Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [170]
‘The gold is not worth it?’ said Godscalc. Then he said, ‘I am sorry.’
‘No. My postulatum was almost as objectionable. Are these five men worth it?’ said Nicholas. But he knew what Godscalc was going to answer. And he would have kept on, himself, no matter what the rest did.
It was Saloum who ended the matter. ‘Lord, there is no choice. In such heat, these people cannot walk back. It is not the gold that will save them, it is the river.’
They didn’t reach it that day, or the next, for between the Senagana and the silent market was a valley, and hills. Events blurred in the memory; reduced this, the first white man’s march past the Gambia, to the daily routine of the Calabrian peasant: the perpetual grubbing for food – the prize of a small flock of guinea-fowl – the forage for wood for the nightly bonfire; the watch for arrows, or animals. The stoicism of Diniz; and the growing evidence that Bel, their anchor, was succumbing to the hateful ailment she had so often nursed.
Gelis walked by the camel, and wiped Bel’s brow, and fed her the milk that, wherever they were, Nicholas found. There was no shortage of water. Half the drama of the bald, infertile landscape was contained in the steep, tree-filled chasms and dwindling waterfalls. But it was not a country for crops, or for people, and the pyramid cities of termites were all that seemed to thrive in it.
Three of their porters ran off. The camel bore, without complaint, what extra burdens it might, and obeyed Nicholas, who talked to it in Greek and sometimes called it Chennaa. The loss was of small consequence, except that the harder work had to be shared. They passed some meagre settlements, but met with shut doors rather than the bold curiosity of the past, and the asses’ hoofmarks in the dust told them why.
They paid desperate prices for goats’ milk and dried meat and millet, and crossed a valley and plodded up broken slopes which made the camel complain, but called no sound from Bel. Diniz watched her. Eventually, he said, ‘Nicholas? She is too weak to be jolted. If I walk, you could carry her.’
Nicholas let him walk, with Godscalc’s help, for a while, and rode the animal in his place, the bundles about him and Bel, swathed in his arms, stained with vomit and blood. He hissed and crooned as he rode, and controlled the steady pace of the beast with a little stick he had made. She said once, ‘Who was Chennaa?’ and Gelis, watching, saw his face touched with a smile. He said, ‘A love I once had.’
Then, in a while, he made Diniz mount once again and gave Bel to Gelis to care for, while he and Godscalc turned a mat into a shape between harness and a stretcher so that they could take her on foot. Carrying her, Gelis noticed, he crooned and hissed the same way, and sometimes sang under his breath. Once, she thought she heard a whisper from Bel, joining in. They came to the mountains.
That night, even Diniz was silent, but Saloum said, ‘Do not fear. It is cool. Over there, cattle graze; there are people. We have only to climb. Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you will see it.’
They saw it sooner than they had feared for, late that day, collecting dusty earth-nuts and berries and roots, Vito found two of their stolen donkeys, quietly grazing in a sparse copse of trees. One had a deep slash crowded with flies on one shoulder. There was no sign of the other three beasts, or of Jorge’s five men who had taken them.
‘I should say there has been a fight on the plain, near the market,’ said Saloum. ‘These animals have been chased back to the hills, and some days ago. That is not the wound of an assagai, or an axe, or an arrow.’
‘They met Doria’s men down there?’ Nicholas said. He didn’t expect Saloum to agree. He didn’t expect Lopez really (he convinced himself) to have led Doria over these hills to the market.
Saloum said, ‘Doria’s men would not be alive. The salt traders kill every stranger, and so do the men from Wangara. It is how the secret is kept.’
The next morning, they passed through a cornfield and up rising ground where