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

  The wind was just strong enough to bring her round. She moved as if on ratchets, bumping over the troublesome water, but she continued to swing until she lay to the opposite tack, eluding the sand bar and slipping into the calm of the channel, itself dulled with sand. Water sifted along her lee side. The ship fell into silence except for the rapid clear voice repeating the soundings, and Ochoa’s commands, and the calls of the mate and the helmsman. The sun, long obscured, glowed overhead suddenly, lurid and coarse as an orange.

  With equal suddenness, a ship appeared on the far side of the gulf, carrying a great deal of sail. Carrying too much sail, you would say, to navigate in such difficult waters, even though she was coming out of the gulf and not entering, and turning south and away with the wind. Then he recognised her. The ship was the San Niccolò.

  She was too far off to hail. Neither vessel could sail across to the other. The caravel made no change to her sails. For a moment, Diniz even wondered if the Ghost had been seen, forgetting that every man on the Niccolò must be looking for her. He heard Ochoa curse, his face caught between anger and puzzlement. Nicholas spoke to him, but Diniz couldn’t hear what he said. The two ships continued to move, the roundship sailing cautiously inwards; the caravel crowding sail to get out. She looked as splendid as she had leaving Lagos: glittering black with her snowy new sails, and her Portuguese flag uncurling over her. She had another one, too.

  She was flying two Portuguese flags. Diniz peered at them. A puff-ball appeared on her flank. There was a flash, and a bang travelled over the water. The helmsman shouted. Ochoa opened his mouth, and Nicholas rammed a fist on his shoulder. Ochoa’s mouth closed. A second white puff appeared, and another harmless explosion took place.

  The San Niccolò had fired two warning guns. Then, without waiting, she held her course southwards. ‘What is it?’ said Diniz, reaching Nicholas.

  He was gazing into the gulf. The sun burned. The veils, lifting, began to reveal the white beaches, the green and blue water. The stony mass shifted apart to become a group of two small shaly islands and a larger one to the right which rose to a modest height from the sea, and then tumbled down to flat sand at its southern end. There were buildings on that, both on the shore and crowning the high ground behind it. The ground was not quite high enough to conceal the masts of a ship, flying the flag of the royal house of Portugal.

  Nicholas for a moment said nothing. It was Ochoa who suddenly giggled. ‘Did you suppose our Fortado had transposed herself? No. This is another danger, or your friends would not have warned you with guns. We see a Portuguese patrol ship, I think.’

  ‘Waiting for us?’ Nicholas said. The deck tilted beneath them: the helmsman, in the absence of orders, was holding the Ghost to her course. He could do little else; the stream gave him no room to turn.

  ‘Expecting us? No. But waiting for us now, to find out why we are here. What do you wish, Senhor Niccolò, my dear? We can kedge ourselves backwards, but it will be slow. We can advance close to the island and then turn and come out by the western channel the San Niccolò used – but that would bring us under our royal friend’s guns. Or we could go in and befool them.’

  ‘Let’s go in and befool them,’ Nicholas said.

  He and Ochoa went off. Sent below to the wainscoted cabin, Diniz talked and Gelis listened with patience. He ended, ‘I don’t know what Nicholas plans. He’ll tell us. He’s coming. We mustn’t be seen. A boat has put off from the island already with armed soldiers in it.’ He couldn’t understand why she didn’t show fear. From her face, you would think she was happy.

  She was happy. She said, ‘Have you unpacked yet? I have.’ She tilted her head, looking at him with a kind of sympathetic affection. ‘Hadn’t you realised yet? Your poor horses. But of course – now nothing or no one can land.’

  She wasn’t quite accurate. Aboard the Portuguese crown caravel Corpus Dei, Ochoa de Marchena, wearing a deceased notary’s mud-coloured doublet, made sure of that, in a glistening outfall of froth. Water, he explained, was all that he wanted. Half his casks had been broached, and he still had to sail down past Cape Verde to provision the isle of Sao Tiago. No mainland trading allowed or intended, although he wouldn’t say no to some mutton. They were dead sick of tunny, his crewmen.

