‘And the Fortado,’ said Father Godscalc.
‘Yes,’ said Jorge da Silves. ‘It is one reason why it is advisable to keep that vessel in sight. We trust she will do her business and turn, but the season is early. She may decide to linger, hoping for more. She may decide to find more for herself. And that is why it is better, Senhor Diniz, to have her ahead rather than following us.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Father Godscalc.
‘Because, padre,’ said Jorge da Silves, ‘they may think that your Lopez has been persuaded to give up the secret.’
On shipboard, the second gathering of the day was at sunset – or perhaps the first, since that was when the new day was deemed to begin. Then the steam rose from the cooking-pots, and dishes of eggs would go round, and maize bread to dip in the stew, and a pail full of oysters, with all the usual hilarity directed at Bel who, in return, would explode like a good-humoured missile. After supper the air became cold and all but those serving the ship turn by turn through the night withdrew behind doors, or between decks, and soon slept.
Until that time, it was hard to find privacy, and what Godscalc wished to say to Nicholas was not for other ears – even those few who understood Flemish. He waited, therefore, until the ship was quiet and the after-deck empty but for Fernão standing stolidly at the helm with one of the boys in attendance.
Nicholas, in fact, elected to climb to the tiller before him, alarming Filipe and causing Loppe, who had been standing unseen in the shadows, to step into Godscalc’s view. Godscalc hung back. He was therefore in the uncomfortable position of hearing Loppe move forward and address Nicholas by name from below.
Nicholas turned, his hair flickering in the light from the binnacle. Loppe said, ‘You don’t want me?’ in Flemish. The helmsman and the boy were both watching.
Nicholas said, ‘Come up.’
Loppe ran up the steps, his skin black on black, and only the vast leather jacket he wore dimly visible. He said, ‘You think I am so easily influenced? There is no need to avoid me.’ He smiled at the helmsman, who smiled back.
‘I suppose not,’ Nicholas said. ‘You are all sons of Adam, as we are.’
Loppe laughed, the sound rumbling softly in his deep chest. He said, ‘Oh, the bitterness! Very well. But I beg to share your apple as well as have you stung by my serpent. I shall not hold it against you if you smile.’
Nicholas stared at him. He said, ‘Jesus son of David, I am preserving your sensibilities, you interfering bloman.’
‘And when the time comes, I shall do whatever I choose. Does that annoy you as much as I hope?’
‘Hosanna to thee, suffering Africa,’ Nicholas said. ‘I don’t know why I listen to you. Especially as someone else seems to be listening too. Behind you. Oh. Father Godscalc?’
‘As you unfortunately see,’ Godscalc said. ‘I was on my way to talk to you also. Probably on the same subject.’
There was a little silence. Then, ‘Oh dear,’ Nicholas said. ‘The two ladies ought to be here; they are extremely adept at exploiting this vein. I assume it is the same vein? The Sun and I alone know the boy is beautiful?’
‘Nicholas?’ said Loppe. ‘You won’t divert him that way.’
‘What do you want me to do, then?’ Nicholas said.
‘Why not tell me the truth?’ Godscalc said. ‘What has Loppe promised to do?’
Nicholas said very slowly, ‘Loppe is not required to make promises. And I don’t exact them.’ In the bows of the ship, someone suddenly screamed.
Nicholas gripped the rail. A whistle blew. A man shouted, and then several others, and there came a pounding of feet and the voice of Vicente, yelling commands to the helmsman, to the mariners, to his deputy. The sheets of the mainsail flew free and the trumpet started to stutter and blare, summoning the full crew from below. Men ran forward, poles in their hands; the lead splashed and splashed in wider casts, and the mizzen also spilled its wind suddenly. A great shudder ran all through the ship, and a jolt that threw Godscalc to the deck, followed by another. He saw Jorge da Silves running towards him, and stagger as the ship lurched again. There came a squealing of timber.
‘A reef,’ Nicholas said. ‘Not a sandbank, a reef. How could there be one in this place?’
The helmsman turned, livid with shock. The two boats, bobbing behind, had men and cable in them already, and the capstan was being rigged. The boy Filipe, staggering back, had flung an arm round the mizzenmast. He was whiter than the man, and was whimpering. Nicholas looked at him. Then he looked at the binnacle.
