Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [308]
Meanwhile, John le Grant waited at the Franciscans’, with the easy horses and the good mounted escort that would carry them both to whatever awaited them in Nicosia. Since men were not children, he had left Nicholas to his own devices. The abbot had been succinct. ‘Nasty flesh wounds; loss of blood; a general lack of condition. Watch the thigh, the arm. He’ll be aware of his shoulder. Rest before he goes; rest halfway there, and he’ll do. Sleep and good food, and no fretting. Advice for angels, eh? Not for a young man with that intelligence.’ He had shaken his head. ‘What he did for us during the siege? He was sent from heaven. And the other. We have prayed, although he was an infidel, for the other.’
John le Grant had been into a church himself that day. Inside the Cathedral of St Nicholas a Mass had been in progress: he found it difficult to get someone to show him the tomb that he looked for, and he walked slowly towards it, for he did not wish to meet Nicholas there. Although swept, the place kept the odours of all the uses to which it had been put these last years. It brought back to mind the church in the fort of St Hilarion; and all that he and Tobie and Nicholas wanted to forget of that day.
The coffin when he found it was new and cheap; one of those brought in by cart from Nicosia until the carpenters could provide a better. On the top was a little sheaf of white sweet-smelling cyclamen, and a wisp of dry, plaited reeds whose significance, if any, was beyond him. It told him at least that Nicholas had managed to get there. And whatever had happened between them Katelina had been bequeathed, in the end, to the shelter of this noble house of the saint of his name. John le Grant left the Cathedral with measured steps, thinking of something that Thomas had once told him, and experiencing an obscure unease of the spirit that could hardly be called dread.
Soon after he got back, Nicholas came, and they set off in silence. Fifteen painful miles on the road, Nicholas said, ‘What is the worst possible thing that could happen to you or to me at this moment?’
The dread was still there. John le Grant found his dourest voice and used it. ‘You tell me.’
‘Because it’s going to happen,’ said Nicholas. His eyes were on the road ahead. The engineer’s followed them. Waiting for them, his legs stuck out like semaphores on either side of his mule, was Ludovico da Bologna, Patriarch of Antioch.
‘Psimoloso,’ he shouted as soon as they came within earshot. It was incomprehensible.
‘Oh, Lord God,’ said Nicholas.
The Patriarch rode up.
Wherever he had been that morning, he had not taken time to shave. Beneath his conical hat with its veil his hair sprang out with its usual ferocious vigour. It merged with his thicketed brows and the cores of his nose and his ears. His face was pitted. He looked like a badly-stuffed, boiled leather cuirass. ‘And you smell,’ he said to John le Grant, as if he had spoken. ‘Even the King smelt, by the time he came away. Come on. That’s the estate over there. There’s a house of sorts. The villagers won’t pay their dues because this fellow keeps diverting the river. You’ll show me what to do about that, and Launcelot here will listen while I tell him what to do. Bring the men. There’s a barn.’
‘Where?’ said John le Grant.
Nicholas answered. A spark had appeared among the shadows of his bloodless face. ‘You heard. Psimoloso,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the casals of the Patriarchate. Over there, on the Pedhieos. Do you want to go there?’
What a moment ago had seemed appalling