To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [314]
‘It would have been worse with the bows,’ Nicholas said. ‘You would really have felt it with the bows. I wasn’t needed at Court. The truce is being extended, the English aren’t sending an army, and the Duke is deeply embroiled with making himself the next Duke of Guelders.’
Plates were arriving, and food. Trestles fronted the elegant cabins. Benches were being brought out, and armfuls of cushions. It was like Linlithgow all over again, except that it was happening in sunlight, on the reeded shore of a limitless pool, and everything within sight belonged to him, and him only.
Gregorio said, ‘I thought King James was claiming Guelders because of his mother.’
‘I pleaded his case,’ Nicholas said. ‘But the Duke is a very hard man to convince. He wanted the land to help make up a new kingdom. Now he may do even better than that. The Emperor Frederick is making signals again.’
Gregorio said, ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘What signals?’ said Tobie.
‘He wants his boy Maximilian to marry the Duke’s daughter, Marie. In return – maybe – he’ll make the Duke King of the Romans, halfway house to becoming next Emperor of the Germanies. And further in return – maybe – he’ll abdicate one day and allow the Duke to become Emperor. You should know all that. You ought to be finding and treating a monarch with piles. Find a patient with piles, and no inside information will escape you. Although, of course, you did treat Urbino. What did he have? Marsh-fever, wasn’t it?’
Gregorio said, ‘So what does this mean for the Bank? Nicholas?’
‘It means I don’t sell so many secrets to France,’ Nicholas said. ‘We keep Julius in Cologne, and Crackbene’s friends in Utrecht, and I cultivate all those charming officers of the Emperor whom I met in the Tyrol. Cardinal Bessarion talked to Frederick about us.’
‘So did the Patriarch of Antioch,’ said Gregorio. ‘The Emperor will suspect we are resuming our interest in the East.’
‘So we are, temporarily,’ Nicholas said. It was easy.
Gelis was standing before him. ‘Why are you here?’
‘That’s what I was about to explain. Because I’m going to Cyprus,’ Nicholas said. Jodi tugged at his doublet.
Gregorio said, ‘What for, in God’s name? The spring attack on the Sultan is launched; the fleet has gone; the Venetian arms are on their way to Uzum Hasan and the Turcoman army.’
‘Paid for by our stolen gold,’ Nicholas said. The gold, pirated on its way home from Africa, was being claimed by the Knights of St John.
Gregorio said, ‘Julius is on his way to plead that case now. You sent him yourself.’
‘Then perhaps I should join him,’ Nicholas said. ‘Rhodes is only two days from Cyprus. Yes, Jodi. I have observed that you are there. You shall sit beside me, and Mistress Clémence will tell us what you may eat.’
‘And what you may eat,’ Jodi said.
‘No doubt,’ Nicholas said. ‘No doubt I shall be force-fed with something before the day is much older.’
Two days later he left, taking Alonse; and accompanied Mick Crackbene and a pallid-faced Tobie in a hard, brilliant sail of twenty-six days down the Gulf of Venice, and east to the farthest end of the Middle Sea.
He had been force-fed with many reasons for not going: the only one that had given him pause was Jodi’s face. Gelis had said nothing. He had promised her a resolution this year in the West, and he had reaffirmed the agreement. Only, on the eve of his departure, she had come to him as he stood on the balcony and said, ‘Would you take me with you to Cyprus?’
The light from the water slipped over her skin and her hair and her breast, and made two translucent points of her eyes.
He said, ‘How dare you? How dare you, after Famagusta?’ He stood, breathing quickly, staring after her as she left.
He gave a different answer when Tobie put the same question later