Scales of Gold (64 page)

There was a silence, during which the Senhora Inês rose and retrieved the small toy from her husband’s restless fingers.

Gregorio said, ‘No. But you are thinking as I am. If there is no money to come, the lady Lucia may be best advised to sell what is left to the Lomellini, and hope that they might be generous. One could not influence her against that.’

‘No,’ said the factor. If that happened, he could find work nowhere else. He didn’t say so.

‘But of course,’ said Gregorio, ‘so far as we know, the
San Niccolò
will come back. She may have a cargo. Whatever the lady Lucia wishes to do, we must persuade her to wait until that happens. Or stay out of her reach, for she cannot sign papers without us. Yes. I will not go to Lagos.’

‘Vander Poele will come back,’ said Jaime’s wife unexpectedly. ‘In four weeks, or five, you will see him. What is the Land of the Blacks, to a young man, strong as he is? And you say he has his priest at his side, and his friend Lopez to help and protect him. What need a man fear, so long as he has friends?’

In Timbuktu, Gelis van Borselen lived in outward harmony with herself, the city and its inhabitants.

She had a new home. The morning after the storm, Umar had called on her and, sitting quietly before her, said, ‘I have spoken to Nicholas. He has not changed. He will go with the padre to Prester John.’

It was strange that when she received the news, it should be from Umar. The disappointment was so great that she couldn’t conceal it. At first, she turned her head away, and then did not. Umar said, ‘I am sorry,’ and she realised he had guessed.

He could not have known. Just before dawn, Nicholas had carried her back to her chamber and resisted her, but not willingly, when she tried to keep him there. She had not had to use artifice, virgin though she no longer was. Dear God, dear God, she had not had to pretend. The ache in her body this morning was not there
because she had been misused or ravished. It was there because he was not.

Umar. Of course Umar would guess, if anyone did. She said, ‘I see. But you are not going with him? You mustn’t.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was foolish.’

After a while she said, ‘Did he send you to tell me?’

‘No,’ said Umar. ‘But in delicate matters, the mind sometimes requires warning, or else the heart speaks. He is concerned for you. I have said I know of an establishment. Small; without great stables or compound, but large enough for your servants and friends. I shall take responsibility for the gold, until he comes back.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ she said.

‘Then, this autumn, I shall take you and it to the Gambia,’ Umar said. ‘They will send back the
San Niccolò
. But, despite what you have said, you and he will be on board. And Godscalc, if Allah is willing.’

Later that day, Nicholas came and told her he had determined to leave. He spoke tranquilly, but his eyes were heavy and bright as a drunkard’s. He said, as Umar had done, ‘I am sorry.’

Once, she might have said, ‘There will be compensations.’ Or, ‘What little girls will you take with you this time?’ She said, ‘I understand. I have had a night of teaching.’

‘Too long a night,’ he said, and touched her wet cheek with his fingers.

He dropped them immediately. Even so, the blood flooded her face, and ran beating again through her body. She saw him respond, and try not to respond, and succeed. She said, ‘No. Never too long.’

‘But not to be repeated,’ he said. ‘Now you have –’ He broke off.

‘Failed?’ she suggested.

He didn’t answer.

She said, ‘Nothing is as simple as that.’

‘No. You gave me solace,’ he said. ‘You meant to do that, too, I think. It doesn’t matter what else you gave me. Unless …’

‘What?’ They were sitting two yards apart, in her chamber.

‘Unless you know,’ he said. ‘Unless you received it as well. There is broken cullet, and crystal. You don’t throw away crystal.’

‘No,’ said Gelis. ‘It breaks easily enough, of its own accord.’ She kept her eyes on his face. ‘What are you trying to say? That we should continue as lovers?’

‘That would be … No,’ Nicholas said.

‘Then what?’ she asked. The ache had turned into something
much worse. She said, ‘We want each other. We have a priest. Is that what you are hoping I’ll say?’

‘Oh, dear heaven,’ he said. ‘Over Katelina’s dead body?’

‘You didn’t say,’ she said, ‘if you thought of her last night.’

He made to move, and then didn’t, his eyes fixed on her face. He said, ‘Do you think if I had, I could have …’ He broke off again. He said, ‘I didn’t ask you that question.’

