Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [177]
‘You speak Arabic,’ Nicholas said. It surprised him that Saloum hadn’t tried it before. He found he fell into it himself very well, as he should.
Saloum said, ignoring this, ‘I shall take you to the court of the judges. It would be better for you to rest there. Or Umar will take you. He belongs there.’
‘Umar?’ said Nicholas.
‘Myself. Umar ibn Muhammad al-Kaburi,’ said Loppe.
Chapter 26
THE PRESENCE OF Loppe was in no way surprising to Nicholas who had, after all, been conversing with him under somewhat obscure circumstances for several days. Huddled shivering upon a cedarwood bed in a large, darkened room, Nicholas was content that Loppe’s face, its features satisfactorily reassembled, appeared from time to time among the many other black and brown faces which accompanied him from the palace of pillars to the house where he now lay. He talked to them all, but especially to Loppe, whose alternative names escaped his memory. He had always disliked even calling him Lopez.
He heard other conversations, but did not take part in them. The first might even have been a dream. It began with the violent opening of both leaves of the door of his room. Through half-open lids he saw the servant behind it stagger back, and two others jump. Loppe, who had been sitting beside him, stood up in his white robe and cap.
It was Father Godscalc who came in, bringing the same cold voice and high anger he had shown the other day in the boat outside Murano, but now very wild in appearance, with curling black and grey face-hair tangled amongst the long hair that fell back from his brow, and his cotton cape and pantaloons filthy. After his first hasty steps to the bed, made in silence, he appeared to swing round and address Loppe. ‘So! It is true!’
‘That I am alive? You might say so, Father. I asked Saloum ibn Hani to beg you to wait until I had seen to Ser Niccolò’s comfort.’
‘He has marsh-fever. As he had in the Abruzzi. In Trebizond. I thought you called him Nicholas,’ Godscalc said. ‘You might as well call him Nicholas, now you have become a trickster, as he is.’
‘He intended to stop here. I know what sickness he has. He is being treated for it. I shall explain to you shortly,’ said Loppe. When he restrained himself, his voice became deeply musical, like a chant.
‘Will you,’ said Godscalc. It was not a question. ‘You’ll tell us how you came to stay behind on the Niccolò, but were the only man to escape. How you led Raffaelo Doria to the Joliba so that the Wangara miners could kill him and his men – and again, you were the only man to escape. How you ensured that Nicholas would follow, believing you were in danger, and instructed Saloum to gull Jorge da Silves and send him and his men to their deaths. Did you mean Diniz to go with Jorge and die? Did you mean us all to die except Nicholas?’
Nicholas heard his own name. The servants seemed to have left the room, including the one who had been fanning him. The bed linen was heavy and wet, but his body was weightless. Loppe said, ‘It is a perilous journey to Timbuktu. The most capricious danger is greed.’
‘And you think Nicholas free of it?’ Godscalc said. ‘Diniz was not.’
Loppe said, ‘I am glad the boy survived.’
‘Are you. And who are you,’ Godscalc said, ‘to tempt men to sin and then punish them for it?’
‘Did they need tempting?’ said Loppe. ‘I led Doria away from Wangara. If he had gone there, you would have followed. You would all have been killed. And I, too.’
Godscalc said, ‘But you did not tell us your plan.’
‘No,’ said Loppe.
The conversation stopped. Nicholas drifted towards another dream. Loppe spoke again, slowly. ‘Perhaps he can hear me. It is only right if he does. Nicholas came to Africa for the secret of Wangara. It was the only way to keep him from it.’
‘At the cost of how many souls?’ Godscalc said. ‘And will he stop now?’
‘Look about you,’ said Loppe. Or perhaps, since it didn’t make much sense, he didn’t say it,