Scales of Gold (30 page)

‘Is
that
why she did it?’ said Diniz.

The door opened. ‘I thought I might be missing a council of war. Did what?’ said Gelis, sitting down.

‘Raised the crew’s hopes,’ Nicholas said. ‘It made me feel very nervous. If you take up soliciting, it makes me expendable.’

‘Why else do you think I did it?’ she said.

She had annoyed Diniz, interrupting. Diniz said, ‘Don’t be silly. Ochoa won’t harm him. At the very least, Ochoa needs him at Arguim. Someone’s got to negotiate for the horses.’

‘Still?’ said Gelis. ‘I thought we were keeping the horses as pets?’

Diniz was not ashamed to speak for the horses. He said, ‘We must land them at Arguim. They can hardly go further and give you a return for their keep.’ He heard Gelis sigh.

‘That,’ said Nicholas, ‘is exactly the point I was hoping to put to you both. It is true you’ve been easy to transport – no kicking, no grooming, no mucking-out – but I have told you before: seriously, this is where it all ends. We should arrive at Arguim about noon, and you should start to pack now. I’m not taking you further.’

Diniz found that Gelis, having sighed, had left him to speak. He said, ‘We argued this out before. The ladies go on shore, but I stay with you on the
Niccolò.
’ Nicholas sat, his elbows set on the table, and his hands clasped in non-supplication. Over them, his gaze was direct. Diniz added stiffly, ‘That is to say, it’s your ship.’

‘I’m glad someone remembered,’ Nicholas said. ‘Come or not as you please; you’ve been warned. You damage your family name, if you do. And you leave the women endangered.’

‘My family name?’ Diniz said. ‘My family head got the damage. I don’t know who could imagine a friendship between you and me now. As for Gelis, she is a wolf pack in one person. And Bel is as bad.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gelis. She tightened her lips.

Nicholas said, over his undisturbed hands, ‘Then Diniz comes. And the demoiselle and her friend leave at Arguim.’

Gelis smiled at him. When she smiled like that, her eyes seemed to stretch to her ears. She said, ‘Perhaps I should warn you. If you try to put me on shore, I shall tell the trading-post everything. The proper name of the
Ghost
, and who hired her, and what exactly happened to the
Fortado.
’

She was the most relentless person Diniz had ever met. He stared at her in amazement.

Nicholas considered her too. He said, ‘Ruining yourself and Diniz as well? Hardly.’

‘Try it,’ she said.

‘You interrupted me. Hardly the vengeance Katelina would have wanted. Diniz helped nurse her when he was starving himself.’

‘Starving,’ she said, ‘from your blockade.’ Her face was quite calm.

Diniz drew breath and then stopped, for his arm was being gripped. Nicholas said, ‘All right, I have a better idea.’ A dimple appeared, and deepened slowly in either cheek. Diniz, unfamiliar with the sight, kept quiet. Nicholas said, ‘Here it is. I set
Diniz
on shore; and you’re bound by your promise to stay with him.’

She said, ‘So you will send Diniz away?’

‘If he agrees to go,’ Nicholas said. ‘Otherwise you’ll have to tell all, as you say. Including how he shot up the
Fortado
with his handgun. Or if you like, I’ll tell that bit.’

‘Diniz?’ Gelis van Borselen said. She was inviting him to come. She was prepared to do anything, it seemed, to part him from Nicholas.

Diniz said, ‘I’m staying. I don’t care what happens.’

‘That’s obvious,’ Nicholas said. ‘Well, I do believe in democracy. You’ve both had your say, not that it makes any difference. You all go on shore, but not till we’re sailing. Then tell what tales you like. Both ships will be gone; the
Ghost
, when next seen, will be, I expect, quite unrecognisable. As for me, the success of my mission should make up for my errors.’

Gelis said, ‘In other words, you hope to bribe the King of Portugal into forgiving you. There is such a thing as justice.’

‘Are you dealing in justice?’ Nicholas said. ‘Let me congratulate you, when I recover my breath. Me, I’m in the business of finding
gold and converting the heathen and bringing Ethiopia into a war, if I can find it. Portugal yearns; the Throne of St Peter is eager. What can be closer to justice than religion and gold? How could you expect justice without them?’

Diniz felt himself flush. Gelis sat, swayed by the ship, and fleetingly her eyes were intent. She said, ‘But what is this? We heard no cries of distaste over the terms of your service in Cyprus.’