‘You asked me one about cullet and crystal. It was the same one,’ she said. ‘Do I want a lover? If I take one, it will be you and no other. Do I want marriage? Not to you. My sister gave birth to your son. And yes, I thought of Katelina when I came to your room. It began with cullet.’

‘And now?’ he said.

‘Now you are going to Ethiopia, and there is time to reflect.’ She shifted, easing her shoulders. ‘We have exchanged a gift, that is all, that neither of us quite intended. Put it down to the heat of the furnace.’

She remembered the words, standing on the wharf at Kabara to see him leave with Father Godscalc, in his trough-canoe crowded with bearers. She did not weep, and he did not touch her, although he was silent, for Nicholas.

She had given him a present, if of a curious kind. In place of self-hatred, self-doubt; in place of distrust, an abiding puzzlement, combined with an emotion which now could not be shown, far less released, for fear it might destroy his resolution to leave her.

She knew what it was, for it lived with her, too, every night. One could not call it love. The name for it was longing.

Because he had not sailed on the
San Niccolò
, Nicholas was a long way from arriving in Madeira that spring. At the time Jaime’s wife made her confident prediction, he and Godscalc were travelling eastwards along the great river which had changed its name from the Joliba to the Gher Nigheren. Rock-strewn and powerful, it sometimes allowed them to travel precariously on its waters, but more often required them to unload their belongings yet again, and place them on the heads of their porters, and follow them on camelback, if they were lucky, or more often on foot.

The porters were grudging and surly. All the fishing huts on the river were occupied by Songhai Muslims, who were unaccustomed to any other colour in mankind but red-brown and black, and who knew nothing of other beliefs except those of the medicine man. Father Godscalc had found no use, yet, for his portable altar except as a bulwark of his own faith.

A good-hearted, outgoing man who got on well with soldiers,
and had fought in a few wars of his own, Godscalc found the journey an ordeal – not just because of the dangers and the discomfort, which soon became extreme – but because he knew it meant nothing to Nicholas.

Nicholas was here for Godscalc’s protection. He had not tried to pretend that he longed to see Prester John, or open the way for a Crusade of the Church. In order to reach Timbuktu, he had been willing to accept this as part of his duty. Perhaps, had there been no other profit, he would have felt some requirement, on his own account, to pursue the River of Jewels, to track down the other treasures of legend.

But long before now, they had heard enough first-hand reports to understand that they were risking their lives for an aim that could never be realised. Even for a troop of well-provisioned men, travelling with the consent of the tribes of the country, the journey from Timbuktu to Ethiopia was impossible in the six months they had given themselves, and was probably so on any terms. All they could do was attempt it and die, or attempt it and bring back their account of the failure.

They had to follow the bend of the river to Gao, the black Songhai capital. From there, as the Gher Nigheren plunged south, they must strike east and south, exchanging rocks and bushes for the steaming terrain of the wetlands. There, as here, men would be afraid of them, and their guides would be ignorant and avaricious, and speak no language they knew.

When, for the first of many times, their porters deserted them, and they had to bribe their way into a village, Godscalc had said, over the fire, ‘What have I done? I should never have brought you.’

‘You had no choice,’ Nicholas said. ‘I don’t mind you bringing me. If you said, “I should never have come,” that’s a different matter. Come on. You were going to draw maps. Where’s the cross-staff?’ Then after a moment, ‘What would it be worth if it were easy? I’ll give you something hard to do. Sit down here, throw a stick on the fire, and convert me.’

They had always respected one another. On that journey was born something that was to last as long as they both lived, and do them both harm. For Godscalc, who had glimpsed the real danger, was too blinded by false hopes to scotch it.

This time, as May drew to a close, Gregorio of Asti kept no vigils on the peaks of Madeira, and did not pause on the cliff between Ponta do Sol and Funchal. He was afraid to see the
San Niccolò
coming.

Crackbene and the
Fortado
had gone, and news of that magnificent cargo would have spread very soon to the money markets in Bruges, and then Florence and Venice. So would the news that the
San Niccolò
too was on her way – perhaps also triumphant, and laden with gold and fabulous gifts from the Negus Prester John, but perhaps not. Already the rumours were spreading. The Vasquez boy had died. Who else of the land party had survived? Or, as on the
Fortado
, was there no one at all except a few seamen left on board a ship which, in this case, was empty?

