“Don’t be so sure,” said Coelho. He was younger than the other and more pugnacious in his expression. “There’s still Ndongo, and other places upriver of there—”
“I won’t hear that!” Mello broke in fiercely. “I won’t listen to a man talk of breaking his license. I won’t have it, Coelho. Do you hear me?”
For a moment it looked to Teixeira that the two might rise from the table and come to blows. Across the table from him, Alema, the pilot, who had said nothing all evening, looked between them in alarm. Then Aveiro’s voice cut through the rising heat of the row.
“Caught a real little pirate before I left.” He spoke calmly, as though the other two were noisy children and would subside if simply ignored. “Walked into Benin cool as you please, tattoos from head to toe: a real old laucado, I reckon. I’d heard of him, of course. Been up north in the forest trading with the Warri for ten years or more. Claimed he didn’t know that he needed a license. …” This produced guffaws of disbelief from around the table. “Anyway,” Aveiro went on imperturbably, “this villain knew something about trade, and he knew something about why it was stopped, so he said.”
The others went quiet at that, leaning forward and suddenly attentive, all except Mello. He sat back in his chair and his eyes roved around the table. He has heard this already, Teixeira thought.
“He was up in a village near the head of the Fermoso. A little over a month ago, about two weeks after the rains stopped, a man walks in, not a villager, a man from some other tribe, carrying a ju-ju, that’s a kind of holy stick they have,” he explained for the benefit of the newcomers. “The villagers greet him, treat him with respect, and then they hold a meeting, from which our lançado’s excluded. A few days after that he’s woken up by the man he does business with and told to leave. Before he can even gather his goods, some more men arrive, men he knows well, mind you. They put a spear to his guts and march him out of the village. When he looks back, they’re burning his hut and everything in it. That was his story.”
“The same as your own,” said Montoroio. “Except for the man with the ju-ju.”
Aveiro nodded. “So I thought. But then I remembered something from my first year at Gatò, the same year the Oba there was crowned. There was a vast ceremony going on for days, eating, drinking, masquerades, and so on. And then, right at the end, a fellow turns up and, this is the odd thing, the whole thing stops. The whole city—and it’s a huge city up there, big as Lisbon—the whole place comes to a halt. This fellow walks in alone, enters the Oba’s compound, and when he comes out, the Oba’s been crowned. What I remember is that he carried an odd-looking ju-ju, just like the one my pirate described.”
“And this fellow crowned the Oba of Benin?” Montoroio sounded incredulous.
“As I remember it. I asked about him then, but no one would tell me for a long time. In fact, they regarded me very strangely if I so much as mentioned it. …”
“So you never found out,” said Montoroio.
Aveiro snorted. “Of course I did. In the end I got a man drunk. He told me this fellow was from a tribe to the north and east of Benin. He was called ‘Ezzery,’ or ‘the Ezzery,’ if I remember right. No one goes up there, though. The Oba doesn’t like it.”
“Nor the Mani,” said Montoroio. “North of the Rio dos Camarões. Have you marked that?”
He addressed this to Coelho, who nodded, saying, “The same area, only reached from the south—”
“So what are they hiding up there? This ‘Ezzery’?” Mello broke in. No one answered. He turned again to Aveiro. “We must question this laucado of yours. Where have you got him?”
“The lançado, ah, a dying breed,” Aveiro sighed. “There was a time we’d have called him a true pombeiro and had him sitting at this table with us. But that was a long time ago, eh, Dom Fernão? Before the likes of Afonso da Torres with his ‘Contract for this-Coast’ and Dom Christobal de Haro with his ‘Contract for that-Coast,’ and their licenses, and their licensees, no offense intended”—this was directed at Mesquita—“and before our King signed treaties with the likes of the Mani and the Oba. There used to be a man, and each man had a price, and that was that. … A long time ago, as I said. Different now.” He reached for a bird from the plate before him and began pulling it apart. Teixeira realized belatedly that the factor was drunk. He had forgotten the question, and Mello had to prompt him to return to it.
“Ah yes, the laucado,” he said as though the matter had just then been raised. “Well, trading without a license. … I hanged him on the spot.”
