Scales of Gold (52 page)

He found he and Saloum had arrived at a pair of vast timber gates, studded with iron. One of their porters banged on it, and a voice enquired who they were. It spoke in Arabic. Saloum replied, ‘It is the marabout Saloum ibn Hani.’ He spoke in Arabic, too.

The gates opened. There were armed men inside, with caps and
white shirts and trousers, and slippers on their feet. They were black. Saloum said, ‘Send word. Quickly.’ No one asked who Nicholas was. They rode through.

Because of the buildings there was shade, which was a relief, but chilled the sweat on the skin. Nicholas shivered, and opened his eyes. Buildings. That was what was strange. He was riding through the dark of a street, with buildings rising high on either side of him, and lanes running to right and to left, also lined with houses of two or three storeys. Ornate dwellings, with doorsteps and windows; and a glimpse of green courtyards, and curious pyramids stuck over with quills. A square opened out, and another.

There were few people about, with the sun at its height, but those he saw paid them little attention. They seemed well dressed, their garments spotless, their heads covered. They were all black. A carnival, he realised. Was it Lent? Was it February? They passed San Marco. Not San Marco: it was smaller, and had a wall, and gardens, and its towers were red and white and had no mosaic. If it was San Marco, he would be in a boat, and not riding a mule rather badly. In Venice, the streets were not made of sand. They came to a palace.

Here, there were people awake. They ran to take the mules, and lead the porters away. Saloum let them, and Nicholas didn’t complain. It was hard enough to dismount, although someone helped him. They walked up steps between pillars. He thought at first it was going to be like Trebizond, and he would meet the Emperor, and someone would take him to the baths. He thought they might do him some good.

Then he saw that the portico opening ahead of him was more like a pavilion in Castile or Granada, as travellers described them. He had seen something like it in Málaga, but not so magnificent. The floor was of marble, a little untidy with sand, and above the masts … above a harbour full of unmoving columns there rose arches of fragile white stucco-work. He had never had a sugar-cook who could create a masterpiece of that order, or finish it before it had melted.

Between the columns, now he looked, he could see men in robes, some watching, some moving slowly. He thought he saw a woman among them, although she was veiled. Saloum turned from a quick conversation. Speaking, he hid his mouth, Nicholas noticed, to catch the spit from the gaps in his teeth. Saloum said, ‘The governor was to have received you, my lord Niccolò, but that has been put off until later. A house is being prepared.’

‘You speak Arabic,’ Nicholas said. It surprised him that Saloum hadn’t tried it before. He found he fell into it himself very well, as he should.

Saloum said, ignoring this, ‘I shall take you to the court of the judges. It would be better for you to rest there. Or Umar will take you. He belongs there.’

‘Umar?’ said Nicholas.

‘Myself. Umar ibn Muhammad al-Kaburi,’ said Loppe.

Chapter 26

T
HE PRESENCE OF
Loppe was in no way surprising to Nicholas who had, after all, been conversing with him under somewhat obscure circumstances for several days. Huddled shivering upon a cedarwood bed in a large, darkened room, Nicholas was content that Loppe’s face, its features satisfactorily reassembled, appeared from time to time among the many other black and brown faces which accompanied him from the palace of pillars to the house where he now lay. He talked to them all, but especially to Loppe, whose alternative names escaped his memory. He had always disliked even calling him Lopez.

He heard other conversations, but did not take part in them. The first might even have been a dream. It began with the violent opening of both leaves of the door of his room. Through half-open lids he saw the servant behind it stagger back, and two others jump. Loppe, who had been sitting beside him, stood up in his white robe and cap.

It was Father Godscalc who came in, bringing the same cold voice and high anger he had shown the other day in the boat outside Murano, but now very wild in appearance, with curling black and grey face-hair tangled amongst the long hair that fell back from his brow, and his cotton cape and pantaloons filthy. After his first hasty steps to the bed, made in silence, he appeared to swing round and address Loppe. ‘So! It is true!’

‘That I am alive? You might say so, Father. I asked Saloum ibn Hani to beg you to wait until I had seen to Ser Niccolò’s comfort.’

‘He has marsh-fever. As he had in the Abruzzi. In Trebizond. I thought you called him Nicholas,’ Godscalc said. ‘You might as well call him Nicholas, now you have become a trickster, as he is.’

‘He intended to stop here. I know what sickness he has. He is being treated for it. I shall explain to you shortly,’ said Loppe. When he restrained himself, his voice became deeply musical, like a chant.

