Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [166]
Gelis said, ‘He’s done enough. I’ll come with you. Have you a net, or have you come for my hair?’ Under the headcloth it hung in long, plaited rats’ tails.
Nicholas picked up the end of the longest. ‘No, but come. We’ll put a slug on it and hold you head downwards. Or …’ He looked at Godscalc.
‘Do you want to?’ said Godscalc.
They knew, of course, about women. She felt her pallid cheeks flush, and then was angry, but chiefly with herself. She said, ‘Thank you. I want to.’
She had to wait, but briefly, while Nicholas marshalled the rest of his party and saw them into the hands of the headman to be allotted places to sleep and to eat. The people here were not afraid: the compound shook to the thud of the pestles as the women pounded the grain-vats and tittered; children ran among goats and poultry and girls paused to stare on their way to fetch water, languidly skeining cloth into a headpad and placing great yellow gourds on their crowns. They bore themselve like empresses.
Jorge was absent, no doubt for the usual reasons, so Vito and Diniz took charge. Nicholas supervised for a while. When he came back to Gelis, he carried two pails, slung on either end of a yoke over his shoulder. There was another for her. He said, ‘We don’t need equipment. We’ve been invited to help in the fishing. I throw out the fish and you catch them.’
She said, ‘How will you know what they are saying?’ The ground was soft. She had left her skin shoes with Bel and her toughened feet pressed down the grasses.
He said, ‘You shouldn’t do that; remember Manoli. We’ll manage. I could interpret St Augustine to a deaf and dumb Jalofo by now.’
Ahead she could hear the sound of the river, and splashing. She said, ‘What would you do if anything happened to Saloum?’
He said, ‘Follow the signs. But it would be difficult.’
She glanced round at him then. ‘We are only really safe, aren’t we, because he is a marabout?’
‘He commands respect,’ Nicholas said. ‘Although few of these people are orthodox in their beliefs. But yes, they don’t attack us because he is black, and a marabout, and may have greater magic than theirs, and we freed him.’ He was looking ahead through the trees. He said, without any change in his voice, ‘To no avail, it would seem.’
The unseen river ran still, overlaid with the hiss of the cicadas. In a bough overhead something hooted, to be distantly answered from the massive canopy of birdsong that twittered and chirruped and sang below a reddening sky. Drums pattered emptily in the distance, or throbbed closer at hand; and somewhere not too far ahead was a murmur of voices unevenly pulsing together, with a single voice filling the spaces. The fish were being apostrophised.
The man staggering towards Nicholas and Gelis contributed nothing to the general noise because his mouth was smashed in, and his nose broken, and his black skin glistening through a moving river of blood. It was Saloum, alone.
Gelis ran forward. Nicholas reached the marabout before her, and was already grasping his body as the Mandingua dropped to his knees. The blood from his face had spurted over his garments and the blotches were soaking together. He sank back on his heels and Nicholas, holding him, ran a hand lightly over the rest of him. He said, ‘Only his face. What happened, Saloum?’ Gelis pulled off her headcloth and knelt.
‘I hit him,’ said Jorge da Silves, and walked up to them all from the trees.
Cloth in hand, Gelis stayed where she was. Nicholas relinquished Saloum and stood up. ‘I was going to kill him,’ said Jorge. ‘Until I remembered we had nobody else.’ He had a club in one hand, and his nostrils above the black beard were blanched. He said, ‘I found him drawing the symbol.’
‘Where?’ Nicholas said.
‘At the river. He was going to cross to the opposite bank. He has drawn them all,’ Jorge said.
‘How do you know?’ Nicholas said. He had a knife at his waist but hadn’t touched it. His voice and eyes, resting on the Portuguese, were both quiet.
‘He has