Scales of Gold: The Fourth Book of the House of Niccolo

  ‘My lord!’ said the man; and ran out after him.

  ‘There he is!’ Gelis cried.

  They caught him just over the bridge, and he had time to wish that he had waited, in a dignified fashion. Diniz said, ‘You were leaving!’

  ‘I have to go,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘After what?’ said Gelis van Borselen. Apart from the circles under her eyes, she was quite unaltered. ‘What have you got him to promise you?’

  ‘Diniz? Nothing,’ said Nicholas. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Where?’

  He paused. ‘Funchal,’ he said warily.

  ‘And why?’ said Gelis van Borselen.

  Gregorio said, ‘Nicholas. The San Niccolò has sailed out of harbour.’

  ‘With David de Salmeton?’ said Nicholas recklessly.

  ‘No. As soon as he left. So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Leaving,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m expected by friends. Gregorio, I’ve left you a letter. Senhor Jaime, I have to thank you and your lady. Diniz, goodbye.’

  It was Gregorio who held his reins and bodily stopped him: Gregorio, who, he would have thought, even more than the girl or the factor would have wanted him parted from Diniz. Gregorio said, ‘Where are you going? You owe it to us to tell us.’

  Nicholas said, ‘I’m going to Câmara de Lobos. Help them. It’s all in the letter, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I am going with you,’ said Diniz.

  ‘No, you are not,’ said the girl, and brought her foot hard down on his, while snapping over her shoulder, ‘Let him go, damn you.’

  ‘What?’ said Gregorio. He slackened his grip. Nicholas tore his reins free and dug his spurs into his horse. It jibbed resentfully, then bounded as he collected the reins and did it again. He heard stumbling footsteps beside him, and then a sudden, desperate drag on his saddle and girth. Diniz was mounting behind him.

  The horse faltered. Clawing, the boy got into place and once there, grasped Nicholas in both hands. He was sobbing for breath. He said, ‘Go. For my father’s sake.’ Nicholas lifted his whip. Gelis van Borselen, on her own horse, appeared suddenly at his side. She said, ‘It is your father’s name, Diniz.’

  The boy raised a fist and hammered on Nicholas’s back. Nicholas reined in his horse, and the other horse stopped. Nicholas said, ‘Do you want me to whip him to the ground? Talk to him if you want. I don’t care either way, but I must go.’ He could hardly breathe, with the grip Diniz had on him.

  The girl said, ‘If you won’t throw him off, then I will.’ He saw her lean from her mount. Diniz growled. Then, lifting his hand, he delivered such a slap to the rump he was sitting on that the horse bolted. Nicholas bellowed. He fought it all the way out of the gates before he got control out on the road. The horse, shuddering, stopped. The girl, mounting fast, had raced after him. She stopped at his side, and sat panting. He caught a glimpse of surprise on her face.

  Nicholas spoke to the boy clinging behind him. ‘Use your head, Diniz. Whatever you want, this is no way to do things; without planning, without speaking to Jaime. Get down and go into the house. Listen and make up your mind. No one will force you either way. I’ll wait fifteen minutes, then go.’

  The girl said nothing, which he hadn’t expected. He waited. The arms clenched about him slowly slackened. Diniz said, ‘You won’t wait.’

  ‘Now I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘you are insulting me.’ He met the girl’s eyes, then saw them shift behind him. Diniz dismounted and looked at him. The girl dismounted as well and stood quietly holding her reins. Then Diniz turned, and they walked over the yard to the house, leaving Nicholas waiting.

  Gregorio joined him. ‘What are you doing?’ He was weary.

  ‘Giving him a semblance of choice. He must elect to stay, not be forced to it.’

  ‘And if he won’t?’ Gregorio said.

  ‘Then he’s too young as yet to help anyone. He’ll come back as a man,’ Nicholas said, ‘and take proper possession, if there’s anything left that belongs to him. I take it you couldn’t cancel the sale?’

  ‘No,’ said Gregorio. ‘The part owned by St Pol has quite gone.’

  ‘So Diniz needs you,’ Nicholas said. He sat and waited.

  ‘I don’t want this,’ Gregorio said.

