Diniz gave one choking sob. The hook dragged his belt and his body began to leave the filthy water. The heavy wool dropped over his shoulders and then gripped round his waist, trapping one arm and leaving one free. Vander Poele thrust the stuff into place and held it firm with one hand, while the other assisted the pull with the wringing-hook. The Fleming talked over his arm to his winch-man. His attention was fully engaged and so was that of Zorzi, who was laughing harder than ever. Diniz began to rise free of the bath.
He had already taken hold of the axe. As he came waist-high to his tormentor, he whirled his arm round with the implement. He let it go just short of its target, which was the vein in vander Poele’s neck. The flash of silver was all the warning the other man had. He began to move, but there was of course no way he could avoid it. Diniz heard the thud, and the other man’s gasp. The Fleming half staggered. The stick fell to the ground, and the wool ran through his fingers. The axe, jarred by the movement, detached itself and fell beside Diniz. He felt the handle under his hip as he dropped back to the vat edge and sprawled, half in and half out of the bath, blinded by the dash of the liquid, and by the crimson spray of Niccolò’s blood. He saw, through the blur, that the other man had fallen quite slowly and was lying, his head turned away, in pools of bright blood and urine garnished with wool twists of Imperial purple. He couldn’t see the extent of the wound. He said, without getting up, ‘Is he dead?’ He started to shiver.
The Venetian Zorzi looked up from where he was kneeling. He was perhaps pale, but his expression was not one of horrified anger. He said, ‘Well. Neither of us expected you to do that. No, he is not dead. But he could be.’
Diniz stared at him. Zorzi said, ‘If you wanted him dead, you have only to leave him. He will bleed his life away in ten minutes, and you would be perfectly safe. It was a fair fight, and the cut of an axe or a sword can look much the same in a corpse.’
Diniz lifted himself until he was sitting. He said, ‘You would do that? Support me?’
Zorzi knelt back, one hand comfortably on his knee. He said, ‘I don’t see why not. I’ve no axe to grind – ha! – over the rights and wrongs of your case, but you seem a good trainee, and vander Poele himself recommended you. This was a fair fight, or an accident.’
‘And you don’t mind if he dies,’ Diniz said.
‘No,’ said Zorzi thoughtfully. ‘Unfortunately, I am not a free agent. I have an elder brother, and orders to follow. I think perhaps I should make some little effort. Of course, I might try very hard, but in the end nature could defeat me?’ He looked down. The scarlet pool widened, and thickened. Far across the yard, a banging noise made itself heard from the other side of the buildings. Bartolomeo Zorzi lifted his head. The banging stopped, to be followed by the jangling of spurs, and men’s voices. Zorzi said, ‘Who? The King’s men, at a guess, come to look for the fugitive favourite. Who has had an accident, practising swordplay, and whom we are doing our best to revive. Hide the axe. Come here. I need a stick and a rag. I apply my fingers here, and you bind as fast as you can. What is wrong with you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Diniz through chattering teeth.
‘Why deny you are weeping? It is right to show anguish. Through no fault of yours, the King nearly lost his good comrade.’
Men appeared at the end of the shed. Diniz said, his hands smothered with blood, ‘He will tell them. When he wakes, he will tell them what happened.’
‘Will he?’ Zorzi said. ‘Remember, he could have killed you and didn’t. He could have freed you, and didn’t. He wanted you in his power. And he has his wish now, hasn’t he, to a degree he hardly expected? You are at vander Poele’s mercy. And at mine, of course, also.’
Chapter 26
‘So YOU FELL on your axe?’ Tobie said.
From this, Nicholas deduced that he was now expected to live; since it was the first direct, normal remark anyone had made to him during several hours of extreme pain and confusion. He had little recollection of being carried, by soldiers apparently, back to his own room in the villa. The doctor’s face had immediately materialised, and the variety of sensations which ensued had been punctuated by Tobie’s voice emitting phrases of bitter anger, impatience, anxiety, and at times a form of bracing reassurance which Nicholas, unable to respond, had felt nevertheless to be deeply disturbing.
