Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [148]
‘Nicholas has agreed,’ Godscalc said. ‘And Jorge da Silves.’
‘No doubt. And that ends it?’ said Bel.
‘No,’ said Godscalc. ‘I have decided, and that ends it. And this time, I want you and the demoiselle to come with us. Unless she is too shaken.’
Bel reflected. She said, ‘No. Ye have to remember she’s not your sheltered flower, and has van Borselen cousins. Paul’s a devil already, and Charles showed his prowess well enough at Louvain before he died at thirteen. Nothing much can shock Gelis.’
She stopped too late: he was already looking at her with dismay and clutching his glum medicinal cup. She regretted, in her practical fashion, that she hadn’t simply brought him another flask of palm wine.
Godscalc of Cologne was a priest who did not understand women, whereas Nicholas of nowhere in particular was a banker who did. His hilarious reception by Gelis had been fully appreciated for exactly what it was. For a space – a timeless portion of a strange African dawn – Nicholas had just been a man, to be teased and tolerated and even liked for his weaknesses. Of course, he had not come near her since, and she had not laughed with or at him.
In general, the escapade at Tendeba didn’t prove as divisive as the wise among them might have feared. Although his elders from the Ciaretti might chaff red-haired Vito, neither Melchiorre the second mate nor his fellow seaman Manoli resented his luck. The two helmsmen were content to jeer at Fernão’s account of his conquests while Vicente, the short-tempered comito, was neither laughed at nor envied. Diniz, in between cherishing his three remaining lean horses, preserved – hugged to himself – a well-bred Scotto-Portuguese reticence. He did, however, regard Nicholas with a new light in his eye.
The only unrest noted by Bel, aiding Godscalc with the sick men below, was provoked by the genial (and clinically improbable) recitals of Luis, which his fellow seamen both demanded and heard in a mood of lubricious jealousy. And above deck, observed by Gelis herself, there hung a constraint which, even through the vivid terrors and delights of the voyage, could be traced to the master, and to his relations with Nicholas and the three Negroes, but more especially with Lopez.
It was understandable, and vander Poele recognised it, she perceived. As a consequence, or so she thought, he passed little time in the company of Lopez in the days after Tendeba. On the other hand, the conversations he did hold with Lopez were so superficial, so markedly impersonal, that Gelis refined and revised her conclusion. It was not Jorge da Silves but the Negro himself who was vander Poele’s prime and almost exclusive concern.
They sailed for three days and passed three nights at anchor without molestation, but in increasing heat. For the first part of the voyage, the canoes of Gnumi Mansa accompanied them, paddled by shouting, laughing young men. Word of their harmlessness seemed to have restored the usual traffic of the river: troughs of varying sizes passed and repassed, sometimes laden with provender; sometimes bearing a group of chattering women and children with their bundles.
The trees, the green, dripping tunnels of choked and mysterious creeks, the looming mangroves, their roots slippered with oysters, began to thin and pale as the estuarine flush fell behind them. Instead, on either side was bush and rolling savannah studded by cabins, and they saw ape-watch towers stamped like runes on the red of the sunset; stamped like runes, or the windmills of Flanders.
On the second morning, they viewed their first elephants: a group of grey beasts in the shallows, each as wide as a siege-engine and as high as the ship, and spraying water upon themselves from the tail suspended under their eyes. The following day, Saloum pointed over the water to the boulder-like heads and piggish ears of submerged water-horses: he said they could upset a