Scales of Gold (46 page)

‘They may even find lead balls from new handguns,’ Doria said. ‘For it seems that some vile trader has recently armed the Mandinguas. Bati Mansa will hang, and Gnumi Mansa will take over his territory. What could be neater?’

He rose to his feet and stood breathing strongly, a little grease on his chin, his naked swordpoint teasing the priest’s matted chest. Godscalc clenched his fists. Nicholas, sitting limply, appeared to be looking up at them both. In fact, Bel observed, his gaze was focused prayerfully rather above them. She heard herself make a sound, and Gelis looked at her. Raffaelo Doria scratched with the point of his sword, lightly, and then turned the blade towards Nicholas.

‘I think it is time. Get up. Walk out. And we’ll have no more Flemish.’

‘All of us,’ Nicholas said. It was between a plea and a statement.

‘You. Of your own will, or not. They have their orders not to kill you. You might find yourself with one arm.’

Doria’s men ringed the hut, rope in their hands. The seamen from the
San Niccolò
and the two slaves lay in the corner. ‘The women?’ said Nicholas. He got up suddenly, unfolding the neat-jointed, powerful frame, so at odds with the comedian’s face. Godscalc watched him, visibly anguished. Diniz stood as well, but quietly, as a young brother might. All through the voyage they had been at odds, these three. Only now, her mind busy, did Bel see confirmed the truth of it. And the dawning horror on the face of Jorge da Silves.

‘Everyone will stay,’ said Doria. ‘Everyone but you. Out. And no Flemish.’

‘No,’ Nicholas agreed. Side by side with Doria, he walked to the edge of the hut, about to leave; about to abandon them all. At the very last he turned, the light from the two lamps bright on his unconcerned face. He said caressingly, ‘Date stones.’

Doria took it, perhaps, for an obscenity. Gelis lifted her fist. The nearest lamp shot spinning over the carpet and overturning into the dirt floor, extinguished itself. Sprawling full length, she got a grip of the other and smothered it. Darkness fell in two stages. Doria’s sword flashed, and the swords of his men, their bows useless. Where Nicholas had been was the paler black of outdoors, and the sound of his voice, and the sound of Diniz, replying, taken up by many voices.

Bel, rising, found herself buffeted by many bodies, some mailed and some not. The space under the millet was filled with shouting and the thudding of feet; with the clash of steel and the smack of flesh meeting flesh; with grunts of endeavour and anger. Someone screamed. Someone fell. She felt her arm grasped and realised that she was being dragged running out of the hut along with Gelis: Godscalc’s voice in her ear said, ‘Stay there.’ She slid on the grass, and saw his big shape in the faint starlight, running back to the hut. She heard Diniz shouting somewhere and voices replying: gasping voices from outside the hut where figures struggled, some dimly sparkling with mail, others shirted.

The crew. The crew somehow were free, and slowly pushing Doria’s men inside the building. The clash of arms became muffled. She heard the voice of Nicholas, calling names, and being answered. Then she saw, a blur in the darkness, that between the encircling pillars every figure was white: the building was ringed by linked men as by chain. Then Nicholas shouted.

‘Heave!’ he yelled.

Afterwards, Bel thought she had heard the panting groans of endeavour, the stamping feet, the first creaking and grinding, the startled screams of apprehension. At the time, she was aware of little but the immense shock of the crash: of the rumbling roar of thirty trees tumbling and bouncing and blundering against one another; of a forest felled, and slamming all that once stood or lay under it. The pillars, pulled inwards, collapsed. And upon them descended their cap; fell, with an encompassing thud, the mighty tiered roundel of millet, with Doria’s men pinned down beneath it.

Silence followed. Bel panted. Not far away, several men started to cough; and the same sound, but fainter and mixed with muffled shouting and moans, began to emerge from under the dome of the roof. Sharply, the roof itself broke into sound, became a buzzing, squealing, rustling city of frantic wildlife. Birds whirred. Something swarmed over the tail of Bel’s skirt, and she heard Gelis exclaim.

Bel of Cuthilgurdy sat up and, groping within the arsenal of her shift, pulled out a tinder-box and made a torch of her kerchief.

Gelis was standing beside her. Diniz, a stick in either hand, was running howling towards her through rushing streams of brown rats. Behind him, a pair of feet were advancing which she took to belong to da Silves, behind that were many more legs and feet whose upper parts were wholly concealed by a deep, powdery cloud of dirty saffron which arched over the clearing and rose into the indigo air until it expired in faint columns of verdigris.

