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By Root 2688 0

was always present and active in matters of navigation. Numbers were his tools. It did surprise him to notice how much Gelis had mastered during a journey which had, after all, been made largely on the extraordinary roundship of Ochoa de Marchena. He had assumed, he saw wrongly, that a young woman of birth would have spent such a voyage modestly in her cabin below. It had already struck him to wonder what she had done during the engagement between the Ghost and the Fortado, but she had said nothing of it herself and Bel, consulted, had told him to mind his own business. That, at least, was what he thought that she said, and he always took Bel’s advice concerning Gelis.

In any case, navigation mattered, whether they were out of sight of land, as they had been, or whether as now they were sailing down a treacherous coast invisible to them by night, and distorted through dust-clouds by day. The eighty feet of the San Niccolò pitched through the ocean, sailing wide, the set of her sails hardly altering, but the lead dipped and dipped from her side while the knots of the log told her speed.

From the poop deck, there was little to see. The coast they were passing was featureless still: a ribbon of low dunes and hillocks and bushes which became greener as the second day progressed, with a line of trees visible above the distant beaches, and the white of surf on low reefs, and a glimpse of mangrove islands, now seeming near and now far in the haze.

Early that morning they had passed the basalt cliff, fifty feet high, which marked, Jorge said, the western limit of Guinea, along with the green point called Cape Verde. After that, their course turned south-south-east, as did that of the Fortado, when she could be glimpsed. Having raised her, Jorge da Silves was quite content to keep his distance, hurrying when she hurried, but making no attempt to gain ground. Except in the matter of slaves, he seemed quite in accord with his patron’s intentions.

Diniz, joining Godscalc under the pavilion of the poop, was happier trying to prove Nicholas wrong. ‘What would you do if you were the Fortado, and having to report back to David de Salmeton? I’ll tell you. You’d get to the Gambia quickly. You’d unload the arms as well as the legitimate cargo. You’d take on everything you can buy – including slaves, I shouldn’t wonder. And then you’d arrange a warm welcome for the Niccolò.’

He sounded unaffectedly happy, visualising it. Also he smelt of horses again. Of the twenty-five they had brought, they had kept five for themselves. He added wisely, ‘No one would know. We’d simply appear to have sunk with all hands in some accident. If I were Nicholas, I’d have hurried and wrecked the Fortado instead.’

‘Did you mention this to Nicholas?’ Godscalc said. He moved away from the helm and the master, and leaned on the rail looking aft. Diniz followed him.

‘He says the Fortado won’t invite battle, because she wants to load and get her cargo home safely. He says she has nothing to gain since we’re practically empty. I say that Crackbene and Doria can’t afford to let him off. Think what he’s done to them!’ His dark, narrow face glowed.

‘I suppose,’ Godscalc said, ‘it depends on how successful they are in the Gambia. The smiting of Nicholas might seem less compelling than a quick exit with a mountain of gold.’

‘Except that they won’t find much gold, according to Jorge,’ Diniz said. ‘Gum and pepper and cotton, perhaps. But when the Senagana has gold to sell, the Gambia doesn’t.’

‘You mean it comes from the same mines?’ Godscalc said. ‘But perhaps Doria knows how to obtain it at source.’

‘No,’ Diniz said. ‘Even Diogo Gomes didn’t know that. They keep it secret.’

‘Who?’

‘The heathens who mine it. They dig holes, and send their women down them with feathers.’

It sounded like a joke. Godscalc was in no mood for jokes. He said, ‘Where did this nonsense come from?’

Diniz, as he usually did, kept his good manners. ‘The classical writers spoke of it. All the navigators were told about it at Sagres. The Carthaginians came here for their gold: Herodotus wrote