Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [56]
It seemed to Gregorio that Godscalc’s face became heavy, like dough. The priest said, ‘Who is there? You do know?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Nicholas said. ‘It’s going to be very dangerous. There is no one there but Simon’s sister and Gelis van Borselen.’
He spoke to Godscalc, and curtly, with none of the relief that would have seemed natural. Godscalc’s face in turn darkened again. He said, ‘Simon has gone? Jordan is still away?’
‘Apparently,’ Nicholas said. ‘So I have only the ladies to charm.’
‘They won’t let you in,’ Gregorio said.
‘I thought of taking a squadron of soldiers,’ Nicholas said. ‘Or keeping the porter in talk while I send a party round the back wall with high ladders. Or hiding some men in a cart, and driving it into their courtyard, dressed as a wife from the campo selling chickens.’
Godscalc said, ‘Stop trifling. You’d lose your caravel if you did any of that.’
‘It does no harm to dream. In real dreary life, the Governor has sent to ask the Widow Vasquez to receive the lord Niccolò vander Poele, her old Flemish friend and commander of the next Portuguese voyage to Guinea. His Excellency’s chamberlain will supply and accompany an escort, and the Palace has loaned us some horses. There they are, on the quay with their groom. You may come of course, or not, as you wish. There will not, I am afraid, be any bloodshed. Now that Tristão is dead, the Portuguese could easily remove Simon’s licence to trade and ask him to go back to Scotland. Lucia daren’t offend them.’
‘Have you ever met her?’ said Gregorio. ‘Simon’s sister?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ Nicholas said. ‘But I remember Gelis.’
Gregorio said nothing at all. Whatever the Governor believed, Nicholas was here neither as an old friend of the Vasquez, nor as the leader of the next voyage to Guinea. He was here to explain how Tristão Vasquez and Katelina van Borselen had met their deaths. Gregorio was mortally glad he was not going to be there to listen.
The house occupied by the two Vasquez families was large and built high on the hill, although outside the wall of the castle. Glancing back, as the small cavalcade began to approach it, Nicholas could see the masts of the Ciaretti as she lay, her hatch covers off, discharging that part of the cargo destined for immediate warehousing.
She was the only boat in the bay, apart from fishing vessels and a caravel recently in, which lay being careened in the busy yards of the estuary. The town was full of her seamen. It wouldn’t be difficult to make up a crew, when he needed one. Her cargo was also warehoused, but in a different quarter, being alive. The double line of black slaves was already ashore before he dropped anchor and, inspected and valued, would soon be brought to market. It was where Loppe had been bought by his first master, who taught him Portuguese and trained him to produce sugar. The chamberlain riding beside him said something, and Godscalc replied. Soon, they would arrive at the house.
Some time ago, Nicholas had begun to realise that Jordan de Ribérac had not chosen to wait for him here. It was not hard to find out that Louis of France, deprived for too long of his foremost financial adviser, had compelled the vicomte de Ribérac to return forthwith to Court.
On the other hand, had Jordan de Ribérac really wished it, he could have found means to remain. If he had gone, it was because he planned a different, slower revenge. Nicholas assumed an execution was planned. The scar on his cheek, given long ago, had been a token of intent, often renewed.
What else would Jordan do? He would send the child somewhere safe; and this he had done. No messenger had been able to trace the three-year-old heir born to Katelina. One might have thought Henry de St Pol dead, except that the boy’s nurses had also vanished from view, and the word from Katelina’s kinsmen in Bruges conveyed no impression of dreadful despair; only the angry hurt of a family parted from its daughter’s sole child.
And the boy was not in Simon’s erratic grasp: Simon until recently