Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [220]
But long before now, they had heard enough first-hand reports to understand that they were risking their lives for an aim that could never be realised. Even for a troop of well-provisioned men, travelling with the consent of the tribes of the country, the journey from Timbuktu to Ethiopia was impossible in the six months they had given themselves, and was probably so on any terms. All they could do was attempt it and die, or attempt it and bring back their account of the failure.
They had to follow the bend of the river to Gao, the black Songhai capital. From there, as the Gher Nigheren plunged south, they must strike east and south, exchanging rocks and bushes for the steaming terrain of the wetlands. There, as here, men would be afraid of them, and their guides would be ignorant and avaricious, and speak no language they knew.
When, for the first of many times, their porters deserted them, and they had to bribe their way into a village, Godscalc had said, over the fire, ‘What have I done? I should never have brought you.’
‘You had no choice,’ Nicholas said. ‘I don’t mind you bringing me. If you said, “I should never have come,” that’s a different matter. Come on. You were going to draw maps. Where’s the cross-staff?’ Then after a moment, ‘What would it be worth if it were easy? I’ll give you something hard to do. Sit down here, throw a stick on the fire, and convert me.’
They had always respected one another. On that journey was born something that was to last as long as they both lived, and do them both harm. For Godscalc, who had glimpsed the real danger, was too blinded by false hopes to scotch it.
This time, as May drew to a close, Gregorio of Asti kept no vigils on the peaks of Madeira, and did not pause on the cliff between Ponta do Sol and Funchal. He was afraid to see the San Niccolò coming.
Crackbene and the Fortado had gone, and news of that magnificent cargo would have spread very soon to the money markets in Bruges, and then Florence and Venice. So would the news that the San Niccolò too was on her way – perhaps also triumphant, and laden with gold and fabulous gifts from the Negus Prester John, but perhaps not. Already the rumours were spreading. The Vasquez boy had died. Who else of the land party had survived? Or, as on the Fortado, was there no one at all except a few seamen left on board a ship which, in this case, was empty?
By now, Simon de St Pol would know he was rich, and might have had the grace to travel to Lagos and comfort his doubly-bereaved sister. No word had reached Gregorio from there.
By now, Urbano and Baptista Lomellini had had the promised discussion with Gregorio, in which they had made a reasonable offer for the quinta at Ponta do Sol, and had asked him to convey it to Diniz’ sorrowing mother. Gregorio had not passed it on.
He had heard nothing directly from the Vatachino, and was glad of it. David de Salmeton had left Madeira for Bruges in the autumn, although his hand, Gregorio knew, lay behind the concerted manoeuvre to have the Ghost waylaid on arrival and identified.
His hand, too, lay behind the trouble that had erupted at Bruges. Gregorio heard only hints of it, and longed to be there, and occasionally wished that Julius could have remained in Bruges, instead of Cristoffels. But the Bank was more important than Bruges, and had first call on the best man. So Nicholas had ruled, with absolute and understandable finality.
Nicholas could not have foreseen, all the same, that the Vatachino would continue to expand as they had done, opening offices, recruiting clerks, venturing into more and more fields as if their coffers were suddenly inexhaustible.
Nicholas had recognised them, of course, as his rivals in Guinea. Even before he learned of their stake in the Fortado, he had suspected that the Vatachino wanted him to go to Guinea with Diniz, and find the gold, the mines, the wealth of the Negus. And then, when he and Diniz failed to come back, the gold, the ship, the Vasquez business