Scales of Gold (21 page)

She must be between forty and fifty. Her features were floury and blunt as a pastryskin over a pudding. She said, ‘Seek your excuse somewhere else. Mistress Lucia pays me, when I’m paid. My gash is my own.’

Nicholas rose, looking at her. He went to the door and, opening it, called. Father Godscalc came in.

‘This,’ Nicholas said, ‘is Mistress Bel, companion to the lady mother of Diniz. She says Diniz may sail with us to Madeira, provided she and Gelis van Borselen come also. Otherwise, since his mother can’t go, he can’t either.’

Godscalc looked from him to the woman. ‘You’re the priest?’ she said. ‘Gelis said ye were nimble.’

‘Demoiselle,’ Godscalc said. He stood, looming darkly and thoughtfully over her. He said, ‘You would leave your bereaved mistress here?’

‘That’s the idea,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy. ‘When the King goes abroad, the sleekit jackmen are made to go with him.’

‘Gelis van Borselen?’ Godscalc said.

‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘she means the delectable David. He said he was going to Madeira.’

‘He’s gone,’ said the woman. ‘If it’s the bonny wee broker ye mean. Got a berth on a Portuguese ship for Porto Santo as soon as your own ship went off. He can cross to Funchal easy from there.’

‘Without first making his offer?’ said Nicholas. ‘Or was it turned down?’

She sat, her hands folded in front of her, smiling. ‘Let’s say he has other competitors.’

‘On the island? Another firm? Who?’ Nicholas said.

So far as he could read her look, it was pitying. ‘Now, what would an auld carline ken? To find out the rights of that, ye’d need to go to Madoora.’

‘Madeira,’ Godscalc said, and Nicholas let him. She knew what she was saying. She knew what she had come to demand of him. And he knew, and she knew, that she was going to get it.

Chapter 11

‘Y
OU’RE NOT PLEASED
,’ Godscalc said, at the hurried supper they took, the four of them, after she’d gone. ‘You should be. Diniz will protect you against Simon.’

‘The ladies won’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘You think Simon is going to be on Madeira?’

‘They said he might be,’ Gregorio said. ‘He can’t safeguard his business from Scotland. And he sent you that letter.’

He and the padre often supported each other, Nicholas noticed, since Venice. Since Venice Gregorio, always agile-minded and effective, had developed in range, in curiosity, in confidence. Now he might find it less easy to slip into the quiet ways of the past, playing music or cards, or talking dreamily under the starlight. And Godscalc, pursuing his own dogged course, had encouraged him. The harshness Nicholas had met in San Michele had hardened into something to be watched. Only once, in the tavern, had Godscalc allowed him a measure of the protective friendship he had had as a boy. But that was all right. No one owed anything to a banker; and vice versa, of course.

Gregorio continued to talk. ‘Of course, there’s no law that says you’ve got to take up Simon’s challenge. You can land the ladies and Diniz and sail.’

‘Leaving Simon free to sell to whom he pleases,’ Godscalc commented. His knife, upright in his fist, had two sardines on it. ‘Something Nicholas had expected to prevent, I deduce, given three days with the volatile Lucia.’

‘There is that,’ Nicholas said. As it happened, he had wished himself alone from pure impulse: a desire to board his virgin ship free of memories, and threatened only by the violence of Nature.

‘Am I wrong?’ Godscalc said. There was no escape: his expression was heavy and mutinous.

‘And you a priest?’ Nicholas said. ‘But assuming I do want St
Pol & Vasquez, wouldn’t it make better sense to let Simon and Lucia sell, if they want to, and take the company over myself once I have money enough? On the whole, I’d rather fight the Vatachino than Simon.’

‘Perhaps the Vatachino won’t succeed in getting it,’ Gregorio said.

Nicholas said, ‘You’ve met David de Salmeton. He’ll do what I’d do. Buy from Lucia on her own. Or allow Simon to sell, and then buy from the buyer. Don’t you know yet what we’re dealing with? Did you never wonder why the Vatachino haven’t interfered with us, or the
Ciaretti
, since Venice?’

‘You’ve been too well protected,’ said Loppe.

‘And at Ceuta, you covered your tracks,’ said the priest. ‘They’re not miracle men. De Salmeton didn’t know you were on the
Ciaretti
, and she sailed without warning. They always do, for fear of corsairs.’

‘Oh, come,’ Nicholas said. ‘The
Ciaretti
leaves, and I disappear? It would take four days to discover I wasn’t in Lisbon, and no time at all to find out what her cargo was, and therefore where she must be going. Diniz and the
Doria
were both in Ceuta: it was a reasonable guess that I was going to try for them both. But de Salmeton didn’t send to warn either Governor, or try to stop either ship.’