‘I couldn’t afford them,’ Nicholas said. ‘I can’t afford them now. I doubt if I shall ever be able to afford them, or even want to. Look at Ochoa. A happy man.’

‘He would be the better,’ she said, ‘Of some teeth.’ Diniz saw that her eyes and those of Nicholas had engaged. His face, normally a conjurer’s bag of expressions, had turned still. Hers, below the folded linen that dressed her pale hair, remained thoughtful, but her gaze was brighter and sharper. She said, ‘What is the
Ghost
taking on board, when she unloads her horses?’

Nicholas smiled. The conjurer, unpacking his box, produced the dimples, the under-lines of habitual laughter, the immense light eyes, lakes of deception. He said, ‘Whatever the
Niccolò
leaves. Gold and gum, pepper and cotton and feathers. Anything.’

‘In all this space?’ Gelis said.

Diniz drew in his breath and Nicholas, who had long ago removed his hand, glanced at him and at the girl. He was still smiling. He said, ‘You mean, am I buying slaves? Yes, I am. I would have told you before, except that it was none of your business. It still isn’t. But it should reconcile you at least to going home, healthily disgusted.’

‘We use slaves,’ Diniz volunteered. ‘In Ponta do Sol. We’ve black servants in Lagos. They’re happy. They’re free, most of them.’ He spoke tentatively, but he did speak. It was true. His father had bought them.

‘I expect they are,’ Gelis said. ‘But that isn’t the point, is it?’

‘And they were baptised,’ Diniz said. There was some justification. He was angry that Nicholas wasn’t helping him; the more so that he understood very well what Gelis meant. Because people would pay for good help, the blacks were worth money to traders. They didn’t volunteer to become happy servants; they were trapped and beaten and marched to the markets where their employers bought them. And before the evolution of such civilised practices, they were simply plucked by ships’ crews from the beaches: fathers fled; women rushed to drown in the sea; mothers hid their children under the mud.

It was not the case now. He wanted to put his father’s point of view, but Nicholas wouldn’t allow it; stopped him speaking, and asked Gelis to go to her cabin.

She didn’t refuse. He was a large man, standing beside her. He could quite well have marched her below. As it was, she rose, and balanced, and walked, pausing to turn as she passed him. ‘Religion and gold,’ Gelis said. ‘You were right, weren’t you, Claes? They have nothing in common with justice.’

The horses, heavy and drowsy below, were the best comfort Diniz could find. He would miss them. Tomorrow they, too, would step on unknown shores and labour for unknown masters. Tomorrow, men and women and children would occupy the same straw. Horses and slaves, to a merchant, were merchandise. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, unless the end justified it.

He spent some time below. Then he spread his blanket in the great cabin and pretended, when the other men came, to be already asleep.

He wakened to daylight and shouting, and came on deck to find the ship floating like the spectre she was in a suspension of fine ruddy sand.

It was far more dense than before. However thinned by the draught of her passing, it hung in impassive red veils beyond, giving Diniz a shadowy glimpse of the jut of Cape Blanco, its long white plateau no more than two miles behind. Of the deep bay the ship was traversing, there was no sign at all. The
Ghost
occupying her circle of sea seemed like a dog on a treadmill, always sailing but never progressing; and every now and then, as the breeze brought it, sand would enter the ship in soft flurries, striking the canvas with a hoarse and echoing wheeze, while rendering noiseless all human activity. Ochoa de Marchena said, ‘It happens. It will wear off through the morning.’ And later: ‘We hailed a boat in the night. It’s good news. See how our young man is happy! The
San Niccolò
is anchored in Arguim, and has been there for two days.’

Two days. Diniz couldn’t see Nicholas, and wondered how anyone could refer to him as young. He wondered, too, at the speed Jorge da Silves had made with the caravel, even given his familiarity with the coast. Lastly, he wondered how the same Jorge would go about conducting his business in his patron’s name without his patron on board, and what excuse he was making to linger. He could hardly say that he had a stolen roundship to wait for.

Ochoa, who knew the coast almost as well as Jorge, came to cheer him from time to time, a piece of bread or a chicken leg in his hand. Ochoa pointed out the sudden glare in the water that screamed a warning of rocks, but was caused by the little sardine fish in its thousands. He described the great fighting tunny: on a clear day, Senhor Diniz would see the fishing-boats and the huts of
their owners edging the sands and mudflats of this very bay, to which they brought back their catch to salt and sell later through Arguim. ‘For whose protection, of course,’ Ochoa said, ‘they pay a small toll. Indeed, a rather large toll. But it gives them sole rights, and that is always expensive.’

