“Conti . . . Conti …” he was stammering like an eager child –“do you know for what I’m making this compass? . . . For the first crew that sails out of Lisbon for India!”
CHAPTER 5
The Locked Door
ABEL ZAKUTO came thoughtfully up the long, stone stairway. Inwardly, he was a good deal perturbed. This thing that was to happen-for which, in fact, he had deliberately set the stage-must be so managed as to appear not managed. It must be, he said to himself, like the unfolding of a flower-as delicate as all that.
Perhaps it was this particular thought that made him, when he crossed the court, stop to gather a cluster of late-blooming roses. With them in his hand he went into the room where Ruth sat sewing with the Girl.
“Ruth, see! Aren’t they fine blooms?” He held them up for her to smell, and then pressed them to the Girl’s cheek. Under his off-hand manner his keen, kind eyes noted the rise of colour in the still face, and the flutter of the listless eyelids.
“Come along into the court, Ruth!” He tossed the sewing from her hands and caught her round the waist, while his other arm swept the Girl up. If he saw Ruth’s startled eyes, or felt the Girl’s slender body stiffen and hang back, he paid no heed as, laughing and talking, he steered for the court.
As they stepped outside, he was aware that the Girl started violently, and, behind him, he heard Ruth’s low “What are you thinking of-taking her out so suddenly?”
“Fresh air and sunlight never hurt anyone,” he comfortably returned, while he guided them toward the lilies that had always reminded him of the Girl.
He picked one and put it into her hands, while he meditated aloud: “The narcissus bed must be thinned before long, and these gilly flowers. There’ll be enough for a new plantation; or would a border be prettier, Ruth?”
His arm always around the Girl, he strolled on, stopping every few steps, to inspect a vine or a shrub; to notice that the mint bed was a bit dry; to rub a bit of sage between thumb and finger and hold it to his nostrils. Over her head he could see Ruth doubtfully eyeing him.
They had made tour of the court, and had halted under the old fig tree, when Abel heard a deep, tremulous sigh, and felt the Girl’s arm drop from his. Quickly he glanced at her. As if she had forgotten his presence and Ruth’s, she was gazing up into the sun-flecked shade while she stretched her arms like a drowsy child.
Almost holding his breath, Abel watched the pale cheeks warm with faint colour; then, as her eyes came back to him, he saw that they held something besides fear. She stood there, very still, between him and Ruth, and then, slowly, as if groping her way, she reached out to a jessamine vine, and picked a spray of its white stars. A look of triumph shot from Abel to Ruth as they covertly watched her smell the flowers, and Ruth found a chance to murmur in his ear, “I’d never have believed it!”
From time to time Abel furtively eyed the gate. At last, feet sounded on the stairs; the door swung back, and Ferdinand stepped inside. Abel saw him look hastily about the court, then draw back as he perceived the Girl.
Abel stole a glance at her. Thank heaven, she was not frightened! Soft, wondering eyes fixed on the figure at the gate, lips parted, head lifted as if listening, waiting-what was it that she looked like? Some young creature of the wild-ah, a fawn!
“I thought Master Abraham said –“Ferdinand broke off, then made another start: “Did you mean me to come now,” he stammered, “or-or-”
“You’re always welcome,” said Abel serenely, “day or night.” He waved a hand at the flower beds. Garden looks well, doesn’t it?”
From behind the Girl, he caught Ruth suspiciously eyeing him. “Abel Zakuto,” he heard her whisper, “I believe you sent for the boy on purpose!”
Without appearing to hear her, he strolled over to a fruit tree and made a pretext of examining it. From under his eyelids he observed Ferdinand slowly advance. He was trying hard, Abel noted with a chuckle, to appear at ease, and so was Ruth.-If she only knew how near the truth she’d come with her dark suspicions!
The Girl, he exulted, seemed less concerned than either. Stealthily he watched her. Never once did she take her gaze from Ferdinand, and, as he came nearer, she bent toward him, and held up the jessamine spray for him to smell-the ingenuous gesture of a child with a playmate! If Abel’s blood quickened a little, he gave no sign, while he continued to potter about his tree, but he observed that Ferdinand had accepted the bloom, and was affably smelling it. He was making, on the whole, a fair show of manners – the young cub!
