Spice and the Devil's Cave (23 page)

A strange sound from Scander made Nicolo stare at him. Scander's mouth was gaping, and he was breathing hard. His face was very red, and the burnt gimlet holes glittered.

“‘Seen him
–
since we had'”
he was repeating. “By St. Vincent, he could have!”

Nicolo continued to stare. “What are you talking about? Are you drunk, too?” he half laughed.

“By St. Vincent!” Scander repeated, not seeming to hear him. “That's deep, that is!”

“What?” Nicolo impatiently demanded.

Scander regarded him pityingly. “If I wasn't working for you,” he brought out at last, “I'd call you the thickest numbskull I'd ever met face to face. You pick up things that don't amount to that –” he snapped his fingers –” like those maps you kept harping on, and then you pass over the core of the whole thing. Certainly that drunk chap could ‘a' seen Gama!”

“How could he?” Nicolo protested with some heat. “Not unless he'd followed him! And Portugal has too many forts and trading stations between here and Guinea to let a strange craft slip past.”

Scander heaved a sigh. “Think you could put two and two together, if I was to tell you how?” he asked mildly. “How'd I get out of Indian waters, me and Nejmi? Don't you remember?”

He waited, while over Nicolo's astounded face crept slow understanding.

“Nothing could be easier,” Scander continued. “Cut across by caravan and boat from the Mediterranean to Aden, and then down the coast a ways – and after that, all they had to do was to wait and see. If Gama got through at all, they was sure to see him.” He meditated a moment, then struck his palms together. “That's what happened!”

“Put it in plain language, Scander!” Nicolo's voice had a new respect.

“Somebody was sharp enough to figure that all out,” Scander meditated aloud. “Somebody must have been right here in Lisbon spying on the Expedition, and when Gama started out, the spies headed ‘round the other way to meet him – through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea into Indian waters. They figured, of course, that if he didn't come it was proof that there wasn't a through passage to India.”

“By San Marco!” Nicolo stopped short and seized Scander's shoulder. “I'll wager my head that one of the spies is the same chap who's been asking Pedro about me. He and that sailor that babbles were both here, just two years ago now! He asked me all sorts of questions about the Expedition. I'll lay you anything he was here to spy on it!”

Instead of replying, Scander regarded Nicolo with an odd expression. “According to that,” he offered quietly, “wouldn't he be the same man that Ferdinand says is the Venetian ambassador's friend?”

“Great heaven!” Nicolo could only stare, aghast at the terrible implication. Was that why Venice no longer scoffed at the Way of the Spices? Was that why she had so persistently demanded to know Manoel's policy about Oriental trade?

“Deep, I call it,” chuckled Scander. “Let us do all the work of finding the passage to India while they sit still and watch us!”

“See here!” protested Nicolo. “We're going pretty far on the drunken babble of a low fellow who couldn't walk straight. I'm not going to make up my mind about anything, until I've seen his running mate, the tall one. He told Pedro he'd be in again for me today.”

At first Scander made no reply. “Tell you what,” he declared, “the one that talks is the one to get hold of – but we must get him alone.” He appeared to consider with himself. “Come along,” he suggested, “and we'll look for him in the taverns and down at the water-front. Tell me when you see him, and then you leave him to me. Sailors have their ways – you leave him to me.”

To this Nicolo promptly agreed. “But first,” said he, “we'll stop in at Pedro's and leave word for the tall fellow in case he calls for me.”

CHAPTER 18

The Will of Allah

G
OOD
!” Scander exclaimed, as they looked into one tavern after another. “He's not there. Sober and alone is the only way he'll be any use to us.”

At the harbour front they instantly saw that something was afoot. The very air was alive with excitement. Across the rails of vessels, deck hands leaned and talked, and on the quay a crowd was gathered.

Scander and Nicolo pushed up to its edge, and heard two men in the midst rapidly exchanging experiences which they were evidently willing to share with the bystanders.

