The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [231]
Catherine said, “You know what you did. You stole his silver. You left him nothing to buy. You stopped him selling at Pera.”
“I stole his silver?” said Nicholas. “Did he say that?”
Her lips compressed, and then parted. She said, “You did all the rest.”
“Then he can’t be blaming you,” Nicholas said. “So why are you afraid?”
“Well, you don’t know him,” said Catherine. She looked at the window embrasure, and then quickly away again.
“Not as well as you do,” said Nicholas gravely. Why Violante? He suddenly realised why Violante. Baby Catherine. Well, no one could say she hadn’t boldness. He said, “But I do know that reverses are difficult for men used to a fine life. It can drive them to do strange things.”
He had pushed a little too far, and she glared at him. She said, “You do admit, then, that you ruined him? You just set out to spoil all his business!”
But that, on her side, was asking too much. He said, “That’s trading, Catherine. We sailed to the same market, he and I, and we competed against one another in different ways, as all merchants do. He had his chance of winning just as much as I did. So, does he want to go home?”
“He says he can’t,” Catherine said. “He says the Turkish fleet is in the way. I don’t know whether to believe him.”
The woman in the window embrasure gave him no help. He continued to feel his way carefully. He said, “It would be hard to leave Trebizond, that’s true. But you needn’t stay with him unless you want to. The way he married you was not the usual one. It would be quite easy to find you legal protection until all the papers had been seen and approved.”
She said, “He thinks you’re the cause of all his troubles. He’d be jealous.”
This time, he was careful not to look at the window. He said, “I can see you might not want to put yourself in my care. Then—”
“Not with your reputation,” she said. “Bath boys. And…”
The exquisite woman in the window embrasure spoke. “Messer Doria has told his wife, my dear Niccolò, of our passion. Yours and mine. She already suspected that I had amused myself with her husband in Florence. I have had to tell her that persons of standing seek such frissons on occasion, and how little it means. It lifted her husband, for a little, above the rut of common whores he commonly exerts himself with and it gave you, I suppose, a taste of something you would otherwise never aspire to. I don’t see how even her mother your wife could object. Unfortunately, Messer Pagano is now making a public spectacle of himself in the Trebizond brothels, and has ceased to act as the child’s proper protector. So she came to find another.”
He could just see, against the light, her painted brows lifted. Seized with delight, he stared at this extraordinary woman whom, of course, he had never touched and who had never for a moment done more than patronise him. Of course, Catherine had come somehow to blackmail her. And with infinite artistry, the princess had both turned the tables and reprimanded him at the same time. He said to Catherine, “Do you want to leave Trebizond?”
Her eyes turned brilliant. She said, “But he would never let me go. And how could I?”
Violante of Naxos said, “I have told her that there are ways. If she wished, we could even take her husband as well. Once away from temptation, the marriage might prosper.”
“He wouldn’t go,” Catherine said. “He has a scheme. What could he barter that would fill a round ship? It’s nonsense.”
All Nicholas’s anger had gone. He said, “I’m afraid it is. The Emperor is just about to order the dismantling of all foreign ships. He couldn’t load anything anyway.”
She was amazingly good, but just too young to hide the thought that came to her. He added, “If the goods are still on board the Doria, he’ll have to unload them. How surprising that he didn’t sell them at once. And, of course, fortunate.”
The voice from the window