A new sound suddenly fell on his ears. Ferdinand’s startled face, Ruth’s eyes bulging with amazement, flashed before him. His gaze followed theirs-to the Girl. That sound . . . why, great heaven, it was coming from her! It was her voice. A voice, he noted, even in that first, incredible moment, that had the sweet vibrancy of metal struck on metal.
“Ruth,” she was saying in that silver voice. “Ruth!” Then, “A-bel,” she slowly pronounced, with a caressing little accent that brought a lump to Abel’s throat. Her eyes now eagerly fixed on Ferdinand – eyes, Abel noted, that, for at least this moment, had almost forgotten their fright.
For a perplexed moment the boy’s gaze questioned hers. All at once he seemed to understand what she wished, and, “Ferdinand,” he said, distinctly.
She repeated the syllables, pausing between them like a child trying a new lesson.
“That’s right!” he nodded, laughing and excited. “I told you she’d talk some day!” he slyly threw at Abel.
“Now-her name!” Abel whispered.
Ferdinand came a step nearer her. “I’m Ferdinand”– he pointed to himself. “And you”– he made a quick gesture –“what’s your name?”
Instantly they saw her face cloud, as she drew away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded in surprise.
“Abel-you try,” whispered Ruth.
Ferdinand stepped aside, and Abel came close to the Girl. In the sunny stillness he could hear her quickened breathing.
“See, my child,” he said, “this is Abel, that is Ruth, and that is Ferdinand.” He touched her arm as if he were wheedling a child. “Who are you? . . . What is your name?”
She only looked blankly back at him. Could she, he wondered, be feigning? He drew her down on a near-by bench. “What is your name? “he coaxed.
“She doesn’t understand a word you say!” Ruth’s voice was as crestfallen as her face.
“But she understands what he means,” Ferdinand declared.
Abel said nothing, but, secretly, he agreed.
“She’s like a locked door without a key,” sighed Ruth.
“There’s always a key, my dear,” Abel thoughtfully replied, while he studied the gently inscrutable face beside him –“if one can only find it.”
“Well –” Ferdinand burst out laughing, “we have a key, sir! All we have to do is to teach her what she’s begun to teach herself-our language. Then there’ll be no trouble about unlocking the door!”
“Humph,” Ruth sniffed, “if you think you can get her to open her lips one minute before she’s ready . . . She’s just what I said she was, a locked door.”
Ferdinand’s eyes glinted. “I’ll guarantee she’ll unlock, if I teach her,” he teased.
Abel glanced down at the Girl. Out of the babel of words, of gestures, of varying expressions on the faces around her, what did she gather? Did some inkling of their import reach her? Again the image of a fawn flashed irresistibly before him-that attitude of pitiful vigilance, those wistful eyes that smiled at you, yet seemed never quite to forget a pursuing terror. He put out his arm and drew her to him. Never had she seemed to him so exquisitely piteous.
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” Ferdinand called back from the gate, “for the first lesson!”
“Abel,” said Ruth, that evening, when they were alone, “did you send for Ferdinand on purpose?”
“Send for him?” Abel inquired innocently. “Why, he’s been coming here for years, h
asn’t he?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean, Abel!”
“Come to think of it, I believe I did do something or other about it.”
“I knew it!” Ruth with her bright, black eyes and her head cocked to one side, reminded him of an exasperated blackbird.
“Well, what harm came of it? Seeing a young person-someone of her own age-did for our poor child what you and I couldn’t have done in a hundred years. It started things going in that benumbed brain of hers.”
“It certainly started something.”
“What do you mean?” Abel demanded uneasily.
“Oh, nothing,” was all Ruth could be got to say then, but, as he was dropping off to sleep, she volunteered, out of an apparently clear sky, “I don’t believe Ferdinand will have to be sent for to come here again!”