He was aware that he was now fully awake after what felt like a profound sleep and that he was in his own bed, from which rose a distinct odour of latrines. The upper left side of his body was encased in wrappings, beginning at his neck and continuing down over his shoulder and chest. The seat of the screaming alarm lay somewhere at the point of his shoulder and neck. Indeed, he remembered explaining to someone that he had been struck and felled by a boulder, and asking them to go and get tackle to lift it. That had been, no doubt, one of his less sensible conversations with Tobie. His head thudded and he had no wish to move, or conviction indeed that he could. It felt, now he came to think of it, as if he had lost a lot, quite a dangerous volume of blood. Now he came to think of it, he remembered how.
Tobie’s face, which had acquired a frown, was beginning to clear again. Nicholas said, ‘Well, I didn’t fall on my sword.’ He added, ‘Is the smell coming from you or from me?’ He further added, ‘I thought you stayed at St Hilarion?’
Tobie scowled, while looking paradoxically cheered. Ignoring this last, he said at once, ‘Are you serious? We had to wrap you in rags, or the bed would be as disgusting as you were. Even after we washed what we could reach of you, and scrubbed the floor, and burned your clothes, you could tell, by God, that you came from a dyeyard. Mind you, for smell, the stupid brat was the winner. Flowers died as he passed them.’ Tobie paused. ‘The Portuguese. The spoiled baby who did his best to kill you.’
Nicholas wished the conversation would halt. Against strong advice from his internal organs he said, ‘Who told you that?’
‘Bartolomeo,’ said Tobie. ‘The Palace, of course, has been treated to quite a different story. But Bartolomeo made sure, naturally, that we heard the truth. I didn’t like him when he came on board off Constantinople, and I don’t like him now. I don’t know why his damned peg-legged brother took the trouble all that time ago to ransom him. And I don’t know, either, why you’ve brought him into the yard.’ He stopped, and into his face came the critical look Nicholas recognised of old. Tobie said, ‘You’re not much of an audience. Sore shoulder? Sore head? A drink, maybe?’
‘Not that kind of drink,’ Nicholas said. ‘But something wet would be nice. There’s a new inlet pipe in my head.’
‘Let’s try the usual way.’ Supporting him, Tobie said, ‘It was your lucky day, whatever you feel like. You moved just a little too far, and the axe was at the end of its range. I’d like to try it again with the brat at the other end, this time.’
‘Diniz?’ Nicholas said. The cup withdrew. ‘He wasn’t hurt?’
‘They didn’t call me to him,’ said Tobie. ‘Which is as well, because I wouldn’t have gone. He’s here, in a cell with a stool, a bucket and a small supply of congealed food. I don’t think he’s been offered a bath yet, but maybe his nose has got used to it. What did you expect, an ovation when you walked into that yard?’
‘I was going to talk to him,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I had to take Zorzi there first. I was going to talk to him along with …’ He stopped. With the pillow behind, he could now see a small amount of the room, including the window. There was someone sitting beside it. He saw who it was.
Tobie followed his gaze. ‘Katelina van Borselen. You asked her to come here to meet you, and she’s been here ever since. She won’t leave till she knows what will happen to Diniz.’
‘Nothing. Tell her.’
‘I have told her. She doesn’t believe me. I don’t, perhaps, sound convincing,’ Tobie said. He was wearing his cap, as he always did when exercising his profession. The curl of his lips matched the neat little scroll of his nostrils; all of which, in their ways, provided a regular index to To
bie’s intimate feelings. Once, in Trebizond, Tobie had attended another illness of his, with consequences Nicholas preferred not to remember. Then, Katelina had not been present: only spoken of.
Nicholas said, ‘Bring her over.’ She came, not very quickly, and stood by his bed.
Sick or well, you couldn’t look at this face without seeing, under the strain, the handsome, high-bred young woman of three years before. You couldn’t look at the slender gown, the long sleeves, the severe coif, without remembering the generous body, twice offered and many times visited. Her gaze was large and brown and impelling. She said, ‘The cause in this quarrel was mine. Diniz was an innocent, acting on impulse. Punish me, but not him.’
Since St Hilarion, he had grown very tired of some sorts of exchanges. He said, ‘How would you like to be punished?’
Her eyes widened. So, he saw with perverse satisfaction, did those of Tobie. Then she said, her voice steady, ‘Do with me as you would do with him.’
‘All right,’ said Nicholas. ‘He goes home, and you start in the dyeyard on Monday.’ He closed his eyes without meaning to, and found it an improvement.
She said, ‘You are playing with me.’
