‘Gao?’ she had said. They had formed a habit of meeting, always in the presence of his family. He found her advice of value and even of profit; she did not object when some not insubstantial gift came her way. You might almost say they had entered a partnership.
‘Gao? No,’ he had said. ‘The Songhai are rather too powerful. Although, of course, it is a place of importance, where the trade leaves for Egypt and Tripoli. Your lord Niccolò will pass through Gao and Kano.’
‘I believe he has passed through Kano,’ she said – she could not resist saying.
The Arab had kept silence. Then he said, ‘I salute, of course, the hardihood of your friends. Had they chosen to go to Egypt, it would not have been difficult. The desert routes, despite their dangers, are known. Through Air, he could have proceeded by the old pilgrim highway to Azawa, Ghat, Murzak, Aujila, Siwa to Cairo. There are salt caravans which pass from Air to Bilma and back and are so common that the peaks near Bilma – do you know? – sing to warn when the camels are coming. But south of Kano … There you leave the land fit for camels, the land of Muslims, and enter the rainforests which have few tracks, and are the province of pagans. I have known only one man who has ever tried to go to Ethiopia from Timbuktu, and he did not come back.’
He paused. ‘You wait, madonna. How long will you wait?’
‘Until October,’ Gelis had said. ‘I have to go from Timbuktu in October, or the caravel which expects us will leave.’
‘It is July,’ had said the Arab thoughtfully. ‘If your friends have not turned by now, they will never come back in time.’
By August, Gregorio was in Lagos for the second time. The first time, he had merely paused there, to deliver Diniz and Bel to the ecstatic Lucia de Vasquez before sailing with Melchiorre north to Lisbon. There he had made his accounting with the King of Portugal, and sold the San Niccolò’s cargo.
He would like to have taken the bullion to Flanders, but there was no time. The price he got in Lisbon was good enough – all Europe was screaming for gold – and by horse and by ship, a bill of exchange could travel faster than a box on a galley. He knew how much to send to Bruges, and how much to Venice. He knew there was no time to waste.
He would have liked, also, to have bought the caravel, but there was not enough money for that. He hired her for another year, and the King made the terms easy, and also the loan arrangements which would permit him to buy his next cargo. So he had lost little in the markets, after all.
When it was all finished, he spent a night at Sintra with Diogo Gomes, who enjoyed the news of Madeira, but listened to what Melchiorre had to tell with hunger in his eyes. At the end he had said, ‘And vander Poele – he is still in Timbuktu?’
‘Until the autumn,’ Gregorio said. ‘You will hear the adventure from his own lips when he comes back next spring. And meantime, you must come south and call on young Diniz. You have a fine young Portuguese explorer there.’
For the sake of the market – why else? – the expedition to Ethiopia was not to be mentioned. The King, of course, had wanted news, but Gregorio had merely replied that the distance seemed greater than was at first thought, and the journey impracticable. The King had not demurred, any more than he had expressed dramatic regret at the loss of Jorge da Silves, potential Knight of the Order of Christ. Gregorio had not said how he died. And the King, with the gold in his lap, was not overmuch distressed by either occurrence.
Gregorio spent some time with other lawyers, establishing his Bank’s intention to challenge the ownership of the empty roundship now called the Ghost, and also their proposal to take to court the joint owners of the caravel Fortado for her actions in the river Gambia and elsewhere. He met the lawyers for the Vatachino, but neither David de Salmeton nor Martin was there. He said nothing to anyone of that fact that the Ghost had carried a cargo, and no one, even Diogo Gomes, even seemed to have considered the possibility.
Everyone else who might know anything had gone. Simon de St Pol had long since passed through Lisbon on his way from Madeira, returning, it was concluded, to Scotland or France. Michael Crackbene and the boy Filipe had vanished, but that was not surprising, given the coming case against the Fortado.
Even less surprisingly, there was no trace of Ochoa de Marchena and his crew. There seemed no doubt, by now, that if Ochoa had purloined the gold, it had not been to keep it safely for Nicholas. The Ghost herself lay in dry dock, and Gregorio was not permitted to view her.
