Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of the House of Niccolo

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘So he has gone,’ Godscalc said. Nicholas said nothing. He had met the same guarded surprise from Jorge da Silves. Godscalc said, ‘Whom will he find there?’

  ‘The factor’s family,’ Nicholas said. ‘And perhaps his uncle Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren. In which case anything really might happen.’

  Godscalc said, ‘Simon might be in Funchal already.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘And come out forthwith to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. He had stopped at the top of the ladder, because Godscalc had stopped at the bottom.

  Godscalc said, ‘You say the Ghost can take to her heels. Can the Niccolò, if she isn’t provisioned?’

  ‘Not before I’ve seen Simon,’ said Nicholas. ‘Afterwards – yes, if we have to. That was why I was mean about oranges.’

  Whatever else she had on her mind, Gelis van Borselen knew what was required of the guests of honour at a homecoming feast, and especially if the guests were on shipboard, and ladies. Her gowns were all drab, out of mourning for her parents and sister, but she fished out the costliest, and enlivened it with a cat’s cradle of ribbons in her salt-whitened hair and a necklace of corals. Bel of Cuthilgurdy, taking her place at the trestles, was remarkably grand in creased velvet and Filipe, in attendance, was neat and comely if pale. He had already, under Bel’s eye, been marched to make his peace with the big seaman Luis, who tweaked him by the ear and told him he bore him no grudges, while the boy’s eyelids flickered.

  By now they knew every man by his name and the men knew well enough how to behave in superior company, although, like effervescence, the success of their landfall kept manifesting itself in raised voices and bursts of quick laughter. The lamps shone on the meat, four days old and still fresh: duck and mutton and pork, and platters of peppered fish steaks, and baskets piled high with soft bread. And when their first hunger had died, the tambourer lifted his drum, and the fifer his pipe, and Gregorio, slipping below, brought his fiddle out, and tuned it, and led into the choruses he had already heard all the way from Ancona. And Nicholas, astride this bench and that, perched on a table, his arm wound round a shroud, shared sea-going gossip and sea-going jokes while the wine went round without stint under awnings spread like butterfly wings in the bay, frazzled with the glow of ships’ lanterns and within a bowshot of the black mountainous shore, with its powder of lights and the distant sound, like a hush, of its torrents.

  He had not parted with Diniz light-heartedly. Their discussion had been hurried and curt – no more than was necessary to establish that, should Simon be found at Ponta do Sol, the San Niccolò would wait for his coming.

  ‘He may not be there,’ Diniz had said. ‘Or want to come.’

  ‘Then send me word. I can’t wait more than two or three days. And you’ll be busy enough, settling your mother’s affairs. Your uncle will help you.’

  You could help me, said the expression on the boy’s face, but he didn’t say it aloud. Neither did Nicholas reiterate all the things that, under other circumstances, he would have said. ‘Study your property. Analyse the books the way you learned in Nicosia. Weigh up whether you and your uncle can manage. Consider what offers you may get. Remember, the Vatachino are your uncle’s rivals elsewhere; to sell to them would be dangerous. Nevertheless, refuse nothing outright. You want to keep other growers in hope; you don’t want them to join the Vatachino against you.’

  As if against his will, Diniz said, ‘What if we can’t run the business ourselves?’

  ‘You and your uncle? Of course you can,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘I could have sold it to you,’ Diniz said. ‘But for my grandfather and Simon.’

  ‘When I’m tired of life,’ Nicholas said, ‘I’ll remember the offer. Don’t sell St Pol & Vasquez to anyone. That would be my advice.’

  Diniz had stood, at last, as if unwilling to go. He said, ‘If I were free …’

  And Nicholas said, ‘If you owned only the clothes that you stood in, the answer would still be no.’

  Lamps ablaze, banners fluttering, noisy with music and laughter, for an hour the San Niccolò rocked in the bay, the centre of all attention. Nicholas, clowning his way through some doggerel, saw the knots of men at the rails of the other ships in the harbour; heard the splash of oars as boats returning from shore circled the caravel en route to their mother ships; was aware that other dark boats came and lingered and went. So far, no one had challenged him. He had set a man aloft, just in case.

