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

Nicholas had tried, also, to choose a brocade worthy of the occasion, and his servant had wound and pinned a scarf of silk round his hair, and laid on his shoulders the necklace the Timbuktu-Koy had given him. Hung from it was a grey hollow object which he understood to be a unicorn’s horn, and efficacious against almost everything. A week ago, he would have joked about it. Now, riding to the palace, he said nothing.

  It had been a curious day. For the first time, clouds had hidden the sun, and by afternoon, the sky was livid and splashed with flickering light, which seemed to stream to the low yellow horizon. Sometimes, above the cheerful din of the streets, a low growl would be heard, as if a pride of lions were stalking the firmament. It was breathlessly hot: a few weeks hence, the sun would hold the city at the height of its thrall. Gelis looked up and said, ‘You will need to go soon.’

  Since the gold had arrived, they had not spoken of what was to come. There had been enough to do, signing documents, making formal depositions, taking physical charge of the great weight of metal. At least, shod in iron, it wouldn’t be simple to steal. And Umar would see it was safe.

  He hadn’t seen Umar since yesterday. He wondered if Umar had spoken to Godscalc, and whether that accounted for the priest’s heavy silence. That, or the inescapable reminder that mankind thought that gold was important. Or perhaps simply an accumulation of doubt over an adventure which had always seemed faintly unreal, and which now seemed quite plainly foolhardy.

  They would see Umar at the palace. Nicholas hoped, with fervour, that the disagreement was dismissed and forgotten, and that Umar had abandoned his madness. If not, Nicholas wondered how he would prevent the other from coming, short of hurting him. He would probably have to hurt him.

  Gelis said, ‘For a rich man, you look very bleak. It may not rain after all. How lucky that you mended the fountains.’

  Tonight, the whole of the palace had been opened, with all its chambers, courtyards and pools, all its flat roofs and its balconies. Lamplit flowers, sickly with scent, poured and clambered over the pillars, and incense smoked in the pavilions where tasselled cushions were heaped on the benches. The cloths which hung from the walls were magenta and purple and gold, and occasionally sewn from the skins of spotted cats of the hunting variety. The floor-tiles had been swept, although grass grew in petty wisps where the cracks were. The sound of water, in spray and in movement, could be heard everywhere.

  ‘Now they have a water engineer,’ Gelis said, ‘all they need is a really good manager. Why doesn’t Umar take it in hand?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Nicholas said. ‘It will give you something to do.’ He had been given a cup, and was sipping from it.

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I’ve begun learning Arabic. That’s fermented.’

  ‘I know. Would you like some?’

  He found himself under close scrutiny. She said, ‘Oh, dear. That’s why you were so quiet on the journey?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Drink, I’m told, usually makes me rather noisy. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not celebrating. You don’t look as if you’re celebrating either. I suppose I don’t blame you. Do you have to go?’

  He said, ‘I’ve only just come.’

  ‘To the Fountain of Youth.’

  ‘Just another irrigation job,’ Nicholas said. He was slightly taken aback to discover quite how much he had had to drink. He said, ‘I’m not worried. Not about that. Let’s go and find some sheep’s eyes.’

  ‘Then about what?’ she said. They were standing in one of the corridors and all the other revellers had passed them by.

  It seemed likely she would find out. He said, ‘Umar and I disagreed. I shall find him, and all will be well.’

  ‘Will it?’ she said. ‘I don’t know all that many people who can tackle Umar sober and alter his mind. What about? Ethiopia?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He saw Zuhra walking towards them with her frizzled hair grooved and pleated, and gold earrings the size of thick golden buckets suspended on either side of her headband. He deduced that Zuhra’s family had dressed her for today: she wore a long tunic made of silks and all the rest of her bracelets, which presumably represented her dowry. In spite of it all, she looked lovely. He felt embarrassment for Umar, and then resentment, and then the pain he had felt before.

  Umar was not with his future wife, or at least not the Umar who had been Loppe. Walking beside Zuhra was the youth of the same name, the Timbuktu-Koy’s son. He was pestering her. At the same moment, Zuhra saw Nicholas. Her face stiffened.