The legs were running forward, bringing their owners out of the blanket of chaff, and the coughing and wheezing, now tremendous, had become charged with whoops of what appeared to be excitement and triumph – indeed, both emotions were plain on the battered faces that now emerged into the clear. The rodents proceeded to vanish.

Diniz said, ‘They meant to do that to us. Did you see? They’d weakened all of the pillars, and connected them with the rope. Saloum saved us. Saloum and Nicholas. Saloum had a knife in his hair. He freed the crew and they dragged the soldiers inside. Oh glory be, did you
see
?’

‘Is anyone hurt?’ Gelis said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Diniz madly, ‘but we’re all out. Here he is. Here’s Nicholas. It was Godscalc who warned us, you know.’

‘And Gelis who put out the lamps,’ Nicholas said. ‘Three to be carried: Diniz, go and help Jorge. Saloum says every man needs a torch. We form a column, the wounded in the centre, Saloum in front and Ahmad in the rear: they both know the way back to the ship. What weapons do we have?’

What they had concealed or picked up were distributed. Da Silves said, ‘The men under the roof?’

‘They can breathe,’ Nicholas said. ‘They’ll cut their way out in time. I want to get to the anchorage.’

‘Why leave it to chance?’ said Jorge da Silves, and lifted his torch.

A vast hand closed on his arm. ‘What?’ said Godscalc. ‘Are you no better than the Genoese brute inside there? Throw that torch and I’ll have your head off your neck – you and any other who tries it.’

No one set fire to the thatch. No one knew, either, the condition of the men under it: how many might have taken the weight of the rim; how many lay with limbs snapped below the tumbling trunks. A fate meant for themselves, and devised, as Nicholas had already said, wholly from injured vanity.

They would be released by the morning, or sooner. They would be alive, all or most of Doria’s men. Alive and beaten and vicious, and free by the morning, or sooner. Trudging in the midst of the hastening column, Bel found herself shivering. Then she found Filipe beside her, teeth chattering, and asked him to hold her hand tightly.

They couldn’t hurry enough to suit Nicholas. The journey from the ship had taken an hour, even omitting their rest-time. Now, returning, Nicholas allowed them no rest, but despite his merciless harrying the uneven ground and the darkness and their weariness made them slow. Twice, they were stalked by glowing green eyes, and were made to chant, and bang sticks, and wave their flaring brands. Halfway there, hoarse with goading, Nicholas fetched Ahmad to the head of the troop beside Jorge and, taking Saloum, set off at a lope into the darkness. Diniz, attempting to follow, was turned back by a voice sharp as a blow. He obeyed. The wounded had to be guarded.

What they would find ahead, no one knew. The crew talked, in gasps, among themselves. That old Genoese bastard, he was lying. The black, Lopez, was a reasonable fellow. He’d never cross sides. And if he didn’t want to, how could a few sailors capture him? Vicente was on board, with the cannon, the handguns, the crossbows. If, of course, he hadn’t turned about and sailed off to safety.

Silence followed that, for a while.

Jorge da Silves, applied to, said that if any man sailed off and stranded him, he’d have his liver. And if the black had gone, there were other interpreters. The fellow Saloum knew his way about.

The fellow Saloum, said someone, sotto voce, had led them all,
hadn’t he, right into this trap? The fellow Saloum was likely working for the
Fortado
, and would knock young Niccolino on the head first go off, and drag him back to the Genoese. If the Genoese hadn’t got killed by the roof, which he deserved. The master had had the right idea: burn them to cinders. Talking of Nicholas, the general tone was a blend of kindliness, admiration, and a judicious awareness of the prejudices of Jorge da Silves and his cronies.

A little later, they fell to reminding one another about King Bati’s men in the canoes. Scores of heathen blackamoors waiting about in canoes, fully armed with the
Fortado
’s consignment. Filipe called out a phrase he knew fitted blackamoors, and Fernão cuffed him. Godscalc said, ‘We have no alternative. These murderous men are behind us. We must go on, and pray to God, and trust to our patron. If vander Poele has taken Saloum, then he has no doubts of his loyalty.’

‘I should think,’ Gelis said, ‘that is probably true.’