And she was right. It had to be a full day at the palace that kept him from giving the Girl a lesson.
Ruth and Abel began by teaching her familiar, everyday words. Ferdinand went about it differently. As he talked to her, he would illustrate words by action; then, with infinite patience, he would make her re-tell what he had said, while Ruth and Abel sat by, sometimes laughing and always wondering at his ingenuity. And, gradually, almost without realizing what she was doing, the Girl began to piece words together.
One day, from a window where they could see the two in the court, Abel and Ruth heard him telling the Girl about his home away beyond the mountains; about the great forests, and the wolves he had trapped, and the boar he had hunted. Kindling to his own description, he said, a little regretfully, “I’d probably have stayed up there, if my father hadn’t made me come down here to the King’s court.”
They saw her look strangely at him, and then, in her halting way, she asked, “Are you sorry, Ferdinand, to be here?.”
“Ruth! Ruth –” Abel clutched her arm in his excitement –“do you see what that young rascal has done? Got her so interested that she forgot herself!”
They held their breath, while they listened to Ferdinand follow up the cue so unwittingly given him.
“Of course sometimes I’m homesick,” he was saying.
“Everybody is.” Then, quite naturally, “Aren’t you?”
They saw her eyes widen with fear. For a moment he appeared to wait for her answer. “Don’t you wish sometimes you could go home?” he urged.
This time the two at the window saw the delicate face quiver.
“Abel, stop him!” Ruth whispered in a panic.
“Yes-he’s going too fast.” He strolled into the court and made a pretext of asking Ferdinand when he’d seen Nicolo Conti. Presently, the Girl went into the house.
“You pushed her too hard, lad!” Abel remonstrated in a low voice.
“She knew as well as not what I wanted, but she’s downright obstinate!”
“Not obstinate, Ferdinand, but afraid. I was watching her while you were talking, and I know.”
When Ruth joined them, she reminded them of her own prediction. “Remember what I told you-not to count too much on her telling you anything even when she knew how!”
As the days went by, Abel and Ruth found themselves less and less curious about her.
“I don’t know that I care where she came from,” Ruth would often say, “as long as she stays!”
“That’s the point, after all, isn’t it? What did we ever do without her?”
“I’m glad she’s so lovely to look at, aren’t you, Abel? If she were homely, now –”
“Your big heart would take her in just the same, Ruth! But I’m glad, yes.”
Once, after one of these conversations, Ruth drily remarked, “Ferdinand doesn’t act as if it were any great hardship to teach her.”
Abel turned in his chair, and looked at her. “How could he? A hardship to teach that sweet child!”
“I sometimes think, Abel,” she laughed, “that you’ve fixed your mind on such far things, you can’t see what’s under your nose.”
Strange, Abel mused, after Ruth left the room, to go along for years and never know what you had been missing. The court, now, how empty it was unless the Girl were somewhere about, learning from him how to prune the grape-vine, or helping Ruth weed and water. Even the workshop, where he had been so content to be alone, seemed to take on a warmer life when she was watching him carpenter.
She asked him, one day, what he was making.
“Something,” he told her, as he tested the accuracy of the compass frame, “to help sailors find their way on the sea.” He glanced up to find her half-fearfully watching him. What had he said, he puzzled, to bring such a look? And afraid lest he should blunder into worse, he said nothing, and went on with his work. But in his own mind he turned the thing over. Sailors and compasses and the sea-what could they mean to her?
“Poor lamb!” Ruth said, when he told her and Ferdinand of the incident. “To think of all she’s carrying in her mind and doesn’t dare tell us.”
“She lives in two worlds,” Abel rejoined, “our own and the one she came from!”
“At least I’d like to know her name,” declared Ferdinand, “even if she didn’t tell us anything more.”
The corners of Abel’s mouth twitched. “There’s nothing to prevent our giving her one. What would you suggest?”
Ferdinand carefully considered. “I can’t think of a name that would suit her,” he came out, at last. “It would have to be something-” he hesitated, flushing a little—“something lovelier than any name we have, and –”
“Go on!” urged Abel, closely watching him.