‘Perhaps he had other ideas,’ Gregorio said. ‘If he knows where she is, the
Doria
may not be at Sanlúcar very much longer.’

‘I’ll be surprised,’ Nicholas said. ‘She’s extraordinarily well protected, and he can have very few men at his command.’

‘Perhaps that’s why he didn’t stop you?’ said Gregorio. ‘Suppose all he’s really concerned with is taking over St Pol & Vasquez, and your absence gave him the chance to slip off to Madeira and do it?’

‘Then why not have me caught and imprisoned?’ Nicholas said. ‘Why not send a warning to Ceuta?’

He was watching Loppe, who suddenly answered. ‘Because he has made up his mind that you will take Diniz to Africa.’ It was not what Nicholas had expected.

‘No, surely,’ said Godscalc.

‘I wonder,’ said Nicholas. ‘I wonder if that’s what he is counting on.’ He had stopped looking at Loppe.

‘Why?’ said Gregorio.

Loppe was silent. Godscalc drew an angry breath. Nicholas said, ‘On the chance that we’d both find the source of the gold. Get to Ethiopia, even. Then on the way back, something would happen to me, and to Diniz, if it hadn’t happened already. Then he’d salvage the ships and the gold and end up with St Pol & Vasquez. I told you. They’re exquisite adversaries.’

‘You like them,’ said Godscalc.

‘I admire them. Different thing,’ Nicholas said. He thought Godscalc would corner him afterwards and deliver a lecture, but he didn’t. He remembered, belatedly, that he had drawn up his projection without even thinking of Godscalc.

He went to Sagres next day, a ride of fifteen miles, accompanied by a short retinue of followers, and Jorge da Silves, and Loppe.

Loppe, in the sleeveless robe and light cap they all wore, would not find his standing misunderstood here, where of all spots in the world the navigator, the interpreter, the man of special talents was valued.

From here, the most south-westerly corner of Europe, the late Henry, Prince of Portugal, Governor of Ceuta, Governor of the Algarve, Grand Master of the Order of Christ, had launched the expeditions of trade and discovery through which men like Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto had found their way down the African coast.

The ships might have sailed from Lagos, but to Sagres and the prince’s farm at Raposeira had come the Jews and the Arabs, the Catalans and the Germans, the Venetians and the Genoese whose combined knowledge of charts, of navigation, of ship design had made the voyages possible, and the courtiers and captains who sailed on them.

Some of these, in retirement, had returned to their lands, or to Lisbon. Some had married and kept fine estate among the orchards of Lagos. Others had settled near this, the ultimate headland; precipitous, bare, and scoured by north-westerly tempests from unknowable oceans. Standing at Sagres, or on the single Cape that lay westward, one looked down sheer sandstone cliffs twenty times the height of a man with the white of dashed foam at their feet; and abroad at the flat, shoreless ocean, upon which laboured the flecks that were vessels and the infinitesimal specks that were souls, witness to man’s perseverance, his greed and his courage.

Before leaving for Ceuta, Nicholas had begun to seek out and comb the minds of these men, and found in Jorge da Silves a willing mentor and escort. He was discovering – with some difficulty, for the Portuguese was a singularly reticent man – that pride itself could take second place to obsession. Da Silves had served great commanders; he had tested his courage in terrible waters, and longed to return to them. ‘Beware,’ the Jew of Mallorca had said, smiling. ‘Jorge da Silves will take you further than you conceivably wish to go.’

The man they were visiting today had been the companion of Prince Henry’s last years, as well as one of the most eminent of his captains; yet he lived simply when away from his post at the Palace
at Sintra, and his house was blockish and plain, although with well-tended stables and bakehouse and mews set among the tousled palms bent askew in the courtyard. Nicholas, riding in with da Silves and his servants, noticed two horses unsaddled and steaming, and a horse-cloth whose blazon he recognised.

So, it seemed, did Jorge da Silves. He stood, his boots astride, his whip in his hand, and said, ‘Diniz Vasquez? Why is he here?’

Loppe’s head turned. Nicholas said, ‘I don’t know. Although, as I told you, we are taking Senhor Diniz and two of the ladies to Madeira.’ The news, he remembered, had been coolly received. He wondered if he now understood why. Then the door opened and a man emerged smiling; a lean grey fellow with a moustache and a stick, informal in chemise and slippers and hose with yesterday’s beard pricking his chin: Diogo Gomes, who had been to the Gambia and beyond. With him, hurrying forward, was the boy Diniz.

