Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [132]
She tilted her head and, rounding her lips, spat a date stone clear across the chamber to where Jorge’s armour hung on the bulwark, without hats or parrots. The article bounced, pinging melodiously, from his Portuguese helm. She said, ‘I thought you would know. He’s your priest. Can you do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, without doing it. ‘No. Whoever is in collusion with me at the moment, it is not Father Godscalc. So what does Mistress Bel expect us to talk about?’
‘Let me guess,’ Gelis said. She took another date and held it point upwards absently, as if about to work out a problem with chalk. Then she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and ate it. ‘Unless you’re supposed to talk me out of travelling inland. Your man Lopez says we are about to turn into the river-mouth and sail the caravel right up the Gambia.’ She spat. A cuirass complained briefly in alto.
‘As far as it’s navigable, yes.’
‘For at least two hundred miles, Diniz says. Then you somehow cross to the river Joliba, which is large, and flows east, and may lead you to Ethiopia. If you intend to go to Ethiopia.’
‘That’s why Father Godscalc is here,’ Nicholas said. He picked up the pallid stones, looked at them, and dropped them into the oyster dish. Gelis took a fresh date. She looked struck.
She said, ‘Of course! It’s Father Godscalc I’m supposed to be helping. All the time we were on the Ghost, Bel was warming him under her pinions. Father Godscalc has to return with his mission fulfilled, and Bel wants to know your intentions.’
‘So tell her to ask me,’ said Nicholas.
‘You’d lie to her,’ the girl said. She licked her fingers.
‘I might,’ he said. ‘I might not. I think quite a lot of Mistress Bel.’
‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is magnanimous. She and I think quite a lot of you; but perhaps in a different sense. We both think you are only here to seek out and establish control of the gold, and that you will abandon the mission party, or divert the mission party, almost immediately.’
‘Have you a Bible?’ said Nicholas. ‘No? Jorge’s crucifix there?’ He enunciated carefully. ‘I intend to stay with the caravel so long as she can navigate up the Gambia.’
‘I expect you will,’ Gelis said. ‘Because the gold is further inland, isn’t it? The mines can’t be near the coast. Diniz says the silent trade must be further inland even than that. And the Sahara caravan terminus bringing the salt from the north for the silent trade must be farther east still – perhaps a very great distance from here. So what about Jorge’s crucifix, and an undertaking that when you leave the caravel, you’ll be taking the track for Ethiopia, and ignoring everything else?’ She spat, and a greave buckle clicked. Her trajectory was moving all the time in his direction.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I did promise to tell you what our plans were, although not necessarily involving ratification by oath under threat of bombardment. If you hit the looking-glass, it will leave a most unpleasant mark.’ He could tell, by the altered movement, that the ship had changed her course slightly, and wished he could go out and look. He kept his voice sweet and patient, to annoy her.
‘I can tell you, and Godscalc knows, that the caravan terminus is thought to be somewhere along the course of the Joliba river, which is the way we propose to travel. If there’s gold there, I shall buy it, because I shall probably need it. The terminus must be some weeks away, and the journey from there to our Black Magus might be as much again, and over mountainous land no one knows. We shan’t get there by Epiphany.’
‘Or at all? You haven’t begun, and you’re saying that the mission is hopeless?’
‘I thought Bel wanted me to discourage you. In