Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [93]
The wind was pranking about from the south-west and gusting. ‘We’re doing five knots,’ Nicholas said. ‘We shan’t do better until we catch the right weather, and the caravels will manage three and a half if they’re lucky. I wonder.’
‘What?’ said Diniz.
‘What guns the Fortado carries,’ said Nicholas. ‘Ochoa will know.’
Diniz grinned, but Gelis, he was pleased to see, didn’t.
He resisted telling Diniz his plans, and Gelis, retired to her cabin, didn’t ask. Just before sunset the ragged clouds cleared, and Ochoa dressed a spar to the mast and went up himself to the peak, a wolfskin cap on his head with its upper jaw over one ear. He slid down almost immediately. ‘The Fortado is in sight. Now we know her course and shall soon know her speed; she has no suspicion. All we have to do is hold back until dark. And there is plenty to do. The wind is coming.’
By the time Diniz came up from his supper to discover the cause of the banging and rolling, the wind was dead astern and the Ghost had changed her shape yet again. The forecastle and poop both seemed higher; the boats were differently stowed and the rail of the quarter-deck altered; while her mizzen-sail, which had been a triangular lateen, was now square, although at present reefed in order to slow her. Lastly, the mysterious chests which had lain on her deck were now dismantled, disclosing six bombards and four breechloading swivel-guns. In the waist, neatly folded, lay a quantity of old thin sailcloth.
‘What are you doing?’ Diniz said. ‘They’ve put out our lamps.’
‘My lamp has been taken away,’ said the angry voice of Gelis almost immediately.
‘That is right, my treasured ones,’ said Ochoa de Marchena. ‘See, pick your way to the binnacle. Per gratia di Dio et del beato messer Sante Niccholò, as they say in the Levant. We show no lights while we catch up with the Fortado, for there is no moon and the stars are cloud-covered. And just recently we have come into the path of the north-easterly, which will propel us all the way to Arguim, once our business is finished.’
‘You are going to blow her out of the water!’ said Diniz exultantly.
‘Nonsense,’ said Nicholas, his face suspended diabolically in the same binnacle light. ‘We intend to put her to a small inconvenience before the night is quite over, but it won’t be for some hours yet, and there is no need for the lady to lose sleep or her lamp. I shall have it put back, demoiselle, so long as you have no objection to having your doorway made fast. One gleam from that, and it might be the Fortado which blows us out of the water.’
‘Then I’d rather be on deck when she did it,’ Gelis said. ‘Keep your lantern.’
She was not on deck, however, when they caught up with the Fortado, for Ochoa, a cape over the glory of his stolen cuirass and sword, had dispatched her below, together with the three or four whores from the forecastle and the groom for the horses.
Up on deck, the big stern lantern was cold, and every other light was extinguished except for the two binnacles, secure in their boxes. The sailcloth had gone, but beside the guns the faintest glow showed where the slow-matches burned in their barrels and men moved about on bare feet, speaking softly. Diniz said, ‘Where is she? The Fortado? Has she seen us?’
‘There,’ said Nicholas, pointing ahead and to the right. Having no armour, he had borrowed for himself and Diniz from the seamen’s stock of leather tunics and helms. ‘No. She’s darkened, as we are. When we reach the top of the swell, you can just see the green of her wake. We want to get between her and the wind on the same tack, so that she loses way and may even broach-to. Then we fire as we pass her.’
‘The cannon?’ said Diniz. He sounded breathless. ‘You said –’
‘I said we’d mind our manners. The cannon are only there in case she doesn’t mind hers.’ As he spoke, the rigging shuddered under his hand, although the sky was so dark he could see no one. He said, ‘We’re going to slow her, that’s all. We can do it with handguns.’
‘I can use one,’ said Diniz. ‘Where are they?’
He told him, and