Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [89]
Discovering him there, Primaflora stood in the doorway and watched, while the boy’s father said, ‘You are knowledgeable. You are not a Hospitaller?’
‘No,’ Nicholas said. He laid back the boy’s head, and received a wan smile. ‘I had the benefit of watching a very good army doctor. A nephew of Ferrari da Grado.’
The father looked up. ‘The Professor? King Louis, the Duke of Milan are his patients. What is his nephew doing – I beg your pardon.’
Both dimples appeared. ‘With me? You would have to meet Tobie to understand. He worships Urbino and fought Malatesta on principle. He follows armies and hates war. His uncle despises him, but he is not all he seems. He has taught me not to make easy judgements. I hope sometimes that people likewise do not believe all they might hear of me.’
‘But nothing but good, I am sure,’ said Senhor Tristão. His voice was warmer than Primaflora had heard it, and so was his smile.
Nicholas, on the contrary, was not smiling. ‘You think not?’ he said. ‘Well. Don’t let’s take a wager on it. I’ll leave him. He’ll do now.’ And touching the boy, he turned and left the cabin, the woman following.
She said, ‘You have purloined my disciple.’
‘A temporary aberration,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’ll get back his devotion tomorrow.’
He had told her what to expect. She said, ‘When they learn who you are from friend Simon? They will both be distressed. You don’t want to tell them yourself?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘And you still expect to be seized and executed as a servant of Zacco’s? Is your man Simon so powerful? Without proof, I don’t see how the Queen or the Order can harm you.’
‘What would you do,’ he said, ‘if you were the Queen, or the Grand Master of the Order?’ What would the other man do. Always, always the question.
She thought. ‘If I knew you were coming, but not when? I should give orders to meet all ships from Cyprus. I should still hope to win you to Carlotta, so I should treat you politely, but keep you under some sort of restraint until your loyalty could be proved beyond question. Then, if I found you were Zacco’s, I should kill you.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Nicholas said.
‘And so? How would you deal with it?’
‘Oh,’ said Nicholas. ‘I should join Carlotta immediately. There is really no other course.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said. Soon she left him, and he didn’t see her again until the drums beat for landfall. Then they stood on deck, with their coffers piled about them, and watched the blue outline of mountains come nearer, and the two harbours with their forts and their long lines of windmills, and behind those, the rising ground that contained, within its thick bulwark and walls, the houses, churches and palaces of the capital of the Rhodian isle, the isle of Helios and Hyacynthos, the island of roses, the home of the Knights of St John.
On their flank was the Hospitallers’ war fleet, in the harbour called Mandraki with the chain locking its entrance. South of that was the trading harbour of Rhodes, full of shipping. On a long pier at its end, a new fortification was being built. ‘The bastion of St Nicholas,’ said Primaflora. Excitement or fear had given her skin a glow normally concealed by her art; her eyes were alight. Today, too, she had replaced her sombre clothes with the style of the court. Her sleeves were ribboned under her mantle which itself had a trimming of ermine, and her hair was concealed by a high rounded hat that displayed the pure lines of her face. He had felt the same impulse to make a gesture, and had dressed finely, for once, to escort her. She appreciated it, but it also amused her. She pursued the question of the new bastion. ‘Are you proud of your saint’s work? See how the ship bows as it passes. Built with the Duke of Burgundy’s money. He vowed to launch the world’s