Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [223]
‘But Diniz is dead,’ had said Simon, with his angelic smile. ‘And even when he was alive, so I hear, he was unable to convert Katelina’s sister. I don’t suppose Gelis will return. Unless she is quick with a knife. Quicker than Nicholas.’
And at length Gregorio had said bitterly, ‘Then don’t you fear for the child? If Nicholas is the cold-blooded murderer you imply, will Henry be safe?’
‘My dear Meester Gregorio,’ Simon had said. ‘I don’t mean to take Henry on board the San Niccolò. You and I and some of my servants will go. A posse of soldiers, already promised by Captain Zarco. But I propose to leave the child at the quinta until the lists have been set up. Then he will come to Funchal to see how his father bears arms. Gentleman against churl: it is not wholly suitable, but Zarco insisted. You know he has given me leave to execute the sentence against Claes myself?’
‘What sentence?’ said Gregorio. ‘For what crime? He hasn’t even arrived yet.’
‘For the death of Diniz,’ Simon said. ‘The San Niccolò will bring enough witnesses. And if that isn’t enough, we have the boy’s account. The boy who stood there and watched it.’
‘What boy?’ said Gregorio.
‘One of the grumetes,’ said Simon with patience. ‘Does it matter? A poor, frightened lad when I saw him last on the Fortado. His name was Filipe.’
‘Was it?’ said Gregorio slowly. ‘Then you have accepted the word of a liar, my lord. A thief and a liar. And I shall tell the captain so.’
‘You may if you wish,’ Simon said. ‘But of course, it will not affect trial by combat, which is what, in my magnanimity, I am offering. It may even last a little longer than once it did: Claes might know one end of a sword from the other. But of course, the outcome is not in doubt, as everyone present will see, including the child. I mean the child to be there. I should like Claes to look Henry de St Pol in the face. I should like Henry to see his head fall.’
Waiting on the wharf at Funchal, Gregorio watched the San Niccolò sail slowly up from the south, and his gut twisted within him.
He had done all he could to reverse what Simon had done. He had visited Zarco, pleaded with the Lomellini, made depositions. He had laid information as to the character of the boy Filipe, all to no effect. He had not slept for two nights. And now he stood with Simon and Urbano Lomellini and a pack of soldiers, waiting to embark on the pinnace that would lead the San Niccolò in. And then board her. And then take Nicholas off to his death.
And yet he watched her come with an aching pride, for she had won home; the lovely caravel which had left Lagos so bravely. And she was making a brave homecoming too: her flags flying, her cannon saluting the town. Far off, there carried the sound of a trumpet. And the flags that were flying were those of celebration: none was at half-mast. So Nicholas was alive and here, to face whatever awaited him.
Her sails came down and, as she took to her oars, Simon led his party into the pinnace to meet her. The vessels slowly converged, and they all saw the real state of the San Niccolò.
She was still painted black. They had bought paint, Gregorio guessed, at Arguim or Grand Canary, and it had been brushed over the great patches and scars in her planking, but roughly, as if there had been few men and little time for the operation. The way her sails had come down spoke, too, of a working crew as sparse as that of the Fortado; and, like her enemy, she lumbered, sluggish with weed.
The rest of her was a patchwork: the cannons half gone; the rails mended with different woods – but the oars were new, and some of her spars pristine and gleaming. She was trailing two boats, one a stout skiff of the kind they used on Grand Canary and the other hacked out of some garish timber, and half full of water.
There were men running about on the deck. Gregorio glimpsed the oarsmen,