Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [63]
All the riches of Africa and the Indies came to Ceuta, brought by caravan up through the Sahara. The Turks might throttle trade in the east, but to Ceuta on thousands of camels came the goods that the Genoese, too, saw and coveted; the rice and the salt, the silks and peppers and ginger, the elephants’ teeth. The slaves. And the gold.
The theory was excellent. In practice, Portugal managed to conquer little but Ceuta. In the outcome, ringed by enemies, they found it impossible to penetrate the Sahara. And the Moors of Ceuta regretfully shifted their caravan terminal a shade to the east, leaving twenty-four thousand stalls crumbling and vacant.
In the years that followed, the displaced Moors returned quite a lot, often with shiploads of friends from Granada, and had to be beaten off once again, with many fine feats of arms. A German knight errant dispatched a Saracen champion here in single combat, during the wave of Christian feeling that followed the fall of Constantinople.
That was when the Duke of Burgundy held his great feast in Lille, where a giant dressed as a Saracen had brought in a weeping damsel, representing Holy Church lamenting oppression, and mounted upon a plaster elephant. Upon which everyone present, including the Duke’s illegitimate sons, had sworn to perform high deeds of arms and wash their hands in the blood of the Infidel. Eleven years ago, that had been.
That was why two of the bastards were here, and not before time: the older would never see forty again. All the commanders were old, and famous for jousting, and anxious about their immortal souls. The knight Simon de Lalaing was probably sixty, and his two sons were no chickens: Ernoul was close by Diniz now.
Ernoul’s cousin had been one of the most famous knights of all time. Ernoul’s father and cousin had jousted in Scotland when Diniz was two, and Ernoul assumed Diniz had heard all about it. Ernoul was bountifully scathing on the subject of skulking Islamic dogs who abandoned their siege the moment the relieving force landed and, instead of offering battle like men, lured soldiers out through the gates and then fell on them.
Skirmishing parties returned with half their numbers or not at all. Guides were few and irresolute. And although heralds emerged and challenges were read out in all the customary language of chivalry, even ordinary decency seemed to have gone. No one replied. Ernoul, who was destined for the Church, had received in a matter of weeks all the reinforcement his faith might have needed. He hated the Saracens.
Diniz Vasquez, who for personal reasons had learned to hate at least one man of Muslim persuasion, began, on the contrary, to find his convictions diminish. He had come because of what had happened on Cyprus, and to escape the clutches of grandfather Jordan. But in defying Jordan, he had left his mother unchampioned, and her livelihood in the hands of an agent.
He had thought – he still thought – that her brother Simon should take care of it all, but of late he had had doubts about the warlike, brilliant Simon. He had had doubts about beauty, in men and in women. He was eighteen years old, and a passionate virgin.
Doubts about beauty, and doubts about faith. Ernoul of Burgundy said, ‘You realise His Holiness might even be dead, and the Crusade called off before we can join it? Men are living in Paradise who helped fight for Constantinople, and I haven’t killed a Moor since I came here.’
‘Join the next foraging party,’ said Diniz; and then regretted it. The fault was hardly Ernoul’s. Ernoul begged daily to lead the next sally into the hills. Charging, drums beating, into oblivion seemed more