Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [126]
‘You weren’t there,’ said Mistress Bel. ‘They laughed at us, and had cause to. The demoiselle knows.’
‘What?’ said Loppe.
No one spoke. Diniz thought of the pearls, and the light silken hair, and the wager. Doria had believed Nicholas concealed on the Ghost, and had been shown to be wrong. Gelis had won her stupid wager, and the child Tati was her reward. Except that the child Tati, freed of her bondage, had clung screaming to Doria her owner; had kissed Doria’s feet weeping; and when finally wrested away, had tried to kill herself with his knife.
The white man was her lord. She was superior now to the Jalofos, who had sold her. She would not survive the shame of returning. And, perhaps, she had been taught to adore Raffaelo Doria as, rumour said, his kinsman Pagano Doria had made himself the first lover of another young girl. So they had left Tati with him.
Gelis van Borselen said to Loppe, ‘You will hear the story from someone, no doubt. I apologised to you once before. This time, you will know that I mean it.’
Chapter 19
THROUGH THE HOT DAYS and cool nights of early December, the caravel San Niccolò sailed to her ultimate landfall in the great river belt of the Sahel, and all but the six slaves aboard her lay at night and dreamed of what might be still to come, for the way to the Fountain of Youth, to the River of Jewels, to the court of Sheba and Solomon was ahead, and open.
The Fortado had left the estuary first, and Nicholas had made no effort this time to forestall her for, he said, the race was won, and he was content. And that at least seemed true, whatever doubts some of them might harbour about the malice of Raffaelo Doria. Nicholas was content, and his caravel carried the glow of it, however fleeting, on the two hundred miles of its journey.
Of the twenty-five crew and six passengers, most could now expect to be wealthy, if they lived, and if the Ghost reached her destination in safety. Seventy kilos of gold three times over had been loaded into the Ghost, on top of what she carried already. She was a roundship, and hence would make no great speed sailing northwards, but Ochoa was a fine seaman, and a good fighter, and she carried a prime weight of ordnance.
As for the Fortado, said Nicholas, she was welcome to proceed south and buy whatever the Gambia traders had hauled to the mouth of the river. Then with any luck she would turn and go home, leaving the upper stream and its secrets to others.
What did he mean by its secrets? What else but finding out where it led? Did it join with the Senagana, as some said? Did it link with the east-flowing river men called the Joliba? And was the Joliba an arm of the Nile, flowing east to the heart of Ethiopia? Nicholas wished no harm to the Fortado going to Gambia, he said, but he would like to see the tip of her mast now and then, and the direction in which her guns might be currently pointing. And once she had got to the Gambia, he would very much like to see the back of her.
He was not altogether stupefied by good fortune.
There was, none the less, something fey about Nicholas – and his caravel. Since the departure of the Ghost, she had changed. When, on the first day of their sailing, Godscalc said, ‘What has happened?’ Bel of Cuthilgurdy smiled and looked up from her sewing.
‘We’ve become mummers; barefaced maskers, my bodach. You and Lopez and Senhor Jorge did the serious work. The rest of us were thrown on our wits; made to jink our way into the Fortado; forced into cheatry; compelled to trust one another. I would tell you we gart Gelis laugh, if I thought you’d believe it. Hence what you might call a truce.’
‘Including Gelis?’ said the priest.
‘That would be rash,’ said Mistress Bel. ‘But there’s a reasonable understanding between her and Diniz. And she’s less cocksure than she was with young Nicholas. Not that the waste of life we’ve seen could be forgotten, but he’s managed to sweeten it.’
‘Not for me; not for Loppe,’ Godscalc said.
‘Then he’ll work on you both,’ said Bel of Cuthilgurdy