  The chirrup of sound, when it came, was just enough to warn those below who were listening. Nicholas rose, hardly noticed, and slipped aft. Clear of the hubbub and laughter, he could hear the splash of muffled oars and the half-felt bump that meant a boat had lodged at the base of the ladder. By then, four of his men were at the caravel’s side, their swords drawn. Nicholas joined them, and looked down.

  There was no great barge at his feet filled with cuirasses; no coats of arms, or threatening crossbows or hackbuts, and the face he dreaded to see was not present. A ship’s boat lay below him, manned by two pairs of half-naked oarsmen, and rising from its midst was a fellow in a great floating hat, bound to his cranium by hanks of gay ribbons. The head tipped back, revealing the bristled chin, the formless face, the violent bonhomie of a man he had met once before, in strict secrecy, in a room of the villa at Lagos. A man who, of all men, he did not want to see at this moment. Ochoa de Marchena, pirate; Spaniard; master of the resurrected roundship, the Ghost, floating somewhere behind in the darkness.

  Nicholas said, very sweetly, ‘Go away.’

  The unshaven jaw hoisted a red, dismayed lip. ‘Oh, I am disliked. I kill myself. Your signal is read, and my crew is aboard, but I kill myself. Why does Señor Niccolò frown? His guests are surely ashore?’

  ‘One of them is,’ Nicholas said. ‘Can’t you count? The rest are still here.’

  The toothless face lengthened like wax. ‘No food, no wine, no kiss for Ochoa?’

  ‘It depends,’ Nicholas said. ‘Why don’t you keep watching the flags?’

  ‘Tonight?’ the man said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Of course,’ said the man. A bubble winked inside his gums. He said, ‘The woman is pretty.’

  ‘She saw you?’ said Nicholas.

  The face below, ploughed by pox-marks and scars, displayed horror. ‘I waved to her. It was only civil. She is of the enemy party? I have exposed myself? Execute me!’ Ochoa de Marchena flung his arms wide, letting go the sides of the ladder and falling backwards through the empty air towards his boat. Two of his crew silently caught him and set him upright in a practised way in the well. ‘What can I do?’ he added, peering from under his hat. He was dressed, Nicholas noticed, in scarlet satin.

  ‘Go away,’ said Nicholas equably; and watched them do just that. Returned to his feast, he was prepared for questions, but none came. He had to remark at large to the company: ‘The roundship master, presenting his compliments. He wouldn’t come aboard; they have sickness. No sign of the barge for the ladies?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Gelis van Borselen, ‘we should think twice about disembarking. If the Ghost has sickness on board, she must have infected all Funchal by now. All her crew were on shore till she recalled them.’

  ‘I didn’t know –’ Nicholas began, his voice easy.

  ‘I recognised signals? You should live on a hillside with an excitable widow and nothing to read except the ships in the harbour. You told the Ghost to recall them.’

  Nicholas smiled. ‘I wish I had that kind of power. I did put up a lantern for water.’

  ‘They must have very good eyesight,’ she said. ‘I’d have sent that kind of order by Diniz. Jordan de Ribérac leased a roundship called the Doria to Portugal. I heard it was stolen from Ceuta.’

  ‘Was it?’ said Nicholas.

  ‘While you were away.’

  ‘In Lisbon,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘I heard you once claimed it was yours. Is that the same
ship?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Nicholas. ‘This is the Ghost out of Seville, with a Spanish master who likes ogling ladies. I said you were busy, but if you wish I could ask him back over.’

  ‘I think you should,’ said Gelis van Borselen. He was trying to think what to say when the whistle blew again. Blew, not chirruped. He drew a deep breath.

  Gelis van Borselen continued to view him. He wondered how she kept her eyes from watering. ‘Simon,’ she said. ‘He knows ships. He knows his father’s ship. Let him tell us.’

  Chapter 13

  THIS TIME, THERE WAS no concealing that something was going to happen. The music died, and the laughter. Nicholas stood, collecting the attention of Gregorio and Father Godscalc and Loppe, all of whom got to their feet and came quietly to join him. One of his men ran towards him. He was smiling.

  ‘Signor, the viceregal barge for the demoiselle and her attendants. They are loading the boxes. Captain Zarco has sent a gentleman to attend them. Here he is.’

  Nicholas had time to feel enormous relief, and astonishment that he had forgotten, and time even to register that whatever he might like to believe, his meeting with Simon was something that occupied most of his thoughts. Then – ‘Here I am,’ said David de Salmeton, walking softly from the head of the ladder and resting his dark, long-lashed gaze on Nicholas. ‘I do believe you’d forgotten me.’