Tobie said, in an exasperated way, ‘He’s not playing with anybody. He’s tired of talking, and he’s just told you the truth. Diniz is under no threat but that. He has to work with the dyes for a season. And even that was already decided.’
Katelina’s voice said, ‘Is that true?’
Nicholas opened his eyes. He said, ‘You know how ashamed I was of my upbringing. Now the Vasquez are getting a taste of it.’
Her relief was so great that it displaced, he saw, even her scorn. She said, her voice strengthening, ‘But he is in a cell.’
‘That was Tobie’s doing,’ he said. ‘A surcharge for unsolicited work conducted under unpleasant conditions. I shall give orders to have Diniz released. He will be, as before, a prisoner of war with restricted freedom of movement. Unless, of course, he tries the same thing again.’
‘I shall stop him,’ she said.
Nicholas looked up at her. ‘He might stop himself, if he thought about it. You could tell him –’ He hesitated.
‘Yes?’ said Katelina. ‘I don’t mind being your mouthpiece. I shall not, perhaps, be very persuasive.’
There was a silence. Tobie said, ‘Go on.’
Nicholas lay, feeling foolish. Because he also felt rather ill, he eventually spoke. ‘Tell him that his father was not killed by my agency. Tell him that, when I found my company in Rhodes, I had already promised King James that we should serve him, or nobody. If I’d told the Queen that, my men would never have left Rhodes alive. And there is one last thing. I had no idea that you and Diniz would be on board that ship for Cyprus. This was never intended.’
She said, ‘So why are you keeping us?’ He couldn’t tell whether she believed any of it or not.
He said, ‘I am keeping Diniz, since he is here, for his own good. I am not keeping you. That is the fault, I gather, of my – of Jordan de Ribérac.’
It was not a slip he would ever have normally made, and she struck immediately, with such speed that he saw her stance had not changed by a fraction. ‘Of your grandfather, you nearly said. You still pretend to believe he’s your grandfather?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. His eyes were worn out with the ache in his head.
‘But you do. That is what I can’t forgive,’ she said with sudden vehemence. ‘You knew what you were doing. It wasn’t by chance. You truly thought and think Simon is your father, and devised the foulest revenge, using me.’ Her voice rose. ‘Using me. Using me.’
‘That’s enough!’ Tobie said briskly. To reduce emotion was, after all, part of his job; and he was good at it. Nicholas heard him through a light haze, which made it remarkably difficult to assemble his own thoughts. He suspected that, after all, Tobie had doctored that drink. Up to the very last moment, his wits failed to warn him what was going to happen.
The girl said, ‘Using me!’ in a scream, and Tobie took charge. He said, ‘That’s enough. Stop! Forget what he did. However dreadful it was, no one is suffering. Simon doesn’t know Henry isn’t his son. The boy will be reared as a nobleman. Nicholas is making no claims on the child or on you. Why pursue such a feud? Look what it’s doing to Diniz!’
Nicholas heard that, all right. He said, ‘Jesus Christ!’ It came out muffled; rather like a short sneeze. Katelina said nothing at all.
Then she said, ‘You know. Who else has – has vander Poele told?’
A sense of disaster, clearly, had come too late to Tobie. He said, ‘Nicholas –’ in an uncertain way. Then, slowly, he pulled himself together. He said, ‘I’m a fool. I’m a fool. Demoiselle, I should never have mentioned it. Nicholas didn’t tell anyone. He wouldn’t. We found out by accident. He had a fever, and rambled. We guessed, and we were – distressed, and he swore us to silence.’
‘He told you and who else?’ Katelina van Borselen said. Her voice, descended in pitch and in volume, was now unnaturally steady.
‘Myself and a priest called Father Godscalc. We gathered – I had better tell you what we gathered. That Nicholas got you with child, and then married Marian de Charetty, as you married Simon. And that Simon believes this son of yours to be his own.’ He paused. He said, ‘Your secret will be kept by us and by Nicholas. You must know he doesn’t take this thing lightly.’
Nicholas said, ‘She knows nothing. We’ve been apart since it happened.’ His head swam, and his heart knocked his breath about. The speech he always ought to have made; the meeting they should have had long ago – both were upon him now; and, half-drugged and in public, he must find the right words now or never. He tried to speak clearly and simply. ‘Given the chance, I should have said to her that I had no idea she was with child. She didn’t tell me. She could not, after all, bear the child of an apprentice. Later, I understood that.’