The next time he left Madeira, it was to co-ordinate the refitting of the San Niccolò at Lagos, and to complete the arrangements for her cargo. He took the same house as before, empty this time of Nicholas and Godscalc and Jorge da Silves.
And of Loppe. He could not get used to calling him Umar, as Diniz did. He could not get used, either, to what Diniz had told him about Loppe. About the slaves, first of all. And then about how he had joined Raffaelo Doria, and led him to his death. To preserve the secret of Wangara, Diniz had said.
Gregorio had refrained from asking the questions which plagued him. Had Loppe promised to lead Nicholas to Wangara if Nicholas indulged him over the slaves? Or had he only promised to act as his guide, knowing what Nicholas would expect, but determined to baulk him? If Doria had not been there, would Loppe have had to decide between Wangara and Nicholas?
These were matters Gregorio would discuss with Godscalc, perhaps, but not with young Diniz, and especially not since he had discovered Diniz knew who Nicholas was, or was not. Since that one, unexpected exchange, Gregorio had found Diniz mute on the subject of Nicholas. Mute and anxious.
Gregorio had only called once on Lucia de St Pol e Vasquez, and then on his return voyage, when she should have recovered from the shock and delight of her son’s return, and the considerable pleasure of discovering that the Vasquez estate had a little money again, and might have more. He had also had no wish to find Simon de St Pol living there, with his obstreperous child.
Simon he now knew had not even stopped to see his sister on his way north. The child had stayed, he discovered, and then had been sent for.
‘How should I know where Henry has gone?’ Lucia said. ‘They sent a nurse for him, and an elaborate escort. You would think he was the vicomte already.’ Bereavement – even mistaken bereavement – had made her a little stouter, although the golden hair was still perfectly coifed and her morning gown and linen immaculate. There were lines round her mouth.
She added, ‘I suppose you met the child? Then you know. An ogre. I told Bel, really, not to trouble.’
‘Bel?’ said Gregorio. She was the real reason why he had called. He hadn’t seen her.
‘Bel insisted on joining the party travelling with Henry. First to Ribérac, and then somewhere else.’
‘To Ribérac? To his grandfather Jordan?’
‘I told her Simon would be furious,’ Lucia said. ‘He’s training Henry to be the first champion jouster in napkins. You know all this madness was for Henry? Simon sold the estate and invested in the Fortado to make money for Henry? The idea of losing it in some sort of court case, I tell you, is driving him mad.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gregorio said.
‘No! Don’t be,’ said Lucia with elegant spite. ‘A dynasty founded by that child? I think they should present Henry to the van Borselen family. They wanted him. They sent the girl Gelis.’
‘You think he’d make a good merchant?’ said Gregorio. His smile felt artificial, even to him.
‘I don’t think he’d make a good anything,’ Lucia said. ‘He’s too like his father.’
At the end, she said, ‘And so, when does the San Niccolò sail for the gold?’
‘In October,’ Gregorio said. ‘With a new master, and a good clerk, and a pilot who can make use of our charts. She’ll arrive in Cantor in December, and bring Gelis and Godscalc and Nicholas back. I can’t go with her: I must go to Bruges.’
‘I don’t want Diniz to go,’ Lucia said. ‘He is not to go back to Guinea.’
‘I know he thought of
it. If you like,’ Gregorio said, ‘I could take him to Bruges. I need help. Jaime will do very well in Madeira without us.’
He wondered if she would object. Bruges was connected with Nicholas. A year ago, she had been convinced that Nicholas was trying to kill all her family. Presumably, he thought, she had observed that Diniz and Gelis had survived, and that the person most worth despising was Simon. He waited.
‘Perhaps I could come to Bruges too,’ Lucia said.
Gregorio clung to the smile. It was what his orders required. He had hoped, truth to tell, to sidestep this particular order. ‘Why …’ he said. ‘Why, of course.’
In the second week of September, when Zuhra was five months pregnant but hardly showed it, Umar invited himself to the house he had taken for Gelis van Borselen and, leaving his shoes in the garden, followed her servant into the largest chamber, where she sat surrounded by carpets. It had been coarse cloth, chigguiya, last time. He came and knelt smiling before her. He said, ‘You know we don’t make anything in this city. We buy from one man, and sell to another.’
