Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [174]
‘Perhaps,’ said Gelis, ‘we are all finding time to be homesick.’
‘Are you?’ Godscalc said.
‘I have no home to be sick for,’ she said.
He had never heard her speak before with self-pity. He thought perhaps she was frightened, for last night the river had been joined by another, and this morning both had gone, to be replaced by a sea: by a lake that stretched from one side of the sky to the other, interrupted by shallows and islands, by outcrops upon which cabins perched, and fishermen mended their nets, and women waded in rice, or pushed out their boats and went visiting from this islet to that.
‘It is only the season,’ he said. ‘Saloum says January is the time for the flood. We shall find the river again.’ That morning they had travelled through grass: a meadow of tall, rustling reeds below which water glinted. Driven by poles, the bark had sheared its way through them, leaving behind it a trail bright as mercury. They crossed other trails, seeing no one, but hearing the crackle of reeds all about them. Next, they had floated through acres of lilies, white and lilac and yellow. Godscalc said, ‘Are you sorry you came?’
In the shade, she had pulled off her headcloth. Her hair was bleached by the sun, the plaits smooth, although the threads of it curled at her temples. Her face, fined into hollows, was thin-skinned and brown, and so were her arms below the crumpled, bleached stuff of her cape. She said, ‘No. I promised myself that I would.’
‘And are you then glad?’ Godscalc said. ‘What have you learned?’
‘About Katelina?’ she said. Her eyes gleamed.
Nicholas was far ahead, in the bows, in the sun. ‘About this young man,’ Godscalc said, ‘who meant her no harm.’
‘That is the refrain Diniz sings me,’ she said. ‘Did you not ask yourself, before you came here, how many would die because of Nicholas? Is it an excuse you would permit, that sometimes it happens by accident?’
If she were less clever, he supposed, she would be happier. And those around her as well. He said, ‘But at least you accept, then, that your sister’s death was an accident? For if you do, your duty must be forgiveness. Does he not grieve, do you suppose? Does he not grieve for his friend at this moment?’
‘You trust him,’ she said.
He wondered what to say, for she was waiting, amused, for a lie. One could never trust Nicholas, not entirely. Nicholas himself had told Lopez not to trust him, and Lopez had not. It made no difference, in the end. Nicholas had made his way to the silent market for gold. Doria and Lopez and Jorge had taken the risks. It was not because of bad planning that the gold had not been there.
But that was nonsense. Godscalc said, ‘I trust him in the things he believes in, which are not, in my view, to be despised. Ask Mistress Bel.’
‘Yes,’ said Gelis. ‘He is afraid of her. So, are we close?’
‘I think,’ said Father Godscalc, ‘that we have come two-thirds of the way.’
The last two hundred miles were not difficult, which Nicholas found irritating, being a person who derived satisfaction from problems. He was not unaware of the murmur of gossip under the hood, and took it as evidence that his charges were rested and fed and recovering. He exchanged pleasantries with them all – which he could hardly avoid, even with fifty feet of timber to roam through – and they always ate under the hood, especially when the gnats hummed and whined in the evening. They had always been apt to afflict him but, shrouded as they all were in cotton, he did well enough.
In any case, once they found the river again, they were able to move much more swiftly. Sooner than he expected, he began to see dunes on the left bank, and although there were still patches of green, and the right bank was florid as ever, there was no doubt that they had come far