Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [274]
*
Despite the stiffness and soreness they slept towards dawn, and so missed the colloquy at the portals; the ultimatum; and the exchanges which led, soon after daylight, to the opening of the gates of Famagusta, and the entry, drawn by many weak hands, of the carts with their soft, fresh, redolent burdens. The gates closed. Outside, the pavilion was packed and placed in its wagon, and the file reassembled, creased and pallid in daylight, to make its way back to beds, warmth and comfort.
With them walked four thin men in rich-coloured rags. The Genoese, invited by Zacco, had freed a group of their merchants to pass Christmas with James in his Palace. In exchange, Famagusta was to keep two men of Zacco’s as surety. One was the Arab Abul Ismail, who had come to offer his skill as a doctor. The other was Niccolò vander Poele, recently arrested, and at present a prisoner. No special diet (mentioned the captain of Famagusta) would be claimed for these two Lusignan hostages. The lord Bastard had provisioned the city. What had been given, being sound, would amply nourish them.
Nicholas woke to the flash of a knife; and found his bonds being cut, and John le Grant already stretching and groaning beside him. Then Napoleone Lomellini came, and informed them succinctly of what had happened, and left. Sickness and pride, in the grey light of day, were set in his unchanging face like a mask. The soldiers who flanked them in his place looked no better.
John was to be released: Nicholas himself was to be marched to the citadel. It was what he had hoped. He had not been prepared for John to stand on the floor of the penthouse, complaining. John said, ‘I’m not leaving. If they keep you, they might as well keep me. Unless, of course, Tzani-bey’s poisoned the food again. Don’t worry. They don’t understand Flemish.’
‘Some day,’ Nicholas said, ‘you’ll find yourself somewhere where someone does understand Flemish, and they’ll cut your ears off, and then all your red hair, wherever you grow it. You’ve to go back and get hold of the Patriarch and convince those four Genoese that no rescue is coming. It’s hardly three weeks to Epiphany. This truce is going to end then. And unless the city knows that it’s hopeless, they might simply pick up the whole war again. And that isn’t what I risked my skin and yours for.’
‘I don’t know,’ said John le Grant. ‘You wouldn’t make a bad pioneer if you had a bit more time for practice. All right. You’ve persuaded me. What do I say about Diniz?’
‘Don’t upset the Venetians,’ Nicholas said. ‘Leave that to me, when I get back.’ He watched the engineer go, and then turned and let them take him up to the wall-walk, and down into the beleaguered city where, once, the Genoese had planned to keep him hostage while his company fought for Carlotta. Where now he was to be incarcerated as a hostage, a prisoner, an enemy. As a favourite of James, and therefore the most powerful lever for peace and for charity – did they know how to wield it – that the Genoese had ever been granted.
A hundred years before, richest of all cities, concourse of merchants and pilgrims, haunt of courtesans, sink of unnatural vice, pride and luxury, Famagusta housed a hundred thousand citizens within its two miles of walls, and was a place of fine squares and great houses, of mills and warehouses, shops and monasteries, stables and shambles and forges, barracks and ovens, merchants’ villas and loggias. A royal palace. A cathedral. A hospice of St John. And three hundred churches.
With the wars of this century, it had shrunk by a third. That meant that one would expect, close by the walls, dilapidated streets and ruinous houses, robbed out for their stone. A piazza made into a drying-field. A warehouse turned into stables. A mill housing poultry. A marketplace harrowed for beans and melons and cucumbers, and vine-covered shacks and sheep pens and orchards among the stumps of great houses.
One would