To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [316]
‘I should be honoured, roi monseigneur,’ Nicholas said.
Outside the audience chamber, seeking Tobie, he moved from group to group of men he had known: all guarded, all nervously welcoming. There were other men who did not approach him, some of them strangers. Among them was one face he could never forget: oval, cleft-chinned and delicate, with lustrous dark eyes and dark hair. The man had a page at his side, and both smelled of jasmine. Nicholas walked across.
‘I hoped,’ said David de Salmeton, ‘that you would come to me. Zacco is so very much married these days that life has become perfectly tedious. You have left the lovely Gelis behind?’
‘Are you still interested?’ Nicholas said. ‘I must tell her. Perhaps you should change places with Martin. But you would hardly expect her to break off with King James on your account. And Martin might not do so well here. I believe the Vatachino are positively flourishing in Cyprus and Rhodes. And, of course, Anselm Adorne.’
‘It was kind of you to desert the field. I fear,’ de Salmeton said, ‘that it is too late to forge an opening now. They have even given me the Kouklia sugarfields.’
‘And, I trust, some of the vineyards,’ Nicholas said. ‘And a ship to replace the Unicorn? All that exquisite claret. I did have some regrets about that.’
‘It sank off La Rochelle,’ de Salmeton said.
‘But they saved me a bottle,’ Nicholas said. ‘I have it for you in my luggage. Too late to forge an opening, you think? Perhaps we should see.’ He nodded and walked away, followed by the eyes of the boy. He wondered, as he often wondered, what he would do without Crackbene.
It had been obvious from the moment of his arrival that he was not going to be lodged in the Palace, and he had sent Alonse to make arrangements with the Venetian Bailie. It would have been correct – and he wished to be correct – for Messer Pasqualigo to invite him to stay. Instead, he found himself escorted, with Tobie, to the palatial villa next door, with which he was very familiar.
Tobie said, ‘Isn’t this where you went to your meeting three years ago? Isn’t this where the Queen’s Venetian family lives?’
It was, of course. It was the home of the Lord Auditor Andrea Corner, the uncle of Catherine and the most powerful Venetian on Cyprus. It was the home of young Marco her cousin, and of Marco’s namesake and uncle her father, when called from his sugar estates in the south. It was also home, on occasion, to those three remarkable princesses, the little Queen’s mother and aunts, with two of whom he had been memorably intimate.
He could feel Tobie walking bristling beside him as they were led in. He could feel Tobie’s disapproval become outrage when the voice that greeted them, sweetly feminine, proved to be that of a beautiful boy. Nerio, well-born exile of Trebizond, had shamed Adorne’s son in Venice and embellished the court of Duke Charles in Bruges and Brussels and had found himself a singular protector, by all accounts, in the house of Bessarion in Rome.
Nicholas said, ‘How surprising. And is the lord Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli present also?’
The painted eyes fluttered. ‘Should I have allowed him to come? But he is sensitive, and such tendresses, as you know, can breed jealousy. He is waiting in Modon. But I am to see to your comfort, and to apologise for the lord Andrea and his nephew, who have been called away. I hope, however, that you remember your Greek. And this is your charming doctor. I remember him well.’
‘I remember you,’ Tobie said.
Alone with Nicholas he said, as he had said all through the voyage, ‘Achille told you. The Vatachino have all the contracts. There is nothing for you here now, or for the army. John and Astorre wasted their time defending a cesspool of plotting and decadence. Why are we here?’
‘To be seduced in Greek,’ Nicholas said.
‘By that scented boy?’
‘It wasn’t his scent,’ Nicholas said. ‘Come to the balcony.’
Below, the trees of the garden were heavy