Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [332]
‘So I have been told,’ Cropnose said. She was not surprised by his moderation, he saw. She had not, therefore, brought him here to foment a quarrel. She said, ‘It is not an argument I should have expected from you. To turn the tables upon Tzani-bey, you sent to Uzum Hasan, and as a consequence, the Emperor of Trebizond and his children died. Because you took no heed of a family feud, the lady Katelina came to these islands, and she and the Portuguese paid the penalty. The cause of all these deaths was neglect and self-interest and pure, petty vengeance. And you criticise me?’
If it was true (and it was), she was the last person to whom he would acknowledge it. ‘Who else dare criticise you, magnificent lady?’ Nicholas said. ‘You are saying that you wish the Mamelukes were alive? You should complain to your brother, not me.’
She was silent for a long time. Finally, she stirred. She said, ‘I am saying, look to your own motives. Soon, no one will dare gainsay you either, and you will be the worse for it. I wish I had the training of you.’
He caught the note in her voice before it hardened. She was not thinking of him, but of bright, wilful Zacco, the indulged son of his father, who would not accept training or censure. He was not sure what to say. In the end, he said, ‘I expect to return. They say I am teachable.’
‘You will keep a foothold here,’ she said. ‘If you are allowed. But the rest of your equipment for life you will no doubt pick up from parasites. Is your mother alive?’
‘No, lady,’ he said. He tried not to show that she had startled him.
‘No. I would have told her,’ said Marietta of Patras, ‘that she made a child of the wrong sex. But since you cannot give birth to sons, you are better gone from the Palace.’
Travelling south, the others thought they understood his long silence, and made few attempts to distract him. He was riding to Kouklia, but it was not of Kouklia he was thinking. It was three years since he had gone to Bologna, and had fought among men made of sugar. He had chosen war, and had been oppressed by what he had found. He had not looked for love, but had been offered it in many different guises and had tried to deal with it wisely, but had not always succeeded. He had experienced the bereavement of others and had suffered from it himself. All that had happened since Bologna seemed to be bracketed between two silent coffins: one that named him, and the other on which his name had no right to appear.
He had no regrets that he had turned his back on Carlotta, for of the two Lusignan scorpions, she was the lesser. It was Zacco who ruled Cyprus now – Cyprus, island of love and fertility and divine prostitution. Cyprus, the perpetual colony, the perpetual mistress and battlefield. Now James was her master, and would rule as well as any had, despite all that worked against him: even though pulled this way and that by his court, his mother, his temperament. And now, by his new friends the Vatachino. In his distrust of Venice, Zacco had called in a predator; and it would please Nicholas to find him and challenge him.
So he might indeed keep a foothold in Cyprus. Here was the first earth he had owned. Here, he had learned something of what he wanted, if not all of it. Now he must acknowledge responsibilities from which he couldn’t escape, for there was no one else left who could carry them. Chief among them, of course, was accountability for his own crazy actions. He thought it a pity, at the back of his mind, that at twenty-three, he should be fettered. He knew that it was generally held that control of his own ingenuity was beyond him. He preserved an open mind on the subject.
In his last meeting with Zacco, the charming broker David de Salmeton had not been present. Nevertheless, it had been very public. James de Lusignan had taken leave of the one-time friend of his soul in open court with the Archbishop and his Chancellor about him. He had thanked Nicholas royally for his services to the throne, and hoped for his speedy return, to enter into his estates and lend the kingdom