‘Will you,’ said Godscalc. It was not a question. ‘You’ll tell us how you came to stay behind on the
Niccolò
, but were the only man to escape. How you led Raffaelo Doria to the Joliba so that the Wangara miners could kill him and his men – and again, you were the only man to escape. How you ensured that Nicholas would follow, believing you were in danger, and instructed Saloum to gull Jorge da Silves and send him and his men to their deaths. Did you mean Diniz to go with Jorge and die? Did you mean us all to die except Nicholas?’

Nicholas heard his own name. The servants seemed to have left the room, including the one who had been fanning him. The bed linen was heavy and wet, but his body was weightless. Loppe said, ‘It is a perilous journey to Timbuktu. The most capricious danger is greed.’

‘And you think Nicholas free of it?’ Godscalc said. ‘Diniz was not.’

Loppe said, ‘I am glad the boy survived.’

‘Are you. And who are you,’ Godscalc said, ‘to tempt men to sin and then punish them for it?’

‘Did they need tempting?’ said Loppe. ‘I led Doria away from Wangara. If he had gone there, you would have followed. You would all have been killed. And I, too.’

Godscalc said, ‘But you did not tell us your plan.’

‘No,’ said Loppe.

The conversation stopped. Nicholas drifted towards another dream. Loppe spoke again, slowly. ‘Perhaps he can hear me. It is only right if he does. Nicholas came to Africa for the secret of Wangara. It was the only way to keep him from it.’

‘At the cost of how many souls?’ Godscalc said. ‘And will he stop now?’

‘Look about you,’ said Loppe. Or perhaps, since it didn’t make much sense, he didn’t say it, but it was merely part of the next dream. The next nightmare.

There was a lot of shouting in that, but Nicholas didn’t recognise either Loppe’s voice or Godscalc’s and wondered if Jordan had found him again. His teeth drummed through his head, sticks on skins, sticks on ivory, shell upon shell. Instead of shouting, he spoke with his teeth, but no one listened.

Gelis said, ‘I am frightened.’

No one answered her. They were in Timbuktu, and had spent their first night there. Now it was early morning and she and Bel, Father Godscalc and Diniz found themselves in a courtyard, about to ride out from the house of two storeys to which the tall Negro
stranger had brought them. The tall Negro who, frighteningly in the half-light, proved to be no stranger at all, but Lopez in life again.

Arriving weary and late, they had found the transformation hard to assimilate. Last night, they had barely noticed where they were staying, being concerned only with Nicholas, who had been conveyed there already, and was sleeping. Lopez had seen them settled and then returned to the sickroom. The building, they gathered, was borrowed, and Lopez, but for tonight, lived elsewhere. There was no sign of Saloum, but many servants were at hand, attentive and smiling. None of them spoke a familiar tongue.

It was not surprising. They were in limbo. They were in the legendary entrepôt where, in due season, the salt from the Sahara was transferred from camel to boat and made its way up the Joliba to the silent place where it was replaced by gold. They were in Timbuktu, and Nicholas had successfully brought them there.

Last night they had been exhausted. Today they awoke to the reality of Loppe’s living presence; of his transformation from Negro slave to a man named Umar ibn Muhammad al-Kaburi who, captured and sold to the Portuguese, had not lied when he said he had no father or mother, brother or sisters or wife, but who had not confided in them his identity. And who had let them mourn him for dead.

They were disturbed because the deception was too great for them to trust him. They had heard Godscalc’s account of his interview. Diniz, confused and angry, had tried to resume that confrontation, but Godscalc had stopped him. Whatever had caused Loppe’s – Umar’s – actions; the key lay with Nicholas and nothing more should be done until Nicholas was able to speak.

Meanwhile, Godscalc found himself avoiding the man he had known for so long, and Gelis maintained a pointed van Borselen silence. Only Bel, perhaps recalling the slave-laden
Niccolò
, spoke to Loppe-Umar naturally – indeed much as she had talked to her chicken. His eyes showed his gratitude.

For the rest, the former Lopez accepted it all as if well prepared for their censure and puzzlement. Only the condition of Nicholas had clearly startled and worried him: he clung to the sickroom, they saw, as if willing Nicholas to awake. But Nicholas, burning with fever, had retreated currently into a separate world and could not recognise his former companions, much less communicate usefully with them.

