To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [329]
‘Hold your tongue,’ said Marietta of Patras. ‘You yourself, in your greed, have ensured that while you hunted, M. le baron did not. They may not have thought of blaming you now, but they will very soon. Especially since you are held here, and impotent.’
‘They?’ said David de Salmeton calmly. But his fingers were tight.
‘The Venetians. You killed the King, and tried to kill this merchant, they will say, out of jealousy.’
‘So why are you here?’ said the prisoner. His knuckles were torn, Tobie saw. However effeminate he liked to appear, David de Salmeton was well made, with a compact, muscular body. And yet …
The King’s mother said, ‘I am here to ask a service of this man, your rival. It is for my son, not for myself. I am going to ask Lord Beltrees to drop the charges against you, and let you leave Cyprus.’
‘The papers are already lodged,’ Nicholas said. ‘My deposition, and that of the former page-boy Filipe.’ It was the first time he had spoken since entering.
The cropnosed woman lifted her hand. In it were two folded documents. She said, ‘In such confusion, it was not very difficult to have them abstracted.’
‘I have copies,’ Nicholas said.
‘You should keep them. But I propose to destroy these.’
‘Why?’ said David de Salmeton. ‘To have me fall into some accident as soon as I leave? Assuming Ser Nicholas were simple enough to allow me to leave?’
‘That is for him to decide,’ said the woman. ‘If the Venetians cannot be made to pay for their crime, I am determined that at least they will lose their chief scapegoat. If you live, of course, you can never come to Cyprus again, and will forfeit everything here that is yours.’
‘The sugar?’ said David de Salmeton. ‘You would give Kouklia to the Banco di Niccolò?’
‘The Banco di Niccolò,’ said the woman, ‘may name its own price for any position, any property, any business it may desire on this island. But I gather that it would decline.’
The bound man laughed. ‘He knew he could never rely on you.’ The laugh caught.
‘Ah yes,’ Nicholas said. Tobie looked at him. He had spoken quite softly. His eyes, steady and sober, rested on the other man’s face. He said, ‘Tear up the papers, my lady.’
‘Why?’ It was de Salmeton’s voice, sudden and shrill.
‘For his sake,’ Nicholas said.
Chapter 45
LITTLE BOATS CARRYING cherries, or cheeses, or sprats bring the world its bad news, long before the dispatch of solemn embassies. So rumours spread to the marketplace. But before even that, fast-beating pigeons and riders and swift, secret galleys make sure that the world’s leaders know what there is to know, even though they may conceal it.
Thus the news of James of Lusignan’s fate crossed the Middle Sea many weeks before the black-robed ambassadors formally presented their tidings to Pope Sixtus and the Republic of Venice, or the Knights of Rhodes and the late King’s half-sister Carlotta, or the Sultan Qayt Bey in Cairo; and long before an arrow borne by a racing dromedary reached a distant Persian battlefield and changed the fortunes of a prince.
One of the swifter ships, although not the swiftest, belonged to Nicholas de Fleury. The Banco di Niccolò conveyed its own first-hand account to the West; while behind, the body of a King was gutted, embalmed, and consigned in a funeral of little ceremony to the Cathedral of St Nicholas, Famagusta, denied even the marble sarcophagus his friends had tried to acquire. In Nicosia, the oaths of allegiance to the Daughter of Venice were taken, although the Venetian Bailie was unwilling to walk in the streets until supplied with a guard. A military parade was arranged, at which the spectators were to shout, ‘Long Live Queen Catherine!’ Queen Catherine herself clung to the safety of Famagusta, and refused to leave for the capital until her father, Marco Corner, winkled her out.
The journey to Venice was unlike any other Nicholas had undertaken in recent years. It had more in common with that long-ago voyage from Trebizond when all three, Nicholas, Tobie and Crackbene, had sailed home like this, repeating their