The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [75]
At the end of five days, he was able to sail out of Modon. His mood was not one of happiness but more of dark and positive determination.
He was aware of the fact that only one stage now lay between him and the Fleece. And that unlike Jason’s, his wooden oracle had preferred not to embark.
Chapter 12
MESSER PAGANO DORIA’S patience with his young lady wife during the passage from Modon to Constantinople, City of the Thrice-Blessed Virgin, ex-Tabernacle on Earth of the Bride of the Lord, was regarded as something amazing by everyone on board the Doria, from Michael Crackbene his captain right down to Noah, his eager black page. There were those who put it down to infatuation, and those who remarked, and rightly, that my lord Pagano Doria was an unusually equable man. There were still others who thought of another possibility.
A man of experience, Doria could see for himself that the incidents at Modon had quickly lost their diversionary value, so that he had to rely on the marriage bed. It was not a penance. Her attraction for him was considerable. She was one of his most promising pupils and, when he could, he devoted himself to her, forgiving the stray acts of wilfulness. Someone else, eventually, could train her out of those. So single-minded did he make himself that, when he turned off the terrible nurse (with his wife’s eager approval) in the last days at Modon, he had selflessly replaced the bitch with two of the plainest servingwomen he could find. It had not entirely pleased Catherine. Incomparable women had pretty maids: only the plain chose the ugly. He apologised, charmingly.
As for Catherine herself, it was quite painful at times to deny his embraces, but she felt it was good for him. She had tamed Felix her brother by refusing approval and companionship, and Felix had liked her better than Tilde. The escapade at Modon had proved an unplanned test of her power over Pagano. It began as a kind of joke. Unknown to him, she would dress in her page’s costume, attach herself to his suite and, unnoticed in the darkness, observe her mother’s husband. Since her ultimate lesson in carnal knowledge, she found it less disturbing to think of her mother and Nicholas. She could understand an old woman’s temptation. She found it less easy to understand Nicholas, who presumably had no idea what he was missing.
Standing there in her pretty costume, she found herself speculating on what Nicholas would say if he saw her. Then he looked straight at her. She was sure, even then, that in this dress and setting she was unrecognisable. And then she had seen his face alter. Become strange and alter, and all because of her! She realised she ought to run for Pagano’s sake, but was laughing with excitement so much that it brought on the hiccoughs and someone had to half drag her along. Noah, the little black bastard (as her late nurse frequently called him); who went and told Pagano as soon as he arrived on the round ship.
But by then she was standing, showered in soot at the ship’s rail, lost in the spectacle of the Florentine galley on fire, and when Pagano walked over, looking hot, she was thinking of nothing else. She had rushed to him and said, “Did you do it? You did it, didn’t you?” in sheer delight, because although they had talked of ways of keeping Nicholas and his ship in harbour, fire had never been mentioned.
Immediately, he had looked a little less rigid. He had said, “How could I have had anything to do with it? I’ve been ashore all evening.”
“Is it bad?” she had said.
And he had put his arm round her and said, “It’s not as bad as it looks. Nicholas is quite safe, but of course he can’t sail for a while. Caterinetta, I have to scold you, but I have a lot to do first. This smoke is bad: I think you should go below and get the girls to make your boxes secure. If I see a chance, I might set sail this evening. Then poor Nicholas will have no hope of reaching the Black Sea before us.”
She was so pleased that she relented. She put her arms round his neck, coughing a little, and said, “I didn’t mean to upset you.