To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [317]
The man was Hadji Mehmet, the far-travelled envoy of Uzum Hasan, the Turcoman ruler of Persia. The woman was Violante, the golden princess of Naxos whose small, plump niece was Zacco’s queen.
Tobie said, ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ Nicholas said. ‘He’s the pill, she’s the … palliative. The Turk must be stopped. Uzum Hasan can stop him. In other words, if you can’t help, don’t hinder.’
He had been right. When, refreshed, they both descended, the lady and the envoy were waiting to greet them, and the encounter proceeded, fluently, on predictable lines. He found he rather enjoyed meeting Violante, for once, on something like his own terms. He paid her far more attention than he did Uzum’s envoy.
In public, neither he nor Hadji Mehmet had ever betrayed anything but the courtesy due from merchant banker to senior ambassador. In fact, they had now met many times, and understood each other very well. Behind his slow tongue and stately manner, the Persian concealed a quick wit and a grasp of alien languages which had served his lord over many years, not least when leading his hundred-strong delegation to Venice two years ago, or at a seminal meeting in this very house some months before that.
With him then had been someone else: the Latin Patriarch of Antioch, who had so understandably wished to place Katelijne Sersanders in a convent, and whom Tobie had met in Urbino. Uzum Hasan made use of the Latin Church, as he employed any tool in a war that might lose him his country. Just as the Latin Church – in the person of the late Cardinal Bessarion, and his agent Ludovico da Bologna – had been and was using him. Nicholas thought of Ludovico da Bologna, and wondered where he was.
He saw Tobie glance at him, and realised that his own manner had become rather less weighty, and Tobie thought he knew why. Probably Violante with her silk gown and ivory skin and high-arched slippers of birdskin thought so too. And of course, he was not without some susceptibility. Any man would long to unfold her hair, discarding the jewels into some warm handy niche, to be recovered quite soon. He realised, ruefully, that most of the time Tobie’s suspicions were right.
They supped in the garden, and were joined by the youth Nerio, who played his lute for them and sang, seated at the princess’s knee. The songs, in the clear sexless voice, passed from language to language, at first amusingly daring, and then unashamedly erotic. Tobie had flushed. The woman, her eyes on those of the boy, was smiling a little, her breathing heightened. The Ambassador sipped the water that was in fact wine, with the peaceful expression of incomprehension that Nicholas now knew so well. And Nicholas, sighing, drank his wine which was in fact water and summoning all his own well-worn skills, blocked the words and music out of his thoughts. He hoped the boy and Violante were enjoying them.
They retired at length, without the Auditor or his nephew having made an appearance. Tomorrow, Nicholas was to hunt with the King. He and Tobie had been given separate rooms, which suited him well. The note he had half expected was slipped into the sleeve of his night-robe; he took it with him into the privy to read. He had already studied his sumptuous little room, with the great bed and the painted walls and the devotional tabernacle with its almost invisible peep-hole, high on the wall. He didn’t mind. He had never minded giving a performance. He had never slept dressed, either, and wasn’t going to start now.
He was in bed although not asleep when the scratch came to his door, and Violante entered, the candlelight burnishing her brow and cheekbones and breast. Her hair was already over her shoulders, and she wore one garment more than he did. He sat up, embracing his sheeted knees. ‘Highness, forgive me. I would come and kiss your hand, were it seemly.’
She laid down the candle and allowed