Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [81]
‘No,’ she said. ‘He pleases himself. But how could you do this alone?’
‘I wouldn’t. Crackbene would help me, or whoever the Venetians have left on the ship. Where is this place John of Kinloch has gone to?’
‘Kouklia. The royal sugarcane centre. The brothers Martini have the franchise …’ She stopped, her hair half-wound on her head. ‘No, they don’t.’
‘I have the franchise,’ he said. ‘Or the option to acquire it, if I bring my men back to Zacco. But how far off is Kouklia?’
‘Not far. You should get there and back in a day. You might even find them all at the Martini warehouses at Episkopi. It’s where the Venetian sugar ship calls. The Knights send their sugar there, too.’
‘I’ve heard. The Martini act as their agents. I’ll go,’ Nicholas said. ‘Can you make some excuse? I’ll get a horse or a mule in the village.’
‘You might take me with you,’ she said. ‘I could show you Venus’s birthplace.’ She held both hands over her head, a strand of bright hair lifted between them. Her breasts were stretched cones made of satin.
However thoroughly he was engrossed, her body spoke to his, insistently, until, like this, it drew from him an answer. His mind, seduced outwards, told him what his unseeing eyes saw, and feeling returned to every surface that made him. Slowly extending an arm, Nicholas took one end of her hair and pulled it all out again. ‘I feel that would distract me,’ he said. ‘No. You stay here and let Diniz exhaust you. Unless, of course, someone has done that already.’ He took her two wrists in one hand and, holding them high, laid her back, arched and intent, on the pillows. ‘I thought you said I had lost you your mood,’ he said. ‘And look, you were absolutely mistaken.’
In the end, he needed to go no further than Episkopi for news of John of Kinloch. It took him two miles to the west in a direction he had not yet travelled. He found the road flat and easy, and, without Primaflora to distract him, laid his plans as he rode.
What Tristão and Diniz Vasquez meant in his life was not something he felt impelled to confide in the lovely woman who was now, he supposed, his accepted mistress. She had been curious already about Katelina. He hadn’t told her that Katelina van Borselen was married, or that the Portuguese she had just met was Katelina van Borselen’s brother-in-law. Seventeen years before, Tristão Vasquez had come to Bruges and met and married Lucia, whose brother Simon years later took Katelina to wife. John of Kinloch knew that. He knew of Simon’s past hatred of Nicholas. If Simon and Tristão Vasquez were partners in Portugal, and hence on the side of Genoa and Carlotta, John of Kinloch would be reasonably sure that, whatever he claimed, Nicholas intended working for Zacco. If that became known, Nicholas would not be allowed to join his army in Rhodes, and Carlotta would feel free to dispose of them. Then Zacco, lacking his help, could succumb to Carlotta.
Therefore Father John by some means must be silenced. And it seemed to Nicholas that he should point out to any Venetians he met that, in this instance, his aims were their own.
He knew no one at Episkopi, but walked his horse down to the jetty where the warehouse doors stood open and carts and barrows squelched over the sand and the mud. Offshore, there were several ships waiting at anchor, but he could see no sign of the Doria, or of the fair bulk of his Master, Mick Crackbene. The sugar ship had not yet arrived. He left his horse, and found his way to where a number of officials were working. There he found and spoke to two men from the Corner plantation and one who worked for the Bishop of Limassol. They could tell him nothing of the movements of the chaplain John of Kinloch, but were more than ready to listen to him on other, extremely pertinent matters. He had finished his conversation and was returning to the larger warehouse and his horse when the warehouse owner stepped into his path. It was Luigi Martini.
In the monastery and on the Doria, Luigi Martini had looked like a man with a grievance, and he had not changed. His