Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [46]
It was not at all easy to trap his thinking processes and set them to work. When they did, they were muddled. He had been in many fights, and suffered from many feverish illnesses. He began to trust his most vivid memory, in which he had been contending somewhere on horseback and had found himself cut off from his fellows. He thought he remembered being pulled from the saddle, and booted feet around him, and the beginning of the blow they had felled him with.
And that part, at least, was quite accurate. He moved one arm and brought his hand slowly up to explore. His hair was stuck with dried blood over a vicious cut which, although swollen, was already closing. Time therefore had elapsed since all this happened. As, of course, it had. Dimly he began to recall a long journey. He remembered being manhandled. He remembered wondering what had happened to his sword. He remembered no faces.
He slept, and woke, and tried to force himself to stay awake and return to that memory. Bit by bit, his recollection came back. It had been a battle, in Italy. Astorre and Tobie. Ferrante and Skanderbeg. And his side had not lost, they’d been winning. The Angevin cavalry had been beaten and started to fly. He’d turned to make for Piccinino’s Genoese rearguard. He had been snared between the soldiers of Anjou and Genoa, against whom Tobie had so frivolously warned him. Katelina, who wished him no good, had been in Anjou with her husband’s father. Her husband did business with Genoa. Between them, a genteel family bargain might have been struck, which had just found its physical target. He felt a twinge of distant amusement. He should have stayed with the Albanians.
His closed eyes were stinging with sweat; the place where he lay was without light or air. He felt by turns heavy and bodiless; his head swam as the rest of him swayed. Like a child awake in the night, he became conscious of adult voices above him, a woman’s among them. Footfalls suggested space, unlike his own stale confinement. He supposed himself to be in a cellar. He heard the voice of the woman again.
Despite all he and Tobie had said, it was unlikely that Katelina van Borselen had personally joined the son of King René in Italy. An agent of hers, it might be. What was entirely probable was that Duke John of Calabria was his final captor. The Duke had lost the battle. He must be in hiding. To him, perhaps, Nicholas represented a possible fortune. Jordan was capable of offering a fortune, to get rid of Nicholas.
His awakening mind prompted him to wonder what day it was. The engagement had taken place on a Tuesday. Astorre and Tobie must surely have missed him. Fleeing, the Angevins might have taken him with them to Troia, which was loyal to Anjou. And then, maybe west to the coast. From there they could take ship anywhere northwards.
Ship. Abruptly, he pulled himself to his elbows, and banged his head as he did so. The succession of noises, of movements explained themselves suddenly. He was on a ship. He was on a ship as his enemy’s prisoner, and was being taken wherever the enemy wanted. If it was an Angevin ship, he would be in Provence in a matter of days.
He objected to that. He thought, if he could find the wits and the energy, he could get up, find a weapon, and take someone else prisoner instead. He began some sluggish movements. He had already stopped when the door opened on daylight, and a man in a rubbed leather jerkin came in. The fellow said, ‘You’re awake. And about time. I’ve brought clothes. You’re to wash. They want to talk to you.’ That was all he said. Setting to work, he paid no attention to questions.
Nicholas submitted. His wound ached, but his senses were clearing. Washed, dressed and fed, he was able presently to follow the