Spice and the Devil's Cave (22 page)

“Has he – has he been talking? “Nicolo heard him inquire, as he jerked his head toward the sailor. “Sure he didn't say – anything?” he uneasily insisted, although Pedro, pausing in his work, told him he was too busy to listen to his customers' chatter.

Nicolo wandered to the door and watched them go down the narrow alley and turn a corner. Yes, he remembered the tall chap perfectly, bushy black hair, guttural accent, and all. He was having all he could do now to handle his charge! Almost identical with the scene of two years ago. Odd that an able fellow would keep an ill-natured sot that long. Nicolo wondered, idly, why he had been so particular to know if the other had talked. As if anyone listened to drunken ravings! That gibber, for instance, about Gama!

But the tall one – trader he'd called himself – there was something uncomfortable connected with him. Nicolo recalled those eager inquiries about the Expedition, and his own feeling that he'd been too free with his answers. No, that wasn't it. It was Ferdinand's afterward telling him that the street quarrel had been reported at the palace, and that the Venetian ambassador had seemed to know all about him. Then there had been his own suspicion that the foreign-looking trader had posted the ambassador. There was something else, too. Hadn't the fellow spoken as if he knew of the Jewish reprieve before its public announcement? That had been extraordinary; it was what had made him suspect that the man had some direct communication with the palace.

The Jewish reprieve! Every moment of that day was graven on his memory: Abel in the workshop … Ruth making preserves for Gama . . . Nejmi and he alone, together, when they had come into a new intimacy. But now that was over. That scene in the court between her and Ferdinand, and then what she had said about her “debt”…

He stepped outside and began to walk to try to dull the ache at his heart. If only he could forget her last words – he could have borne anything but that. “I'm going to pay back my debt. . . . You want me to pay you!” How could she have dealt him that blow, she, who must know how he felt about her?

Well, he was not going to see her till he had himself in hand. As for Ferdinand, if she wanted him, and he, her … He meant to avoid Ferdinand for a while. That wouldn't be difficult, for the King's household was going up in a day or so to the summer palace.

There was a moon, and Nicolo continued to walk. His weariness seemed to have vanished. Pedro's hot supper was having its effect. Deliberately he put Nejmi out of his mind. He'd pin himself down to business.

That lumber, now! If only Rodriguez were here to consult, instead of at sea, somewhere between the Madeiras and Cape Verde! On impulse he decided to have another look at the lumber. It wasn't late, and the moon was bright. He ran back and called to Pedro that presently he'd return – not to lock him out.

The streets were deserted, but through tavern doors drifted talking and laughter. Down by the docks, he passed a knot of sailors. Once he heard a gang-plank dropped. He went on to the end of a dock where the lumber was piled. Beyond, there was a strip of sandy beach on which tiny waves lapped softly.

He walked slowly around the lumber, inspected it from end to end. Excellent stuff, sound as a nut. And its pungent odour was like a tonic. Standing there in the shadow, his ear caught the dip of oars, and he made out a row-boat coming in. As it neared, he saw two figures in it, one at the oars, the other in the stern, and both wore wide-brimmed hats. He watched idly as the keel grated on the sand. The figure in the stern jumped out, a man in a long cloak, whose face was hidden by his hat. The other remained in his seat, his face, too, in shadow.

The one who had landed stood, for a moment, with his hand on the bow. “Good-bye and good luck,” he said, in a low tone.

Nicolo started. The man was speaking Italian.

“You'll be off, I suppose,” he added, “as soon as you've got those – those things, so I shan't see you again.”

He bent forward and gave the boat a shove. It glided off, and he turned and walked along the beach and toward the quay. In the shadow of the lumber and hardly a half dozen paces away from Nicolo, he halted, pulled up the collar of his cloak around his face, and then strode briskly on.

Nicolo stared after him. What on earth did this mean? For the face, a moment ago so close to him, was that of the Venetian ambassador! He watched the retreating figure disappear in the shadows, and then, recollecting the other cloaked figure, he turned around to see what had become of the row-boat. But it had blended into the harbour shipping.

In a whirl of puzzled thoughts Nicolo left the lumber pile and walked slowly back to The Green Window. He lay awake trying to account for the ambassador's strange excursion: an ambassador at the water-front at midnight, without a single attendant – and so evidently guarding against recognition!

