Spice and the Devil's Cave (24 page)

“Now,” Scander carefully continued, “if a vessel sailing north was to pass you, and another sailing south, which one would you say was
going up?”

“The one sailing north, of course.”

Scander's eyes glittered, and he ran his tongue around his lips. “Then the one sailing south …”

“Would be coming down,” Nicolo glibly completed. Then – he was staring at Scander. He seemed to have lost sight of the room. “He meant that Gama was ‘coming down'
from India?
. . . ‘Coming down' – on his way home?” he whispered unsteadily.

“Now you got it!” But in spite of his bantering air, Scander's hands shook. “So, of course,” he went on, “if they saw him down Melinde way or off Mombassa, which isn't so far from the Devil's Cave, and the Devil's Cave not but six months' run to Lisbon –”

“Great heaven! Gama might – might almost be here!” gasped Nicolo. His head was bursting. Manoel must be told. All Portugal must know that Gama wasn't lost as they'd feared, but alive, coming home! But Venice – the Venetian ambassador! Suppose Marco and his mate were their spies. Could he tell Manoel without exposing them? And yet . . .

“Scander,” he choked out, “we must take this to the King.”

“Can't,” Scander briefly stated. “He's gone. They were all leaving the palace two hours ago. Besides, we aren't sure enough yet of anything to talk. First thing you know, you'll get into trouble.”

“Then I'm going to Master Abel! This is getting too thick for me.”

“Wait till I get that chap out of here – he mustn't see you,” Scander whispered, stepping ahead. “He's finished eating – getting ready to go. And he's not going out of my sight till I see where he stows away for the night.” He glanced back at Nicolo. “Did the tall chap call? No? Then all the more reason to keep an eye on Marco. Neither'll leave Lisbon without the other.”

“I don't blame him for being uneasy about Marco's talking!” said Nicolo. “Come back here tonight,” he whispered, as Scander was going, “so you can hear what Master Abel has to say about this.”

All the way up the hill he was tortured with the self-questioning that had started with Scander's tremendous news. Gama probably on the way home! But how, in common decency and honour, could he keep that from Manoel? Yet, if Venice were involved in a plot, had instigated it, even paid a price for it, then, what? Could he bring himself to expose Venice? Still, hadn't he cast his fortunes with Portugal? Again, if this thing should ever come to light, how could he hold up his head in Lisbon – Lisbon, where he'd built so carefully, so solidly, for his future?

He tried to put from him the thought of meeting Nejmi. He hadn't wanted to see her; in fact, he had deliberately planned not to see her, and he half hoped she wouldn't appear.

But the first person he saw, when he stepped inside the court, was Nejmi, sitting on the threshold of the workshop; Nejmi in palest, filmy yellow, her head against the door frame. Did he imagine it, or were the dark eyes wistful, even sad? And then, as they perceived him, did they change – quicken?

He steeled himself to speak casually, and then to pass by her into the workshop where Abel looked up from a map to exclaim, “Well, young man, it's been too long since you were here!”

“It's good to see you again, Nicolo,” said Ruth, bustling in from the next room. She scrutinized him a moment, then, “Sit down here by the windows,” she told him kindly. “You look warm – throw back your cloak.”

“I mustn't stay,” he murmured.

“Not stay! Of course you'll stay. I'm going to keep you for supper. There's a brace of young pigeons in the pot that'll tempt you, if – if nothing else will!”

Nicolo felt his ears tingle. Was there just the ghost of a knowing twinkle in Ruth's round, bright eyes as she added that last clause?

“I'd like nothing better than to stay,” he declared, “but I've agreed to meet Scander as soon – as soon as I've told you something, Master Abel, that's beyond my solving.”

At the troubled voice, Abel looked up quickly. “Come over here, boy, by me.” He pushed away his work, and turned his attention to Nicolo. “What is it?”

Nicolo made no answer at once. Again, everything was a whirl. Where should he begin? How weave together the tangled happenings of the past day and night? He seized on the one name, the one fact, that stood out from the confusion:

“Master Abel, Gama has been seen in Indian waters!”

He heard a sharp intake of breath as Abel started up. “Gama – Gama has been seen?” he gasped.