  ‘I know,’ said Nicholas. ‘Instead of garnering gold, you get to settle the bill for my sins. Do what you can. Don’t forget them if you have to go back to Venice. Julius is a good man, but if the Fortado is better than I think she is, you may have to carry a great weight between you.’

  ‘The Fortado?’ Gregorio said. ‘She’s really sailing for Africa? With de Salmeton?’

  ‘I think that’s unlikely. The Vatachino couldn’t spare him. But yes, she’s sailing. And the Vatachino are financing her, and the Lomellini, and Simon; Gelis will have told you. We’re going to have to fight for our gold.’

  ‘And if Diniz wants to fight beside you, you’ll take him?’

  ‘You were willing,’ Nicholas said. It was necessary.

  Gregorio said, ‘But you need swordsmen. I understand.’

  He had walked halfway back to the house, his shadow behind him, when the front door opened again and the factor Jaime came out and spoke to him, and then called for his grooms. Five minutes passed; then Diniz rode out to Nicholas, a bag strapped at his back and his eyes unusually bright.

  Behind him, cloaked and mounted, was Gelis van Borselen. Nicholas said, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To a nunnery,’ she said. ‘Oh, how your face cleared! I go wherever you go with Diniz. We have made a bargain.’

  ‘Not with me,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘You said you didn’t care either way,’ said Gelis van Borselen. ‘If he comes, I come. I thought you were in a hurry?’

  ‘Diniz,’ Nicholas said. ‘We are going to Africa.’

  ‘I can’t stop her,’ he said. ‘I don’t care. I need the gold for my mother.’

  He looked driven. Nicholas turned on the girl. ‘You’re doing this for Lucia too? Well, why not. I’m sure she thinks you can manage. But I’d mind out for the brick if young Diniz gets buggered despite you.’

  Diniz went patchily red. Gelis said, ‘Shouldn’t we ride? I heard you’d gone. I guessed the San Niccolò would creep out and pick you up somewhere. I told Bel to slip back on board and come with her.’

  ‘Along with your luggage?’ said Nicholas. All she had slung on her horse was her coffer.

  ‘I left quite a lot in my cabin. I shan’t miss my luggage,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said Nicholas. ‘Then we might as well ride.’

  He had never seen Câmara de Lobos in daylight. Asleep under the stars, it was a pretty village, huddled among wattle fences and great skeins of fishing nets drying. The village boats rocked in the bay, surrounding a single great vessel, quietly at anchor where the water was deeper. She was a roundship.

  Two men rose when he rode down to the beach, and spoke to him softly, and held the horses as all three dismounted. Far out, a light boat began to move from the mother ship, which had put up a lantern. Diniz said, ‘That isn’t the Niccolò.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘That is the Ghost, our allotted transport to Africa. Full of pirates, but deficient in clothing and women. I don’t recommend it; not on one coffer.’

  ‘Where is the Niccolò?’ Gelis asked. For the first time, she looked disconcerted.

  ‘Speeding to Arguim,’ he said. ‘Bearing Bel of Cuthilgurdy, it seems, and your wardrobe. I assume you’ll see sense now and stay on Madeira. I can’t protect a woman out there.’

  ‘I never thought you could,’ said Gelis van Borselen. ‘It isn’t your forte.’

  She didn’t see sense. He could have detained her by force, but he didn’t. Partly, perhaps, because the solitary Bel was now on the Niccolò somewhere ahead of them. Partly because, denied his conclusion with Simon, he felt compelled to confront and to master his demon in some other form. Partly, then, to chastise himself.

  He thought how
pleased Father Godscalc ought to be.

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS NO SURPRISE to Ochoa de Marchena to send his caique to Câmara de Lobos and find it return with a youth of eighteen and a young lady of nineteen, as well as his owner. As well, that is, as the man who had signed him on as master. Who owned the Ghost didn’t concern him. He was quite surprised, however, when the girl was allotted the wainscoted cabin, and the owner and the boy joined the mate and himself in the big one.

  The council of war, too, was unexpectedly brisk. Instead of sailing in convoy, the San Niccolò in all her legitimacy had fled the harbour at Funchal and was now making straight for the African coast, pausing to take on fresh stores in the Canary Islands. The Ghost, with her great spread of canvas, was to make all haste to catch and protect her. Preferably in Grand Canary itself. The Ghost of Seville, full of horses, had no permission to sell them in Portuguese Africa.