Very early in the morning he was waked by a knocking on his door, and before he could swing his legs out of bed, he was surprised to see Ferdinand enter. With the memory of that scene with Nejmi still rankling, Nicolo's greeting was a little forced, especially as Ferdinand himself seemed conscious and ill at ease.

“I had to see you before we went up to Cintra,” He burst out, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “and we're leaving today or, at latest, tomorrow.”

Unconsciously Nicolo braced himself. The boy was going to speak of Nejmi!

“Nicolo”– Ferdinand leaned closer, and lowered his tone –“something's going on at the palace. I had to tell you!” He eyed Nicolo anxiously. “Probably you'll think it's my imagination, but I'm sure something's going on,” he repeated.

“I'll get my things on,” Nicolo told him as he began to dress, “while you talk.” In his surprise at this unexpected turn he forgot his constraint.

“Well, here it is. Yesterday, toward evening, the Venetian ambassador –”

Nicolo almost dropped the long hose he was buttoning, but instantly smothered his exclamation in a pretence of coughing. Better keep last night's incident to himself.

“The Venetian ambassador,” Ferdinand was saying, “came up to me and was very pleasant. He'd never noticed me before, but we talked for some time, and, after a while, he asked if I didn't go to an Abel Zakuto's, kinsman of the astrologer, Abraham, whom he used to see around the palace.

“He told me he'd heard Master Abraham say his cousin specialized in collecting maps of the Orient. Then I said he made them, too; that he had first-hand information about the Orient – meaning, you know, Scander. At that he burst out quick – ' Could you manage to have a friend of mine see Zakuto's maps? ‘The next minute he'd calmed down and sort of apologized for getting excited. His friend, it seemed, was collecting maps, and if I'd take him to Master Abel's . . . I told him of course I would, only I was going away for the summer, and then, without thinking, I said I knew someone who would.” He looked quizzically at Nicolo, and they both laughed.

“Meaning me?” Nicolo thrust his arms into his waistcoat and quickly fastened his doublet over it.

Ferdinand nodded, but now his face was very grave.

“If it had ended there, I wouldn't have given it another thought, but, Nicolo, I'd no sooner said that, than the ambassador fairly snatched at it – could he depend on me to get his friend to Zakuto? ‘I'll pay you well,' says he. That was what gave me a queer feeling: that talk of paying. And so eager too! I must have shown my surprise, for he laughed and said, off-hand, ‘Who is the person that'll take my friend to Zakuto's? ‘

“I mentioned your name, of course, and then the next queer thing happened. The strangest look came over his face, and he half muttered to himself, ‘
Oh-kef'
Then he said, ‘Young Conti? Stays at The Green Window, doesn't he? ‘You see, he knew all about you!”

“That's the second time he has appeared to know all about me,” exclaimed Nicolo. “Remember the first?”

“No,” said Ferdinand.

Nicolo recalled to him how, just before Gama's departure, his own name had been mentioned by the ambassador in connection with a street quarrel that had come to the King's notice.

As he talked, he buckled his cloak and sat down beside Ferdinand. “I wonder why he's so particular about keeping his eye on me.”

“Nicolo!” Ferdinand grasped his arm. “That's what kept me awake all night: his being so anxious to pay me if I'd get you to take his friend to see Master Abel's maps.”

“Did you say any more about my taking his friend to Zakuto's?”

“Yes. I told him his man would find you here, where you lived, though I had an uncomfortable feeling about it all the time.”

“When did you say you had this talk?” asked Nicolo.

“Late yesterday afternoon.”

Then, meditated Nicolo, the “friend” couldn't have been the one who knew he went to Abel Zakuto's, because, according to Pedro, he had come in about noon.

“After I went to bed,” Ferdinand continued, “I got to turning it all over. I didn't like the looks of it. And then, all at once, it popped into my head that early in the afternoon the ambassador had got his final answer about what we meant to do in the Orient, provided Gama found a sea passage. The gossip around the palace was that Manoel had been pretty short with him. Don't you see, Nicolo, the ambassador must have come to me right afterward!”

Nicolo's mind was in a chaos. Should he tell what he'd seen last night?

