Silently he assented. Remember that day, indeed! Would he ever forget its smallest detail? Though, to tell the truth, Ferdinand’s talk was less clear in his memory than the scene he had later watched from the workshop door. He saw her eyes suddenly drop, and the colour steal over her delicate face. Had she guessed his thoughts?
“If the Venetians knew Gama had been seen, then they knew there was a passage,” she was saying very low, and as if, it struck Nicolo, she were struggling with some pent-up emotion. “And so they – Venice – want the maps to show how to reach the Orient ahead of Portugal.”
“Of course!” cried Abel. “To steal a march on Portugal before Gama can get home to tell what he’s found, and before Portugal can claim it! How did we miss it, Nicolo? Certainly, Ferdinand was right when he suspected something behind the ambassador’s inquiries. You see,” he said, musing aloud, “Venice must make a desperate stand to keep her trade supremacy.”
There was a sound of despair from Nicolo. “Then how can I, a Venetian, hold up my head here if this thing ever comes to light? My business-the friends I’ve made-” He got up hastily to hide his emotion.
Abel pressed him down again in his chair. “My dear boy, has there ever been a time when there wasn’t war over trade?”
“Portugal would do the same thing in Venice’s place,” Ruth impartially stated. “You mustn’t take this so to heart, Nicolo! It’s none of your doing.”
“Assuredly, Portugal would do the same thing,” Abel repeated. “Besides, your record here is too good to have this thing count against you, even if it should come to light.”
“Do you think, if Manoel should hear of it, that he wouldn’t let it ‘count against’ me?” Nicolo asked bitterly. “And Gama-what would he say? I tell you the ground is cut from under me. I’ll have nothing. I’ll be discredited-dishonoured.”
He saw Nejmi slip out of the room and felt, miserably, that it was the way she wished to slip out of his life. He became aware of Abel’s voice . . . something about “an odd angle.”
“A very odd angle to this business,” he was saying. “Now, what if I should take a notion to revenge myself on Manoel, and give my maps up to Venice?”
“Abel!” gasped Ruth.
“Well, after all, I’m human! Would it more than even his account with our people?”
In the dead silence that fell on the workshop, Nicolo, dumbfounded, could only study Abel’s face. Shrewd, keen, sagacious; jaw thrust ever so little forward; eyes narrowed. The face now of Banker Zakuto! Banker Zakuto, who held, at last, the odds that would square, in part, at least, the long account of his people.
Suddenly the old whimsical laughter twitched the corners of his mouth. “Don’t be afraid, Nicolo! Ruth, did you really think I would?” The boyish eyes were twinkling – perhaps, too, were a bit wet. “Did you think I’d do any harm to the child that Bartholomew and I have tended and watched years before Manoel was born-the Way of the Spices?”
“Abel,” Ruth said, with a catch in her voice, “there was never another like you, my dear!”
“That’s what was going through my mind,” Nicolo quietly seconded her.
“Nonsense!” declared Abel, vigorously clearing his throat. “Now, about that chap who is after my maps –”
“I haven’t yet seen him, sir, but I’m sure to. He might, though, come to you first.”
“I’ll attend to him whenever he comes!” declared Abel.
“Then,” Nicolo said, sombrely, as he started toward the door, “I’d better go and tell Scander what Nejmi-what you think about the maps.”
“Keep us in touch with every step,” Abel charged him. “Especially anything you hear of Gama.”
It was later than he’d thought, Nicolo saw, as he crossed the court. The stars were out, and the moon just showed over the high wall. He was reaching for the gate, when, from behind the vine trellis, and directly in front of him, stepped – Nejmi. Too startled to speak, even to think coherently, it went through his mind that all the golden sweetness of the night was gathered up into her.
“Nicolo,” she breathed hardly above a whisper, “you said – I heard you sav – vou had nothing.”
Puzzled, he could only look at her. “Yes, I said that” he finally got out.
“Then, Nicolo, if you have nothing, now-now is the time I should pay my debt to you.”
