Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [67]
Physically, the boy had matured. The hollow-cheeked, bloodless youngster of Famagusta was a man of middle height who would never be broad, but who now had the shoulders, the neck and the forearms of a soldier. He looked his father’s son, except for the shape of his eyes and something about the set of his back, which came from his half-Scottish blood. Nicholas said, ‘Are you sorry?’
‘No,’ said Diniz. His eyes were bright. He said, ‘You’ll come to the house with me?’
‘I think that would be a remarkably bad idea,’ Nicholas said. ‘No. It’s your own affair, what you and your people decide. Anyway, I’m supposed to be out of town. Send and tell me tomorrow what happened.’
Diniz said, ‘I thought I’d tell them …’
Nicholas rose. He said, ‘Diniz, I don’t want to know. You’ve had time to think. It’s your business. If your mother wants, I’ll take her to Madeira. But I shan’t take you without her.’
The boy’s skin darkened. Then he said, ‘Of course not,’ and left.
Nicholas went ashore in disguise, and passed the hours until sunset in the house Gregorio had taken, for ostensibly he had spent the last days in Lisbon, not Ceuta, and was not due to return until evening. He used the time to talk to his companions in residence, among them Jorge da Silves, now installed to supervise the commissioning of the vessel whose master he would be.
Time now was precious. Heat and rain were the enemy: every voyage to and from the African coast had to be made between September and May. In three weeks the ship had to be ready, to the last detail of equipment, provisions and crew. On this, the first day of his return, Nicholas mastered the reports, read the lists, and discussed the last fitting-out of the caravel. It had a name.
‘The what!’ Nicholas said.
‘The San Niccolò,’ Gregorio said. ‘We had to call the ship something. What are you going to use for the other one? The Doria, the Ribérac, or just Future Trouble? Stolen, unlicensed, and trading where anyone can blow her out of the water? Who’s going to sail her?’
‘No one reputable, you may be sure,’ Nicholas said. He didn’t want to upset anyone, yet. He didn’t particularly want a ship named after himself either, but knew well enough when to recognise a gesture. He said, ‘I wonder whom Jordan insured her with?’
By the time he went to bed that night he had seen over his completed ship, now afloat. After the Ciaretti, the caravel felt like a fishing-boat. Half the length, three-masted, beamy, she answered to twenty-five mariners, as the slender Ciaretti answered to two hundred or more, and had room in her stout pinewood belly for food and water and cargo; and a rig and a rudder to take her anywhere her captain had heart to go. Still warm from the sun, she was so new she smelt like a banquet, and shone in the lamplight like satin. The pain he felt this time, unwisely, was joy.
Next day, he was arguing over some drawings of collapsable boats when Bel of Cuthilgurdy was announced, and for a moment he couldn’t recall who she was. Then she came in, upholstered from neck to floor like a tent and wearing a linen towel on her head, bunched heavily over each ear. She was not carrying a hackbut. She said, ‘Aye. And are ye sober today?’
Simon’s sister’s companion. He said, ‘You need to come very early for that,’ and smiled at her, and got rid of the others who fortunately didn’t speak Scots. He found her a cushioned stool and some wine. When she sat, all the stool and part of the floor disappeared. He sat down opposite. ‘Now, about sodomy,’ she began.
‘… Yes?’ said Nicholas.
‘Oh, ye can cackle,’ said the woman. Her eyes were brown as two coppers. ‘But spoil that laddie’s good name, and I’ll have ye cold as a chine of boiled mutton. He’s for going to Madoora.’
‘Madeira,’ Nicholas said. ‘With his mother?’
‘Ye know Mistress Lucia?’ the woman said. ‘Well, you’ve cause to. She got three good dunts on ye afore we pulled her away.’
‘You had a hackbut,’ said Nicholas.
‘But I didna use it. No. Ye don’t want Mistress Lucia on Madoora.’
‘Worse than sodomy?’ Nicholas said.
‘You’re a cheeky young bastard,’ she