To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [319]
‘Enough,’ said Marietta of Patras. She pointed to a seat at her side, and Nicholas sat. Even in age, and a woman, she dominated the room, as she had pushed, beguiled and dominated her son through all his charmed, wilful life. She had been a King’s mistress and also a beauty, until the rightful Queen bit off her nose. Now the veil hid the scar, but not the power.
‘Enough. This is dangerous for the King. We must speak and then go. My lord Mehmet.’
‘No. I will speak,’ Zacco said. He had flung himself down. Now he pulled off his cap and jumped up, to begin prowling back and forth. He said, ‘Nikko, listen. Venice is becoming too powerful. You know my dilemma. I must pay tribute to Cairo, or the Mamelukes may again overwhelm me. If Cairo and I are too weak, the Ottoman Sultan will have me. Venice offered to save me from that, and so I made this marriage. Now it is Venice, Venice, Venice and I may be worse off than before.’
‘How?’ said Nicholas.
Hadji Mehmet spoke in his measured voice. ‘Unless he receives the promised help from the West, my lord the prince Uzum Hasan may not succeed in his plan to regain his lands of Karamania, and push the Sultan’s land forces north. The Christian fleets have done nothing this year but make simple forays and quarrel. The promised arms and experts are delayed. If my prince fails from no fault of his own, we fear, and the King fears, that Venice will make a shameful peace with the Sultan for the sake of her trade. Thus the prince Uzum Hasan will be rendered helpless –’
‘And so shall we,’ Zacco said. ‘And so too will the Knights of Rhodes, and the Sultan at Cairo. All need Venice but fear her and hate her. There was a rising here against ourselves and the Venetians last autumn.’
‘It was put down,’ said the King’s mother. ‘But then my son, my sweet lord lost his head when the Venetians tried to bring their ships and arms into Famagusta in April. What did you say, my son James, to Messer Barbaro? That if all the galleys did not leave in two hours, you would see that they were blasted out of the harbour? That if any men were found afterwards on land, you would make them so much dead meat?’
‘Nikko understands,’ Zacco said. He came to rest before him, his face set. ‘We are the slave of the Sultan of Egypt. If Uzum Hasan fails, no Christian power is going to save us. We dared not let these galleys enter our harbour and anger the Sultan. However much Venice may object, we are compelled to send hackbutters to Cairo if the Mamelukes demand them, just as we must resist the Signoria when she tries to impress our soldiers for her galleys. And Venice must look out for herself. Cairo is tired of her, and may very well drive out her traders and replace them in Syria with Genoese.’
He didn’t say with Anselm Adorne. He didn’t have to. ‘I see,’ Nicholas said. ‘So that you, roi monseigneur, and my lord Hadji Mehmet, troubled about the present dominance and future intentions of Venice, have been looking at other alliances? Always excluding, of course, the King’s half-sister Carlotta in Rhodes.’
‘The Knights are finding her tiresome,’ said the King’s mother. ‘The Patriarch is there; he has told us. Once we feared Milan and Genoa with some cause, but now we cannot afford to close doors. Once too, I believe, you were kind enough, Ser Niccolò, to try to forward my son’s marriage with a daughter of the royal house of Naples. Mischief-making perhaps, but there, too, circumstances have altered the case. Our Archbishop is in Naples now, arranging a contract of marriage between the King’s natural son and our grand-daughter Charla.’
Charla was six, the oldest of Zacco’s four natural children, of whom he was carelessly fond. The other Charlotte, his first and his favourite, would have been sixteen had she survived. She died, poisoned, it was said, by Andrea Corner the Queen’s uncle. Venice, Venice.
Nicholas said, ‘You must at least congratulate me on not having tied you to the princess Zoe, now in Muscovy.’
‘Have you met my wife?’ Zacco said. ‘The happiest day