  It occurred to Nicholas that it was no pleasure, being extremely rich. He took a single, cowardly step to one side. Gelis said, ‘That’s Muhammed ben Idir’s son. Damn him, look what he’s doing!’ She looked round. ‘You’re not going to let him?’

  Nicholas, now four paces away, said, ‘He’ll stop now.’ Behind him, the corridor led to a garden pavilion and freedom.

  Umar ben Muhammed ben Idir, who had been caressing the neck of the future wife of his namesake, looked up and grinned. His face, big-nosed and teak-coloured, was more Tuareg than Negroid in character, and he had the Tuareg’s bad teeth. He called, in Arabic, ‘Is she not a pretty monkey? Will her big, stupid husband know what to do with her, after ten years with white women who cannot tell whether it is a little dog or a man in their bed? Do you not think we should teach her some secrets?’

  ‘You know Arabic,’ Nicholas said sadly to Gelis. He stopped retreating and prepared to advance. Before he could move, Zuhra tore herself from her tormentor’s grasp and, tramping up, stood before Nicholas. Her earrings clanked and jangled, and she looked furious. Behind her, the Koy’s son looked astonished. Nicholas said, ‘You’ll give yourself a headache.’ Gelis suddenly giggled.

  Zuhra said, ‘You will not take him.’

  ‘Holy Mary!’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Wrong culture,’ said Gelis.

  ‘Do you have peace? Nothing but peace,’ said Nicholas rapidly. He began to walk backwards and bumped into a pillar. He was in a chamber full of pillars, with a white vaulted ceiling made of honeycombed stucco, and a basin in the middle which he had never managed to mend. It led to a court with a pool. He said, ‘Gelis, take her away.’

  ‘Why?’ said Gelis.

  ‘Indeed, why?’ said the other Umar. ‘This is my father’s house.’

  ‘And in it,’ Nicholas said, ‘are …’ He backed down the steps to the courtyard. ‘Many fountains.’

  ‘You will not take him away,’ said Zuhra again, following. ‘Who are you to erase Umar’s name from the tablet of life? To make his sons fatherless, and myself a young, grieving widow with no shares in your Bank? Take some other man to save your life this time.’

  ‘You aren’t even married to him yet,’ Nicholas said. He spoke crossly, and hurriedly. The Koy’s Umar had also followed and was standing beside him, one arm round Zuhra’s shoulders. She shook it off, and the Koy’s son slapped her, smiling.

  Gelis said, ‘Stop that! Why don’t you stop him?’

  Nicholas said, ‘Zuhra, come here. See here, you. Hearken, O Lord. Forgive us if we offend, but the lady’s well-being has been confided in me by her future husband, to whom we now propose to – Gelis. Don’t.’

  She put down the foot she had raised. She said in Flemish, ‘You didn’t mind when I did it to David de Salmeton.’

  ‘No, I didn’t, but you weren’t in his father’s house at the time.’ He turned to see the Koy’s son reach again, viciously, for Zuhra. Her earrings jangled.

  Nicholas said, ‘Oh, Christ God, she’ll probably drown.’ Nevertheless, with resignation, he caught the girl by the arm, whirled her close and, running, jumped with her into the pool. On the way down, she hit him three times.

  He awoke coughing up water in quite a different place: a pleasant chamber containing cushions and chests, on one of which sat Gelis, still haphazardly laughing while trying to console Zuhra, who stood weeping. She was naked again, and a large, swe
et-mannered eunuch was engaged in drying her off. Although dripping wet, Nicholas himself was still fully clothed. He sat, absently choking, and looked about him.

  ‘The harem,’ Gelis said. ‘The only place we could find to take you. How drunk were you? Are you?’

  ‘Are,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. It was a new sort of drink. What happened to the Koy’s Umar?’

  ‘Father came and took him away. Very concerned in case you had come to some harm. We said it was all a complete accident, and Zuhra’s earrings knocked you out as you fell. Why did you fall?’

  ‘So that someone would bring me into the harem,’ he said. He weighed up the situation, coughing again. ‘I had to speak to Zuhra.’

  ‘Well, you can speak to her,’ Gelis said. ‘In front of me.’

  The eunuch had gone. The girl his friend was going to marry sat enveloped in homely cotton, her earrings discarded, her knotted hair tight as a newly bathed child’s, her swollen eyes fixed on Nicholas. She said, ‘He is mine now. It is not just. You have your woman. Take your woman to Ethiopia.’