“First I saw of the vermin was three days out of Fun-chal. I was keeping fair close to the Moroccan coast to where I could cut straight across to St. Vincent when out shot two brigantines –”

“Ha!” Scander exclaimed to Nicolo. “Pirates!”

“That's my story to a word, Captain,” cried the other of the two men, “only that I was bound from the Canaries. Half-way up Morocco I should say ‘twas, too. I must have been just a day behind you. Goat hides and cheeses was my cargo. What was yours?”

“Honey, wine and Madeira beechwood. They never touched the lumber, but, saints above – the honey and the wine!”

“Good heavens, Scander!” whispered Nicolo. “This raid may have caught
The Golden Star
. Rodriguez expected to be down by the Madeiras and the Canaries at this very time!”

Scander, joining in the laughter of the bystanders, was evidently too engrossed to heed Nicolo. “Just listen to that!” he delightedly exhorted.

“They let my goat hides alone,” the captain from the Canaries was saying, “but blast them if they didn't set to and fill their bellies with the cheeses, and then play ball with the rest of them till my deck was like a slime pit and stunk like a hog pen!”

Again the crowd laughed, and Scander's feet began to jig in a sailor's shuffle.

“Lord!” he whispered to Nicolo. “This talk makes me homesick for the feel of a deck.”

“Yes, but Rodriguez –”

“Well –” Scander was frankly impatient –“what can we do about him?”

The words died on his lips, and Nicolo saw his gaze suddenly fix on one of the two captains.

“They started in by asking if I had any pepper,” the man was saying.
“Pepper!
Now can you imagine that?”

“So they did me!” cried the other. “And ‘cloves, too,' says they, in their heathenish jabber.”

“‘Must think I'm Gama,' I told 'em,” rejoined the first speaker. His face suddenly sobered. “By the way,” he threw out to the crowd, “any news of Gama?”

A slight movement near them caught Nicolo's eye. The drunken sailor! Only now he was quite sober, to judge from his alert, eager face.

“There's our man,” he murmured in Scander's ear.

They watched him as he edged nearer the speakers, evidently intent on not losing a word.

“I'll take care of him,” Scander whispered back, “while you keep the other one busy when he calls for you. And don't leave The Green Window,” he added, as Nicolo moved away, “without telling Pedro.”

Hour by hour, Nicolo, from the rear of The Green Window, kept his eye on the front entrance. Pedro's regular customers came and went. Groups of sailors drank and bragged. More than once Nicolo's ears caught from them an echo of the story of that morning, only by now the two brig-antines of pirates had swelled to a fleet, and the decks of the attacked vessels ran with blood instead of cheese. Mid-afternoon came, and still the bushy-haired, foreign-spoken stranger failed to appear.

“Are you sure he said he'd come in today?” Nicolo asked Pedro, and invariably the reply was “That was what he told me.”

What would Scander have to report? Nicolo wondered. Restlessly he reviewed the train of incidents of the last night and day, from the maudlin words dropped by the drunken sailor, to his own startling discovery of the Venetian ambassador, and Ferdinand's confidences of the morning. Was it all a chain of intrigue or his own imaginings? He'd wait before he made up his mind. … By heaven, that lumber deal he'd meant to close this morning! He'd go now to the dealer, he hastily decided, and started to tell Pedro he would be back before sundown, when he saw Scander and the sailor enter the inn together.

He watched them sit down at a table while Pedro brought them hot dishes and red wine. Even from the rear of the room, Nicolo could see, under Scander's usual manner, signs of excitement. He barely touched his food and only sipped his wine. Presently he left the sailor heartily gulping down his meal, and spoke to Pedro who nodded in Nicolo's direction. Unhurriedly, Scander strolled over to him, but, instantly, he dropped his leisurely manner.

“He said the same thing over that he told you, last night – said it while he was sober, too!” he exploded, under his breath.

