The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [87]
“Nicholas,” Tobie said. He spoke in a clipped voice.
“Escaping?” said John le Grant. He sounded surprised. Below, the shouting increased. They could see the top of the companionway sway. The head of Nicholas came into view, its toneless brown hair frizzed like a ball of brown wool with the damp. His hat was missing, and his cloak had half fallen off. From his belt to his boots, he was soaked in dirty seawater. His face was rosy with pleasure, and he was talking with large and positive gestures in incomprehensible Flemish.
In taverns in Bruges and Louvain, Julius had tracked them both down, Felix and Claes, by that joyous voice and uninhibited laugh. Paid their bills, led them out, held their heads while they retched. “Escaping,” he said.
Chapter 14
IF NICHOLAS HAD ESCAPED, it was only, of course, in a figurative sense. Like everyone else, he was still surrounded by Janissaries on board the impounded Ciaretti, whose sailing-master and notary had been beaten, bound, and were about to be removed to suffer the ultimate penalty, while the rest of her complement (her sober complement) awaited, sickened, the end which fate was preparing for them.
Tobie, herded with the rest on the prow, tried to imagine, bleakly, why Nicholas, just at this juncture, should have resorted to wine; and concluded that the girl was the cause. For all he knew, the same might have happened in Modon, had not the fire claimed all their energy. He tried to read Godscalc’s face, but it was void of expression. Julius, who must have been in considerable pain, was incandescent with anger. Le Grant, also under sentence of death, merely lay, looking puzzled. Loppe, whom one might have expected to show more distress than any one of them, merely looked vaguely content. Hesitantly, hope revived in Tobie’s sharp, Pavia-trained brain. He looked hard at Nicholas.
Like Loppe, Nicholas also looked vaguely complacent. His lower half still trickled with water from his mishap on the steps. His elbows, twined in the arms of two Janissaries, were knobbed like the wings of a pullet, and you could have put a caterpillar as soon as a crust between his smiling, generous lips. They made to hold him in front of the Bey, but his legs buckled a little, and his feet, unexpectedly straying, carried him out of his captors’ surprised grasp and ambitiously onwards. He arrived before they knew it at the roped-off square of the kitchen and stood staring down at his red-headed acquisition from Aberdeen. He sucked his breath in reprovingly. “You’ve pissed yourself,” Nicholas said. He spoke in Tuscan.
The red head jerked. “Well, by God, you’ve filled your boots as well as your drawers, and they didn’t give you the blunt end of an axe on your skull. They’re going to hang us,” said John le Grant in the same language. Tobie heard him.
“No, they’re not,” Nicholas said with confidence. His gaze, straying, found Julius tied up, and he transferred the smile to him, widened. “Impale you, they might. Bury you up to the neck. Tie you in a sack with a dog and then whack it. Fire you off from a cannon. Canon law, Julius. Couldn’t fire John, he’s too wet.”
“They know…” Julius began. He used Flemish.
“And you rowed very well,” Nicholas said, still in Italian. “Won your wager.” He turned his attention to Loppe at his side, and the Bey. He said to Loppe, “Tell your new chief he owes Julius three girls and some ale. Debt of honour. No, not ale; the skin-clippers think that it’s wicked.”
The men on the poop, frozen till now, were looking at one another uneasily. Tobie stared hard at Loppe. The Janissaries by the kitchen stood prepared, their eyes on Tursun Beg, who had given them no signal yet. The Turk spoke curtly to Loppe, who replied. Nicholas, evidently noticing, leaned and poked Loppe in the side. The negro turned.
Water from Nicholas’s cloak streamed over his boots and formed a pool which spread to where Julius was lying. Goat manure stirred,