Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [131]
At the supper that followed, no one mentioned the Fortado, long since vanished. The crew, early fed, were asleep on deck but for the watch and so were the black passengers, who willy-nilly had worked their passage now towards the Gambia. The horses, exhausted by fright, drowsed below, all except one thrown by the collision, which had had to be dispatched with a hatchet. At the table, the master sat red-eyed and silent, and Diniz dozed beside Godscalc until sent to bed by Bel of Cuthilgurdy. The master excused himself, and then Loppe. Godscalc stayed, with the two women and Nicholas.
Godscalc said, ‘So what about Filipe?’
‘Ah,’ said Nicholas. ‘The court of enquiry.’ His voice seemed rather flat, but he was not a man who needed much sleep, and he looked less fatigued in some ways than Bel or young Gelis who, besides the cook’s work, had set their hands to a number of tasks not normally included in the education of well-bred ladies from Flanders and Scotland.
The thought reminded Godscalc of what Filipe had shouted last night. He had resented discipline, and feared it, and yet weakly invited it. Most of all, of proud Portuguese blood, he had resented discipline imposed by a dyeworks apprentice. Everyone who knew the St Pol family, Godscalc imagined, would have been told the origins of the lord Niccolò vander Poele, Knight of the Sword. Godscalc said, ‘A personal enquiry: it is not for me to go further. How could Filipe run us aground?’
‘Mechanically or morally?’ Nicholas said. ‘Morally, because he has very small scruples, and they haven’t descended yet. Mechanically, because he was in charge of the hour-glass. The ship’s course depends on its accuracy: if it isn’t properly kept, you can’t trust to your place on the chart. The glass can be made to lie by rough seas. Also, boys can speed the sand and shorten their watch by warming the glass in their shirts. The wind is cool and unpleasant these nights, and the helmsman gets sleepy. I should have noticed it sooner.’
‘Did Filipe realise what might happen?’ said Bel.
And Nicholas said, ‘I think it unlikely,’ which Godscalc conceived to be as good a lie as he had heard from him. From the lack of any following question, he guessed that Bel and even the girl guessed as much, too, and were impressed. He wished he didn’t know that beneath everything Nicholas said and did there existed fathoms of labyrinthine calculation. Abruptly, he got up to leave, and with a little weariness found that Bel, normally welcome, had risen and was leaving along with him.
In the big, empty cabin Nicholas, too, made to move and then changed his mind, since he and Gelis had been abandoned, he assumed, for a purpose. They sat at opposite ends of the same couchette with the uncovered lamp of palm oil glimmering on a plate of bones and another of oyster shells: he had already wiped his knife and put it away. At sea, and in this season, there were very few insects.
She was consuming dates from a bowl in a meditative fashion. He was aware that her hair was tightly coifed in linen as usual, and that she wore one of her plain, shortened serge gowns powdered as usual with dust. Since he rejoined the ship she had made no effort, except on the Fortado, to appear feminine; and indeed he got through most days without actually looking at her, since in that way he was never taken unawares by some resemblance.
Most of the time, in any case, he was not thinking of her at all but rather, as just now, of a number of things he had to do, including visit Filipe in his cell and put the fear of God into him. He already knew what he was