To Katelina, it must have seemed nearly as difficult. She looked at Tobie, then straight at the bed. It was the first time Nicholas had seen her look at him properly. Katelina said, ‘I was in Brittany.’ Her voice had altered again. ‘You knew I couldn’t reach you in time. You knew Simon wanted to marry me. You knew that, to save myself, I would marry Simon. And you knew I didn’t know the connection between Simon and you.’
He said, ‘Katelina. How could I know you were pregnant?’ He didn’t speak of the assurances she had given on the night she offered herself to him in Bruges. He had been the one to speak of the risk. She had been the one to dismiss it. But there had never been any doubt that the child was the product of their next night together, and his.
Perhaps she remembered. There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘I think you did. There was a woman in Brittany who suspected it. Antoinette de Maignélais, she was called. Is the name familiar? She was not unconnected, I think, with what happened to Jordan de Ribérac under the last King of France. His disgrace and exile, which seemed to suit you so well at the time. I am not surprised – I’m not wholly surprised that the seigneur de Ribérac has refused me a ransom. This family bears long-standing grudges. But anyway, what does it matter? Whether you knew you had succeeded or not, you married while I was in Brittany.’
Nothing would make him speak of Marian de Charetty. His eyes closed, and he made them re-open. He said, ‘I didn’t know of the child. It is all I can say to you.’
He saw her staring back. It seemed, for a moment, that something he said might have touched her. Then she sighed, and said, ‘Who else have you told?’
She had removed her gaze, turning a little; conveying the close of the matter between them. With a glance at Nicholas, Tobie took over the answering. He said, ‘No one. What he says is the truth. We learned of it, Godscalc and myself, by pure accident.’
She said, ‘But when will there be another accident? He is prone to fever. What future will Henry have then?’
Tobie said, ‘What do you want him to do? Drop dead for something that is
n’t his fault? It takes two to make a son, demoiselle.’ He sounded angry, which was unfair on Katelina.
Nicholas, who realised his head was about to explode, nevertheless saw the humour in this, and thought he ought to explain it. He said, ‘Tobie! Don’t be silly. You’ve always believed to the depths of your soul that I plotted it all. Of course I did. A bastard for Simon. Luxurious exile for David of Trebizond. St Hilarion at all costs for Zacco. And the events of today for us all, loving scions of a fortunate family. Who says I can’t plan?’ His heart ran like a wheel out of gear, and his senses screwed themselves to a pitch that made his breath falter. It seemed to him, from limited experience, that there was a certain finality about the situation. He said, ‘I think the future may be safe from me after all.’
An angry voice spoke from the doorway. It said, ‘Is this the talk of a man, or shall I take your doctors away? A man values his life, and thinks it worth fighting for.’
Zacco, straight from the banquet. In gold and jewels, ermine and satin he stood on the threshold, tall and glaring. Through darkening eyes, Nicholas witnessed a new and complex situation appear, over which he could have no control. With infinite weariness, he watched it develop. Katelina turned, her exhausted face pale with astonishment. Tobie flushed. He said, ‘My lord King, he has no wish to die. And, God willing, we shall prevent it.’ Zacco stared at him and then, glittering, swept past and knelt at the bed.
His jewels flamed, but no one ever looked at them. Instead, like Tobie, like Katelina, like himself, those in Zacco’s presence were mesmerised by the enchanting, remarkable face. Today, its vitality was repressed; the brows drawn under the swathe of hair that had fallen, again, from the cap of state he still wore. His warm hands closed about the cold fingers of Nicholas and he held them, gazing in silence.
Nicholas did not speak, but kept his eyes open. Across Zacco’s face passed the shadows of many thoughts, bringing him, presently, to some resolve. He released one of his hands and leaned forward. The light dimmed. There was a smell of soaps, and furs, and a warm, clean humanity. Zacco’s lifted hand touched his lips, his temple, his hair; then closing, calmly descended. Nicholas felt his palm smooth his lids, closing them. Blessed darkness returned. The palm lay, flat and weightless, prohibiting movement. The King’s voice said, ‘You need peace more than a friend. My purse is yours and your physician’s, and all that my kingdom can offer. I shall come every day.’