Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [84]
‘And you believed it?’ Nicholas said. ‘Next time, ask Father Godscalc. Meantime, I’m sorry, I don’t want to distress Tristão Vasquez for no reason.’
‘You’ve come here to kill him. I see it,’ said John of Kinloch. ‘You will not do it. I forbid it.’
He had the valour, if only the silly valour, of righteousness. Nicholas said, ‘All right. Come with me to the Lieutenant. Where are your saddlebags?’
They were on his horse, which somehow had found its way into the stables. Nicholas said, ‘I will wait for you.’ He waited until he heard the scuffle, and then slipped through the door after the chaplain. The Venetian was already kneeling, with the priest lying pinned on the straw. Nicholas said, ‘Father John? I’m sorry. I can’t afford to have my affairs damaged by gossip. You will come to no harm, nor will the Vasquez. You will be kept in a safe place and then allowed to go home as soon as possible. I know the offence is great, and I shall do what I can to make up for it. Do you understand me?’
‘Murderer!’ said John of Kinloch.
‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘we should bind something into his mouth.’
‘I think you should,’ said the low voice of Primaflora behind him. ‘What a villainous past! With whom have I been consorting?’
Nicholas finished knotting the rope-ends and turned. She waited, wrapped in her cloak, where John of Kinloch couldn’t observe her. He said, equally softly, ‘With a man. What about our Portuguese friends?’
‘They are safely at table,’ she said. ‘Are you going to kill the poor man?’
‘Not immediately,’ Nicholas said. ‘We are taking him, in the form of a sack of flour, to a house this fellow knows of. You can ask your questions later.’
‘I shall ask one now,’ said Primaflora. ‘Is this why you prefer James to Carlotta? Because you have a vendetta against someone on Carlotta’s side? This man Simon, now waiting in Rhodes?’
The horse trampled. ‘Let us say,’ said Nicholas breathlessly, ‘that someone with interests in Genoa and Portugal has a vendetta against me.’ They were thrusting the priest, a threshing bundle, into a pannier.
She still stood in the doorway. ‘Twice, in Bruges, someone mentioned a woman called Katelina.’
Damn Colard. ‘Yes. Well,’ Nicholas said. ‘You now appear to have heard about Simon. Vasquez married his sister. Katelina is Simon’s wife. His second wife.’
‘And you hate them all?’ said Primaflora.
‘No,’ said Nicholas in sudden anger. He turned, breathing heavily. ‘I don’t hate anyone. Well, Tzani-bey al-Ablak I do make an exception for.’
She watched them lead the horse over the drawbridge and out into the road. Then she went back and was particularly charming to Diniz.
Chapter 13
NICHOLAS EMBARKED for Rhodes at dawn the following morning, accompanied by Primaflora his mistress. The Vasquez, father and son, went on board with them, and no screaming, dishevelled priest appeared to warn them that they were sharing their trip with a murderer. Before he left, Nicholas met once again the man Martini had loaned him, and sent him back to the Venetian with both advice and information. He hoped, as a result, that John of Kinloch would be securely kept and well treated until he need no longer fear him. He not only hoped, he felt confident.
The galley, flying the Cross of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller of St John, had come straight from Rhodes. It seemed, interestingly, to be already loaded. Nicholas, who had spent some time on the roof of the seventy-foot citadel, had observed no bustle of exodus the previous day from the storehouses. The spreading fields, on the contrary, had appeared singularly peaceful, stretching to the south, and the sea. There had been a smudge of smoke above the distant monastery of Ayios Nikolaos, and a streak of rose-tinted white told of the saltflats, with the winter flamingoes on them.
It occurred to Nicholas that he had never seen Cyprus, except in autumn and winter. He had never really seen Cyprus at all. The birthplace