‘You make books,’ she said, looking up. In the heat, she dressed mostly as Zuhra did, in a single garment of cotton, with one of coloured silk to wear over it in public. In private, in the steam baths and pools and lounging-rooms of other women she often went bare, he knew from Zuhra, and probably did so here, too. She had made for herself a way of living in an environment as different as Europe had been for him. He knew how much fortitude it needed – and even more how much energy, how much understanding, and how much intelligence. He could not understand why, with all that, she had not left Nicholas alone.
They never spoke of him. They spoke a lot of Timbuktu, and all that concerned it. She saw it not just as an exchange mart, a centre of peace, of learning, of wisdom, of retreat, of happiness, although she recognised all these things. She wanted to give it more: a wealth of its own. Even though the carpets around her were poorly woven and inadequately dyed, she contemplated them, frowning, to see how they could be made better.
Umar said, ‘Gelis. We make books and copy them. Is that not enough?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Books can walk. If Akil demands more than his third for the army, if a caravan fails to arrive, or the Joliba floods at the wrong season, then books can leave Timbuktu and make their home anywhere. Wealthy scholars find it easy to leave. But artisans who supply swords and slippers and good dyed cloth can survive on little, and will stay, and so will the heart of the city.’
‘I think perhaps,’ said Umar slowly, ‘you are becoming at home in this place. Do you want to go back?’
She looked at him. To be truthful, her eyes always made him uneasy by their paleness, and the unexpected lines of brown lashes, all of it framed by the pallid, wheat-coloured hair. She appeared as if coated with sugar; while within, something quite different was rooted.
She said, ‘Do I want to go back? I dream of nothing else.’
‘Very well,’ he said.
He had no need to say more. She looked up. ‘Ah. You have come to tell me there is no news, and that there are therefore decisions to be made. I am sorry, Umar. I should have guessed. Come in. Let us leave this, and talk.’
She was brave, of course, and had considered the possibility that she might have to set out for the Gambia on her own. She would have to leave Timbuktu in three weeks at the most, to make the long journey back along the course of the Joliba, and then down to the Gambia with the gold. ‘I shall come to Cantor,’ Umar said. ‘And the Timbuktu-Koy has promised a boat and many men, strongly armed, from his own bodyguard. The San Niccolò, which will be waiting, will have her own artillery and far more than her usual complement.’
‘I know,’ Gelis said.
Of course she, too, had read all those meticulous pages. Once before, in Trebizond, Umar had read such a list of directives, when sure that Nicholas was not going to return.
Umar said, ‘There is still time. They are late, but the Niccolò can wait for a little. Not for long, but a little. The unrest may even have helped. If Godscalc found the path doubly barred, he might have had to turn back the sooner. Then all that would hamper them would be the rains.’
Gelis said, ‘You never thought they could get there.’
‘No,’ Umar said. ‘Nor did they. Father Godscalc had determined to try it for the sake of his faith, and to save others. And Nicholas went to protect him.’
‘And not for the River of Gems?’ Gelis said. Her smile drew the sting, or appeared to.
‘He needed the gold for his Bank,’ Umar said. ‘And now he has it. Who knows what desires he has now? What drew him, or what will bring him back?’
Gelis said, ‘I think he is dead.’ And looking at those bleak, Baltic eyes, he saw that she had spoken, for once, her true mind.
On the lower Joliba, which men called the river of rivers, Gher Nigheren, the villagers paid some lip-service to Allah, and slightly more to the holy man who came and killed chickens and foretold the size of the maize crop next year. They had, however, learned that Allah, or his servants, liked to know when true Believers met their death, so that words might be said over them by men with their heads bound in cloth and a leather parcel hung round their necks and the necks of their horses. Therefore they sent word up the river when bearers arrived carrying the remains of two men who were certainly Tuareg in some part of their blood, going by their colour, and the shapes of their noses.