Loppe said, ‘Nicholas, come. We must find out the damage.’
Nicholas said, ‘You did that before.’ He wasn’t speaking to Loppe.
The boy whimpered again, but mixed with the whimper was a wild snigger.
Nicholas said, ‘When she ran aground before. You did that.’
Godscalc picked himself up and strode forward. The whole deck was tilting. He could hardly hear himself speak for the uproar. Loppe, after waiting, had flung off to help with the anchor. Godscalc said, ‘Filipe did this? What are you talking about?’
‘Fornicator with blackamoors,’ Filipe suddenly said. His voice was thin and breathless and girlish. ‘Common scullion. My father would chain you to his …’ His voice petered away. On his face, stiff and forgotten, was a defiant grin.
‘I am talking about this,’ Nicholas said; and delivered a blow that travelled straight from the shoulder.
Against the hubbub below, the boy’s screams were hardly heard, except by Godscalc and the petrified helmsman and by Jorge da Silves who was stopped by them, while leaping up to the helm. Stopped by the screams, and by the crunch of fine breaking glass, and by the sight of the blood that welled black through the sobbing boy’s shirt and under his arms as he hugged himself.
There was fresh blood, too, on the hand that Nicholas let drop to his side. He said nothing, but watched as reddened clots of sand slid to the deck from the boy’s clothing. Jorge da Silves saw them too. His features, always grim, became waxlike. He drew back his arm, his knuckles stark, his eyes on the boy’s twitching face.
Nicholas stopped him. ‘Later. Padre, lock him below. And come back. I may need you to prevent me from doing anything stupid.’
It was a long night that followed, for the San Niccolò had hitched herself on her reef at slack water with the ebb still to come, and she had the choice, it first seemed, of sliding off with her holed bottom and sinking, or of staying stuck and breaking her back. In the end, the carpenters worked like bullocks down in the bilges and had her sufficiently sound to keep out the water by the time the boats had found a secure bed for their anchor.
Unfortunately, by then the ebb had reached such a state that it would have done the grounded ship as much damage again to warp her free. All they could do was haul up the contents of their wood store and make legs of it, to shore up their pretty new caravel until the flood came with the daylight. And even then their troubles were hardly over, for the day brought a fresh blowing of sand, and the men straining at the bars of the capstan could hardly open their mouths to chant, never mind give it their best effort. In the end, all that scudded along was the anchor, while the ship stayed firmly stuck until the next tide, when Jorge da Silves went out himself to seek better holding, and ended by manning both boats and succeeding in towing the San Niccolò backwards until she floated, scuffed and scarred and with some curious great patches below the waterline. Then, her sails set, she took up her journey south once again.
At the supper that followed, no one mentioned the Fortado, long since vanished. The crew, early fed, were asleep on deck but for the watch and so were the black passengers, who willy-nilly had worked their passage now towards the Gambia. The horses, exhausted by fright, drowsed below, all except one thrown by the collision, which had had to be dispatched with a hatchet. At the table, the master sat red-eyed and silent, and Diniz dozed beside Godscalc until sent to bed by Bel of Cuthilgurdy. The master excused himself, and then Loppe.
Godscalc stayed, with the two women and Nicholas.
Godscalc said, ‘So what about Filipe?’
‘Ah,’ said Nicholas. ‘The court of enquiry.’ His voice seemed rather flat, but he was not a man who needed much sleep, and he looked less fatigued in some ways than Bel or young Gelis who, besides the cook’s work, had set their hands to a number of tasks not normally included in the education of well-bred ladies from Flanders and Scotland.
The thought reminded Godscalc of what Filipe had shouted last night. He had resented discipline, and feared it, and yet weakly invited it. Most of all, of proud Portuguese blood, he had resented discipline imposed by a dyeworks apprentice. Everyone who knew the St Pol family, Godscalc imagined, would have been told the origins of the lord Niccolò vander Poele, Knight of the Sword. Godscalc said, ‘A personal enquiry: it is not for me to go further. How could Filipe run us aground?’