  The brilliant light flamed on the jewels that buttoned his doublet, that weighted his fingers, that clasped the cunning drape of his hat below which his hair hung warmly curling, like Zacco’s.

  Nicholas didn’t know why now, and not in Lagos, he should be put in mind so suddenly of Cyprus and its King. Compared with the power of Zacco, David de Salmeton was a sinister toy: an ivory figurine possessing the same comeliness but without the fierce, immature courage. Perhaps David de Salmeton had courage. Perhaps maturity was courage, but it didn’t wring the heart, as the King’s did. On the other hand, David de Salmeton didn’t come with a mace in his grasp, or a leopard, or a sword with which to cut off a Mameluke’s head for a friend. Or with a lure for a hawk, or a woman.

  David de Salmeton said softly, ‘You have forgotten me,’ and Nicholas turned, and brought him into the company.

  The feast was over. The agent seated himself, wine in hand, between Nicholas and Gelis van Borselen, while boxes appeared and were hoisted below to the barge. The agent smiled. ‘Now do tell me. Voices carry so. You were speaking about the Doria?’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Nicholas said. ‘Have you dined? There is a good piece of beef and some puddings left.’ He spoke French, as de Salmeton had. He recognised, with sorrow, that the man would understand Flemish and Scots. The girl’s face, as he watched, became animated.

  ‘You heard me speak of the Doria,’ Gelis said. ‘The Ghost seems her very double, although Monsieur Niccolò doesn’t agree. And perhaps he should know, since her master has privately called on him.’

  ‘They tell me her lines are the same,’ David de Salmeton remarked. ‘But, they say, she is painted a different colour.’

  ‘And, I am sure, would be very different within,’ Nicholas said. ‘You came in the Fortado?’

  ‘And sailed past the Ghost, spar to spar. Some of our crew had seen Monsieur de Ribérac’s vessel in Lagos, and wanted to swear the two ships were the same. But who could tell, except one who had sailed in her?’ He moved his grave, liquid gaze. ‘Perhaps one may be found to examine her, less busy than Monsieur Nikko?’

  ‘I dare say,’ Nicholas said. ‘Why not ask Diniz Vasquez, who sailed in her from Cyprus? Where is he?’

  ‘Or his Uncle Simon?’ the young woman said. ‘Son of Jordan de Ribérac? Where is he?’

  A manicured eyebrow rose by a whisker. The agent said, ‘I fear almost to answer you both. The boy has sped, so I hear, to his father’s quinta at Ponta do Sol. The lord Simon is not on the island, having gone home, his business completed. So, if the Ghost is to be identified, other experts must do it. They should be easily found.’

  He appeared to be assessing his wine cup. Beyond the vacated benches around them, Nicholas saw Gregorio’s face, and that of the priest. Near at hand Gelis, too, was looking at him. Gelis said, ‘Am I to do all the work?’

  ‘It’s your family,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘Any day of the week, you may have St Pol Simon with pleasure. So?’ She turned to the agent. ‘What business has the lord Simon completed, apart from digesting his meals? His sister assumed there would be none until Diniz arrived with her authority.’

  ‘The lady Lucia? Exquisite creature,’ said the broker. ‘But with her husband deceased, and Diniz, forgive me, a child, the lord Simon had to act in his own interests. He decided to sell what he could get out.’

  ‘What he could!’ Gelis said. ‘He owned half … The great booby’s sold half the business?’

  ‘Lend you a brick,’ Nicholas said automatically. The woman Bel glared at him. He was thinking.

  David de Salmeton seemed unaffected. He raised his free hand by a half-inch. ‘Simon is not of Portuguese birth. His permit to trade was subject to the whim of the Portuguese government, with whom his stock is not high, and he had a youth and a widow as partners. The St Pol plantations were his to sell, and the investments to realise.’

  ‘He sold them to you?’ said Nicholas suddenly. He wouldn’t have thought so, but for something he imagined he read in the other man’s face. It might have been irony.

  ‘Why, no,’ said David de Salmeton. ‘I was unable to tempt him. He was afraid, it seems, to add to our strength as his rival elsewhere.’

