To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [326]
*
Late that same afternoon, white and weary at the end of a feat of dogged persistence, Nicholas de Fleury dismounted at the marble portico of the royal palace of Famagusta, in face of the soaring Cathedral. Behind that was the Citadel, and behind that the blue water, full of Venetian ships.
Filipe had freed him, and found him a horse and brought him part of the way. Now the youth was riding to Nicosia to fetch Crackbene quickly. Nicholas understood, he supposed, why Crackbene had been in no haste to mount a rescue operation himself, even when informed by Filipe where to find him. It was fortunate that Filipe, unaware of these subtleties, had made his own way to Kouklia to save him.
Filipe had little personal cause to be interested in the survival of Nicholas, under whom he had suffered as an inadequate ship’s boy nine years before, off the African coast, on the San Niccolò. But he had wished very much to please Mick, the big Scandinavian master, who had helped to protect the little fool after the voyage; and had since contrived him a post in Nicosia. And then, when David de Salmeton had moved there from Cairo, the boy had been engaged as his servant.
Nicholas hadn’t known that: had been astonished to notice the youth standing scented and curled at de Salmeton’s side on his arrival. But Master Crackbene had been told about his new position, the boy had volunteered. They had exchanged messages now and then.
Nicholas wondered what the messages had been. He had never liked Filipe very much. But now he probably owed him his life, and perhaps something else. If Zacco still lived.
They were not entirely willing to admit him. He was wasting his momentum on anger when Tobie suddenly appeared, and took him by the arm and led him in and sat him down in a room somewhere. ‘He’s very sick, but he’ll last till you’re fit to see him. Tell me what happened.’
Tobie, being a grandmother. He told him, and was given something sweet and rather invigorating to drink while in turn he listened to Tobie. Then he said, ‘When can I see him?’
‘Now,’ Tobie said. ‘Sit with the rest. He will single you out, to show his confidence in you. Then you will have to wait here until he’s alone.’
Nicholas said, ‘He has survived for five days. I think you underrate yourself, Tobie.’
‘You want to think so,’ said Tobie. Tobie, being ruthlessly honest.
*
He applied to the sickroom very soon after, and entered through the heavy carved door, and was met by a second barrier of odour, thick as a rug.
He had been entertained often enough in Zacco’s personal chamber in Nicosia, but not here. The ornate Venetian bed stood on a platform laden with sickroom basins and tables and trays. The great cortinaggio still spread its covering wings, hung from its cords in the ceiling, but the silken bed curtains had been lifted and knotted, and the gold-embroidered pillow and sheets had given way to plain lawn. The doctors moved back and forth, and the nurses. There were several now.
He could see, just, the dusky figures seated on the banquettes against the glimmer of revetted marble, but all the light seemed absorbed by the bed and the slow-tossing figure upon it. The young lion whose place, impatient foot swinging, was customarily on the sill of his window, his sinewy shoulders turned to the moat and the gardens, his mocking voice offering friendship and treachery. Careless joy, careless abuse, careless love.
Now Zacco lay, his eyes burning, his body abandoned to the slow flicking movements of fever and pain, his flesh and tissue and blood seeping from him. He said, ‘Ha! Nikko the lascivious he-goat, fervens semper ad coitum. Who are you ravishing now?’
‘I shall save her for you, roi monseigneur,’ Nicholas said. ‘I wish I and my doctor had come earlier.’
‘So do we,’ the King said. ‘We wished to play cards, before you had spent all your money. Your gyrfalcon pleased us.’
‘I am glad, sire,’ Nicholas said. Tobie signed. He bowed and, recreating,