Last night Diniz, too, had lingered frustrated at his bedside, but had learned nothing from Nicholas, and less than nothing from his physician. The man was a Negro.

‘From Kabura,’ Umar-Lopez had answered, when fiercely questioned. ‘Of my own race, many of whom live in this quarter. He is a master of medicine, as fully qualified as your friend Abul Ismail of the Mameluke army. Would I offer Nicholas less?’ He had paused, and seemed to brace himself to make an effort. ‘You are about to say that, but for me, his journey here would not have been so impetuous, or so damaging. It is true. I am sorry.’

‘Nicholas didn’t have marsh-fever in Cyprus,’ Diniz said. ‘On that occasion, he gave himself other punishments. He is going to be very angry, I think, when he understands you are not dead, or a dream.’

‘I am sure of it,’ said Umar-Lopez. After a moment he said, ‘It is unusual, to interpret even so much of how Nicholas thinks. But of course, you are of his blood. Of his colour.’

‘Colour? What has that to do with it? I saw him lose Katelina van Borselen,’ said Diniz.

Now it was morning and their host – their captor? – had indicated that he did not wish to leave the building today, or have them leave. Pressed, he delivered a blunter reply. ‘It is customary,’ Lopez said, ‘for guests of Timbuktu to remain indoors until summoned by the governor, the Timbuktu-Koy, to his residence. When Nicholas is well, you will go.’

‘I do not wish to wait,’ Godscalc said. ‘I propose to ride round Timbuktu this morning, either with you, or without you. Vito can sit beside Nicholas.’

He didn’t expect Umar-Lopez to agree, but he did. He had not, therefore, total power over their movements. No less than the others, Godscalc was concerned over Nicholas, but it was necessary to go out and take bearings. Held indoors, they were dependent wholly on Lopez. Now, however brief the tour he allowed, they would at least see where they were and, when Nicholas woke, move towards independence if necessary. It was imperative to believe that Nicholas would recover, and soon.

Godscalc and Diniz, Gelis and Bel made their journey through Timbuktu mounted on small Arab horses and veiled, robed and gowned in the style of the country. The ride was to be short, and unobtrusive. ‘Or?’ Diniz said. His arm was paining him.

‘Or you cannot stay in Timbuktu,’ had said Umar-Lopez regretfully.

In the semi-dark of the previous evening, they had registered little. Now, all was unexpected and new. Emerging from the yard, their horses stepped out upon sand between high walls of coated mud-bricks, shaded by trees and heaped with creepers and flowers. The lane they had entered surprisingly led to another, and another.

They reached a fine open space, strung with awnings and shaded by trees, which proved to be a market of produce, rather larger than might have been expected, and displaying a bounty of both river and pasture. There were heaps of rice and millet and tamarinds, piles of kola nuts, sacks of Baobab flour, calabashes of honey and wax and soft cheeses. There were dates and fresh and smoked fish, goatskins of milk, and stout yellow gourds of sweet juices.

Goats bleated, and tied chickens flapped, while vats of palm oil sizzled and smoked and children skipped about, shouting. The sellers and buyers were of every colour from chestnut to black, and many were naked. They sang and chattered and laughed. It was a place of enchanting gaiety.

‘They are of different tribes,’ said Umar-Lopez, ‘and come daily. You will hear Songhai, Tamashagh and even classical Arabic. There is another market, for pots and baskets and bowls from the craft-shops.’

‘The dealers are there?’ Diniz said. They moved away from the market.

‘No,’ said Umar. ‘In Timbuktu, the merchants deal from their houses. We are reaching that quarter now.’

‘That quarter?’ said Diniz. He was tolerant, until the street turned. It widened. There were mansions planted on either side, some of them walled and enclosed, others confronting the street with immense, glittering doors, their flanking walls fretted with openwork. The road between them was marbled with light.

‘This is a
town
!’ Diniz exclaimed.

Umar-Lopez looked at him. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said.

There were people here, too; many of them. Some walked, black and naked and smiling, with bundles on head or at hip, or driving goats, or sheep, or a cow. Some rode on mule or donkey or camel and were enveloped in clothes; booted men robed like the nomadic traders of Arguim and masked by the double blue headcloth, so that only the measuring eyes could be seen. There were men in coats and dark turbans, who might be brown-skinned or black, hairless or bearded or wearing moustaches. There were men, brown-skinned or black, in white gowns and swathed heads who walked soberly, a cane or a scroll in their fingers.