‘Mechanically or morally?’ Nicholas said. ‘Morally, because he has very small scruples, and they haven’t descended yet. Mechanically, because he was in charge of the hour-glass. The ship’s course depends on its accuracy: if it isn’t properly kept, you can’t trust to your place on the chart. The glass can be made to lie by rough seas. Also, boys can speed the sand and shorten their watch by warming the glass in their shirts. The wind is cool and unpleasant these nights, and the helmsman gets sleepy. I should have noticed it sooner.’
‘Did Filipe realise what might happen?’ said Bel.
And Nicholas said, ‘I think it unlikely,’ which Godscalc conceived to be as good a lie as he had heard from him. From the lack of any following question, he guessed that Bel and even the girl guessed as much, too, and were impressed. He wished he didn’t know that beneath everything Nicholas said and did there existed fathoms of labyrinthine calculation. Abruptly, he got up to leave, and with a little weariness found that Bel, normally welcome, had risen and was leaving along with him.
In the big, empty cabin Nicholas, too, made to move and then changed his mind, since he and Gelis had been abandoned, he assumed, for a purpose. They sat at opposite ends of the same couchette with the uncovered lamp of palm oil glimmering on a plate of bones and another of oyster shells: he had already wiped his knife and put it away. At sea, and in this season, there were very few insects.
She was consuming dates from a bowl in a meditative fashion. He was aware that her hair was tightly coifed in linen as usual, and that she wore one of her plain, shortened serge gowns powdered as usual with dust. Since he rejoined the ship she had made no effort, except on the Fortado, to appear feminine; and indeed he got through most days without actually looking at her, since in that way he was never taken unawares by some resemblance.
Most of the time, in any case, he was not thinking of her at all but rather, as just now, of a number of things he had to do, including visit Filipe in his cell and put the fear of God into him. He already knew what he was going to do to settle the problem of Filipe, which was to promote the appalling lout Lázaro to the rank of mariner. He didn’t deserve it, and it would take weeks to train him, but it would part the two boys and send Filipe, with any luck, looking for a new exemplar. Meanwhile, the quickest way with Gelis van Borselen was sometimes the shortest one. Nicholas said, ‘What are we supposed to be talking about?’
She tilted her head and, rounding her lips, spat a date stone clear across the chamber to where Jorge’s armour hung on the bulwark, without hats or parrots. The article bounced, pinging melodiously, from his Portuguese helm. She said, ‘I thought you would know. He’s your priest. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, without doing it. ‘No. Whoever is in collusion with me at the moment, it is not Father Godscalc. So what does Mistress Bel expect us to talk about?’
‘Let me guess,’ Gelis said. She took another date and held it point upwards absently, as if about to work out a problem with chalk. Then she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and ate it. ‘Unless you’re supposed to talk me out of travelling inland. Your man Lopez says we are about to turn into the river-mouth and sail the caravel right up the Gambia.’ She spat. A cuirass complained briefly in alto.
‘As far as it’s navigable, yes.’
‘For at least two hundred miles, Diniz says. Then you somehow cross to the river Joliba, which is large, and flows east, and may lead you to Ethiopia. If you intend to go to Ethiopia.’
‘That’s why Father Godscalc is here,’ Nicholas said. He picked up the pallid stones, looked at them, and dropped them into the oyster dish. Gelis took a fresh date. She looked struck.
She said, ‘Of course! It’s Father Godscalc I’m supposed to be helping. All the time we were on the Ghost, Bel was warming him under her pinions. Father Godscalc has to return with his mission fulfilled, and Bel wants to know your intentions.’
‘So tell her to ask me,’ said Nicholas.
‘You’d lie to her,’ the girl said. She licked her fingers.
‘I might,’ he said. ‘I might not. I think quite a lot of Mistress Bel.’
‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is magnanimous. She and I think quite a lot of you; but perhaps in a different sense. We both think you are only here to seek out and establish control of the gold, and that you will abandon the mission party, or divert the mission party, almost immediately.’
‘Have you a Bible?’ said Nicholas. ‘No? Jorge’s crucifix there?’ He enunciated carefully. ‘I intend to stay with the caravel so long as she can navigate up the Gambia.’