‘Jorge!’

‘And so you are home!’ said Jorge da Silves, and received the boy, smiling. Then he stepped back.

Diniz, eyes glowing, was still holding his arm. ‘You are to sail the new caravel! I’ve just heard. And I shall be on it.’ He looked over at Nicholas. ‘I called at your house, and they told me you were going to the headland, then here. You must listen! There is so much Senhor Diogo has to tell you!’

‘This boy!’ said the man with the stick affectionately. ‘What, child, can I tell that you haven’t already got from me, or Aires or João since you were in swaddling clothes?’

The boy coloured. The face of the Portuguese had turned cold. Nicholas said, ‘Perhaps I ought to have consulted Diniz instead of you, senhor. But he is only travelling as far as Madeira, and with his mother’s consent. If, Diniz, I am right? Your mother has agreed that you and the ladies should go?’

‘Gelis has decided,’ said Diniz; but his eyes, shifting away, had fallen on Loppe. He walked over and held out his hand. ‘This is better than Cyprus.’

‘It is different,’ Loppe said. And their host, walking over, held out his hand also to Loppe and said, ‘I have heard of you. Senhor vander Poele is fortunate to have such a guide. Come in, all of you, and let us talk about this hell-hole you are determined to visit.’

The words were light enough. They covered the same trace of defensiveness Nicholas had observed among all this brotherhood of solitary voyagers; even among those with crooked limbs and warped yellow skin and heads that nodded and trembled, who would never travel again.

They spoke of marvels, of course: of the monstrous horse-fishes and lizards; of the tattooed women with gold-burdened ears, or stretched lips, or pendulous breasts, or of the kings with thirty wives each. That had to be listened to. But the advice Nicholas wanted was harder to come by, even from Diogo Gomes.

Africa? Jorge there knew all that he did. The Moors lived in the north – Diniz knew that, he’d fought them at Ceuta, good lad. But walk out of the back door of Ceuta, and there was the Sahara desert before you, stretching south for fifty-two days to the Sahel. And what was the Sahel? A belt of scrubland with rivers and grazing and trees, that divided the sands of the north from your tropical Land of the Blacks, a place of heat and rain and forest not even a madman could penetrate.

‘So that’s your interior,’ said Diogo Gomes, drinking up his cup of sweet wine. ’That’s the way the caravans go, north to south, taking silk and silver and salt down through the desert to these damned tricky marts of the Sahel and then plodding back north, your camels bow-legged with gold.

‘That is, not
your
camels. Christians are barred from that route. But being brighter than most, we found we could sail round the edge of the desert and, landing from time to time, entice some of the gold to the coast. All right so far as it goes. But why not go further, you ask, and cut into the north-to-south traffic?’

‘Ca’ da Mosto tried it,’ said Nicholas. ‘He said it couldn’t be done.’

‘And you didn’t believe him,’ said Gomes. ‘Well, I’ll show you. Where’s the map?’ And he put his cup down and, leaning over, stabbed a scarred finger.

‘There. There is Ceuta. There’s your north African shore in the Middle Sea. Follow me west through the Straits to the Ocean. Watch the African coast, how it bends to the south and the west – still green, still full of unchristian peasants, the devils. These are fishing villages. And now, see?’

He shifted his cup, and Diniz caught the map as it began to roll up. The commander flattened it with a broad hand, drinking absently. ‘Now look at the coast. Flat and pale, the sign of a damned, waterless land fit for no one but nomads, for you’re sailing down the edge of the Sahara with a steady north-easterly pushing you, and the sea with more sand than water in it, as your lead-line’ll tell you. There’s Cape Bojador, which men thought couldn’t be passed. A hundred miles south of the Grand Canary, that’s all it is, but nasty with rocks, keep well clear. Keep off the whole God-damned coast, watch out for rips, and don’t flatter yourself there’s a place safe to anchor.’

‘The current is south-west,’ said Jorge da Silves.

‘You want me to show you where it isn’t? You wait,’ said Diogo Gomes. He was red, but only partly from wine. ‘But now, you want to keep going south, and there’s the Rio de Ouro which you ought to know is a gulf, not a river, and leading straight into the desert, where the only gold is already on camel backs. Correct? And so go on until you’ve made three hundred miles since Bojador, and you’re coming to the good white stone of Cape Blanco and within it, the gulf we are speaking of; the first place for a thousand miles that will give you quiet nights and fresh water, for all it’s as bleak as a legless man’s toe.’