Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [60]
‘No,’ said Nicholas again. His hands had steadied, and his face had ceased to feel like pigskin. He detached a stool with his foot from the companionable circle that had been drawn, and kicking it to the wall, sat down with his arms folded and his shoulders against the plaster. He said, ‘Well: let us look at the realities. The Bastard James is actually expecting me: this is not a gambit of your own? Yes. And he is sending someone to collect me – could that be the noise that we hear?’
‘It could be,’ said Erizzo. He glanced at the others. ‘But they will wait.’
Giovanni Loredano got up. ‘I’ll see to it.’ The door closed behind him.
‘But you are not going to Nicosia? Because King James doesn’t know you are here?’
‘Because it is better for you to go alone. We shall come later,’ said Erizzo.
‘And the lady Primaflora?’ Nicholas said.
‘She may go with you,’ said Erizzo.
‘Why?’ said Nicholas. ‘She has no value now. Queen Carlotta can’t stop me coming: I’m here. Send the girl on to Rhodes on the next ship.’
The door opened. The young man Vanni said, ‘They won’t wait.’ He spoke in anger, with something held down behind it.
Erizzo said, ‘Nonsense. Tell them.’ Then he broke off and said, ‘Luigi. Try.’ The older man Martini rose, looking at him, and then left with Loredano. The door closed. The Venetian Bailie said, ‘Yes, the lady. You don’t want her in Nicosia? Well, she is a free agent. If the convent will have her, no doubt she could stay until she has the means to leave.’
He spoke with his eyes on the door, behind which an amazing noise was developing, compounded of shouting, and the crashing of timber and something that sounded like, but could not be, the clashing of steel. Nicholas said, to get it quite clear, ‘The lady Primaflora may leave Cyprus?’ He could not, yet, believe that Erizzo was making no use of his most powerful lever. With three-quarters of his mind, he was listening. The door opened again, and Loredano stood on the threshold.
This time the Bailie stood up. The sound of shouting came clearly now from the cloisters, and the thud of blows, and of running feet, and of screaming. Erizzo said, ‘Christ Jesus. I have no sword here.’
The man in the doorway had blood on his face. He said, ‘I asked for five minutes. They say the time has expired. The servants have gone. The monks are in the church. They are fetching the lady.’
‘Who?’ said Nicholas. ‘Who are fetching her?’ He had got to the door but Loredano held it against him, his fissured cheek welling. Loredano said, ‘The Mamelukes. The King has sent the Mamelukes for you. You can’t do anything now. No one can.’
‘Of course they can,’ Nicholas said, and wrenched open the door and came face to face with Primaflora half-naked, in the grip of a fully-armed Mameluke.
Nicholas saw he was alone in his shock. The delightful bare breasts of Primaflora were not those of a housewife. In Venice, he had heard, the courtesans looked not unlike this, with their plucked brows and their dyed golden hair and the gowns cut as nearly to cradle the breasts as to conceal them. And Primaflora herself contributed the disdain of the courtesan, her dishevelled head high, her arms hanging loose over the brown fingers grasping her ribs.
The man behind her held her thus for a moment and then, forcing down with his wrists, compelled her to sink to her knees. Grasping her long loosened hair he twisted it, to hold in his fist as a leash. He said in Arabic, ‘Whose is the chattel?’
He was not, Nicholas thought, of pure blood. Broad, and of medium height, this Mameluke was still taller than an Egyptian should be. Beneath his conical helmet with its burst of short feathers his face could hardly be judged: little showed between the tongues of his face-guard but the red of his lips and the glossy black of his untrimmed moustache. Below that, the man wore a brigandine, covered with bright brocade studded with metal. His curved sword, sheathed in shagreen, had a handgrip