At midnight, Ahmad spoke stiltedly. ‘We shall soon be in sight of the anchorage. Does my lord wish to put out the brands?’

‘No,’ said da Silves. ‘The main party will stay here, the brands lit. You will lead me in the dark to the anchorage. I trust you, but I have a knife, you understand?’

The Mandingua smiled and nodded, and then saw the knife and nodded again, but uncertainly. Godscalc said, ‘Will you signal?’

‘One whistle for
Come,
’ da Silves said. ‘If you hear two, hide yourselves. I shall find you if I can.’

This time, no one spoke. They sat or lay where they had stood. The wounded men, one with a smashed leg, the others with split ribs and a bloody, half-severed hand, groaned and whimpered. The burning wood crackled. The voice of the bush began to make itself heard again: the shrilling insects, the twitter and screeching of birds, the bark of a jackal and the belly-grumble of an irritated animal, drowsy with food. Their torches eddied and flinched in strange currents, and streamed sideways as something heavy passed overhead: an ape, the flame bright in his eye. A high, thin sound came from the darkness ahead. It was not repeated.

‘The whistle!’ said Diniz. He jumped to his feet. So did Gelis.

‘Or a bird,’ said someone on the ground. ‘A damned bird. Or a lure.’

‘Well, we’ll never know, will we?’ said Diniz. ‘Unless we try.’

You could be jumping with fear, thought Bel of Cuthilgurdy, and still be struck to the soul by the great, jocund stars that shone now upon them, and the clarity of the high-sailing moon against
which the stems and fronds of the trees were like fine Lucca velvet on silver. The water beyond ran thin rippled satin.

She could hear the Gambia flowing. She could hear no other sound: not the splash of paddles nor the hum of men’s voices. Certainly not the boom or crackle of gunfire. With the rest, she beat out her torch, and padded forward into the moonlight.

The stretch of river opening before them was empty. It unreeled its emptiness as they pushed past the last trees and walked through the trampled dust of the trading-place and stood on the strand of the island, off which the
San Niccolò
, their pretty caravel, should have awaited them.

There was nothing there. Nothing in the anchorage, and nothing across the broad silvered expanse of the river, visible to the opposite shore. Then Gelis said, ‘The boats. The special boats from the
Niccolò.
’

She had keen sight. The two boats, once towed at the rear of the
Niccolò
, lay upside down on the same strip of shore they were standing on, but far off down the river: so far that in the luminous glow from the sky they might have been river-horses, crouched and lowering. As they squinted, the distant figure of Jorge da Silves detached itself from the shadows and the solitary, mournful pipe of his whistle reached them again; in summons, not in warning. Ahmad stood beside him.

The boats had been destroyed. It was the first thing they saw, running over the mud. Buckled, battered and split, these portable barges would never carry them to the upper Gambia, and from the Joliba east to the River of Jewels. It had been done by many hatchets. Godscalc said, ‘But where is the ship?’ And Jorge da Silves pointed.

The swampy islet was yet further downstream by some distance, and the
Niccolò
had driven on it with some force, spinning round so that her bow had run high on the slime and the rest of her was tilted over, a third among bushes and the remainder still in her natural element. She glimmered, fragile as tortoiseshell in the misty, rippling light which touched, now and then, one or other of her three intact masts.

Nothing else stirred. She had come there by no error of navigation: her cable must have been cut; perhaps she had even been driven there. Godscalc said, ‘The men? What sign of the men?’

‘None,’ said Jorge da Silves. Then he said, ‘Someone is coming.’

They looked behind, expecting Doria. Then, as da Silves didn’t turn, they followed his gaze to the caravel. A bark canoe had put off and was approaching; black as flotsam and poled by one man. They heard the splash as his blade touched the water, first on one
side and then on the other. They didn’t speak. He came nearer. They saw, bit by bit, that he was European, and bare-headed, and wearing a torn, open shirt black with bloodstains. They saw it was Nicholas.

Jorge da Silves began shouting, and Vito and Fernao and half the others. Bel didn’t call. She’d put Ahmad and two of the crew to piling up firewood, and before the bark touched the mud, the stack was alight, and their shadows were running behind them. Nicholas lowered his oar, hesitated, and stepped heavily into the water, while others ran the boat up. Diniz ran up to him, but Jorge da Silves stayed, and Godscalc, and Gelis. Gelis had made no effort to help with the bonfire.