Not that either their colour or the original shapes of their noses could clearly be distinguished, as they had been found in the forest, where the hyenas had certainly had a look at them; and where, before that, they had been systematically attacked by both spear and axe, and perhaps by arrows, since the limbs of the older man were both discoloured and distended in places. But that might have been because the bones in both his upper and lower arms had been broken, and most of the bones of his fingers.
The younger man displayed, too, the gouges and hack-wounds of recent battle, but also the signs of older injuries, and with them an extremity of exhaustion which suggested other causes. That one lay without sound or movement, but the older Maghgrebian, when first brought in, muttered a little.
Dead and dying, the unfortunate men had no money and no possessions and, indeed, might not have been identified as Tuareg except that it was a Friday, and someone from upriver came into the mosque, where the bodies had been laid out to keep them out of the rain, although the walls had begun to dissolve, and the straw of the roof had seen better days.
But it could be seen, of course, that the community’s intentions were good, and messages had been sent off straight away, and straight away answered. They were ordered to carry the two corpses immediately towards Timbuktu, from which city great (and generous) men were setting out already to meet them.
A man and a woman couldn’t travel as quickly as drumbeats. Umar brought men and camels and – in eternal hope – a physician; he and Gelis raced with them down the side of the shallow, rock-strewn, inimical river until they heard the sounds of chanting and horns, and saw the drift of men and women and children strolling cheerfully towards them, with a herd of goats, a hump-backed ox, and two litters.
Umar swung himself down, ignoring the greetings, the people pressing around him, laughing and singing. He used his shoulders to push through the crowd to the litters. A goat stood astride one.
Gelis got down more slowly, and didn’t come forward as Umar drew back the first rain-sodden blanket.
Beneath it was what had been the vigorous bulk of Godscalc of Cologne. The eyes in the misshapen face were intact, and were open. Umar looked down. Godscalc said, ‘He is not dead.’
His eyes had not changed, nor his lips moved. The words, in Flemish, were nothing but breath. Umar said, ‘I hear you. Dear friend, I have you under my hand, and I thank your God and mine.’ Then, answering some pleading in the open eyes, he turned to the other.
He knew, by then, that Gelis had run forward and had knelt beside Godscalc and that the physician,
too, had forced his way through. He kept his back to the girl, and unfolded the cloth, soaked with blood, that lay over Nicholas. He heard the doctor’s voice, speaking gently to Godscalc, and then felt Gelis behind him. Her eyes were turned away. She said, ‘Tell me.’
Umar looked down, unspeaking. He touched the cold skin.
There seemed nothing familiar about the bloodless face, turned to one side, its saucer eyes closed and pushed about by blackened pillows of flesh, scored with white contusions, so that the eyelashes stuck out at unnatural angles. Half his face was raw and marbled, like meat on a stall, and his swollen lips were stuck fast together. Nicholas could not have spoken, even if the bloody mess of his body was an illusion; even if he had been alive. Then Umar saw a shadow move, small as a mite on the torn flesh of the neck, and then a bead of fresh blood.
He said, ‘He is alive, but …’ He stopped, for the physician pushed him aside. Umar rose.
Gelis said, ‘But?’
The doctor said, ‘I can do nothing here. We must take them back quickly. The camel-litters are steady.’
‘But?’ said Gelis again. Her skin was so pale it looked dead.
‘But?’ said the physician testily. ‘But I do not know if either will survive the journey. As it is, this one should not be alive.’
He was referring to Nicholas. Umar thought, as he stepped forward to take the weight of the strapping, how many people had said that of Nicholas, through all his brief life. And he wondered whether it was by their wish or his own, that this had happened. Some of the hostility Nicholas generated had been his own fault, but not all. It was a heavy burden for a man to carry unless he were very sure of himself, and Umar doubted whether Nicholas had ever been as sure as he seemed. That was – that had been – his saving grace.
Chapter 34
SEPTEMBER CAME TO an end, and no long procession of bearers left the Metropolis of Negroland to journey south-west to the sea with the possessions of Nicholas vander Poele, Gelis van Borselen and Father Godscalc of Cologne, accompanied by four thousand pounds’ weight of pure gold.
Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 53