  He didn’t convince the royal captain immediately. The captain proposed to visit the Ghost (currently flying a Genoese flag), but the resident factor thought it unnecessary. The resident factor throughout had looked glum. Then Ochoa’s trading had come under review, and he had to display the fine receipt for his horses. He thought it right, then, to mention the white roundship they’d seen, chasing after a Portuguese caravel. The Fortado, he thought she was called, but he couldn’t go to her help, not with all that water to pump. But the casks were sound now. Repaired and sound and ready for water …

  The explosion of a successful Ochoa returning on board was heard everywhere on the Ghost, including the wainscoted cabin. A few minutes later, Nicholas entered and, closing the door, sat down and looked from Diniz to the girl, whose smile was like the snap of a thumb in his face. Then he spoke.

  ‘You know the Niccolò’s gone, so that I can’t land you through her. I can’t openly land you from the Ghost. I can, however, get you ashore in the boats we are sending for water. Once there, you’d have to hide until the Corpus Dei has decided to leave; then the Arguim factor would take care of you. He’s been paid. He’d see you got to Madeira.’

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ Gelis said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas. ‘But Diniz would have to go with you. I think I must be honest and say that I don’t want him to go, but you need the protection. I must also be honest and say that I did once want you to stay, but not now. I can’t see matters healing between us, and I don’t think we should try. You have your own life to pick up. And truly, I cannot take you where we are going: I can’t leave you alone on the Ghost; I can’t send the Niccolò home with nothing accomplished; I can’t take you into the interior. So I beg you, go ashore; and go home.’

  The smile was still there, and unchanged. ‘A speech,’ she said.

  ‘I have nothing to gain by it,’ he said.

  ‘You said you did,’ Gelis said. ‘But I don’t mind at all if we upset one another. That’s why I’m here.’

  While they spoke, men ran about overhead; there was nervous shouting, and the creaking of tackle. The first boat was launched with a splash. From below came the rumble of barrels. Diniz stood. He said, ‘Gelis. I have clothes that might fit. Push your hair in a cap. The factor’s wife will give you a gown. Come while you can.’

  She touched his chin with the tip of her finger. ‘You would leave because of me? You are your father’s son, Diniz.’

  ‘And you are Katelina’s sister,’ he said. He had heard, in what Nicholas said, something he had not heard before. Diniz said, ‘Give him a chance to forget.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Nicholas sharply. ‘Let her make up her own mind.’

  ‘No,’ said Diniz. He found himself addressing her earnestly. ‘We are all cursed with guilt, don’t you see? For far more than my father, or Katelina. She understood.’

  ‘You knew her well?’ Gelis said. ‘I don’t think you did. I can’t really care what you have on your conscience. This is between Claes and me.’

  ‘But you are wrong about him,’ Diniz said. He caught Nicholas by the shoulder, and, setting both hands to the neck of his shirt, ripped it down from its edge to its side-seam. Revealed between neck and shoulder was the deep raspberry cleft of an axe blow.

  ‘I did that,’ Diniz said. ‘By mistake. I believed what you believe.’

  Nicholas swore, pulling away and throwing together the cloth.

  His eyes, startled and angry, shifted from Diniz to the door, beyond which they all heard footsteps approaching. Ochoa de Marchena appeared like a starfish.

  ‘My children!’ he said. ‘You are not prepared! I am told I have two new oarsmen to take, and one of them is dressed like a nymph?
’

  Gelis stood. After a moment Nicholas rose, very quietly. Diniz said, ‘I’ll fetch her clothes. She’ll be ready. I’ll bring her.’

  ‘Poor, pretty knave,’ said Ochoa. ‘Who is to keep the horses alive, now you are going? I have a great cargo, have I not? Twenty-five dying nags and some water.’

  He held the door, wailing softly and crossly in Arabic. Diniz hurried towards it and turned, seeking Nicholas. Ochoa fluted and grumbled. ‘And Jorge sleek in his caravel with the merchandise. He will say, of course, he feared we were lost. But whom will my little mice blame?’

  ‘Come,’ said Nicholas. He took Diniz impatiently by the arm.

  Diniz, walking, called to Ochoa, ‘The San Niccolò managed to fill her hold then? Gold, and pepper, and gum?’

  ‘All of that,’ Ochoa said. ‘And forty slaves, the Portuguese devil, that should have been here in our straw, but that Jorge said he would take them, having a priest and a trustworthy Negro aboard. But!’ said Ochoa, ‘I tell my mice to be patient! More are waiting! Great broad stallions, and wriggling fillies, and curly-haired cupids, all to buy in the Gambia, if the horses hold out. Senhor Diniz, change your mind and the lady’s: don’t leave.’