Nejmi came in from the threshold, and sat down at the table. She said nothing, but Nicolo saw the golden light that always came to her eyes when she was stirred.

“How do you know?” Ruth asked in an awe-struck whisper. “Who told you?”

“Was he alive?” Abel was demanding, his face close to Nicolo's. “Is Gama – alive?”

“When he was seen-yes.”

Then, as well as he could, Nicolo told of seeing the Venetian ambassador the night before, of Marco's drunken outburst, and the boasts into which Scander had later trapped him.

“Think of it! Seeing Gama!” Abel murmured rapturously. “Why it's like looking into the future and knowing what's going to happen, before it does happen. The Way of the Spices is a certainty!”

“But suppose, sir,” Nicolo said carefully, “Venice had got that information before we did-say some months ago …”

Abel's expression became intent. “I see!” he said. “I see now. You mean Venice's recent demand to know Portugal's intentions in the Orient?”

“How else could you account for such a demand? You see, sir, this Marco and his mate were here when the Expedition was outfitting. I fell into talk with the mate, and I'm sure now, from the questions he asked, that he was here to spy.” Nicolo suddenly recalled that he had not mentioned Ferdinand's account of the ambassador's eagerness for his “friend” to see Abel's maps, for the effect of Scander's passing the maps over as unimportant had been to blur the incident in his own mind. “The fellow even went to The Green Window to get me to take him to you.”

“When was that?” Abel shot back.

“Yesterday, about noon, according to Pedro.”

“Then I saw him! I was passing, and stopped a moment to look in. I heard my name and something or other about maps. I heard Pedro speak of you, too. Said you were looking at some lumber. So that's the man who was here two years ago, and asked you about the fleet?”

“The same. Ferdinand was sure – and at first I agreed with him – that the ambassador's wanting this ‘friend' to see your maps, was suspicious because he was altogether too eager about it, and too willing to pay.”

A slight movement from Nejmi made Nicolo turn his head. He noticed, then, that Ruth was watching her. Elbows on table, and chin dropped on her clasped hands, she was following his account so intently that he had the impression of breathlessness. He waited a moment-did she wish to say something? Then, as she continued silently to gaze at him, he went on:

“But Scander declares there is nothing to that – says everybody's interested in maps just now.”

Abel assented. “Likely as not the ambassador and this friend of his are collecting them, just as I've collected them. No, I hardly think there's anything in that.”

“But there is! Ferdinand is right.” In the pause that followed Abel's words, Nejmi's low voice had the effect of a stone thrown into a still pool.

“Of course they want our maps,” she added, almost as if she were talking to herself.

In utter and frank amazement Abel and Nicolo stared at her. But Ruth, in her matter of fact way, asked, “Who is it, child, that want the maps?”

At first Nejmi made no reply, but continued to regard Nicolo with that peculiar intensity – only, now, was it sorrowful? “How can you help but see?” she asked almost in-audibly.

And then he knew what she meant! Sharp across his memory struck his own first misgivings when Ferdinand had told him of the ambassador's eager curiosity about Abel's maps. Scander – and Abel, too – had too quickly brushed aside this item as insignificant, and afterward Marco's startling disclosures had taken his own attention from it. But now, as clear as day, the ambassador's parting word to the oarsman came back to him: “You'll be off as soon as you've got those things.”
As soon as you've got those maps
, Nicolo silently translated – just as he had first suspected, until Scan-der had laughed at him. And of course it was easy enough now to complete Marco's repeated “Depends,” when asked by Scander when he would leave Lisbon. “Depends on when we get the maps” was what he really meant.

“You mean – Venice wants Master Abel's maps,” he said, as steadily as he could.

“Don't you remember that day,” she asked him, “when Ferdinand first told us about the Venetians wanting to know what Portugal meant to do in the Orient, and you all wondered why they'd changed their minds – because at first they'd said there couldn't be a sea passage to India?”

Silently he assented. Remember that day, indeed! Would he ever forget its smallest detail? Though, to tell the truth, Ferdinand's talk was less clear in his memory than the scene he had later watched from the workshop door. He saw her eyes suddenly drop, and the colour steal over her delicate face. Had she guessed his thoughts?