Teixeira looked across the table. Alema was staring at him.
“Let’s have a song, shall we?” Mello appealed to the company then.
They sang for a while, then talked idly of the heat. Dom Ruy told anecdotes of the Picanço’s voyage and relayed the gossip from Mina, some two hundred leagues away on the mainland. Then he asked Dom Francisco the nature of the animal that, rumor had it, was stowed on the Ajuda’s deck.
“It is a kind of monster,” said Dom Francisco. “And an evil one at that.” He too was drunk by now, his tone sullen and morose. “It eats horseflesh,” he said finally, and shot Teixeira a look of frank contempt across the table.
The banquet broke up soon after, the traders and Mello stumbling inside while the others walked off to find, respectively, the jetty where the Picanço was moored and the boat that would ferry them out to the Ajuda. Dom Francisco took Mesquita by the arm and began telling him how they had blasted their way out of the harbor at Goa: “Two full broadsides in less than two minutes! How’s that for gunnery, Dom Ruy?” The Picanço’s master nodded politely. Teixeira watched them go.
“Dom Jaime?”
It was Alema, standing there waiting for him, hesitant. Nervous too, Teixeira saw. The man had scarcely touched his cup throughout the evening. Teixeira looked around casually, but the terrace was deserted now, except for the eight Negroes who had stood behind them through the hours of the evening and who still stood there, now fanning eight empty chairs. Dom Francisco’s drunken babble faded into the night.
“You may stop,” he told them. The men looked at each other but continued fanning. Teixeira shook his head, then turned back to Alema.
“You have the letter from Peres,” he said, and watched the relief that washed over the younger man’s face. Then the guarded expression returned.
“How did you know?”
“Mello’s letter contained nothing, as you probably know.” The young man shook his head at that. “You were mentioned as the Picanço’s master and Dom Ruy as her pilot. Peres does not make mistakes like that without a reason. You have the letter with you?”
Alema reached within his coat and handed it over. “Normally we would be long gone by now,” he said. “In other circumstances it would have been difficult to justify our wait here.”
“Other circumstances? What is your pretext now?”
“You heard them at table. We have been waiting to lade for a month now. There are no slaves. It was the same along the coast. In the past we have put in a few leagues before Axim to take on fresh water, fresh vegetables. The prices at the fort itself are ruinous and so … It is harmless enough. We know the natives there, and they know to keep quiet. But this time, nothing.” He shrugged, baffled. “They would not come out. We saw them watching us from the beach, but they would not come.”
Teixeira folded the letter away carefully, half-listening to Alema, half-thinking of the words he would soon be poring over in his cabin. Peres’s words.
“Did you meet him in person?” he asked the pilot. “Peres, I mean.”
The man shook his head. “One of his lieutenants.”
“Alvaro Carreira?”
“He did not give a name. A man a little older than myself.” Alema paused then and looked about him hastily. “There is another matter,” he began, speaking quickly and quietly. They were walking a deserted path whose curve unwound and gradually straightened, becoming the track that led along t
he waterfront to the jetties and the beach. Mesquita and Dom Francisco were visible a few hundred paces ahead, the latter now being supported by the caravel’s captain. “Dom Ruy is of a mind to keep quiet, for if Mello knew, he would have every ship on the coast up there.” He checked himself and organized his thoughts. “It was at the Rio Real. We had come too far along the coast, and drifted too far in. Even so, we were five leagues or more out, beating south against the wind. We only caught a glimpse of her, but there was a ship anchored in the estuary. That was a month ago now. Then I was thinking of what they were saying tonight, about the trade drying up. …”
“And so? Many ships trade here, do they not?” Teixeira could not fathom the man’s excitement.
“Yes, yes, they do,” Alema conceded. “But not there, and not now. When we left, the Berrio and Esphera were still looking for crews. We are the first this season. Perhaps it is a privateer, a Spanish vessel, or perhaps even French”—the latter was hazarded with a perceptible shudder—“but that does not explain her anchorage.”
“This ‘Rio Real’?”
