Scales of Gold (45 page)

‘Hell and damnation,’ said Diniz. ‘Don’t we have another tent?’

‘We could give him a warthog,’ said Nicholas. ‘Do you think we could get them to hurry? I don’t want to come back this way in the dark.’

In the end, the place they came to, although far inside the island, was not unlike Gnumi Mansa’s riverside clearing, except that there was no village near it, nor any provision for water or ovens. The forest about it was thicker, and instead of a great central Baobab there stood a man-made hut without walls: a low henge of vertical tree-trunks, upon whose bare crooked forks rested a mighty domed roof made of millet-stalks. The airy arena below, sufficient for the congress of two hundred people, was currently being enjoyed by a small flock of goats. Otherwise, entering, they found it quite empty.

Nicholas walked round it once, with Saloum. He said, ‘Ask them. Where is the King?’ Before he fully reached the end of the sentence, he stopped and turned. Apart from Saloum and Ahmad, there were only white faces inside the pillars. No flashing smiles and white caps. No black, assiduous figures racing up to inform, to reassure. The grass before the hut was quite empty. The escort had gone. There was no one for Saloum to ask.

There was someone. There was a voice declaiming outside; a sonorous voice, employing superb Italian.

‘I very much fear,’ said Raffaelo Doria, strolling heavily across from the trees, ‘that the lord Bati Mansa is unavailable. Perhaps I may be allowed to entertain you instead? Demoiselle. Mistress Bel. Senhor Vasquez. How very happy I am to catch up with you.’

He wore a half-suit of armour, and there were fifteen armed men in mail at his back. Bel of Cuthilgurdy dropped a slight curtsey and Gelis, when prodded, did likewise. Dear oh dear, thought Mistress Bel. Dear oh dear,
shellfish
.

No one spoke. Jorge looked like a killer snake faced with another. Nicholas, his face bland as a pat of butter, said, ‘Signor Doria, you may always be sure of entertaining us. And, of course, may be further assured we shall cause you no trouble. Senhor da Silves, gentlemen,
no trouble, d’you hear
?’

The last words, spoken as quietly as the first, were in Portuguese; and as he said them he walked slowly forward, blocking Bel’s view. She realised why he was blocking her view, and felt queasy.

‘That is wise,’ said Doria. ‘The ladies may sit. There are mats. Did you receive some refreshments? I have sent for more. Messer Niccolò, you will remove your cloak very slowly and unbuckle and drop whatever weapons you carry below it. Senhor da Silves the same; and then all the rest of you. Then they will be collected, and you will be searched. As you see, there are fifteen crossbows trained upon you.’

Nicholas said, ‘No, padre.’

‘But yes,’ said Godscalc, walking up to Doria and dumping a box before him. Bel wondered, not for the first time, why he had chosen the Church, and not made use of his build, his ability, his muddled belligerence to serve as a happy warrior in some freebooting troop. And Doria, with his firm, meaty face and machicolated teeth, looked less the Caesar than the hard-headed trader he probably was. But the sword at his side was real enough.

Godscalc opened the box. ‘Perhaps you wish to search that for arms? I came here to celebrate Mass before the black heathen. Why are you, a Christian, preventing it?’

‘Why did your friends, supposedly Christian, fire on the
Fortado
?’ said Doria. ‘And from the stolen ship of my dead cousin? Why did you cheat and lie at the Senagana, employing even your ladies to rob us of trade? I brought you here; there is no question of Mass – the King has his own mumbo-jumbo and would not listen. I brought you here because I wished to express my disappointment. And you will agree that I have not been unduly cautious. You come oddly prepared for the sacrament.’

‘I knew nothing of this,’ said Father Godscalc. The hidden arms, rattling down, formed a buckled pile at the feet of every man from the
Niccolò
with the exception of Saloum and Ahmad. Nicholas, if not bearing the forecastle mortar, had been fortified with a small Turkish bow and a quiver and a very handy short sword, all now in an untidy heap slightly behind him. Three of Doria’s searchers began to move forward.

‘Goats,’ said Nicholas shortly, in Flemish.

Behind him, plump on the floor beside Gelis, Bel stared at his back. Behind him, the previous occupants of the compound, uneasily cornered, sniffed the foreign smells and eyed the butchers’ knives on the ground. The leader, a great beast with curled horns, suddenly squealed at the top of his voice, leaped straight into the roof, and then bolted. Gelis withdrew her pin. The rest followed.