“I couldn't get it out of my mind,” Ferdinand was saying, “that the two things, put together, looked – well – odd. And that's what kept me awake all night, that I'd got you mixed up in it. I wish to heaven I'd kept my mouth closed about your taking the ambassador's friend to Master Abel's.”

For a moment Nicolo made no reply. Ferdinand sleepless and anxious about him, while he had been thinking resentfully of the boy, even avoiding him!

“Don't give it a thought, old fellow,” he said heartily, gripping Ferdinand's hand. “I'll look out for that' friend'! You won't see him, by any chance?”

“Oh, I thought I told you! Yes, I did see him. Later, in the evening, the ambassador took me into the garden and introduced me to him and spoke of you.”

A sudden intuition leaped to Nicolo's mind. “What'd he look like? So I'll know him.”

“He was tall,” Ferdinand began, “dark, talked with a foreign, throaty accent –”

“Wait a minute!” Nicolo clapped on his cap, seized the surprised boy by the arm, and hurried him to Pedro. “Tell Pedro what this person looks like who's to call for me, so he'll know him.”

“That's the one was here yesterday,” Pedro exclaimed, before Ferdinand was fairly started. “Him with the foreign way of talking. Come to think of it,” he said to Nicolo, “you saw the man yourself, Master Conti. Remember when that fellow came in here last night and carried that drunken chap off?”

Nicolo gasped. “Was he the same one who'd asked for me at noon?”

Pedro nodded. “I didn't think you'd want to talk with him along with that mate of his, and then you went out and I forgot to mention it. But he said he'd be in again today. Yes, he was the one who knew about you being a friend of Zakuto, and about Zakuto's making maps and such.”

Ferdinand and Nicolo exchanged glances.

“There!” Ferdinand murmured. “You hear? Maps! I wish I needn't go,” he said regretfully, “so we could follow up this thing, but it's good-bye now for the summer. If any trouble should come of this – and I can help –”

Nicolo grasped both his hands. “Nothing's going to happen, or if anything does, at least my eyes are open!” On the whole, he decided, he wouldn't tell about seeing the ambassador at the docks.

As he stood at the door and saw Ferdinand hurrying away, he recalled their first meeting. Here their friendship had begun. Here, on this very threshold, and with this same warm little stir at his heart, he had watched the boy going back to his palace duty. The same luminous eyes that seemed always to be visioning some mystic world . . . the same open, boyish heart! Nothing, Nicolo vowed to himself, should ever again come between them.

But the Venetian ambassador! His inquiries about Abel's maps. His being out last night in that boat. Most of all, his connection with that foreign trader, that tall seaman. Could that other man in the boat have been he? ‘You'll be off as soon as you've got those things,” Nicolo uneasily recalled. “Those things.” Was he a fool to read a hidden meaning into those words?

If only he could talk the matter over with Abel. But that meant seeing Nejmi. Then – Scander! Yes, he'd go to him with this. He was busy, Nicolo knew, getting together stevedores to unload for Rodriguez, who was shortly due in port.

Scander was hurrying away from his lodgings when Nicolo overtook him. He was reluctant to be delayed because, as he said, good workers weren't too plenty, and one must be early at the docks to get them first. So Nicolo fell into step with him, and presently was pouring out his story and Ferdinand's suspicions.

Scander, however, refused to get excited. “Everybody's interested in maps nowadays,” he said, “making 'em or collecting 'em. As for your seeing anything in what the ambassador told the other fellow – rubbish! Why ‘those things' might ‘a' meant anything, from salt fish to new sails! Ferdinand's imagination got started – and so did yours.”

“Yes, but Scander, the ambassador pulling up his cloak to hide his face! And if the man who was rowing him was the same one that Ferdinand and Pedro and I all saw –”

“You saw him? You didn't mention that before. So you saw him, did you?”

“For just a minute, when he came into Pedro's to claim a drunken mate – and Lord, but his mate
was
drunk!” Nicolo grimaced at the recollection. “He'd lost every sense he ever had. Sat across from me at a table, and raved like a madman. And of all people in the world he chose Gama to rave about! Swore that he'd seen him since we had, but that we wouldn't see him again. Kept on saying it, too – in such dead earnest. It was really funny!”