Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [178]
There was a lot of shouting in that, but Nicholas didn’t recognise either Loppe’s voice or Godscalc’s and wondered if Jordan had found him again. His teeth drummed through his head, sticks on skins, sticks on ivory, shell upon shell. Instead of shouting, he spoke with his teeth, but no one listened.
Gelis said, ‘I am frightened.’
No one answered her. They were in Timbuktu, and had spent their first night there. Now it was early morning and she and Bel, Father Godscalc and Diniz found themselves in a courtyard, about to ride out from the house of two storeys to which the tall Negro stranger had brought them. The tall Negro who, frighteningly in the half-light, proved to be no stranger at all, but Lopez in life again.
Arriving weary and late, they had found the transformation hard to assimilate. Last night, they had barely noticed where they were staying, being concerned only with Nicholas, who had been conveyed there already, and was sleeping. Lopez had seen them settled and then returned to the sickroom. The building, they gathered, was borrowed, and Lopez, but for tonight, lived elsewhere. There was no sign of Saloum, but many servants were at hand, attentive and smiling. None of them spoke a familiar tongue.
It was not surprising. They were in limbo. They were in the legendary entrepôt where, in due season, the salt from the Sahara was transferred from camel to boat and made its way up the Joliba to the silent place where it was replaced by gold. They were in Timbuktu, and Nicholas had successfully brought them there.
Last night they had been exhausted. Today they awoke to the reality of Loppe’s living presence; of his transformation from Negro slave to a man named Umar ibn Muhammad al-Kaburi who, captured and sold to the Portuguese, had not lied when he said he had no father or mother, brother or sisters or wife, but who had not confided in them his identity. And who had let them mourn him for dead.
They were disturbed because the deception was too great for them to trust him. They had heard Godscalc’s account of his interview. Diniz, confused and angry, had tried to resume that confrontation, but Godscalc had stopped him. Whatever had caused Loppe’s – Umar’s – actions; the key lay with Nicholas and nothing more should be done until Nicholas was able to speak.
Meanwhile, Godscalc found himself avoiding the man he had known for so long, and Gelis maintained a pointed van Borselen silence. Only Bel, perhaps recalling the slave-laden Niccolò, spoke to Loppe-Umar naturally – indeed much as she had talked to her chicken. His eyes showed his gratitude.
For the rest, the former Lopez accepted it all as if well prepared for their censure and puzzlement. Only the condition of Nicholas had clearly startled and worried him: he clung to the sickroom, they saw, as if willing Nicholas to awake. But Nicholas, burning with fever, had retreated currently into a separate world and could not recognise his former companions, much less communicate usefully with them.
Last night Diniz, too, had lingered frustrated at his bedside, but had learned nothing from Nicholas, and less than nothing from his physician. The man was a Negro.
‘From Kabura,’ Umar-Lopez had answered, when fiercely questioned. ‘Of my own race, many of whom live in this quarter. He is a master of medicine, as fully qualified as your friend Abul Ismail of the Mameluke army. Would I offer Nicholas less?’ He had paused, and seemed to brace himself to make an effort. ‘You are about to say that, but for me, his journey here would not have been so impetuous, or so damaging. It is true. I am sorry.’
‘Nicholas didn’t have marsh-fever in Cyprus,’ Diniz said. ‘On that occasion, he gave himself other punishments. He is going to be very angry, I think, when he understands you are not dead, or a dream.’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Umar-Lopez. After a moment he said, ‘It is unusual, to interpret even so much of how Nicholas thinks. But of course, you are of his blood. Of his colour.’
‘Colour? What has that to do with