To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [323]
Crackbene came and sat in a tub of tepid water in Tobie’s room. Tobie was thankful to have him. The tub overflowed, but the pools of water made the room cool. Crackbene said, ‘Can we be overheard?’
Nicholas had checked Tobie’s room for him. It was secure. His own, he had let drop, was not. Tobie said, ‘Yes. Why?’
‘The King’s attack,’ Crackbene said. He spoke very softly. He got up and, dripping, closed both the windows; then he sat on the sill. He said, ‘It isn’t colic. It’s the flux. The bloody menison.’
The two looked at one another. ‘When did it start?’ Tobie said.
‘While they were eating in camp. They heard him yell from his tent, but that isn’t uncommon. Then it got worse. It was known when I left that he was passing blood and screaming and cursing. He flung the bowl at Gentile while he was trying to sponge him.’
‘A fever?’ said Tobie.
‘So they said.’
‘And did he vomit?’
‘From the pain. He was given something that stopped it. Corner told them to do anything that they could to ease the pain and keep his food down.’
Tobie felt very old. He said, ‘You don’t believe it.’
‘I believe that part,’ Crackbene said. ‘So will everyone else.’
He cleared his throat. He said, ‘I have something else to tell you. I know where Nicholas is. No one is going to kill him. And however disagreeable his circumstances, he is safer than he would be in Famagusta.’
‘You are saying,’ said Tobie, ‘that the King has been poisoned. And that, being absent, Nicholas will be free of suspicion?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I am not going to tell you,’ said Crackbene. ‘And in case it has entered your head, I didn’t order his capture. I learned of it through a young friend. You make friends, at sea.’
As far as Tobie knew, Crackbene never made friends. He met people, and used them. He said, ‘A man held under duress may suffer as much as another with … dysentery. Tell me where Nicholas is. I am going to him.’
‘He wouldn’t wish it,’ Crackbene said. ‘If you were to ask him, he would beg just one thing. And since you can’t ask him, what you do will relieve his mind afterwards. Go to Zacco.’
‘He has a doctor,’ Tobie said.
‘A man called Gentile, who owes a great deal to Zacco, but also to Andrea Corner and his nephew. They have locked the door to the royal apartments,’ Crackbene said. ‘No one is allowed in. No friends, no courtiers, no royal officers, unless they are Venetian. You are a Pavia physician, the nephew of one of the great medical men of our time. They will not refuse you.’
‘You do not speak,’ Tobie said, ‘of the rewards I may garner for saving him.’
The solid figure in the window said nothing, and Tobie also fell silent, thinking of a young King: a lion, a leopard; violent, wilful, glorious in its courage and struck down on a whim.
Venice, Venice.
From the moment he opened his eyes, Nicholas de Fleury knew where he was; because ten years before, this place had been his.
His most profound recollections of it belonged to the spring, and were mixed with the scent of the sugar. The man who had caused him to be brought here of course knew all about that. Knew about Katelina and Fiorenza of Naxos; about Tobie’s early, earnest experiments; about Primaflora. About the young, courageous Diniz, who had attempted to kill him. The little Catherine, nine years old, had been here with her parents. Now St Mark was her parent and, plain still and very much plumper, she had a King and an isle in her grasp.
And a man he knew had stood on this spot: something which for the first time, for the very first time made it a place of remembered fulfilment and not of reproach. He did not know why, but he knew the change would have angered his enemy. His enemy who had had him hidden here, bound, in his sugar plantation of Kouklia.
The south coast was two days from Nicosia. He had no recollection of the journey but thought, as hunger broke through the drowsiness, that someone had drugged him as he had drugged Violante.