Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [277]
He retreated. Nicholas stood. The Arab said, ‘I am sorry.’
‘I am not sure,’ Nicholas said, ‘what you are sorry about.’
The brown, smoky eyes were not especially compassionate; merely lucid. The doctor said, ‘I am here attending a patient, and I have to tell you her story. You left the young lady Katelina van Borselen at Rhodes. She was about to sail home to Portugal. On the eve of her sailing, she learned from a spokeswoman of the Queen’s that news had come in from Cyprus: that Diniz Vasquez her husband’s young kinsman was trapped in Famagusta. She elected to join him. He survives. But her house was struck by a ball from your cannonades.’
He had been feeling cold for some time. Now he felt not only cold but quite bloodless. He said, ‘She is very ill? I would have brought her away. Why did Diniz not send me word when it happened?’ His voice, he noticed, remained perfectly steady.
‘Death has made an appointment with her,’ said the Arab. ‘Her heart is great: she might live to your Feast of Epiphany. Meanwhile she cannot be moved. She would find no better fate in Nicosia. She would not have you informed, in case it placed your own freedom in jeopardy. But now God has brought you; you are held here a captive, as she is. She fears for you, but is joyful, for now she will see you.’ He waited, and then said, ‘She will depend on you. Sit. Come in when you are ready.’
Aphrodite, Aphrodite. He said, ‘I must go, if she is waiting.’
Chapter 40
SHE LAY IN a room from which all the wood had been stripped, save for the pallet beneath her. What wouldn’t burn still remained: bare walls muffled with incongruous tapestries, flooring tamped over with carpets. There was a stand of bronze inlaid with silver, looted perhaps from a rich merchant’s house, and a cut of marble propped on an empty brazier and supporting the physician’s jars and boxes and bottles. There was a brazier newly in use, and still smoking a little. The air in the room was not yet warm.
From her throat to her feet she was covered in velvet and gold, furs and silk and jewelled embroidery. From her throat to her feet, the housings of her single, stark pallet were royal. The plain sheets that should have served it were also there, but torn into strips and padding and squares, and laid on a tray on the ground. The door closed behind Abul Ismail, and Nicholas looked at his father’s wife.
Her face was ivory. Upon those sturdy, well-defined bones the clear, even tint seemed translucent. The hollows under her cheekbones were sepia, and the skin which sank into the new, heavy arcs of her lids, and the shadows beneath ear and chin. Her brown hair, newly combed, coiled ash-dull among all the rich fabrics. But the eyes on him were shining as at Kalopetra, when he had been constrained to leave, and she, for a while, had stood to stop him; stood as close as the flesh on his body. The Fontana Amorosa. Whosoever drinks from that, they are thirsty for ever.
He said, ‘They have just told me.’
When he knelt, his eyes were level with hers; he saw them moated with tears. Her hand wanted to rise: he found and made a tent for it with his own. He said, ‘Are you in pain?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. She smiled, arrogant eyebrows clenching, tears sliding into her pillow. She said, ‘I used to be. Not now. Not now.’ And her breath, as she smiled, began to catch in weak, involuntary sobs; so that he bent over her, his cheek against hers, his arms embracing hers in spectral and impotent comfort. Then he felt her lashes stir at his cheek, and raised his head and kissed the place where they lay, and then her brow, her throat and her chin, while her lips went on smiling. When he drew apart, she said, ‘Your face. Your face is marked. Have they hurt you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I would have come before. I didn’t know. You should have told me.’
‘How could you have come?’ she said. ‘They would have killed you. When I could walk, I would climb the wall and look across to your camp. Then so many fell sick.’ She stopped, and then