“And different from our language anyhow!”
“That’s it-different!” Abel’s fist on the table confirmed his agreement. “I tell you, Ferdinand, she doesn’t belong to our race. I’ve made up my mind to that. How about it, Ruth?”
“I believe you’re right, Abel.”
“The colour of her skin’s not like any I ever saw,” Ferdinand suggested. “It’s not dark enough for a Moor.”
“Nor blonde enough for northern Europe,” Abel added, with an image in his mind of a dusky, golden lily.
“We aren’t any farther along with her,” Ferdinand fumed, “than when we started.”
“Perhaps we never will be!” teased Ruth.
“There’s a first time for everything, Aunt Ruth. You wait!”
CHAPTER 6
Sofala – The Devil’s Cave
FROM where Ruth sat sewing, in the room next to the workshop, she could see and hear Abel and Ferdinand. They had a map spread out on the table, and their voices drifted past her in a jumble of strange names.
In the pauses of their talk she stopped sewing to watch the Girl as she moved about the court in the soft brilliance of late afternoon. Her eyes drank in, with a fulness of satisfaction, the grace of the figure that now was silhouetted in sunlight or tenderly outlined by leafy shade. That sharply delicate contrast of dark hair and ivory skin against a sweep of vivid bloom! Was there ever anything so lovely?
This child, Ruth often said to herself, was like some flower of golden grace, half hidden in shadow. And, again, when there was a sliver of moon behind a wisp of cloud, Ruth was as likely to say that she was like it, too. More and more, fear was leaving the soft eyes; some day, Ruth silently exulted, it would be wholly gone.
The hum of voices in the workshop rose again.
“It’s the same old knot,” Ferdinand was saying, “that we’ve still to cut: that reach between the Devil’s Cave and Sofala.”
As he spoke the last words, Ruth saw the slender figure start, and stiffen into tense, listening stillness, her face stark and white. Her impulse was to run out-but already the Girl was stealing toward the workshop. A glance at Abel and Ferdinand, with their backs to the door, told Ruth they were quite unaware of the presence behind them.
Noiselessly the Girl sank on the threshold, face turned to the court, hands clenched on her knees. Ruth could see the straining knuckles and the rigid shoulders. What had made th
is ghastly change? Was it something the Girl had overheard Abel or Ferdinand say?
In vain Ruth tried to recall the conversation, and at last she went into the workroom and dropped into a seat where she could watch.
“What are you two talking about? “she asked as casually as she could.
“Oh, nothing new,” Ferdinand answered, without looking up. “I was saying that it was the same old knot that remained to be cut.”
As he spoke, Ruth saw the head in the doorway turn ever so little. Just as she had suspected! Something connected with the map – and again she cudgelled her memory. Presently, with a yawn, Abel moved back from the table to where he could look at the sunset. She tried to draw him out, but he was no more inclined to talk than Ferdinand. After another pause, the Girl on the doorstep rose and Ruth heard her go to her room.
In an agony of suspense she debated with herself: should she follow? Should she tell Abel what had happened? Yet, after all, what was there to tell? No, she would delay a little, at least till Ferdinand went.
When supper was ready, she cautiously approached the Girl. She found her flung on the bed, her face turned to the wall. No, she wasn’t ill – nor hungry. She wanted just to be quiet. Her voice was so natural, that Ruth’s anxiety almost vanished. She went back to Abel, telling herself that her imagination had run away with her. She was glad she had had the sense to say nothing to him. But that night she found herself dropping off to sleep still puzzling over the curious change that had come over the Girl.
Suddenly, she woke, with an instant consciousness that Abel, too, was awake.
“Ruth,” she heard him breathe, “someone’s in the workshop.”
A stealthy sound came to her ears. She recognized it at once: the drawer of the big table sliding on its grooves. The drawer where the maps were kept!
“There!” Abel was sitting bolt upright. “Don’t you hear?”
He seized his cloak, and stepped into the court. In another moment she was stealing after him to the workshop. Yet, even before they reached it, Ruth knew who would be there.
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