Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [47]
He was on a round ship, sailing fast under canvas, and high in the water. Haze prevented a view of the coast, but the sun was on his right quarter, which meant it was late in the morning. If there were soldiers on board, he could not see them. He noticed seamen, but couldn’t judge their nationality. Of identifying banners and pennants there were none. So near to Naples, the beaten claimant of Naples would lie exceedingly low.
His captor had, however, commandeered the best quarters. From the threshold, Nicholas saw that the master’s cabin was as large as his own, but better painted. Ushered in, he found the usual settles and a large central chair, upon which was seated a middle-aged muscular man in a straw hat speared and pinned with good gems. Buttons of gold closed the thin stuff of his doublet and a chain of gold spanned his strong shoulders. The ringed hands on the knees of his hose were nevertheless soldier’s hands, and under coarse brown hair, his gaze was peremptory. This could be Duke John of Calabria. It could be one of his captains. Beside the chair, to one side, sat a young man and one a good deal older. Both were also well dressed, in the Italian style. On the other side, on a bench, sat Primaflora.
Nicholas looked nowhere else. She wore a purple silk dress with its bodice lightly embroidered and her hair, threaded with laces and ribbons and pearls, was caught in intricate pleats round her head, in the way he remembered from Ghent. Her eyes on his were like aquamarines under water; her fingers moved a little, interlacing together. She spoke, looking at him all the time. ‘He is unwell. You should not have brought him here.’
She spoke Italian with the accent of Savoy. The man in the chair answered in a purer version of the same language. ‘Then let him be seated beside you. Messer Niccolò?’
Nicholas stayed where he was. ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘in whose company I should be sitting?’
The man smiled. ‘Let us use French. My name does not matter, nor that of my companions. But you know the lady Primaflora, do you not? Is that not enough?’
‘More than enough,’ Nicholas said, ‘if she planned my abduction. But I imagine you yourself had some part in it?’
‘No, no,’ said the man. ‘Absolve the lady. She has been an unwitting conspirator.’
‘You tracked me through her then?’ Nicholas said. He made his anger quite plain, although he made his way to her bench and sat down. She looked at her hands.
‘You might say so,’ said the man. ‘I apologise for your treatment. Speed was necessary, and the men who brought you here were not the kind I would have chosen. Your wounds tell that you fought a brave action at Troia.’
‘There were no cowards, that I saw,’ Nicholas said. He paused. ‘The Angevin losses must have been heavy.’
‘They deserved to be. They were led by a fool. And Piccinino, everyone knows, serves only for money. Duke John has fled to Ischia, I hear, and King Ferrante has a secure throne in Naples, and is likely to stay there.’
Nicholas became aware that silence had fallen. He drew his hand down from the back of his neck. He said, ‘I seem to have lost count of time. What day are we in?’
‘You have been ill. It is Saturday. Late afternoon on the twenty-second day of the month of August. You have missed four days, that is all. Where are you going?’
He had reached the door before they could stop him. He drew aside the curtain and looked. The sun had moved a little from the right quarter and was now more clearly aft. If it was the late afternoon, it could not be so. Unless they were not sailing north. Standing there, he said, ‘We are sailing east.’
The voice behind him was composed. ‘You are not surprised, Messer Niccolò? You knew – surely you guessed – that you are going to Cyprus?’
Cyprus. He was struck dumb before his own incompetence. He had not guessed. His mind bent on his intricate plans for his army, he had neglected the obvious. He had been curious, as Tobie