Dust rose. The heaps of arms tumbled with the vibration. Bel braced herself for attack: for the clash of swords and the thud of arrows as Nicholas and the rest snatched their weapons.

They did not snatch their weapons. Nothing happened because Doria’s crossbowmen stood firm, their bows already stretched, their barbs levelled. A charge by Nicholas, whatever its outcome, would have cost the lives of some of his party. And Nicholas had preferred not to make it.

The three soldiers, stepping forward, resumed their uplift of arms. Hemp was brought, in great coils. The seamen were tied hand and foot. Nothing had happened, except that Doria’s men, now cackling, had been given a fright. Nothing, except that Gelis, she saw, now had two knives inside her chemise and a quiver lodged between that and her tunic. And the object she was thrusting towards Bel was a bow.

As it chanced, Bel had already come well provided with helpful objects matched to her contours and headgear. Reassembled, she settled back in a sitting position. ‘Och, och,’ she remarked. ‘It near gars ye wish that they’d try for a rape. What next, d’ye think?’

What came next, irrelevantly, was a supper, brought in baskets and spread on the floor for their captors. Perhaps they were hungry. They took it in turns, Bel observed, to eat and stand guard: two in front and the rest spaced outside round the pillars. Doria, reclining at ease, invited Nicholas to share his meal, sitting opposite, and then thought to make room for the ladies, and finally for Godscalc and Jorge and Diniz. He wanted, she thought, to humiliate Jorge in particular. Doria’s men kept peering at Gelis, who smiled back at them from time to time. Bel hoped she knew what she was doing. She could hear Filipe, whining.

She stirred a finger in a few dishes but felt no compulsion to eat.
She envied the rest of the party, including Filipe, who had not been invited – who, indeed, would have been a puzzle to feed since the seamen had been left, tied and stripped to the waist, where the goats had been. There was, as before, nothing to be done; nothing, yet, that was worth risking lives for. Outside, shadows crawled on the brilliant grass, black as predators, and above the trees, the first pallid stars were just visible. Nothing quite yet.

Doria’s crew still wore their jacks and their helmets. Beside them, the
Niccolò
’s men looked like peasants: bare of head, and reduced – even the priest – to gaping shirts over their hose. No one had suggested that the ladies should disrobe, which was as well. Which was, Bel understood, what Nicholas had intended.

She let her gaze dwell on him, and then wander over Diniz. The lad had filled out better than you would have expected. She could imagine, without looking further than the two of them, what King Gnumi’s wives had also imagined. She glanced at Gelis, and had the impression that Gelis had recently directed her gaze somewhere else. She had the further impression that Jorge da Silves had seen it and was scowling. On the other hand, he had been scowling ever since they arrived, either upon Nicholas or upon Saloum and Ahmad.

Two lamps had been brought, warming the underside of the corn roof to chestnut. Outside, something screamed in the bushes. Inside, Nicholas, dabbling in rice, was placidly clarifying the situation. He said to Doria, ‘So you bribed the King to stay away?’

‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Doria said, a bone between his ringed hands. ‘We had, through your kind intervention, this large bale of weapons to offer him. He has a great deal of hunting to do, and has told his young men that they may amuse themselves as they like in his absence. They don’t like gold robbers or spies.’

‘They can’t afford to harm us,’ Nicholas said. ‘Whatever you tell them.’ He sounded quite calm. Diniz sat like a man under orders, and da Silves like a man rebelling against them. Father Godscalc, his eyes lifted, might have been praying or chewing.

‘I’m afraid they’ll get the blame, none the less,’ Doria said. Gelis drew in her breath. The two lamps burned in the silence. Outside, it was black.

Nicholas said, ‘Were your orders to exterminate us? It seems a little unpolished for the Vatachino. What you promised the others I don’t know.’ Underlit, his eyes might have been pursed with laughter. It was a face fixed in the mould of frivolity. Bel had seen others like it, some of them dead.

‘I always make the same promise,’ said Doria. ‘To bring back the largest profit they have ever known. As a result, I am rich.’

‘What did Simon de St Pol ask you to do?’ Diniz said.

Godscalc turned his head. Gelis didn’t move. Raffaelo Doria looked at the boy. He said, ‘I never discuss who my clients are.’

‘We know who they are,’ Diniz said. ‘The Lomellini, the Vatachino and St Pol. What did St Pol ask you to do?’

‘Why?’ said Doria. Reclining on one elbow, he had nibbled half down the bone.

‘He was my father’s partner. He sold his half of the business to the Vatachino. He wants my half.’

