Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [276]
Gelis said, ‘This is the library. Come and see.’
He had glimpsed it once before. Into his mind came a narrow, beautiful room with thirteen dormer windows, through which the indigo night sky looked down upon tiered ranks of shelves, twelve on each side. And at the end of the long, shining river of parquet, silver candelabra glowed on a table.
With extraordinary violence Nicholas said, ‘No!’
‘What?’ she said. ‘Nicholas, what?’ Then, in her usual voice, ‘It is not like the Qadi’s, or Katib Musa’s. Come in. It’s quite different.’
And then he saw that she was right, and it was not like any room he had been in before, and especially not one of the kind he had imagined, which he had never seen in his life. He walked in, therefore, saying, ‘The Qadi’s library is half gone. There was a fire.’
She stood still. ‘A fire? How?’
‘Begun by Akil’s men. It will be all right now. I showed them what to do. And Umar is there. He got home. You heard.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ she said. ‘I know he helped you over the desert. Three children now?’
‘The last a daughter.’ In the candlelight, he saw her face soften. She had changed, as he had. The wind had printed fine lines on her brow, and her skin would never again have the pure, fine grain of the child. Her eyes seemed bigger, as the flesh now clung close to the bone, and her lips had a tuck at each corner, as he had seen them when she first sat with the smallest black children, penning her lessons. Her hair, straight but not straight, like satin touched by the teazle, had returned from streaked silver to oat colour, and the fronds of her lashes were brown. She had pulled out a book and was gazing at it. Godscalc had done that.
Nicholas said abruptly, ‘Do you have peace?’ He said it in Arabic.
She looked up, her lashes aghast like a doll’s. When she answered, it was in harsh Arabic, and not with the called-for response. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who I am. Bel has gone. I can only find the person I was when speaking to Godscalc, or Diniz. Or you. I hoped, you. But you have put it behind you.’ Her knuckles were white on the book.
He drew the book from her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I carry it with me.’
‘How?’ she said. It was what Jordan had said.
‘I had teachers,’ he said. ‘And books, like these. And the desert. Mostly the desert.’
‘But you didn’t want to stay?’
‘Oh, I did,’ Nicholas said.
‘But the gold drew you back?’ She sounded fierce.
‘No. I was driven out,’ Nicholas said. ‘Paradise lost. Or not even that, really. I was doing them harm.’
‘How could you?’ she said.
‘I think we should look at books,’ he said. ‘If that is what I’m here for. You know I brought a lot back?’
‘How could you do them harm?’ she repeated. She sat on a stool, suddenly, like a child in her fine clothes. ‘You said yourself that you helped them.’
Nicholas looked down at her, and didn’t answer at once. Then he said, ‘I know what I’ve left. I am not going back. No one can help them yet, except themselves. Umar accepts it as well.’
‘So he took you there for nothing?’ Gelis said.
‘You may judge it so,’ Nicholas said. ‘We laid his country open to rape, and he allowed it to teach us some truths, and in the end, protected it from us. None of us can be the same. What clods would we be if we were? Your mould is broken: you are afraid, but you have a chance few people have, to make a new one. What you see of me is his handiwork. Diniz will make a good man. Bel brought her own goodness with her, and increased it.’
‘And Godscalc?’ Gelis said. She stopped. ‘No. That isn’t fair. Heaven knows, that isn’t your fault, or Umar’s.’
‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘You have it wrong. It’s not the men of passionate faith for whom martyrdom is a glory. Godscalc has made good his vows, whereas all his life he feared to fall short of them. The hands are his sacrifice. And he and Colard Mansion are going to drive each other crazy. Gelis,