By now, Simon de St Pol would know he was rich, and might have had the grace to travel to Lagos and comfort his doubly-bereaved sister. No word had reached Gregorio from there.

By now, Urbano and Baptista Lomellini had had the promised discussion with Gregorio, in which they had made a reasonable offer for the
quinta
at Ponta do Sol, and had asked him to convey it to Diniz’ sorrowing mother. Gregorio had not passed it on.

He had heard nothing directly from the Vatachino, and was glad of it. David de Salmeton had left Madeira for Bruges in the autumn, although his hand, Gregorio knew, lay behind the concerted manoeuvre to have the
Ghost
waylaid on arrival and identified.

His hand, too, lay behind the trouble that had erupted at Bruges. Gregorio heard only hints of it, and longed to be there, and occasionally wished that Julius could have remained in Bruges, instead of Cristoffels. But the Bank was more important than Bruges, and had first call on the best man. So Nicholas had ruled, with absolute and understandable finality.

Nicholas could not have foreseen, all the same, that the Vatachino would continue to expand as they had done, opening offices, recruiting clerks, venturing into more and more fields as if their coffers were suddenly inexhaustible.

Nicholas had recognised them, of course, as his rivals in Guinea. Even before he learned of their stake in the
Fortado
, he had suspected that the Vatachino wanted him to go to Guinea with Diniz, and find the gold, the mines, the wealth of the Negus. And then, when he and Diniz failed to come back, the gold, the ship, the Vasquez business would be easy to take.

Half the Vatachino plan had succeeded. Of the two ships, the roundship had gone. Diniz was dead, and his
quinta
defenceless. The
Fortado
had brought back a full cargo, by whatever means. For the rest, the
San Niccolò
had to find her way home from the Gambia, and Nicholas himself had not been heard of since he reached what they called the Great River.

But then, when had Nicholas not been able to extricate himself
from the worst situations? Crackbene had patently not told all he knew, but even in his voice there had been respect for Nicholas and a kind of confidence, despite what he had said of the dangers. Nicholas always came back.

By the end of May, Gregorio was still comforting himself with such thoughts when a ship came in from Lisbon, carrying passengers.

He had been up in the mountains when it arrived. Normally, his was the paperwork, the planning, the visits to Funchal, the sending of orders and the leasing of cargo space on the ships that plied between Madeira and Portugal. The
quinta
had been kept in repair as much as was possible, so that the main house still looked trim and well cared for, and the yard was mended and swept, the stables watertight, the mills in good order, the cabins of all their workers solid and decently thatched. He had used his workers to do it, for now, with the St Pol estate gone, there were too many of them. Too many to house and feed and support, with all their increasing families, with so little coming in.

He had done, too, what he could about that, leasing out the free time in his mills, using ground hitherto wasted to plant the herbs and roots that grew so freely in the rich soil, to eke out their food. And he had laid out some money on poor ground high on the slopes which came cheap because it had to be terraced – a job requiring many people – and irrigation channels had to be led.

With the warm, rainless season approaching, there was need for haste, and Jaime spent his days with his men and their wives, hauling stones and laying them in neat ridges, and passing the nights with them as well, beside their rough withy shelters, singing and talking round the cooking-pots and sleeping under the stars.

Gregorio, riding up one day alongside the cook’s daily mule-load of food-panniers, had dismounted and tied up his horse, unbuttoned his doublet and, taking his place at Jaime’s side, had worked with him till the sun set. Then he had sat on the bare earth in his shirt and hose and, taking someone’s fiddle, struck up a tune Margot used to sing to, when she presided over the Ca’ Niccolò and they had friends to sup.

It would be a year, soon, since he had seen her. She knew now he was in Madeira: he had received three dog-eared packets, the first arriving in March. He was not a person who would seek consolation elsewhere for what he missed, and he knew she was the same. They each withstood the separation, but he knew that he had the better part of it, even though Nicholas hadn’t chosen to take him to Guinea. He slept well and even happily that night, rolled up
in a blanket with the smell of pine and juniper and fresh earth in his nostrils. Then next day, he rode alone down to the
quinta
.