He steeled himself not to wince at this mention of that old hurt. And yet this look in her eyes, this tremulous tenderness of her lips, what was it? Was it pity? Though the pounding of his heart and the surge in his ears turned everything dizzy, he saw how pale she was.
Suddenly she moved nearer him. Then –
“Nicolo, I love you!”
Spellbound, he stared at her. He couldn’t have heard aright. Was he stark mad-or was she? “You mean Ferdinand!” he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears.
“I knew that was what you thought,” she cried, with a little sobbing catch in her voice. “Ah, no, Nicolo – you! I-1 have nothing to pay you with except – except love.”
It was that “nothing to pay you” which broke, at last, the numbness in his brain, at his heart. “Nothing!” Yet not always “nothing” In fancy he saw her father’s house, the great warehouses of Scander’s description, the wealth and luxury that once were hers. And then, across that vision, flashed another: an empty barrel … a tender body, forlorn, destitute! He swept her up in his arms, murmuring he would never know what.
At last he held her back a little. Just enough to look full at her. Moonlight, Nicolo decided at that moment-moonlight that sifted through blossoming shade – was for the sole purpose of tracing patterns of delight on Nejmi’s arms and on Nejmi’s upturned face – patterns as uncapturable as the beauty of that face.
“But, Nejmi, that afternoon when Ferdinand talked to you about the ‘flaming kiss’ of East and West, he meant his feeling for you. I watched when you weren’t looking!”
“I know,” she laughed softly, “because I watched you when you weren’t looking! No, Ferdinand didn’t mean his feeling for me, and what you heard him say only showed his real heart.”
But Nicolo wanted reassurance. “What is his real heart?”
“The love of adventure, of finding –” she hesitated, feeling for a word –“of finding a new Beyond! That will always be his great love, Nicolo; always it will be first with him. Can’t you see it in that beautiful, flaming look that comes to his eyes when he talks about the time that he can go?”
“I was so sure, so desperately, wretchedly sure you loved him, Nejmi! There was such happiness in your face-only, somehow it was such frightened happiness.”
“‘Frightened,’ yes,” she said, very low, “for I’d seen your face at the workshop door! And I was afraid to believe what I saw in it, because –” her voice sank to a breath –“because I so wanted it to be true! I was afraid of myself, lest I couldn’t keep from you …” She hid her face on his shoulder. “Oh, Nicolo, how shall I say it?”
He drew her closer. “Keep what from me, dear?”
“You remember that time, with the bird, when you told me not to be afraid? Ah, Nicolo, I loved you then – and ever since! That was what I tried to keep from you until I dared to tell you I’d pay my debt with love!”
“And how cruel I thought you were to say I wanted you to pay me!” He was suddenly grave. “Why did you choose tonight to tell me?”
She turned a radiant face to him. “When I heard you say you would have no friends, nothing, I knew that it was time to pay my debt, and I came out here to – to find courage to do it!”
“But, Nejmi, if what we suspect of Venice should be known here in Lisbon, it would count against me. Do you want me, with a blot on my name?”
“What is against you is against me, too, Nicolo. What difference does anything but our love make to us?”
What difference, indeed? His arms tightened about her with a rapturous wonder at what she had said. Yet for her dear sake this plot should be set straight
! Aloud he said tenderly, “Why have you kept me so at a distance – hardly ever let me talk alone with you?”
She made no answer until again he urged her: “Why, dear?”
“You know, Nicolo,” she said at last, “that Master Abel and Mother Ruth would have gone away long ago but for me; so, how could I think of anything apart from them?”
“It won’t be ‘apart,’” he promised. “I’ll share you – they shan’t be left alone.”
“And then, too,” she said, looking away from him, “I couldn’t wholly forget how I’d been brought up – how my people – my mother’s people – believe a girl should be brought up.”
He remembered how Scander had spoken of the seclusion of Arab women of her rank.
“And now –” she covered her face with her hands –“see what I’ve done! Among my own people I’d be in disgrace. But you were so unhappy when I said it was Venice that wanted the maps … Ah, Nicolo, I had to pay my debt!”