  Ochoa de Marchena didn’t need it spelled out. He had treated them to one of his soft, toothless grins. ‘You heard the Fortado’s been licensed for Guinea as well? You don’t want her to clean out your market before you.’

  ‘I’d quite like to get to Arguim first,’ his patron had remarked. He looked livelier than you’d expect, though unshaven. ‘She’ll have left Funchal by now. She knows, I’m sure, where you’re going. What do you think she will do?’

  Ochoa always liked a man who asked his opinion. He said, ‘Take the same route as us; she can’t avoid it. The quickest way to raise Arguim is to sail by the Canaries until their peaks are hull down, and then cross to the coast above Blanco. Her advantage is that she’s fully provisioned. So she won’t stop. She’ll go straight over to Guinea.’

  ‘Is she well manned?’

  ‘She’s got a well-practised crew. I don’t know what master; she changed command when she got her new orders. She was diverted from Ceuta: the crusade came to a halt, and the Fortado had a load of grain and gear she’d no use for. That’s what she’ll be selling at Arguim.’

  ‘Diniz?’ the patron had said unexpectedly.

  And the boy, asleep on his feet, had said, ‘That’s right. It was a regular run. I can tell you what she carried.’

  ‘Can you? Good. And being a caravel, her sailing speed will be much like the Niccolò’s? Other things being equal?’

  Ochoa had laughed. ‘You asking about Jorge da Silves? I’ll tell you. He wants a knighthood in the Order of Christ.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he’ll burn water for you, if he thinks he’ll get a name for it. He’ll get to Arguim first. But what about your next port? You’ll have the Fortado after you, empty and angry. And she’s licensed.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you to sink her,’ vander Poele said. He had a mild way of speaking.

  Ochoa had laughed again. ‘No, you weren’t. But she might fall off the end of the world. No one could blame me for that.’

  ‘Not if you brought absolute proof. So we call at Grand Canary?’

  ‘Why?’ said the young lady. She wasn’t asleep. Her face was familiar.

  She was the one he’d been told not to wave to. Ochoa said, ‘Do I answer?’

  ‘You might as well,’ vander Poele said. ‘She doesn’t like the Fortado either.’

  ‘She was a guest of the Captain at Funchal,’ said Ochoa.

  ‘Then if she swims ashore to complain, we’ll be sorry. We call at the Grand Canary because we require a receipt for having offloaded horses. Also, the San Niccolò will have arrived, and I’m joining her.’

  She said, ‘I won’t be put on shore.’

  Ochoa, pleased, left the patron to answer. The patron said, ‘Who would dare? Diniz, however, had best come with me. Father Godscalc might worry.’

  Later, when the girl had retired, Ochoa thumped into his cot by the others. ‘So the young lady stays with Ochoa?’

  The Ghost was in the full ocean by then, her course set for south by south-east, her square sails bellying, her round starboard flank seething and dipping. The first of an uneasy dawn lit her mast-top. The patron stirred, and delivered an answer. Its import was negative. Its nature – its poetic nature – was such that Ochoa de Marchena was awed. Seized with joy, he leaned over his owner and kissed him.

  In the event, circumstances saw to it that nothing disembarked at Grand Canary four days later but twenty-five mythical horses: mythical only to the inhabitants of the island, that was. They were real enough on the Ghost, where it seemed likely that they would stove in the planks between decks. And there was no question of transferring to the Niccolò, because the Niccolò had gone straight past La Palma without stopping (so the port officer cheerfully informed them) and down the east coast of the Canary as if the devil himself were coming after her. ‘And let us hope,’ he said, ‘that she has her supplies well aboard, because she’ll find little but water at Arguim.’

  The port officer was Castilian, and he approved the brave Castilian flag the Ghost was flying, as well as being well acquainted with Ochoa de Marchena. Nicholas, fretfully ashore and plied with heavy Andalusian wine, enquired whether the captain was sure it was the caravel he had witnessed.

  ‘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.
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  ‘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 days at seven knots.’

  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.’