Scales of Gold (51 page)

The river, half a mile wide, flowed to the north-east, where they were going. Vito, nimble and bright as a marmoset, had manufactured extra rigging and canopies and made them beds and partitions within the roomy, hooded interior. The paddles splashed, and the skins of goats’ milk and water swayed overhead, and from the long cooking-trough there floated back the warm smell of partridge roasting in Kalita butter, or the bubbling of a fine piece of perch, or pieces of fresh beef cut up among rice. Borne on the smooth breast of the Joliba, Bel and Diniz began to recover.

Godscalc no longer demanded to take his box ashore and carry the Cross to the princes of Guinea. It was not that the shores were unsafe, as were those they had found on the Gambia. Here, children played on the straw-littered strands, and women beat out their washing beside the twisting blue smoke of the earth-ovens, and herds of cattle, of camels, flocks of goats, lines of ponderous sheep picked their way through the scrub of the landscape. He saw men weaving cloth in the freshness of sundown: their looms like tangles of thorn by the waterside, their cotton as white as the egrets. That was before the bull-frogs took up their song, and the water-horses bellowed and splashed in the shallows, and the birds filled the air with their cries, wheeling like ash against a conflagration of sky and of river.

No, he didn’t refrain from going ashore because he was afraid, or because the need for haste wouldn’t allow it. There was no need for haste now. He abstained from the exercise of his mission because he had seen confirmed what he did not wish to believe: that he, a white man and a stranger, could not deliver his message to a simple people so alien. They heard him with fright. And even if they had received him with love and peace and full understanding, they were bound not to follow him, unless their King followed
him too. His was not a mission to his fellow men, who must be heedless as those screaming baboons. It was a message only for Zughalin and Gnumi Mansa and Bati Mansa and those other great lords such as Prester John, to whom he was an envoy, a person to pamper or kill.

But perhaps, most of all, he sat here with his faith locked within him because the people of these shores, he had been told, were practising Muslims, and that was Saloum’s creed. Once, he had despised Saloum for leading a priest to Gnumi Mansa. Now, he understood that he had saved all their lives.

He had asked Saloum what Timbuktu was like, but had learned only what he already guessed: that it was a place of trans-shipment; a terminus where the camels, ten thousand perhaps in a train, could rest and feed and take water while the goods they had brought from the desert were moved to the yards of the dealers, and from there to the boats by which they would be dispersed when the floods would allow. A place of seasonal haggling, and gold.
What your heart and your soul both have need of
, Lopez had incomprehensibly said.

He supposed Nicholas still needed gold, although he hadn’t said so: the journey had to be paid for, and the
Ghost
might not have arrived. Diniz, his shoulder still bound but dry and without inflammation, sometimes talked about that, and the surprise his mother would get when she found he had made her so rich, and how good Gregorio was, and what a fine job he and Jaime would make of the estate in Madeira now they could buy in more land. And how furious Simon would be, wherever he was, and the man David from the Vatachino. Diniz wished that everyone knew what had happened to Raffaelo Doria. He wished the same could happen to all the men still on the
Fortado
, including Michael Crackbene.

‘I don’t think you mean that,’ said Godscalc, but knew well, of course, that he did.

Vito also spoke with satisfaction about the fate of Doria, who had wanted to kill them all under that hut. He was less comfortable with what had happened to Jorge da Silves, who had been the ship’s master until he had decided to make his own way to the gold. It sometimes worried Vito to think that the traders who killed the signor’s men might be in this place Timbuktu, and angry with Signor Niccolò for being white, and of the same party that frightened the Wangara men into burning their goods.

Godscalc, who had had the same thoughts, said that he hoped that Saloum, whom they had freed, might protect them; and that the traders liked spectacles. If the place seemed too rough, they would simply pass it and proceed on their way.

‘To Ethiopia,’ Vito said, with a pleased, freckled smile. Although in awe of Nicholas, he had sailed with him all the way from Ancona and possessed for him an uncomplicated admiration, as well as a belief in all his works. Only now and then, when he saw a black lion motionless on the strand or a group of monsters with long marbled necks in a bush, he would speak of how he would shock all the oar-makers in Venice, but that they would never believe him. And he rambled on sometimes, too, about Melchiorre, who was the best fellow he knew, and likely to be recovering well on the
San Niccolò
, assuming that that King and his wives hadn’t exhausted him.