Nicolo stared at him. Incredible! “How'd you get it out of him?” he finally asked.

“I'll tell you,” said Scander, “but we must be quick. We can't lose sight of him, so if he starts to go out…”

He sat down beside Nicolo where he could watch his charge.

“I began by trying to hire him to help unload when Rodriguez comes in –”

“If there's anything to unload after those pirates are done!” growled Nicolo.

“I asked him what he was doing here,” Scander continued, “and he said he and another chap were fishing; had a small craft anchored out a-ways. ‘When are you going out?' I asked him. ‘Depends,' he says. That was all I could get out of him: ‘Depends.'”

Nicolo recalled that the ambassador had said to the man in the boat, “You'll be off as soon as you've got those things.” It was clear enough that “those things,” whatever they were, were what the departure “depended” on.

“The chap's name, by the way, is Marco,” Scander was saying. “Wait,” he broke off, “while I tell Pedro to keep him supplied so he won't go.”

“Well,” he continued, when he returned, “I told him I'd pay him extra high wages to help unload when our ship got in, and he finally agreed to hire with us provided he wasn't gone by that time. I noticed he kept talking about the captains who'd been raided, down Morocco way – seemed quite worked up and excited. So I asked him if he knew that coast. No, he didn't; but he'd wager his last coin there was nothing ‘round the Mediterranean he didn't know! I let him talk, and then I let slip indifferent-like, that I'd sailed the Red Sea. So had he! I dropped a name or two-Aden, Melinde, Mombassa. He knew them – ‘d seen them!”

“How in the world,” Nicolo broke in admiringly, “did you know how to get him started?”

“Why a sailor'd rather brag about the places he's been than eat. It'd be a pity if I didn't know their ways by now. Well, after that you couldn't have pried him loose from me. All he wanted was to talk about the places he'd been – and I gave him plenty of rope! But all the time, I was saying to myself,
'
Slow, now, Scander, easy – don't ground on a reef!' Finally, when he was going top speed, I said,' That's nothing to what happened when I was with Captain Diaz!'”

“What? You didn't say you'd been with Diaz?”

“Well, in my own mind I have,” grinned Scander brazenly. “Plenty of times! Anyway he swallowed the bait. ‘And that's nothing,' he comes back, ‘to the time I saw Gama coming down all loaded up – ‘But right there he bit his words off as if they was twine, and I vow the sweat started on his face, so scared he was at what he'd let out.”

“It doesn't seem possible,” Nicolo ejaculated, half fearfully. “Gama!”

“I could feel his eyes on me,” Scander went on, “watching to see if I'd noticed. The only way to do was to play the simpleton, and I said, cool and laughing, ‘Ever hear the singing sharks around Goa?'”

“‘Singing sharks!'” laughed Nicolo. “More of your inventions?”

“Oh, it's one of the yarns they always tell land-lubbers. Well, I saw right away by his questions that he'd never set eye on Goa, nor on Calicut nor Cochin. I tried him on all those Indian ports, and I found out what I wanted to – that he'd never been near those coasts to the north'ard. Every once in a while he'd get harping on the pirates they were telling about this morning, and finally I twitted him with being afraid he'd be chased by them. I saw him give me a queer look out of the corner of his eye, and he changed the subject – but not back to Gama! Wouldn't say another word about Gama.”

“But what's it all about?” Nicolo queried. “Suppose he did see Gama … suppose he's let Venice know it…”

“That's what I can't figure. What I'm working on is what this Marco fellow let slip: ‘The time I saw Gama coming down all loaded up.'
‘Coming down,'”
Scander repeated.

“Well, what of that?” Nicolo's face was completely puzzled.

“I've turned it inside out and hind part foremost, and here's what I make of it: this Marco must have been somewhere off the coast south of Aden when he saw Gama's sails. That's sure, because he knew all about Melinde and Mom-bassa, but nothing about the Indian coasts. Remember I tried him on them?