  Diniz stopped. Nicholas let go his arm.

  Gelis said, ‘Leave! With the horses so poorly? I shouldn’t dream of it. Diniz wouldn’t dream of it, either. And we want to make Messer vander Poele happy. You’ve changed our minds for us: we’ll stay.’

  Chapter 16

  AS THE Ghost, buzzing with discord, stood by to take on her water, the San Niccolò sailed south of Arguim with priestly mutiny breaking out on her decks.

  Since the Isle of Arguim was found and claimed twenty years ago, hundreds of men had made their way there: seamen, merchants and craftsmen; the men who built the fort four years later; the masons who had planted the Portuguese arms carved in stone on each headland to replace the blackened crosses the explorers had left. Far fewer had sailed farther than that, to the Sahel, and the priests who went with them, if any, seldom made a loud stupid fuss about slaves.

  Under the blistering sun of November, the San Niccolò travelled in a storm-cloud of anger. On her decks were forty black people and twenty-eight white, of whom twenty-four were the crew of Jorge da Silves. The remaining three, whose authority Jorge da Silves did not recognise, were Godscalc the chaplain, Loppe the Negro interpreter, and the young woman’s companion who was there by mistake, and had a voice like a hinge on a codpiece.

  All the way to Arguim, Bel of Cuthilgurdy had been Godscalc’s anchor. She had not stayed at Funchal, although she had tenderly escorted the shaken David ashore. Her blunt, floury features, tied into the straw of her hat, had appeared soothingly at Godscalc’s elbow immediately after he had heard, with disbelief, that Nicholas had left to find Diniz and that the San Niccolò was sailing without him. It was Bel who convinced him that Nicholas would re-embark from a bay down the coast; and likely Gregorio too, since the demoiselle and Gregorio had followed him. Nor had she been silenced for more than a moment when they sailed past the bay, and found out that it was the Ghost, not the San Niccolò, which was stopping there.

  ‘The sailing-master’s in a right stew,’ advised Bel. ‘The blue caravel’s chasing behind, and we’ve to get to the markets afore it. That’s why they’re taking the triangles down and putting up tablecloths. And biscuit and salt beef again: we’re not to stop and buy at the Canaries. I wanted to stop and buy at the Canaries.’

  As Nicholas had learned to do, Godscalc listened. Biscuits and salt beef: they were short of food, then, but not of water. And the Fortado was coming. He knew, now, what the Fortado represented. On the surface, a Portuguese caravel on its way to Guinea with a licence to trade. In fact, a caravel propelled by the mercantile might of the Lomellini; the ill-will of the Vatachino; the single-minded venom of Simon, whose recent actions had lost him the goodwill of his sister-in-law.

  Godscalc said, ‘Mistress Bel? Why did you come back on board?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘I wanted to buy a canary. And of course, if the laddie Diniz gets himself on to the Ghost, so will Gelis. She doesna trust him with your Nicholas.’

  ‘Do you?’ Godscalc had said.

  She was helping him at the time with the seaman-cook’s blistered forearm. Since her excursion into the nursing of Filipe (on board again, and pallid, and sullen) she had been presented with a gashed hand, a broken toe and an aching tooth by a crew who preferred her cantankerous care to the chaplain’s. She said, ‘No, I wouldna trust anyone with your Nicholas, but she hasna had the chance to trip him up yet. First things first.’

  ‘Meaning, first target the Fortado?’ said Godscalc. The cook, departing, was blessing her. ‘You stunned de Salmeton so that the Ghost could escape and find a way to impede the Fortado?’

  ‘It would be handy,’ said Bel. ‘I’m sure Gelis thought it would be handy. And she didn’t even know your Nicholas would be on the Ghost at the time.’

  His anchor, but not an unmixed blessing.

  Between Funchal and Arguim, by contrast, Father Godscalc saw little of the third member of his party. The adult crew, having found Loppe far from simple, had placed him in a familiar category: that of the able, trained Negro with whom they could be amiable without being intimate. The youngsters Lázaro and Filipe, once more confederates, thought it good sport to try and goad a black man wearing hose like a westerner. Godscalc, seeing that Loppe took it calmly, left him to himself. It took some restraint. Loppe would know if Nicholas intended to bring Diniz with him. Loppe, he noticed, scanned the ocean as intently as anyone, watching for following sails: a blue caravel, with a red roundship in pursuit of her. But the Negro volunteered nothing, and the padre refrained from testing his loyalty. In one respect, Godscalc was comforted. He had asked Jorge da Silves point blank if he intended to buy slaves at Arguim. And Jorge da Silves had said he did not.

