Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [330]
Naturally. The contract was over. Crackbene had been paid. Meticulous to the last, he had waited before switching masters, and the fault was not his that Nicholas had failed to foresee it. Nicholas remembered him on the same round ship sailing from Italy: a solid, fair, high-coloured man, put out because he had been forced by Erizzo to take the Doria to Cyprus. It had been easy to mistake his indignation for loyalty, and in its way, that was what it had been; for at that time Crackbene had been employed by the House of Niccolò. But now, that covenant was concluded. The ownership of the Doria – of any vessel – was not Crackbene’s business. He was invited, for a fee, to become master, and if the fee was large enough, he accepted. You could call him a rascal, or you could call him a master mariner without whom Famagusta would have been a condemned city. It didn’t matter to Crackbene that the vicomte had stolen the ship. He might not even have known that the Doria was once called the Ribérac.
Nicholas said, ‘I am sorry. I have lost a ship, and you have lost your ransom.’
‘At least,’ said the clerk, ‘the other ransom was paid.’
It was David who spoke, as was to be expected from the King’s creditor. He said, ‘One ransom had been paid? Whose was that?’
The clerk said, ‘A previous prisoner. Messer Niccolò paid it. It doesn’t fall into this calculation.’
‘Whose?’ said Nicholas. Again, he knew. He simply wanted to hear it, before he could bring himself to the task of believing it.
‘A youth called Diniz Vasquez,’ said the clerk. ‘The vicomte was his grandfather. He was not a prisoner, but the vicomte insisted he be found and compelled to go with him. They have left Cyprus, they tell me, for Portugal.’
‘I regret,’ said the person called David for the second time. He was smiling now: smiling at Nicholas.
Nicholas, too, regretted. Things nothing to do with the loss of his ship, which was a stroke only de Ribérac could have thought of. He regretted the implications of this news as it affected one stricken family. He regretted the harm done by Primaflora, out of ambition, jealousy, a dread of the future, all mixed and half defeated by the one attribute a courtesan should never permit herself: a passion for love.
She had forced Katelina to suffer. She had killed. Primaflora’s loss to himself was something that, as yet, he didn’t want to call in to measure. But he had used her as well. He had learned from her. And, as he had said, the King’s conscience had worked in his favour. She would not, therefore, endure the ultimate punishment through any action of his, although he had taken exaction. Nothing extreme; nothing overt; nothing crude. The King required sons. He had simply sent the King’s mother a message, in which Sor de Naves was mentioned.
Regret did not describe what he felt about the death of a high-born, wilful girl who had borne him a son, and had lived only a twisted half-life afterwards. A girl not unlike Primaflora in natural ardour, but constrained and thwarted by the society that she lived in. He didn’t know what happiness Katelina had ever had since her childhood, but for the hours they had given each other. Now she had gone, leaving two sets of wounded people staring at one another over a gulf.
One of them was Diniz Vasquez. If he had set out to find him last night, perhaps he could have stopped what had happened. Instead, the boy was at sea, in the grasp of that brutal, impenetrable man, and facing a vengeful, a bitter, a fatherless home. He did not regret, not at all, that Jordan de Ribérac had gone.
The young man called David was watching him. He said, ‘The ship that has been purloined was yours? It is a great loss, on top of all your other disappointments. You were not insured?’
‘It was mine,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was insured, by my lawyer in Venice.’
The dark eyes watched and watched. The young man said, ‘I heard of no such large transaction. With whom was the business placed?’
‘With the Vatachino,’ Nicholas said. ‘I employed a pseudonym. Happily, by the terms of your company’s bond, I stand to lose nothing.