“Losing everything was nothing to losing you,” he told her ardently. “Yet how could I come to you with even a shadow of suspicion against me? Nejmi,” he asked, suddenly curious, “what made you think of Venice?”
“I don’t know. It flashed across me like a streak of light in the dark. And we Arabs say, when something comes to you like that, it’s sent by Allah.”
Silently he pondered what she had told him. What would Scander say now about the maps?
“I sometimes think, Nicolo,” she went on, “that though my father was a European, my heart is all Arab!”
He assented, though not quite understanding her.
“Do you remember how long it was that I hated all mention of the Way or of anything connected with it? At first I forced myself, because I loved Master Abel so, to touch his maps, his instruments. Do you remember the night I was polishing the compass?”
Ah, didn’t he!
“Now I know that from the beginning it was the will of Allah that my life should be linked with the Way. Else why –” she threw out her hands in a gesture that he recognized belonged only to the Orient –“else why all that horror – my father and mother – and afterward the sea and those men? And at last Master Abel and the workshop?”
“You mean,” he said, with a sudden flash of understanding, “it was all part of the finding of the Way?”.
“It was all part of Allah’s will that the Way should be found!” she gently corrected. “Don’t you see, Nicolo, how small all my trouble, even my whole life, seems, when you think of it as part of the great will of Allah? And so, from hating the Way, and then trying to like it for dear Master Abel’s sake, I’ve come to think of it as something of which I’m part. And now, Nicolo, I feel as Master Abel does, as Master Diaz does: I’d do anything for the Way!”
“And I love it,” he tenderly told her, “for its bringing us to each other. From the very first time I saw the fear in your dear eyes I’ve wanted to make you forget all that horror and fright. And that’s what I’m going to do, from now on and forever!”
“Forever!” she repeated, with a strange look. “Did you ever think, Nicolo, how long that word is? That it reaches back as far as it reaches forward?”
“You mean,” he said, softly, “that – that our love, too, is the will of Allah?”
She took his hands and covered her eyes with them. “From the beginning – forever!”
CHAPTER 19
The King’s Marmosets
“ASCORE of marmosets . . . ordered special for the. King . . . and not a one of ’em saved –”
The words drifted out from a knot of passing sailors to Nicolo hurrying toward The Green Window. Absently he wondered why “not a one of ’em” had been saved. The next moment he was obliged to give way for another group. Where had they all come from-and all at once? Sailors in peaked caps everywhere you looked. Before tavern doors, at corners, swaggering by twos and threes along the street. Never before had he seen the town so full of them; and at so late an hour, too, though for all he cared or knew about time it might have been blazing noon as well as a radiant summer night.
All that really mattered now about time was whether or not it separated him from Nejmi! And all that mattered in the whole world was her happiness. Nothing must stand in the way of that, not even a shadow of suspicion against him – though she had said that would make no difference. His good name, doubly precious now, must be without reproach. Yet, how to steer an honourable course? How be loyal to the country of his adoption without dishonouring the country of his birth?
To his surprise he found The Green Window jammed with noisy sailors, whose calls for drinks Pedro was trying to fill, looking like a brown gnome as he scurried from one to another.
Concealed at his old post in the rear of the room, he waylaid the old man on one of those trips. “I’ve seen nothing but sailors,” he declared, “all the way down here.”
“Of course,” returned Pedro. “With ’em all coming in to port and none shipping out, what’d you expect?”
“None shipping out? Why not?”
“Haven’t you heard about the pirates?”
Vaguely Nicolo recalled hearing something or other about pirates, that morning on the docks, with Scander.
“By the way, has Scander been back here?” he inquired.
“Here now. Wanted to know when you came in. I’ll go tell him you’ve come.”
Pedro bustled off, and in a moment Scander appeared, yawning.
“That Marco’ll keep me up all night,” he complained, “He won’t budge from anyone that he can get to talk about this pirate business, and I won’t leave him till I see where he berths. I suppose you’ve heard the latest about the pirates?”
“No, and I don’t want to, until I’ve told you something!”
“What Master Abel says?”