  Nicholas rose and, slopping across the warm marble, knelt before Zuhra. ‘She doesn’t want to go, Zuhra,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want her. I don’t want anyone except the priest I am going with. I have told Umar this. He has misled you.’

  ‘You call him a liar?’ she said. Her fists coiled.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Gelis asked. She was not laughing now. Instead, she sat down beside Zuhra and touched her shoulder while she spoke again to Nicholas. ‘Do I understand that you thought of asking Umar to guide you to Ethiopia?’

  Nicholas looked at her, and back to the girl. He said, ‘He offered to do it. Of course, I refused.’

  ‘He offered!’ said the girl. ‘When he is about to take his first wife?’

  ‘From courtesy,’ Nicholas said. ‘Zuhra, he is that rare man who counts no cost if he thinks he can help a friend. The offer came from his heart, and took no account of his longing to stay, or his marriage. He will do as much and more for you in your years together. He made the offer, and I refused it. That is all. You need have no fear. He is not going to leave you.’

  ‘But if you had said yes?’ Zuhra said.

  ‘Then,’ Nicholas said, ‘I should not be his friend, as I am. Have no fear.’

  She looked at him. Her lip trembled. She said, ‘He is a very fine man.’

  ‘I know that,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘He has land in a country that has its own salt mines,’ she said.

  ‘He is a very great man,’ Nicholas said. ‘Zuhra, you must keep your eunuch with you until you are married. The son of the Timbuktu-Koy may be jealous.’

  ‘That oaf!’ Zuhra said. She rose. The eunuch had returned, a fresh robe over his arm. Her earrings clanked from his finger. She said, ‘I have known that oaf since he had no more manhood to him than the end of my finger. If he does what I do not care for, I strike him. You felt my fist?’

  ‘No,’ Nicholas said. ‘I was felled by either a spade or a slingshot, the tomb of all bravery. Nevertheless, I don’t intend to complain. I shall merely keep well clear of your Umar. Your fresh gown has arrived. Perhaps I should drip somewhere else?’

  ‘I know where to take him,’ Gelis said.

  It was a small chamber, with several mattresses and no windows. There was no one else in it. Gelis disposed herself calmly on the floor, and Nicholas stood with his back to the door and looked down on her. She said, ‘She hardly hit you at all.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘So all that performance was simply to get rid of the Koy’s son.’

  ‘And you,’ he said.

  ‘And me,’ she said after a pause. ‘And be taken somewhere where you could pacify her. Was that true? Did you try to force Umar to take you to Ethiopia?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘She thought you did.’

  ‘I told her the truth. Umar offered. I didn’t tell her that Umar wouldn’t take a refusal.’

  There was a silence. She said, ‘If it’s like that, then why is he marrying her?’

  ‘Because it isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘Or not the way you’re thinking. He asked me not to go. When I wouldn’t, he threatened to come as a means of changing my mind. Of course I shall stop him.’

  ‘So he doesn’t mean it,’ she said.

  He stirred. ‘Oh, he means it,’ he said. ‘He is as interested to keep me here as you seem to be. What did you put in the ewer?’

  She was so adept, her eyes didn’t change. She said, ‘A new kind of drink. As you called it.’

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘But since you couldn’t keep me asleep for a week, presumably you had another outcome in mind. This room? Are you going to disrobe?’

  She said, ‘You are the one who is wet.’

  He said, ‘I see,’ and crossed and sat on a cushion quite near her. The damp spread through the silk and reminded him of something. He smiled.

  ‘What?’ she said quickly.

  ‘I was thinking of Lagos. I thought you wanted to get rid of me and take home the gold?’

  She folded her skirt primly and looked up. She was twenty years old, and above middle height, with the kind of firm, solemn face you saw in altar paintings, usually suspended above childish, blunt-fingered hands holding a psalter. There were hairline creases under her eyes, not sufficiently used to be called laughter lines. Because of too little nourishment and too much heat in the five months’ pilgrimage he had inflicted on her, her breasts were still bud-like and young, and hardly disturbed the cloth of her gown, although they were distinct in his memory: curved and white as a lily, without the blue veins that would come as they pouted and swelled. Her waist was a twist of gristle, as Katelina’s once had been, and she had longer legs than Katelina. The place between them, too, was fair and not dark.

