief, twice seen, and well enough served by its own. Two-thirds of the land he had never visited. He had done