‘And so he might want your death, you think? And perhaps Messer Niccolò, as his business rival – as everyone’s business rival – is also feeling vulnerable?’

‘I generally do,’ Nicholas said. He stopped kneading and sat back to study the Genoese. He said, ‘I don’t think you have orders to kill us. I think you’ve decided to do it from pique. You’ll blame the Mandinguas. And if that doesn’t stick, you’ll blame your patrons. Would I be right?’

‘You flatter my patrons,’ said Doria. He put down the bone and, drawing a kerchief, wiped his hands slowly. ‘Some wine? You may drink it with confidence. You are one of the two persons who are going to survive this little adventure.’

‘What? What, you scoundrel?’ said Godscalc. Diniz gripped his arm, but he was staring.

‘Who is the other person?’ Nicholas said. His voice had flattened.

‘Ask Saloum,’ Doria said. ‘Is that what you call him? Or his Negro companion. They conducted you here, to get you away from the ship.’

‘
Away from the ship!
’ It was Jorge da Silves.

‘Oh, the
San Niccolò
, I am sure, is in perfect order,’ Doria said. ‘A little emptier, perhaps, than you left her. As you must have expected, your other dark gentleman, your travelled gentleman, your Lopez has joined us.’

Chapter 23

T
HE CICADAS SHRILLED
in the invisible grass. A bird flew over the guest-hut, complaining. Somewhere, as always, drums were beating.

A pulse was ticking, too, above the damp lawn of the shirt Nicholas was wearing. He said, ‘No.’

‘Go to the ship,’ Doria said. ‘You will find your Lopez has gone.’

‘You have taken him,’ Nicholas said. He hadn’t moved, but he seemed to have solidified, sitting hunched opposite Doria. His brow was striped with sweat released from the crooks and curls of his hair.

‘I warned you,’ ejaculated Jorge da Silves. ‘Blackamoors, unbaptised and dyed in sin as black as their skins.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Nicholas. ‘Saloum.’

Bound and prone beneath the threat of the crossbows, the men of his crew and the two slaves could hardly be seen in the dark. Saloum shifted his head. ‘If Lopez has gone, he has been captured.’

‘He elected to stay on the
Niccolò,
’ said Jorge da Silves.

‘It was your suggestion,’ said Nicholas. ‘So who has taken him? Has Crackbene? Where is Loppe?’ The early name came by chance, Bel guessed, out of an unusual distraction.

‘I told you,’ said Doria. ‘Lopez was loyal but you offered him nothing. I promised him he should have half of whatever the secret of Wangara was worth. He is with my people now, waiting to lead me there. And to make sure that he does, you are coming.’

‘No,’ said Nicholas again.

Godscalc looked at him. The look was full of alarm, as if a bear trained to caper had suddenly snarled. Gelis spoke under her breath and stretched out her hand. Slowly, Bel slipped the bow into it. Nicholas said, ‘He will not take you to Wangara, whether I am there or not.’

‘You would kill him first, or see that he was killed? I assumed as much. I assumed he had told you the secret,’ said Raffaelo Doria. ‘That is why you are coming. One of you might deceive me, but not both.’

Nicholas moved. It seemed to Bel that in the next moment she would see him hurl himself forward at Doria; it would have been, she thought, the first unpremeditated attack he had ever been seen to make. Doria, in fact, was expecting it: he was sitting back with his unsheathed sword in his hands, waiting to use it, while a glitter came from the line of raised bows all round the cabin.

Instead, quicker even than Nicholas, Godscalc jumped to his feet, stamping hard on the hand Nicholas had spread beside him as leverage and thrusting him, deliberately or not, to one side. ‘How dare you!’ Godscalc said to Doria. ‘How dare you prate of gold, and threaten good men! If these poor people, the miners, wish to protect their livelihood, neither you nor we have any right to wrest its source from them. Neither would Lopez, I am sure, dream of doing such a thing, for himself or for us or for you. What is more –’

‘He is giving us time,’ murmured Gelis in Flemish. Her face contorted with fright, she pulled herself back from the supper circle and sat studiously shivering. ‘Why?’ Bel put her arm round her. Behind them, she thought she heard rustling. Doria was toying with his sword.

‘– what is more, if you lose all chance of redemption by perpetrating what you seem to have in mind, you will suffer for it on this earth as well.
The pillars will fall about you, as strong men pull down your false edifice
. And do not think you can blame the Mandinguas. Men will come. They will find crossbow bolts in our bodies.’ In his vehemence, he had delivered part of his harangue in Flemish, as Nicholas had already done.