‘Perhaps,’ said Gelis, ‘we are all finding time to be homesick.’

‘Are you?’ Godscalc said.

‘I have no home to be sick for,’ she said.

He had never heard her speak before with self-pity. He thought perhaps she was frightened, for last night the river had been joined by another, and this morning both had gone, to be replaced by a sea: by a lake that stretched from one side of the sky to the other, interrupted by shallows and islands, by outcrops upon which cabins perched, and fishermen mended their nets, and women waded in rice, or pushed out their boats and went visiting from this islet to that.

‘It is only the season,’ he said. ‘Saloum says January is the time for the flood. We shall find the river again.’ That morning they had travelled through grass: a meadow of tall, rustling reeds below which water glinted. Driven by poles, the bark had sheared its way through them, leaving behind it a trail bright as mercury. They crossed other trails, seeing no one, but hearing the crackle of reeds all about them. Next, they had floated through acres of lilies, white and lilac and yellow. Godscalc said, ‘Are you sorry you came?’

In the shade, she had pulled off her headcloth. Her hair was bleached by the sun, the plaits smooth, although the threads of it curled at her temples. Her face, fined into hollows, was thin-skinned and brown, and so were her arms below the crumpled, bleached stuff of her cape. She said, ‘No. I promised myself that I would.’

‘And are you then glad?’ Godscalc said. ‘What have you learned?’

‘About Katelina?’ she said. Her eyes gleamed.

Nicholas was far ahead, in the bows, in the sun. ‘About this young man,’ Godscalc said, ‘who meant her no harm.’

‘That is the refrain Diniz sings me,’ she said. ‘Did you not ask yourself, before you came here, how many would die because of Nicholas? Is it an excuse you would permit, that sometimes it happens by accident?’

If she were less clever, he supposed, she would be happier. And those around her as well. He said, ‘But at least you accept, then, that your sister’s death was an accident? For if you do, your duty must be forgiveness. Does he not grieve, do you suppose? Does he not grieve for his friend at this moment?’

‘You trust him,’ she said.

He wondered what to say, for she was waiting, amused, for a lie. One could never trust Nicholas, not entirely. Nicholas himself had told Lopez not to trust him, and Lopez had not. It made no difference, in the end. Nicholas had made his way to the silent market for gold. Doria and Lopez and Jorge had taken the risks. It was not because of bad planning that the gold had not been there.

But that was nonsense. Godscalc said, ‘I trust him in the things he believes in, which are not, in my view, to be despised. Ask Mistress Bel.’

‘Yes,’ said Gelis. ‘He is afraid of her. So, are we close?’

‘I think,’ said Father Godscalc, ‘that we have come two-thirds of the way.’

The last two hundred miles were not difficult, which Nicholas found irritating, being a person who derived satisfaction from problems. He was not unaware of the murmur of gossip under the hood, and took it as evidence that his charges were rested and fed and recovering. He exchanged pleasantries with them all – which he could hardly avoid, even with fifty feet of timber to roam through – and they always ate under the hood, especially when the gnats hummed and whined in the evening. They had always been apt to afflict him but, shrouded as they all were in cotton, he did well enough.

In any case, once they found the river again, they were able to move much more swiftly. Sooner than he expected, he began to see dunes on the left bank, and although there were still patches of green, and the right bank was florid as ever, there was no doubt that they had come far north as well as far to the east, and very soon now would be touching the desert.

It was cooler again, and he slept better. That was to say, he never slept a great deal, but latterly had found the knack of resting elude him. Now he fell once or twice into thorough slumber, from which he awoke with a headache. The only person who noticed was Bel, who spent her days peacefully under the hood, reduced in size and in colour but not in spirit. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. She had cultivated the company of the chicken the crew kept for good luck, and it sat on her lap, making messes.

‘Too much sunshine,’ he said. ‘We are having lungfish. Vito caught one.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Bel.

