Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [320]
She had flung up a hand to the veil. Now she turned it into an ordinary gesture, drawing the linen aside and letting it slip to the bed. She said, her voice clearing, ‘Where did you find it? I left it with the Queen.’
‘Carlotta,’ he corrected her. He said kindly, ‘Open the packet. It was to be given to you when I was dead.’
If I survive a second time, I must revise it. He had written it in December, on the night of the Feast of St Nicholas. There was nothing he wanted to add. He watched her as she read it, leaving unopened the personal thing he had also left her. He found a seat and descended carefully into it, still watching. At the end she said slowly, ‘Small men are suspicious like this, and see treachery everywhere. You made love to me, and to Zacco, and all the time this is what you were thinking?’
‘Recently,’ Nicholas said, ‘I haven’t made love to anyone. But Zacco gives freely – and takes – although his mother usually determines the victim. What had happened was obvious, anyway, from the time Zacco came from Kyrenia. I remember the gowns you wear; I have cause to. There were too many others.’
‘You have refused nothing he has given you,’ Primaflora said. She walked away from him and back, and threw the letter down on the bed, before coming to stand, looking down on him. She said, ‘As for the rest, it is nonsense.’
He said, ‘When it was written, I didn’t know Katelina was ill in Cyprus. Did you contrive that she went to immolate herself in Famagusta? She heard, from Carlotta she thought, that Diniz was trapped there and starving. But Carlotta has had very little, hasn’t she, to do with all this?’
‘You didn’t tell me the city was starving,’ said Primaflora. ‘You said it could hold out until spring.’
‘And you told Zacco,’ Nicholas said. ‘You were meant to. Otherwise he would have sent no food, and hoped for a quick surrender. You and the King’s conscience, because of you, were what brought those relief wagons that night.’
He fell silent under her stare. She said, ‘You used me?’
And Nicholas said, ‘Give and take: I play games for a living. Zacco doesn’t; you will have found that out already, perhaps. He can be ruthless, and so can his sister. Katelina and her family threatened me and the Cypriot sugar trade, at a time when Carlotta wanted both. Would she have gone to such lengths without you as her agent? The attack on the Portuguese that killed one of them, and brought Katelina there and very close to her death – didn’t it matter that Diniz was sixteen, and adored you?’
She said, ‘I was with you at the time! How could I have arranged it?’
‘You hired killers,’ said Nicholas. ‘Do you want me to tell you what agents you used? I might not have found out if I hadn’t followed Katelina to Rhodes to warn her about you, and made friends of Persefoni and her kinsmen. Katelina might be living today if I’d stayed with her until she left Rhodes, but I thought all I had to do was remove you.’
She backed slowly and sat on her coffer. She said, ‘You love schemes, don’t you? I wasn’t an agent of Carlotta’s. She asked me to spy on you, after the death of Ansaldo. When he died, I hated you and I hated her for expecting me to forget him. I didn’t know Zacco’s Venetian friends were going to trap both of us, or that you would refuse Zacco until you had overtaken your army. Carlotta was powerful. How could I have told her on Rhodes that I would never spy for her, or admitted that I had given myself to you, and not just my body? Do you think I do for any man what you have experienced? Do you, Niccolò? And when she sent you to Kyrenia, I followed. She forbade me, Niccolò, but I followed. You seemed glad.’
She was weeping, her face held immobile. Nicholas said, ‘I didn’t know, then, that Katelina was on board. I thought I had separated you. But of course, it was all right in the end. Zacco sent you back to Rhodes.’ He felt his face crack in what was supposed to be a smile. He said, ‘At that time, he wanted no rivals.’
It dried her tears, that reminder. She said, with a spurt of anger, ‘And after? What designs could I or