Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [195]
‘You’re over-tolerant,’ Godscalc said. ‘You are not old, and celibate so far as I know. But that was not what I meant. I questioned your logic. You accept slavery here, despite all that occurred on the Niccolò?’
‘You think we exploit them?’ said Umar.
‘I think, from what I have seen, that you treat them as the Portuguese do,’ Godscalc said. ‘In a wealthy community, they are needed as servants, and seem happy and comfortable in that role. They wash, they market, they cook, they carry burdens, they bring water. They tend gardens and plant herbs and run errands. We said on the Niccolò that the lives of such slaves were pleasanter than they would have been with their families, except that they are not hired by their own choice, and have lost their homes and their dignity. And the more they are needed, the greater their value in money, and so the trade is debased.’
He had spoken with vehemence, but Umar showed no offence. They were stopped, twice, by acquaintances before he replied. Then he said, ‘I told you that you were free to go to Prester John’s land, but if I am not eager, then this is the reason. Yes, the slaves here are happy, although some masters are more just, as in every country, than are others. They come to the city from the lands round about. Some were brought in or were captured, but many came from choice, and most of these were idol-worshippers from the forest, who are now of my faith. Also, at present the city is orderly: it cannot itself be plundered of people. Hence the situation is very different from the coast, where tribe despoils tribe, and the traders pass up and down every hour, collecting their booty. It could become like that here, if the Christians come.’
‘Or even if the Mamelukes come,’ Godscalc said.
‘Yes,’ said Umar. ‘You might find black faces in strange places then. I think I see Nicholas over there. I am glad you asked me. I should perhaps tell you that it was not intended that I should be celibate. My family have chosen a wife. Her name is Zuhra.’
Godscalc halted in his surprise. He said, ‘You are happy?’ He wondered if Nicholas knew.
Umar smiled. ‘It is my duty. Of course.’
‘Then you plan to stay here?’ He realised too late that it was an uncivilised question.
‘I think,’ said Umar, ‘that Europe will manage without me.’
Gelis, too, became familiar with the narrow lanes of the city: the sludge walls and soft, rounded corners where the rains had dissolved the grey rough-cast and left melting, half-repaired shapes of booths and houses and workshops, shrines and markets and mosques. The secret of baking mud-bricks and using mortar had come, it was said, from the masons of the towns of Dia and Djenne, two hundred and fifty miles to the south-west; but there was clay to be had at Djenne, whereas the villages along the Joliba made their bricks from mud mixed with gravel and dung, so that families lived through the rains in homes made of half-liquid ordure.
In Timbuktu there were mud-and-straw huts on the outskirts, but the wealthy could afford to import something more permanent. Many of the merchants’ houses were built of clay-covered stone as was the Andalusian mosque, although the rest seemed to cling to the primitive fashion, rising tall as monuments made of cuneiform blocks and webbed with shadows cast by the rods men scaled like flies to repair them. The exception was the Grand Mosque they called Jingerebir, built in the style of the palace and likewise mismanaged, so that water for the ablutions had to be brought from outside.
Nicholas had not been allowed there, but the pieces of its irrigation system had somehow found their way to his lodging, so that whenever Gelis entered the courtyard, she burned her ankles on fragments of metal. Then, apologising, he would remove them into the shade and resume what he had been doing, which was sometimes nothing to do with metal at all, but an idle pastime such as carving a farmuk, with which he entertained the hordes of black children from the slaves’ quarters.
Gelis had seen one before: he had sent a toy like it from Florence when