  When Arguim Bay began to appear, and still they were alone, with no sign of the Ghost or the Fortado, the prearranged plan came into effect. They were to enter and trade in the gulf, with Melchiorre, the second mate, acting as Nicholas.

  It was hard not to feel fierce excitement, up until the moment they saw the patrol boat at anchor. They were about to set foot on strange shores; achieve the first stage of their mission; replenish their meagre provisions. In return for a thousand ducats of goods – cloth and carpets; alum and salt; shaving basins and pots – they would take whatever lay in the stone and mud warehouses they could see on the shore: precious white pepper and gold dust and ivory, brought in by the nomadic Tuareg traders and stockpiled in readiness. A ship like theirs, followed by a roundship as large as the Ghost, would probably empty the station.

  The Ghost, of course, was not an authorised trader, but the factor was amenable, it seemed, to persuasion. It was not an issue that Godscalc felt entitled to worry about. He was not even greatly disturbed when Jorge da Silves pointed out that so long as the naval vessel remained, the outcast Ghost, when she arrived, could neither trade, nor should she come near the Niccolò. It seemed merely unfortunate that they were not to see Nicholas.

  It would have eased Godscalc’s mind, certainly, to wait for the Ghost’s safe arrival, but meanwhile he found intense interest in observing the passage of the caravel through the gulf’s thready channel, and agreed with alacrity when the master proposed that he should accompany the first boats on shore. ‘Because,’ said Jorge da Silves, ‘the nuisance of it is, that we shall have to carry the blacks.’

  The word hung between them. It was a moment Godscalc would not forget; the moment that confirmed all his darkest fears of this voyage. From the day she had loaded her horses at Sanlúcar, the Ghost had meant to exchange them for slaves. Nicholas had not refuted it; only he, Godscalc, could not believe it of him. Jorge da Silves had denied it the other day with easy casuistry, knowing that it was the Ghost and not he who would handle them.

  They had not meant to involve Godscalc himself. Perhaps they had hoped
to load their living cargo in darkness … But no. Why should they trouble? It was a valid trade: they were not ashamed of it. And in any case, Loppe had to help them. That was why Loppe was here. That was the sin for which he, Godscalc, couldn’t forgive Nicholas.

  He, a priest, knew what slavery was. The Church had its own bondsmen; the law allowed a man to sell himself or others for debt. He understood that nations at war made slaves of their captives in place of slaughtering them. It had happened when the Turks had attacked Trebizond. Nicholas had come to him at Trebizond and placed his dilemma, and himself, in his hands.

  His advice had been to leave. Nicholas had taken that advice, and knew what had followed. Was that why he was doing this? To flout, to punish him? But Byzantines – all Oriental nations – also used slaves: for the house, for the fields. The Crusaders had done, and the Jews. Christians had made slaves of barbarians, and the other way round. Many lived better, in the end, than at home. The Muslim world sold off their captives; the Church bought back what Christians it could. But the Muslim world also elevated them. Turks trained up alien children to become the elite of their army; captured children ruled Egypt as Mamelukes. Portugal, depleted by plague and by warfare, had welcomed the first frightened Negroes captured from Guinea; found them intelligent, biddable; had trained them, freed them, sent for more.

  But now they were not acquired as prisoners of war. They were bought, seven hundred a year, as goods from middlemen who stole them from their villages. True, they would learn a civilised tongue; be baptised; earn their salvation. Their lives would not be hard. But what of the great, dark, barbarian land they came from? How could you bring a people to Christ while stealing their children?

  So, thunderstruck on the deck of the Niccolò, Father Godscalc of Cologne seized the master of the ship by the collar and the arm, there before all his own men, and said, ‘I will have no men purchased with coin and brought aboard this ship against their will. Swear that you will leave them.’ And because rage gave him power, and he was a vigorous man accustomed to battlefields, he felt Jorge da Silves quiver before he stiffened and said, ‘The sun has harmed you, padre. There are men all about.’