Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [62]
‘You haven’t heard mine,’ Nicholas said. It was only to see what she would say.
‘And we don’t want to!’ said Simon’s sister. ‘Do you think we should dream of selling the business to you?’
‘Yes, if it was failing,’ Nicholas said. He shifted on the cold floor. For one reason or another, he was going to have to leave soon.
‘And you would still buy it?’ Gelis van Borselen said.
‘Yes. Up till now,’ Nicholas said, ‘it hasn’t had me to run it.’ He sat, clasping his bloodstained kerchief round his dirt-encased knees, and let his smile spread and dimple under his matted hair.
‘It is a powerful argument,’ said Gelis van Borselen. ‘Very well. Submit your offers in writing, and declare when and how you would settle. Madame will communicate in due course. You are both going to Africa?’
Nicholas looked at the prie-dieu, and the dark, liquid eyes returned the look. ‘Not together,’ Nicholas said.
‘Ah!’ said David de Salmeton. ‘I had hoped … That is, surely you planned, like myself, to call on the way at Madeira? The plantations of St Pol & Vasquez are there. I hoped your new caravel might offer me passage at, of course, the right price.’
‘Free,’ Nicholas said. ‘Provided I am the new owner of St Pol & Vasquez. Otherwise the ship will be full, I much fear, of inedible merchandise. Demoiselles, I must leave.’ He got up.
‘A cool drink?’ said Gelis van Borselen. ‘There is no hurry, surely.’
There was not so much hurry that he couldn’t make them all an extremely elaborate bow. He said to David de Salmeton, ‘Perhaps we shall meet in Madeira. Or elsewhere.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ the agent said. ‘There are Negroes enough for us all, although I envy you that young Guinea fellow you’ve tamed. He’ll take you straight to the pick of the bunch. I’m told the piccaninnies are charming.’
‘I’ll send you one,’ Nicholas said; and got himself outside quite adequately, he was so angry.
The plump, friendly woman was still in the tavern when he eventually called on his way back, and so was Father Godscalc, sitting in a settled way before a small, half-empty flask.
Nicholas paused. The woman had her foot on the steps. Godscalc said, ‘If you want them, the chamberlain has given me the addresses of three proper houses. You have one bastard too many already.’ Then he looked again and said, ‘Who did that to you?’
‘Simon’s sister,’ Nicholas said, ‘hit me on the head with a brick.’ He sat down, overwhelmed by the humour of it. He said, ‘The Vatachino were there.’
Godscalc said nothing.
Nicholas said, ‘And Gelis. Gelis van–’
Godscalc said, ‘So what of it? You knew what to expect.’ He waited and then said not unkindly, ‘And they are not alike. You would hardly think they were sisters.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
He heard Godscalc throw a coin on the table and get up. Godscalc said, ‘Come. I have a horse. Time you were back on board ship.’
Chapter 10
STRANDED WITH THREE thousand Portuguese and two thousand Burgundians on one of the Pillars of Hercules, Diniz Vasquez was far too stubborn to admit that he had made a mistake in coming to Africa.
From the hill-top fort to which he had been posted, he looked across fourteen miles of water to the opposite Pillar, named Jabal Tariq by the Moors who had occupied the rock until practically yesterday. To his right was the Middle Sea. To his left was the Ocean Sea of the West. Behind him on its narrow peninsula lay the Christian city he had come to relieve, called Septem Fratres by the Romans, and Ceuta today.
The name referred to seven hills and not to any visible record for brotherhood. In seizing it fifty years ago, the King of Portugal had proclaimed a number of charitable aims, such as gaining access to the desert