“It is hardly a river,” said Alema. “The coast there is a kind of swamp, or a flooded forest, the same for fifty leagues. The people there are called Ijaws, fishermen. But there is no trade. No gold, no pepper, Malagueta or tailless, no slaves.”
They were almost at the beach now. Mesquita was already walking down the jetty, Dom Francisco blocked from view behind it. He listened as Alema explained that the mouth of the Real stood equidistant between those of the Fermoso and the Camarões. “If someone wished to trade with this all-powerful ‘Ezzery,’ then he would anchor there,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
Teixeira nodded agreement, but the pilot’s theory seemed outlandish, a tissue of conjecture. The vessel might as easily have been blown off-course or anchored there to take on water, or perhaps to buy fish from these “Ijaws.” It did not concern him. Only the beast concerned him. The pilot fell silent.
“You have done well,” Teixeira said as they reached the jetty. “I will recommend you to Peres when I see him.” That seemed to please the man.
“You will sail direct to Belem?” he asked.
“God willing,” he replied, tapping the letter pressed against his chest. Peres willing, he thought.
They parted there, Alema walking quickly down the jetty to the caravel. Teixeira watched him board, then continued along the beach. The bay’s black water broke into a white foam as it lapped and splashed up the beach, luminous in the light of the waning moon. Six tall figures were visible against it, then the boat, and last of all, a little way up the beach, he saw a prone figure. The fidalgo was snoring loudly, his knees tucked up against his chest.
“Horseflesh,” he murmured to himself. “Monster.” And an evil one at that. … He stood over the sleeper, waiting patiently for the saliva to gather in his mouth, watching impassively as it fell. The Negroes looked to him.
“Throw him in the boat,” he said.
Greetings, Dom Jaime, once again,
I write in haste from Ayamonte, where our situation is perilous three times a day and the waves every bit as forceful as those you face at sea, though different in kind—I grant you that much. …
Peres’s words, his voice, his hand. Teixeira felt the man’s presence in the parchment he held before him.
The Ajuda had sailed two days later, revictualed and repaired. Now, closeted in his cabin, he reread the letter, searching it for clues, for the things he had missed in that first hurried reading the night of Mello’s banquet. It was something to wave in Dom Francisco’s face. He heard the men shouting on the deck above him. In an hour they would be in open waters, and he could not trust the fidalgo while they were anchored in the bay; it had to be now, before Gonçalo turned them about and they headed south to pick up the trades that would take them home. Not south, he thought. North. Not away from the great continent they had almost circled, but toward it. … Dom Francisco’s reactions were invariable.
“What? That you can come to me and ask that, that. …”
The man spluttered and raged in full view of the crew, the two of them up there on the poop deck with Estêvão, who tried to appear both deaf and blind to the man’s ravings, absolutely absorbed in the trim of the sails. They will need to be trimmed again, he thought idly while Dom Francisco blustered in his face, for he would have his will.
I will not rehearse all how we are brought to this pass. You are not alone—I must tell you that first—though the company is not such as I would have you keep. All my efforts at Ayamonte have been directed to the safeguarding of our King’s new possessions: those known, those yet to be learned of. That was my charge. Of the transactions in Rome, it was my wish that they never concern you. Our Orator there is Joao da Faria. It was he and Fernando’s Orator, Vich, who were charged with procuring His Holiness’s agreement to their sovereigns’ treaty, for Leo has promised and yet delayed, affirmed and yet prevaricated. The bull has languished in the Camera above two years now. I believe you know the price that is required of us to drag His Holiness’s hand to the inkpot. …
The beast: he rehearsed that to himself in the days that followed. The Ganda, the sick monster. And an evil one at that. … He looked again for the face that had appeared at his cabin door to warn him, scanning the watches as they changed with every eight turns of the glass. The man did not appear. He confided in Estêvão, who could tell him only that fifteen men had died of disease between the night of his visitation and their landfall at São Thomé. “Perhaps he was amongst them,” the boatswain told him, leaving unsaid his clear conviction that the man was imagined, a harbinger of the sickness that was to overtake him, too. Perhaps it was so. There was time to turn it over, to consider and ponder as the ship made her way north, for the winds were light and contrary, the currents likewise. Gonçalo sat as always on the forecastle, silent, watching the water. Oçem spent his days on deck, sometimes adding his weight to the ropes, for they were short-handed now but usually sprawled beside the cage, into which he would poke armfuls of hay in the morning only to retrieve it, uneaten, in the evening. The beast was silent in there. Each day, at different times and without routine, he would catch the keeper’s eye and the question would pass across his face. Each day, Oçem would wordlessly return the same answer, and then Teixeira would consider whether he should broach the matter that lay between them. He eats horseflesh. … The keeper looked away. Tomorrow perhaps he would ask, or one of the tomorrows that would follow that one. Not today.
