Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
Those who could walk were hastening towards him, Godscalc keeping with Nicholas, and Gelis passing Saloum. Saloum said, to Nicholas rather than Vito, ‘If they cannot agree, if the trader cheats, if the tribesmen are angered or fearful, sometimes they will burn the dealers’ merchandise and take back their gold and go home.’
‘So they thought they were being deceived?’ Nicholas said. ‘Or saw that strangers were coming, and blamed the traders?’
‘Maybe,’ Saloum said. ‘Or perhaps the hollows scooped for the gold were thought to be unreasonably deep. The traders can sometimes be obstinate.’ He was speaking monotonously, his Portuguese worse than usual.
‘Where are the hollows?’ said Gelis. She looked for Vito, who was still on his knees. ‘Oh, I see. One, of course, by each booth.’ She walked up. ‘Why …!’
‘… There is something still in them. Move her away,’ Nicholas said.
There were only six of them filled; but after all Doria had only had seven men to begin with, counting Lopez, and had probably lost more men and bearers than they had. Much of the flesh of the heads had been eaten, but some of the hair still remained, and you could tell which skin had been white, and which black. Doria’s eye-socket had an earring dropped into it. Nicholas couldn’t say which of the blacks had been Loppe. If there had been a body, he could have told from the hands.
Vito was retching, but Gelis had not gone away. She said, ‘This was why he brought them here. That was what Saloum said, wasn’t it? This was why Lopez brought them here, and didn’t want you to follow. He knew this would happen.’
She looked at Nicholas. He hadn’t lifted his eyes. She said, ‘He knew that if Doria brought you together, one of you would tell him the secret of Wangara.’
‘I didn’t know it,’ said Nicholas. Across the grass, Diniz had got up and was coming forward, shambling a little.
‘We had better bury them,’ Nicholas said.
‘Don’t you hear me?’ she said. ‘He saved Wangara, and the men from Wangara have killed him.’
It was to be noticed that, from then onwards, few of the six who were left disputed with Nicholas, and the standing of Saloum, too, was secure. If Nicholas gave it much thought, which uniquely for him he did not, he would have discerned well enough the chief reason. He had not exploited his friendship with Lopez. Lopez had received from him the unconditional gift of the slaves and, faced with a conflict of loyalties, had reconciled some of them here, and shown himself ready to die for them. And Saloum had been faithful to both.
Nicholas gave the subject no particular thought, since he was busy. His party had to, ride for a little. But once past the falls – a stretch of rocks and rapids and currents so fast that a craft could shoot twenty-five miles in three hours – the Joliba turned itself into his highway. A log boat fifty feet long had been purchased, with men to manage it, and the sale of the asses and of Chennaa – of his camel – had bought them a bountiful load of provisions, without recourse to his porcelain shell-coins. The heat, though at times disagreeable, was ten degrees less here by day than they had suffered, and by night was cool and fresh as a spring dusk in Flanders.
The river, half a mile wide, flowed to the north-east, where they were going. Vito, nimble and bright as a marmoset, had manufactured extra rigging and canopies and made them beds and partitions within the roomy, hooded interior. The paddles splashed, and the skins of goats’ milk and water swayed overhead, and from the long cooking-trough there floated back the warm smell of partridge roasting in Kalita butter, or the bubbling of a fine piece of perch, or pieces of fresh beef cut up among rice. Borne on the smooth breast of the Joliba, Bel and Diniz began to recover.
Godscalc no longer demanded to take his box ashore and carry the Cross to the princes of Guinea. It was not that the shores were unsafe, as were those they had found on the Gambia. Here,