  He stood where he was and said, ‘No, I’m wrong. You do want me to go. But first you want me to stand here and feel this.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Her colour, he thought, had risen a little.

  He said, ‘If I had been the worse for what you gave me, I might have done something about it. You would have screamed, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ she said. It was obvious now that she had flushed. Her eyes were like aquamarines. She said, ‘Next day, you could not have borne it.’

  ‘And would have gone off to Ethiopia, agonising. Not a bad scheme.’ He moved forward, his head to one side, engaged in unfastening the clasp of his mantle. He dropped it. Beneath, he was still wearing his robe. The dampness of it on his skin was a luxury. Then he lowered himself to the cushions: close, but not quite close enough to touch her. He said, ‘What makes you think that, next day, I’d regret it?’

  She smiled, but the hair-creases below each eye hardly deepened. The changes in her were so slight that, had he been further off, they would have been invisible: a low pulse near her throat; a quick breath. She said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  He drew up his knees, and studied the toe of her slipper. He said, ‘If you didn’t want me, you wouldn’t be able to give me much pleasure. A virgin unmoved makes an unsatisfactory victim of lust. Didn’t Bel tell you?’

  Now the colour in her face had pooled and heightened. She said, ‘Hardly. Although I have heard of failure. A poor experience might even have sent you off all the sooner. I’m glad all your other women were eager.’ She bit off the word.

  Nicholas squeezed his eyes shut, and after a while, opened them. He said, ‘Oh, stop. Let us both stop. She’s dead. Gelis, Gelis, this is a terrible way to mourn her. If you want me, I’ll take you, whatever it does to me later. And of course I was lying: you could never be, or give, anything but delight. But you mustn’t offer yourself out of revenge.’

  He could hear her breathing. She lifted a hand, as if unsure where to place it. He took it in his own. He said, ‘The moment of truth. A thumb, and four agile fingers. The possibilities are infinite.’

  His mind was determined on calm. It was his blood which sent the pulse t
hrough his fingers to hers. He could not stop it, and he saw her recognise it for what it was. The Byzantine eyes smiled. She said, ‘Take me, then. Take me the way you took Katelina.’

  He dragged his hand away, and stood up; then, more slowly, picked up and threw over one shoulder his wet, crumpled mantle.

  ‘I took her under a waterfall, as I remember,’ he said. ‘But we’ve done that part, and I’d rather not get wet again. I thought I’d go now. Will you ask Umar to bring you home?’

  ‘The Timbuktu-Koy will be angry,’ she said. When he opened the door, noise and light streamed into the room.

  ‘He will be ashamed,’ Nicholas said. ‘His son behaved badly. But in time, when the old man has gone, there will be no one else to protect Timbuktu against Akil.’ He stopped and said, ‘I am sorry. I hate this. You should have filled me with drink, and it would be over with.’

  ‘It is over,’ she said. He could not see her face. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘Then you are lucky.’

  He didn’t look for Umar before he left, or for Godscalc, or for Zuhra, or any of the gentle, austere, witty friends he had made in the last weeks. Friends of the mind, whose attentions made it unnecessary to pamper the body. Until tonight.

  He walked to his quiet house through crowded African lanes, and ensconced himself behind veils in his chamber, his drying clothes cast aside, his flesh oiled with sweat in the heat. He lay open-eyed, listening to the lions grumbling in the ether, and watching the light from the summer storm flicker over his walls. Much later, he heard the sudden rush of rain falling. He imagined the palace, with its flowers drenched and its lamps all put out, and the carnival rising to its glorious, animal pitch, with young bodies weaving and dancing in the tepid, bountiful rain. His door opened.

  He thought it was Godscalc. Then he thought it must be Akil’s girl, although he had dismissed her because she had revived the old, the constant, the inconvenient hunger. When rain-splashed flesh slid against his, he flung out an arm.

  It met warm, unbound hair: European hair. He drew a breath, and a palm was laid on his mouth. ‘I am not here,’ said Gelis; and touched him with a thumb and four fingers without possessing, without surely possessing an inkling of what she had unleashed.