Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [29]
‘Who is that?’ said the woman.
‘Claes,’ said Colard. ‘The bastard dyeworks apprentice who became servant to his employer’s son Felix. Protector and servant. He went to Louvain University with him, and learned more than Felix, didn’t you, Nicholas? He served under Julius, and even Julius noticed that he had a flair for numbers. Then his employer noticed that he had a flair for several things.’
‘That’s enough, Colard,’ said Nicholas.
Colard did not even turn. ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘So. At nineteen, Nicholas married the widow and took her best men to set up an outpost at Trebizond. At twenty, he fought the Turks and withdrew from the Black Sea with two shiploads of refugees, treasure and alum. At twenty-one, what is he now? A happy drunk on the floor of Colard Mansion.’
She was drinking ale, pensively, from a cup she had wiped clean with her kerchief. ‘And who is Katelina?’ she said.
Colard glanced over again, and their eyes met. He turned back to the girl. ‘I do not think,’ Colard said, ‘that I had better tell you. You want Nicholas? He has a bad left profile and those are the Devil’s fingermarks in his cheeks.’
Nicholas let himself down on the floor and gazed up at the warped and charred rafters. If he closed his eyes, they might all go away.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him. But I have no money. And the Queen is my mistress.’
The astonished silence reached even under his eyelids. Colard said, ‘I could name five nobles in Bruges who would lease twenty years of you.’ Nicholas smiled.
The girl’s voice, when she spoke, had the same smile within it. ‘You speak your mind.’
‘I know a professional when I see one,’ said Colard. ‘So what can the Queen do?’
‘Have me killed,’ said the girl. Nicholas opened his eyes.
Colard said, ‘You won’t lure him to Cyprus that way.’
‘I don’t want to lure him any way,’ said the beauty called Primaflora. ‘I don’t want him. I don’t want to go back to Cyprus. I want to get away from the Queen. I thought he might help me.’
‘You’ve made him sit up,’ Colard said. ‘I didn’t think he was sober enough.’
Nicholas said, ‘Say that again.’
Her pale eyes met his without flinching. ‘You know my instructions. To join you, and bring you to Cyprus. I need help to escape her. All the knights of St John are her spies. I want to disappear. Maybe to Italy. I would find patrons there.’
There was a silence. Nicholas said, ‘How long were you with Ansaldo?’
Her face, he guessed, could not afford a change of expression. ‘A year.’
‘I had less,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Queen’s plan is no more of interest to me than it can be to you. I have some money. Take it and disappear.’
‘I have to leave with you,’ she said.
‘Then leave,’ Nicholas said. ‘The only possible drawback is that I haven’t decided yet where I am going.’
‘Yes, you have,’ Colard said. ‘To Italy. To the Naples campaign. To join your army and slaughter Duke John of Calabria. You can’t take a courtesan there.’
‘You heard him,’ Nicholas said.
Primaflora smiled. Instead of dimples, she had pleats that curled round her mouth. She said, ‘What kind of courtesan should I be if I hadn’t found a rich sponsor long before he catches up with his army?’
‘You’d go with him? You’re going to take her? I must be drunk,’ Colard said. ‘I never heard such stupid decisions.’
‘No. You never heard them,’ said Primaflora, rising. ‘But when you wake up in the morning, you will see the basket and account for it somehow. Messer Niccolò, when do you leave?’
‘Tomorrow, by the Ghent gate, at daybreak,’ Nicholas said. ‘I think Colard is right. I think I shall go back to Italy and look for my army. I enjoyed –’ He broke off.
She stood, holding her cloak, and looked down on him. She said, ‘Thank you, at least, for remembering. I shall not encumber you for long.’ The door closed.
Colard said, ‘Are you asleep?’
Nicholas grunted.
Colard said, ‘She