  ‘Well, he had some sense,’ said Gelis. ‘But that seems to be the extent of it. He should have sold to young Diniz. At the very least, he should have waited to talk to him.’

  ‘He had an unmatchable offer,’ said the agent. ‘Conditional on immediate acceptance. I regard his decision as sensible.’ His eyes had moved to Nicholas, with the same amused shadow behind them.

  ‘Any man would,’ Nicholas said. ‘To whom did he sell?’ To himself, his voice sounded over-clear, but that was because the tables were empty, and the sounds of hilarity no longer to be competed against. He thought, anyway, he guessed the answer.

  It came in the musical voice that was of a piece with the face and ringed hands, and at odds with the neat muscularity of the frame. ‘He chose the Lomellini of Genoa. You know them.’

  Nicholas knew them. He knew the Lomellini from Cyprus and Rhodes. He knew them from Bruges, where they engaged in trade for the Duchess of Burgundy. The Lomellini bought alum, and sent laden supply ships to Ceuta. Members of the Lomellini in Lisbon controlled the entire Portuguese exports of cork and cane sugar: their methods had forced the Vasquez lands out of profit until the Duchess’s secretary, a Vasquez, complained. Through intermarriage with Portuguese ladies of birth, the Lomellini had obtained naturalisation. Here on Madeira, the brothers Urbano and Baptista cultivated great estates, and sold wine and sugar and honey in Europe. They also sent vessels to Africa.

  Through its favour at court, St Pol & Vasquez had been able to hold its own among the two hundred families permitted to exploit Madeira. Even now Tristão was dead, his son might have done as well, with the help of his factor, and the support of his partner and uncle. Now, without the St Pol money and assets, Diniz was left with a broken-backed heritage.

  For a moment, Nicholas looked out to sea. Simon had sent him an ultimatum and he had come west to meet it, not knowing if he would escape with his life; or if, in saving his Bank, there would come a time when he had to choose between that and the family his mother had married into.

  Simon had issued a challenge. Simon had come and, wittingly or not, had destroyed the livelihood of his sister and nephew. And then he had gone, without waiting for Nicholas. Simon the athlete; the jouster finer than he would ever be. Simon, who had won every fight they had ever had in the past and who had, but didn’t know it, the ultimate reason to kill him. So why wasn
’t he here?

  The flash of a cup warned him, but half its wine still struck his shoulder; then Gelis tossed the pewter on to the board. She said, ‘Oh good, Claes, I have your attention. Of course, you and the Vatachino planned this between you.’

  He let the wine drip while, thinking, he looked at her. Surprise flashed across de Salmeton’s face and softened into something else. The agent said, ‘I can see, to be sure, it might seem so. We both benefit. I have to say, however, that the outcome was an accident. My instructions were to buy St Pol & Vasquez for the Vatachino. The lord Simon refused me; a pity. An even greater pity, I thought, should the company fall to some arriviste Venetian Bank. Urbano Lomellini agreed with me. He made a winning offer, and showed himself glad of my counsel. My dear Monsieur Nikko, your doublet is ruined.’

  ‘I have another,’ Nicholas said. The barge was ready. The tramping had ceased and Bel of Cuthilgurdy was standing at her mistress’s shoulder, with the boy Filipe lurking behind.

  Gelis spoke to her without turning. ‘Simon has sold his share of the company. For how big a nest egg, I wonder? Enough, I suppose, to farm out his son, and keep himself in comfort in Scotland. How thoughtful you’ve been, Monsieur de Salmeton. How much did you advise he should get?’

  ‘You would have to ask Urbano Lomellini,’ said de Salmeton. ‘One regrets.’

  ‘One will regret when I have reversed the agreement,’ Gelis van Borselen said. She rose, her gaze sharpening on Nicholas. She said, ‘No collusion? Prove it, then. Come with me and help me cancel the bargain.’

  Tardily, David de Salmeton rose to his complete, charming, miniature height. ‘My dear demoiselle! The transaction is over. Simon has already removed all the sum that was owed him. And even if he had not, you should beware of asking Monsieur Nikko to help you. He covets your dead sister’s business.’

  Nicholas moved, but Gelis spoke immediately. ‘Simon has taken his money? In specie?’

  ‘In gold,’ the broker said. ‘And in venture shares. They may well attract a fine return. There may be money to spare for his sister.’