‘I expect you will,’ Gelis said. ‘Because the gold is further inland, isn’t it? The mines can’t be near the coast. Diniz says the silent trade must be further inland even than that. And the Sahara caravan terminus bringing the salt from the north for the silent trade must be farther east still – perhaps a very great distance from here. So what about Jorge’s crucifix, and an undertaking that when you leave the caravel, you’ll be taking the track for Ethiopia, and ignoring everything else?’ She spat, and a greave buckle clicked. Her trajectory was moving all the time in his direction.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I did promise to tell you what our plans were, although not necessarily involving ratification by oath under threat of bombardment. If you hit the looking-glass, it will leave a most unpleasant mark.’ He could tell, by the altered movement, that the ship had changed her course slightly, and wished he could go out and look. He kept his voice sweet and patient, to annoy her.
‘I can tell you, and Godscalc knows, that the caravan terminus is thought to be somewhere along the course of the Joliba river, which is the way we propose to travel. If there’s gold there, I shall buy it, because I shall probably need it. The terminus must be some weeks away, and the journey from there to our Black Magus might be as much again, and over mountainous land no one knows. We shan’t get there by Epiphany.’
‘Or at all? You haven’t begun, and you’re saying that the mission is hopeless?’
‘I thought Bel wanted me to discourage you. In fact, we’ll try. If we get there, they’ll canonise Godscalc. If we don’t, we’ll bring back maps to help others. And on the way there are settlements he can visit. I’m told the local rulers convert fairly easily, given a pair of falcons and a consignment of handguns. The Holy Father should have hired the Fortado.’
‘You despise Godscalc,’ she said. ‘And these black people. And Lopez.’
‘I can’t help my humble childhood,’ Nicholas said. ‘And as for Godscalc, I don’t see any harm in paying a modicum for your beliefs and at least buying a hearing. After that, the message either sticks or it doesn’t.’
‘How eloquent. A statement of religious ecstasy, near enough, in terms of dyeyard philosophy,’ Gelis said. ‘So I shall assure Bel that the Pope and Godscalc have your complete and unqualified support. And will you light a candle tomorrow?’ She looked him in the eyes, a thing to beware of. The stone this time sailed past his ear.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow they would reach the southernmost port of their journey. Tomorrow they would arrive at the mouth of the
Gambia and confront the Fortado. Or not. Tomorrow the horses ought to be exercised, and the provisions checked, and the arms oiled and prepared, and the slaves supplied and given such directions as might help them. Four were leaving, and two were desirous of sailing with them upriver. ‘Tomorrow?’ said Nicholas.
‘Your Saint’s Day. You hadn’t forgotten?’
He had forgotten. Deliberately forgotten. He became slowly conscious that she was sitting gazing at him, her hand arrested on its way to the bowl. She said in a voice of horror, ‘Katelina died on that day?’
It startled him, that he had allowed the cast of his thinking to show. He said, ‘No, Gelis. No. Other things happened.’
‘And not pleasant ones,’ she said. ‘I can’t say I’m sorry.’
‘No. I am sorry enough for both of us.’ In Lagos, he had tried to initiate this conversation, and perhaps would again, but this was not the time. ‘It’s late,’ he said, but she was still seated, with that shrewd, considering stare. It struck him that their relationship was like that of two disputing men, one young and one older. Even in the grip of such an obsession, her mind had a cold, clear quality which surpassed, for example, anything the boy Diniz had shown. A mathematical mind, like young Tilde.
As if she had again guessed his thoughts Gelis remarked, ‘How old are you then? Twenty-four?’
He shrugged without answering, as the ship kicked. A strong cross-current: where would they be? He saw his lapse of attention strike and sting her.
‘And rich once more, and going to be richer. And powerful. But none of that matters to you as much as the way it happens. You worship duplicity for its own sake. You’ve grown up alone, because it suits you. You don’t have to discuss your real plans with anybody. Last night we ran on a reef. It’s probably the only event since we left Lagos that you haven’t personally set in train. No wonder Godscalc is sick of you.’
Nicholas leaned forward and picked up two oyster shells and a date. ‘No God is absent save Chance. What makes you think I didn’t plan the reef episode too?’ He bit the end of the date and then put it all into his mouth.
Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 30