Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [92]
‘No doubt!’ he said. ‘New, and black-painted as you describe. Not but what I thought her a roundship at first, with a square-cut sail instead of a lateen.’
All at once, the Andalusian wine tasted magnificent. Nicholas said, ‘That should send her bowling along, once she picks up the north-easterly wind.’
‘She was in a hurry, that is so. Very few go to such trouble. Although I saw another, not two hours behind, which had used the very same trick,’ said the officer. ‘Older. Blue. Portuguese shipmates, no doubt, with gold in their eye and a fast turn-round in mind.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Ochoa de Marchena. ‘How you have made his wine bitter! We execrate the little blue boat, and were praying for every kind of misadventure. When did she pass?’
‘Why, at nona, or thereabouts,’ said the port officer. ‘And handled by a seaman, that I can tell you. But a caravel hasn’t your spread of sail. Go to it, Ochoa. You’ll catch her before sunset, if you want to.’
The wine of Jerez had never been so quickly abandoned. The sails were drawing and the lead-line armed before the commissary had properly packed down their stores: the cheeses and biscuit and meat the San Niccolò would be in sore need of, and a few handy parcels of orchella and some dragon’s blood that Nicholas had thrown into the boat as a bargain.
Watching from the great cabin, Gelis – still perforce on board – was triumphant, and Diniz excited. ‘What has happened?’
Nicholas joined them with reluctance. Since Funchal he had seen much of Diniz, by turns anxious and elated to find himself liberated on his grandfather’s roundship. For Nicholas, the return to the former Doria, haunted by Primaflora, by the recollection of Pagano Doria, had been unwelcome. He found it hard to deal with Gelis and had been thankful that, until now, she had learned to keep to her cabin. Ochoa’s crew of exuberant cut-throats were a different matter from the San Niccolò’s seamen.
But now, the lizard stare on her face, she seemed stimulated as well as amused by what he was telling them. ‘You say the Niccolò should get to Arguim first. But if the Fortado follows her in, she will certainly warn the fort that a third, unauthorised vessel is coming, and the Portuguese factor will prevent you from trading. Surely he would stop you in any case?’
‘Maybe,’ Nicholas said. ‘Maybe not. He likes horses.’
‘I see,’ she said. There was contempt in her voice. ‘And that is the only peril?’
‘The Fortado knows we may be the Doria and will report that. She also knows, I suppose, that I am here, and not on my own licensed caravel, which would certainly give the Portuguese authorities grounds for searching us.’
‘And finding all of us, and the horses, on a stolen ship run by Castilian pirates. End of venture,’ said Diniz.
‘She doesn’t know,’ said Gelis van Borselen.
‘What?’ said Diniz. She didn’t look at him.
‘David de Salmeton didn’t know you had left the San Niccolò. It didn’t occur to him that you would, and I didn’t tell him. So the Fortado thinks you’re still on board your own caravel, and that I am still in Madeira, staying with Diniz. It is what I told them at Funchal.’
Nicholas gazed at her. The strength of her hatred unnerved him. He should have been sorry for the Vatachino, had he not been quite apprehensive for himself. Diniz said eagerly, ‘So now you can blow her out of the water.’
Slowly, Nicholas removed his gaze from the girl’s. She had lifted an eyebrow.
‘That’s so,’ he said. ‘Mind you, we’d have to sink her and leave no survivors, or the Ghost would be as ardently sought as the Doria. And we have to catch her up first. The coast is less than sixty miles off.’
The prospect of drowning or slaughtering thirty compatriots serving the Lomellini, the Vatachino and Simon did not, it was clear, preoccupy Diniz. He said, ‘The African coast?’ with some pleasure, and then added, ‘But it’s a bad lee shore, according to Diogo. Ships don’t immediately cross: they take a late diagonal west to Cape Blanco. That gives you four or five hundred miles to catch up with her. A good three