Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [185]
The silence stretched. Then Nicholas dragged himself up on one elbow. ‘Now I remember,’ he said. His pale skin was livid.
‘Leave, please,’ said Umar, without looking round.
She had no need to stay. She knew what Nicholas felt about Lopez. She knew what Nicholas felt about a great many people, but especially about Katelina.
She hadn’t needed the ravings of Nicholas to tell her that Katelina’s body and hers were alike. Alike, of course, except that hers was intact, while Katelina’s had enjoyed lover, husband, maternity. Except that she was alive, and Katelina was dead. She didn’t want to hear what happened between Nicholas and a man who only made believe to be dead.
As she opened the door, she saw Umar walk forward in his spotless robe and white cap, and abruptly drop to his knees like a servant. She heard Nicholas speak. Nicholas said, ‘How dare you. How dare you do what you have done.’
The violence of it stayed in her mind as she left. She could not imagine feeling such rage, had Katelina come back.
Chapter 27
THE EFFECT OF THE collision between Nicholas and Lopez was unexpected. Instead of being thrown back into fever Nicholas stayed, entrenched and determined, on the high ground to which temper had propelled him, and the vitality he had lost came flooding back.
The same might have been said of Lopez. The explosion over, the familiar figure, broad and black and reserved, emerged as if from limbo to speak and act once again as he had always done. As if, with Nicholas there, he need have no fear of misrepresentation, even if he had neither approval nor support. Even Diniz, with his vaunted insight, could not fully understand what had happened, and Gelis, when unobserved, wore an expression of doubt. Bel said, ‘What is it sin-eaters do?’
‘Never mind,’ Godscalc answered. Recently, they had spent some time together, but neither had spoken of, or to, Gelis.
On the afternoon of that same day, Nicholas had asked them all to come to his room and delivered a statement in a low, restored voice. Propped up by pillows, he had denounced Loppe as the murderer in spirit, if not in fact, of Doria and his men, and Jorge da Silves and his. As Godscalc had not done, he also recounted Loppe’s reasons.
‘To me, the grounds for killing these men were insufficient,’ he ended. ‘By his lights, they were not. In any case, you might say, it happened; it is over; and, now the motive has been removed, it will not happen again. The deaths that occurred on the ship and on the journey would have taken place anyway. We might have fared a great deal worse had we not been given Saloum, who is absent because … Umar … wished us to understand that Saloum deserved none of the blame. Umar did not see fit to advise us of the character of Timbuktu, or of his standing here, because he was committed to deceiving us about Wangara. The secret of Wangara being safe, he is willing to rejoin us now, and to guide us through the trade we have come to effect, and to help us on the next stage of our journey, if we want him. I don’t know whether I do. You are here to make your voice known. Have I been fair?’ He looked, unsmiling, at Umar, who had been Loppe.
‘No,’ said Umar. ‘But it is your language, and your standards, and your company.’
‘Then make your own case,’ Nicholas said. ‘You are, I hear, a jurist.’
‘I should not presume,’ Umar said. He, too, looked sombre.
Diniz said, ‘We’ve come a long way. We need help. We couldn’t even go back.’ He thought. ‘He provided this house, and looked after Nicholas, and protected us from that bastard Akil. But will he let us buy gold?’
‘Yes,’ said Umar. ‘This is a legitimate market. It is the silent trade and the mines you are debarred from. As has been said, I have no reason to deceive or hinder you now.’
His gaze, as he spoke, was on Godscalc. He had made no plea; said nothing of all he had done for them in the past in Cyprus, in Trebizond – even, so Godscalc had been told, on the homecoming