“No – what Nejmi says! That talk about maps between the ambassador and Ferdinand, that you said meant nothing, is the gist of the whole plot!” He forthwith described Nej-mi’s instant and unhesitating conviction.
“That child,” said Scander, very quiet and humble, “is right!”
“But you as much as told me I was a fool,” Nicolo reminded him,” when I thought we should follow up the map item.”
“I know,” Scander admitted, “but where you just thought, Nejmi knew! It’s just as she said, when a thing flashes at you out of the dark, you may be certain it’s the truth.”
He glanced at Marco, talking and drinking. “So that’s why,” he mused, “he’s waiting around for the tall chap to get hold of the maps.”
“Of course,” Nicolo agreed. “I’m looking for that chap any time, now, to come here to ask me to take him to Master Abel’s.”
“Had you ever thought he might go there by himself?”
“Yes, and I mentioned it, too. Master Abel seemed sure he could manage him.”
Scander pursed his lips. “Hm! If he wants those maps bad, it’s not going to be child’s play to prevent him getting ’em.”
“You mean,” Nicolo said, “that one of us should stay by Master Abel, in case –”
He was interrupted by a burst of voices. A group of sailors trooped in, all talking at once.
“And the little beasts a-squealing and a-chattering like demons, and a-clambering up the rigging”– a burly fellow was bawling.
“Yes,” shouted another, “and I a-yelling that they was the King’s marmosets and whoever laid hand to ’em –”
“The King’s marmosets!” Nicolo exclaimed. “That’s the second time tonight I’ve heard about them.”
“Yes,” said Scander. “A ship bound back here from the Verde Islands with a cargo of gold and a score or so of marmosets, was boarded off Morocco.”
“Another one?” Nicolo broke in with an alarmed face. “Besides the two we heard about this morning? If Rodriguez –”
“Don’t you remember, when you first came in, me speaking of the latest pirate attack, and Marco being all taken up with the talk about it?” Scander wheeled around
and hurriedly glanced about the room. “I must keep my eye on him,” he murmured. “Look – there he is!”
Absorbed, intent, and as near as he could squeeze to the man who had come in with the marmoset story, sat Marco. “What were you carrying besides marmosets?” they heard him ask.
“Raw gold, mostly, and as rich as I ever saw,” the man ruefully replied. “I’d have made a gift of it to the swine if they’d let those marmosets alone. Why, those marmosets-ordered special for King Manoel, they was-would’e brought me in a snug bit.”
“Lose the gold, too?” they heard Marco inquire.
“Every grain of it! And then they turned everything inside out looking for-spice! Did you ever hear the like of that?” he demanded from his audience. “Spice!”
At that word there was a sudden lull. Those who could, edged nearer him, and others craned their necks or stood up on benches to see him.
“I asked ’em how was I to get hold of spice-which doesn’t come except from India-and all they did was to go on searching. Even started to break in the bulkheads!”
“Yes,” put in another voice, “and they swore we were helping Gama get his cargo to Lisbon secret-like!”
Scander nudged Nicolo –“Look at Marco!”
Eyes glittering, lips caught hard between teeth, Marco, transfixed, sat staring at the last speaker.
Nicolo watched him a moment, and lightning-like came conviction: “He knows something about this pirate raid!”
“I was only waiting for you to say it!” agreed Scander. “By the saints –” as Marco suddenly rose –“he’s going! I’ll have to follow him.”
“Here then, quick!” Nicolo jumped to fling open the back door, and as Marco, shouldering through the crowd, disappeared through the front, Scander dove out of the rear.
Pedro, in high feather, stopped to whisper to Nicolo that never had his money bag been so heavy. If only the pirates would keep Lisbon bottled up a while longer, he’d presently be rich enough to retire.
Yes, thought Nicolo, but what if, at this moment, Rodriguez was fleeing with empty holds before those robbers?
He went back to his seat where, hidden in shadow, he could watch and listen. What did it all mean, this sudden onslaught of pirates, and their absurd demand for spice?
Spice and the Devil's Cave Page 18