“If the Venetians knew Gama had been seen, then they knew there was a passage,” she was saying very low, and as if, it struck Nicolo, she were struggling with some pent-up emotion. “And so they – Venice – want the maps to show how to reach the Orient ahead of Portugal.”

“Of course!” cried Abel. “To steal a march on Portugal before Gama can get home to tell what he's found, and before Portugal can claim it! How did we miss it, Nicolo? Certainly, Ferdinand was right when he suspected something behind the ambassador's inquiries. You see,” he said, musing aloud, “Venice must make a desperate stand to keep her trade supremacy.”

There was a sound of despair from Nicolo. “Then how can I, a Venetian, hold up my head here if this thing ever comes to light? My business-the friends I've made-” He got up hastily to hide his emotion.

Abel pressed him down again in his chair. “My dear boy, has there ever been a time when there wasn't war over trade?”

“Portugal would do the same thing in Venice's place,” Ruth impartially stated. “You mustn't take this so to heart, Nicolo! It's none of your doing.”

“Assuredly, Portugal would do the same thing,” Abel repeated. “Besides, your record here is too good to have this thing count against you, even if it should come to light.”

“Do you think, if Manoel should hear of it, that he wouldn't let it ‘count against' me?” Nicolo asked bitterly. “And Gama-what would he say? I tell you the ground is cut from under me. I'll have nothing. I'll be discredited-dishonoured.”

He saw Nejmi slip out of the room and felt, miserably, that it was the way she wished to slip out of his life. He became aware of Abel's voice . . . something about “an odd angle.”

“A very odd angle to this business,” he was saying. “Now, what if I should take a notion to revenge myself on Manoel, and give my maps up to Venice?”

“Abel!” gasped Ruth.

“Well, after all, I'm human! Would it more than even his account with our people?”

In the dead silence that fell on the workshop, Nicolo, dumbfounded, could only study Abel's face. Shrewd, keen, sagacious; jaw thrust ever so little forward; eyes narrowed. The face now of Banker Zakuto! Banker Zakuto, who held, at last, the odds that would square, in part, at least, the long account of his people.

Suddenly the old whimsical laughter twitched the corners of his mouth. “Don't be afraid, Nicolo! Ruth, did you really think I would?” The boyish eyes were twinkling – perhaps, too, were a bit wet. “Did you think I'd do any harm to the child that Bartholomew and I have tended and watched years before Manoel was born-the Way of the Spices?”

“Abel,” Ruth said, with a catch in her voice, “there was never another like you, my dear!”

“That's what was going through my mind,” Nicolo quietly seconded her.

“Nonsense!” declared Abel, vigorously clearing his throat. “Now, about that chap who is after my maps –”

“I haven't yet seen him, sir, but I'm sure to. He might, though, come to you first.”

“I'll attend to him whenever he comes!” declared Abel.

“Then,” Nicolo said, sombrely, as he started toward the door, “I'd better go and tell Scander what Nejmi-what you think about the maps.”

“Keep us in touch with every step,” Abel charged him. “Especially anything you hear of Gama.”

It was later than he'd thought, Nicolo saw, as he crossed the court. The stars were out, and the moon just showed over the high wall. He was reaching for the gate, when, from behind the vine trellis, and directly in front of him, stepped – Nejmi. Too startled to speak, even to think coherently, it went through his mind that all the golden sweetness of the night was gathered up into her.

“Nicolo,” she breathed hardly above a whisper, “you said – I heard you sav – vou had nothing.”

Puzzled, he could only look at her. “Yes, I said that” he finally got out.

“Then, Nicolo, if you have nothing, now-now is the time I should pay my debt to you.”

He steeled himself not to wince at this mention of that old hurt. And yet this look in her eyes, this tremulous tenderness of her lips, what was it? Was it pity? Though the pounding of his heart and the surge in his ears turned everything dizzy, he saw how pale she was.

Suddenly she moved nearer him. Then –

“Nicolo, I love you!”

Spellbound, he stared at her. He couldn't have heard aright. Was he stark mad-or was she? “You mean Ferdinand!” he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears.