Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [48]
Nicholas turned back, smoothly closing the curtain. He spoke to Primaflora in a voice perhaps softer than usual. ‘My congratulations. Colard Mansion would add his, if he knew. All the time, you were working for the Queen. You questioned Thomas, you traced me, you told Queen Carlotta where to find me. Well, you have failed. I will not work for her.’
The girl said nothing. The man in the chair plucked his lip with his hand, and the jewel in his hat winked and shivered. He said, ‘The Queen is a powerful woman, and a bad enemy.’
‘I can believe that, if this is her friendship. I will not serve her,’ said Nicholas.
‘She offers land, rank, possessions – all the wealth in the world, once she has been restored to the island,’ the soldier said. ‘The Pope commends her. The Duke of Savoy her uncle supports her. She is raising armies to help her. You married a woman of great worth, I believe, and found it no hardship to work with her. So why not this Queen?’
‘The reason is quite immaterial. The answer is no,’ Nicholas said. ‘So what happens now? Am I thrown overboard, or do her servants stop short at that?’
‘Not often,’ said the man. ‘So it is fortunate, perhaps, that I am not her servant. Do you really feel so strongly against her?’
‘For her personally, I have no feeling at all,’ Nicholas said. ‘The matter is just as I have stated. I do not wish to go to Cyprus, and I will not be coerced into it.’
‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘But that is a different argument. Once, I am told, you had no objection to trade in the east? You considered sugar, I’m told.’
‘I considered many things, before my wife died.’
‘In Cyprus,’ said the man, ‘we grow, as you know, the finest sugar reeds in the world. We need an able, vigorous man to revive those trades that the long war has disrupted. The manufacture of sugar is one. There are other prospects of note in the capital. If you wish to fight, a princely contract is yours. If you do not, there is ample scope for the rest of your skills. May we not tempt you?’
Nicholas said, ‘What sort of offer is that? You hold Kyrenia in the north. The prime cane fields are all in the west or the south. The capital is Nicosia which is not, either, in the Queen’s hands. My other skills, as you call them, could find no outlet unless I fought for you first. Until you clear Cyprus of the usurper and his Egyptian soldiers, you have no such posts to offer.’
The man sat back, and clasped his hands before him. He said, ‘But, Messer Niccolò, I speak for the usurper, as you call him, and his Egyptian army. The usurper holds the sugar, the royal capital. The usurper has driven Carlotta into Kyrenia. The usurper, whose servants you fought so worthily, so disconcertingly that day south of Bologna, has been most impressed by the tales of your resistance to the blandishments of the Queen, tales which I have now seen for myself are quite true. I,’ said the man, rising suddenly, ‘am making no offer to you on behalf of Carlotta of Cyprus. I speak to you in the name of James, her half-brother. All she offered, he will give you and more. And much more, if you will come and work for him in Cyprus.’
Nicholas stood, ignoring the pain in his head, and let the implications of that burst like metal filings around him. His main emotion, he found, was one of exasperation. He walked to a stool, and sat down on it. He said, ‘The Queen’s brother approached me before. In Venice. His delegates failed with the Pope and, passing through Venice, came and spoke to me.’
‘The Bishop and Sir Philip Podocataro. Their approach to you was untimely,’ his captor said peaceably.
‘And again at Silla? Then it was her brother’s hirelings who attacked Queen Carlotta, and made off with the sugar? Of course,’ Nicholas said. He understood now the words of the Cypriot. Venetians? Genoese? They would have taken the sugar. Only one man would have destroyed it.
And Queen Carlotta, without naming him either, had