Now know this: that the Spaniards too seek the animal which resides aboard the Ajuda. This much was allowed in our negotiation, it being among our purposes to entertain His Holiness, albeit as a means of making him our own. Rivalries amuse this Pope, according to the astute Doctor Faria, and thus, being good Christians, we conjure for him the image of a rivalry. A contest, between ourselves and the Spaniards to procure for him a certain beast. And so, my dear Dom Jaime, you find yourself our elected champion. I hope the picture affords you some amusement of your own, for it is no more than that. A likeness of contention, sketched by myself at Ayamonte, colored by our Orator at Rome, and so lifelike that His Holiness already claps his hands and fingers the laurels which he dreams of placingon the victor’s head. But now, like a statue stepping from its plinth and swinging blindly amongst all our causes—Dom Manolo’s and Fernando’s, mine, your own—the image becomes the fact.
He read the letter every day, or almost every day, and came to know it by rote. Peres’s “likeness of contention” teased him, framing as it did a circumstance the very opposite of his own. What of the contentions that have no likeness? he wondered. The soundless, unlit struggles … what of those? Fifteen men. The animal: eater of horseflesh. Oçem’s little shrug, repeated day after day, until finally he sat down heavily beside the man, knowing already what his questions would elicit, unsurprised when they came, hardly even angered, the method used even exciting a vague admiration, for he had underestimated his man.
“What can I do?” he answered frankly. What could any of them do? The animal stank. He recalled the man in the hammock, his mouth open under Oçem’s gentle prompting and the breath foul with rot. He had recoiled then. Now it was familiar. Forward of the main mast, the door to Dom Francisco’s cabin banged open. Oçem glanced at him again, but his expression was unchanged.
A ship has sailed from Rome, a ship captained by two fools recruited for the purpose and intended by the Spaniards to offer no more than a pretense of their intention. Their Orator claims now that a renegade captain commands her, a murderer and thief, his booty being the vessel herself and—mark this, Dom Jaime, as I marked it—a rutter containing regimens for sailing east along the Guinea Coast from Cape Palmas as far as Cape Santa Caterina. She is called the Lucia, and the cutthroat who captains her goes by the name Diego. …
There was more. The phrases went around and around in his head as the days passed and Gonçalo piloted them north toward the coast. Alema’s briefly glimpsed caravel would be this caravel. Or it would not. It would be there, or it would be gone. It would be a mirage, a specter, or as solid as the Ajuda, whose decks rocked beneath his feet. These possibilities mingled and collided, and their different players merged within them.
The coast appeared, a darkening cut between sea and sky. They stood a league or two off and sailed west, Gonçalo gradually lengthening the legs of their tacks as he beat against the weak westerly currents prevailing here. In his mind’s eye Teixeira saw the Ganda stamping and roaring again, killing his man “with great deliberation,” then rooting up and trampling such objects as rotting fruit, rats, firewood, a miter, starchy vestments, heaps of shells, wooden angels carved from brittle yellow timber, a great mash of these things in which he snorted and whinnied, his trunkish feet pounding up and down. And in his wilder leaps, slipping into view at only the most abrupt kicks and twitches, Teixeira fancied he might glimpse the animal imprisoned within this one’s leathery tegument, dancing madly in there. …He yawned and stretched. It was nonsense, of course. There were no “wild leaps” now. No “twitches,” either. The stench was getting worse, and it was possible he had offended Estêvão, shouting at him when he had mentioned this. That was yesterday, or the day before.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 62