Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [86]
He knew, on shore, where to hire a horse, and they found him a guide very quickly. It was only twenty-five miles to Ponta do Sol on a path that went clear down the coast, but he couldn’t risk missing his way. Diniz would be at Ponta do Sol, and he must reach him soon. Before, distraught at the news of his uncle, the boy thought of taking horse east, and attempting to reboard the caravel.
If I were free, he had said. Well, he was now.
Even without the guide, Nicholas would have known he was approaching the estate of Tristão Vasquez by the smells beaten into the grindstones: the dense vinous breath of the presses, and the aroma he could never forget, the herbal sweetness that still steamed, he hoped, from his copper vats by the temple at Kouklia.
It had not been a talkative journey. The track was only the width of a wagon, and soft and pitted with use: another aspect of the moist balmy climate that produced the tropical profusion of flower and foliage he could only sense, and the darting, bustling life of the undergrowth. His guide possessed a flambeau, but had not needed to light it. The night had cleared, and the starlight and the strange reflected light of the sea on his left-hand side were enough. He rode, for the moment enveloped again in the tranquil detachment he had gained, and then lost, in the solitary months after Marian’s death, and had found again only in Cyprus, on his way to and from Kouklia.
He met no one on the road: no frantic boy spurring back, bereaved, adrift and now pauperised by the golden uncle whom his father, out of generosity, had made his partner in a fine, growing business. He was going to be in time.
Before the guide spoke, the rush of the stream told him he was coming towards Diniz’ patrimony. The limits of the tilled land were not easy to define in the darkness, but he saw a bridge and a mill and a collection of cabins, and further off a stockade within which appeared a number of roofs, mostly thatched, and all of them illuminated by the glowing lamps in the windows of a much larger residence whose upper storey he could discern.
The gates to the stockade stood open, sign of perturbation enough, and as he and the guide dismounted and went in, a brace of dogs began to bark wildly, causing a baby somewhere to cry. A man’s voice shouted an enquiry, and Nicholas stopped in a pool of light.
The central house of two storeys was lit along its full length, the windows neither shuttered nor covered with muslin, and its walls thick with vines. A man, fully clothed, came out on the balcony, and Nicholas took off his hat to show his face. He said, ‘Nicholas vander Poele of Venice. I hoped to see Senhor Diniz.’ It was halfway through the night.
‘Wait,’ said the man. Against the light he was broad-built but not young, and his voice had a ring of authority. He could be no one but the factor.
Nicholas waited, hearing a confused sound of voices through the open window. Then almost immediately the door below burst open and Diniz came out and stopped. The slanting light sharpened the hollows of cheekbone and eye and his hair, uncovered, hung in rough strands. There was no trace left of the tight-lipped hauteur of his leaving. He said, ‘I knew you would come.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nicholas.
‘Yes. So am I,’ Diniz said. ‘We’re not – You must be tired. Come upstairs.’ The man from the balcony came out at his back, inclined his head and, walking past Nicholas, went to speak to his guide. Diniz said, ‘He’s my father’s … he’s the Vasquez factor, Jaime, who lives here. He has seven children.’
The implications