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘Well, he says so.’ He moved away, training his mind on other things. The flood. The flood they said reached Timbuktu during January, and carried the river, or a channel of it, up to the depot. If there was a wharf, there would be a picket of animals. He could get one for Bel. The men and Gelis could probably walk, depending on distance. Depending on distance, they would need packmules for the goods. The upshot was he had better leave them on board and go with Saloum first of all, to look about and call on the headman, who was said to be a Tuareg and unpopular.

Nevertheless, they might qualify for some sort of shelter until he worked out how long they would be staying. How much gold there was, or wasn’t, and how long a wait it would mean to acquire it. He wondered if it was February yet, and was amazed to find that he had lost track of the calendar. It occurred to him that the stores ought to be checked ready for disembarking, and he went off to see Vito and Diniz. They were excited, and therefore talkative, which he found painful.

He realised what was happening. There was nothing he could do about it.

The arrangements seemed to take a long time to make, and he went outside again, where it was fresher. He saw the shore was sandier, although there were bushes. He saw a great silk-cotton tree upholding a snowdrift of slumbering ospreys. He saw some birds from the crane-wheel in Bruges. He began writing things down.

That night, he dreamed he was in a boat. He probably was, for Loppe was rowing. The first time they met, he was swimming. He tried to remember his face, but could only remember how black it was. Black, with a nose as long as a Nubian’s, and black fingers turning the ledger.
The sugarcane has done well. Of course it has. But what will you do with no hands?

Someone said, ‘Nicholas?’ and he woke.

The hired boatmen knew, too, that they were getting close to the terminus and a dispute began, which Saloum had to interpret. They wanted money to take them back home. They wanted the boat, perhaps. Nicholas got hold of Diniz and they agreed terms, with a small show of force. If they got the gold, they might have to store it. If they got a lot of gold, he might split the party and send Diniz back to the
Niccolò
, although he didn’t want to mention that yet. Assuming Godscalc was bent on Ethiopia. Assuming Ethiopia wasn’t where he was beginning to suspect it was. He wondered what to do about Gelis, and then thought he could leave that to Bel
and to Godscalc. He remembered that he’d written down none of his plans for the
Ghost
. He thought he had better lie down, but not yet.

He said to Godscalc, ‘I want to take Saloum ashore and then come back for you. If I don’t, tell the men to row out. I’ve paid them to wait, and they’re due more if they do what I’ve asked them.’ Soon, they all went to sleep, and so did he.

The trouble was Raffaelo Doria, and the child he had snared for his bed in the
Ghost
. Except that the name of the ship was the
Doria
, which meant Raffaelo could claim her, unless a black boy could be found to cut his head off. Then old Jordan claimed her instead, and laughed, and hit Nicholas in the face, and took Marian away. Sent Marian away, so that she died of starvation in Cyprus, and her son was killed in a tournament. Although he was so young. He was too young, far too young for a tournament.

Someone said, ‘It’s all right. He’s dreaming.’

Diniz. Then the voice of Gelis said, ‘Really?’

‘Wake up, Nicholas,’ Diniz said. ‘We’ve arrived.’

The water had reached far up to the terminus, but there was no view of the place, only dunes behind the ramshackle buildings of the wharf. Under a few dusty trees, everyone including the curs seemed to be sleeping, and the empty boats rocked in the heat, reeking of stale nut oil and ordure and fish. Everything stank.

There was a last-minute quarrel, once they had wakened people and hired mules and a couple of porters, because Diniz announced he was coming. It was not expedient. Nicholas couldn’t remember why it wasn’t expedient, except that Saloum said so. He wondered if it was Saloum, in the first place, who had suggested they go first together. He left Diniz behind, scarlet and fuming, with Godscalc and the women and Vito. He was himself worried, for they couldn’t manage without him. He couldn’t manage, either, without them. He had to get the gold back to the Gambia.

The ride was not long, which was fortunate. He had an impression of gaining a rise and seeing a sheet of water before him with the walls of the chief’s house beyond it, made of whitened mud bricks and not brushwood. He thought that this was certainly wise, in a place where goods were stored in the compound. He had heard that the caravans lodged to the north, in sandy plains outside the depot.