The fog of sand lingered all morning; the food Diniz found in the cabin was gritty. Gelis didn’t appear. He took time to pack, since he was certainly leaving – for the
San Niccolò
, he hoped, despite everything. He saw that Nicholas, too, had stowed and strapped all his belongings. He came in once, lowering a flask from his lips, and said, ‘You’re ready, good. Better still if the sand doesn’t clear: we can slip quietly across to the
Niccolò.
’ He smiled. There was no gold today on his shirt. He said, ‘Would you like some of this? There’s no mud in it.’

It was Madeira wine. Diniz drank and wiped and corked the flask as Nicholas had done, handing it back. He said, ‘Will they start trading without you?’

‘They may. We made an arrangement. If Jorge doubts that we’re coming, the second mate will pass himself off as me. We’ll know soon. The Cape of Arguim is just ahead: we’re reducing sail until the tide makes. It’s tricky. I’ve asked the demoiselle to stay below, not to be seen. There’s no harm in your coming up, if you want to.’

‘How is she?’ said Diniz as they walked.

‘Charming,’ said Nicholas.

Diniz saw Cape Arguim from the deck, although it was very low and surrounded by dunes, and slips of sand licked by foam stood all about it. The sky was suddenly brighter. It was two hours to high water, and the wind had changed at last to blow from the north-east. ‘Damnation,’ said Nicholas.

The haze of sand thinned. Beyond the Cape, a socket-like gulf, stark and treeless, seemed to run sharply north, a stony mass in its depths, its beaches glimmering. The entrance was patched and streaked with sandy shoals and snarled with cross-currents. The
Ghost
made no effort to enter. She rattled on to the voice of the leadsman until she had passed two-thirds of the entrance. Only then did Ochoa call strongly. There was a rush of feet; the ship trembled and Diniz half lost his footing as the
Ghost
abruptly changed course and swung pitching into the bay.

The wind was just strong enough to bring her round. She moved as if on ratchets, bumping over the troublesome water, but she continued to swing until she lay to the opposite tack, eluding the sand bar and slipping into the calm of the channel, itself dulled with sand. Water sifted along her lee side. The ship fell into silence
except for the rapid clear voice repeating the soundings, and Ochoa’s commands, and the calls of the mate and the helmsman. The sun, long obscured, glowed overhead suddenly, lurid and coarse as an orange.

With equal suddenness, a ship appeared on the far side of the gulf, carrying a great deal of sail. Carrying too much sail, you would say, to navigate in such difficult waters, even though she was coming out of the gulf and not entering, and turning south and away with the wind. Then he recognised her. The ship was the
San Niccolò
.

She was too far off to hail. Neither vessel could sail across to the other. The caravel made no change to her sails. For a moment, Diniz even wondered if the
Ghost
had been seen, forgetting that every man on the
Niccolò
must be looking for her. He heard Ochoa curse, his face caught between anger and puzzlement. Nicholas spoke to him, but Diniz couldn’t hear what he said. The two ships continued to move, the roundship sailing cautiously inwards; the caravel crowding sail to get out. She looked as splendid as she had leaving Lagos: glittering black with her snowy new sails, and her Portuguese flag uncurling over her. She had another one, too.

She was flying two Portuguese flags. Diniz peered at them. A puff-ball appeared on her flank. There was a flash, and a bang travelled over the water. The helmsman shouted. Ochoa opened his mouth, and Nicholas rammed a fist on his shoulder. Ochoa’s mouth closed. A second white puff appeared, and another harmless explosion took place.

The
San Niccolò
had fired two warning guns. Then, without waiting, she held her course southwards. ‘What is it?’ said Diniz, reaching Nicholas.

He was gazing into the gulf. The sun burned. The veils, lifting, began to reveal the white beaches, the green and blue water. The stony mass shifted apart to become a group of two small shaly islands and a larger one to the right which rose to a modest height from the sea, and then tumbled down to flat sand at its southern end. There were buildings on that, both on the shore and crowning the high ground behind it. The ground was not quite high enough to conceal the masts of a ship, flying the flag of the royal house of Portugal.