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

  ‘I want my dinner,’ said Henry.

  ‘It isn’t time yet, my hinny,’ said Bel gently. ‘Ines told you.’ The mouth opened, became square.

  Diniz stirred. He said, ‘The girl should – where is the girl?’

  ‘In Funchal,’ said Bel placidly. ‘Simon sent for something he wanted. It doesna matter. We shall manage perfectly well.’

  Gregorio thought of Agnès, the capable Frenchwoman who had spoken lovingly of this her nursling in St Omer. Lovingly of the boy, and of Katelina his mother. He rose. He said, ‘Has the child no one else?’

  Bel looked at him. ‘He has his father,’ she said. ‘Simon wishes the boy to grow up a man. He is training him himself.’

  They were speaking over his head. The child walked over to Bel, and kicked her as hard as he could in the shins. ‘I want my dinner,’ he said. Then he screamed.

  Diniz, gripping both arms, had lifted the boy off the floor and held him suspended. The childish boots flailed in the air. The child in its rage had turned scarlet, and whooping cries left its lips.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Bel. Gregorio was holding her, and there was blood on the Canary blue damask. ‘Don’t. You won’t cure it that way.’

  ‘How will you cure it?’ Diniz said. ‘Except by starting again, with a different father?’

  Bel said, ‘No.’ Removing herself from Gregorio’s arm, she shuffled forward. She said, ‘No. Put him down. Henry, hurting people won’t get you your dinner. Your father has to stay in Funchal, to make the ducats to buy you all these coats. He’ll be back. Soon, you’ll have dinner together. Now, when Ines is ready, you can eat with her. Come. She has toys you haven’t seen yet.’

  They went, the woman limping, the child sullen and frightened, hand in hand. Gregorio said, ‘She’s a saint, that unlikely small woman, but I think it’s too late. There goes a man born to the mould of his father.’

  Diniz sat. He said, ‘He has his looks, too.’ He paused. He said, ‘I meant to ask you about something else. Do you – did you know that Nicholas was born to Simon’s first wife? And used to believe himself to be Simon’s son?’

  ‘You’ve heard that?’ Gregorio said. ‘It’s true that he maintained it, but there’s no proof that he is. Simon and his wife were living apart when Nicholas was born. The woman is dead, and Simon refused to have anything to do with the child. I gather Nicholas never importuned him over it, but always hoped for some kindness. Instead Simon took against him, as you see. A wretched business.’ He paused. ‘Does it worry you?’

  There was a long silence. Diniz said, ‘If it were true, Nicholas and I would be cousins.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gregorio. ‘In any case he is a good friend. I know he is proud of you, although he wouldn’t have told you himself. A remarkable man.’

  He got up quickly. ‘Diniz? You’re more tired than you know. That’s enough. Go and rest. We can go over the papers tomorrow.’

  Diniz rose to his feet, with an effort. Gregorio walked with him to the door, also anxious. At the threshold, Gregorio said, ‘What are the chances? A terrible journey, you say. What are the chances he will come back from Ethiopia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Diniz said. ‘I don’t know what to hope for.’

  Chapter 33

  BECAUSE NONE OF THEM could see the whole, none of them (except Nicholas, who was not there) could admire the felicities of the plan which immediately began to unfold itself, touching lands lying between Scotland and the Levant, Flanders and the deserts of Africa.

  Gelis van Borselen, who had seen those twenty-five written pages, knew part of it, and had time to consider it, and even elaborate on it, during that part of her life she was about to spend in an Andalusian city in Africa, in her well-staffed house, with no one from her past to visit her but Umar.

  It was not a habit of hers to be lonely. Taken to Scotland, to Brussels, to Geneva; to any of those places where her father had business: she set herself to acquire interests and friends, or at least acquaintances. Had he lived a little longer, Florence van Borselen would have come to rely on her way of acquiring trade secrets; the guileless questions she had found a young woman could ask, and have answered.

  She had been useful to her uncle, the seigneur of Veere, and had listened, patient if not much impressed, to Wolfaert her cousin, who held a Scottish earldom because of the Scottish princess he had married. She knew all about the family of St Pol of Kilmirren in Scotland, and the unpleasant grandfather Jordan who bore a French title and lived at Ribérac, and advised the French King on finances. She knew about the philandering Simon, and why her pregnant, stupid, dead sister Katelina had married him. She had guessed more than half of Nicholas’s story before he had proclaimed the truth in his fever that night. She had found out what Nicholas was capable of, and had trained herself to act and think as he did.

  It was disconcerting, therefore, to find that, four weeks after his departure, she had still failed to implement fully the disciplined programme she had set for herself. When she should have been learning Arabic, she called on Zuhra, whose marriage contract with Umar was now final. The girl’s affairs didn’t much interest Gelis, but Zuhra was the only innocent in Timbuktu who assumed, without a second thought, that Nicholas had been her lover.

  It was worth reminding herself of the fact, since an affair of even one night should not be forgotten. It was part of one’s history. Katelina had not wished to stay a virgin, and neither had she. One required a catholic viewpoint.

  It was because of the wider, worldly stand-point that she deferred her visits to the Qadi’s library, in order to assemble her thoughts on the scheme Nicholas had prepared for Bel and Diniz and Gregorio.

  He had specified the exact cargo of the Ghost, and had jotted down a long, orderly list of the many ways in which it could have been stolen, together with recommendations for tracing it.

  He had examined the case of the impounded ship itself, and proposed that Gregorio now set on foot the moves that would vindicate his ownership, remove the injunction, and restore either the ship or the insurance money. He recommended that Astorre, the captain of his mercenary army, should be traced, and Tobie his physician, now fighting in Albania with Skanderbeg, since both could describe the ship’s early history.

  He proposed Gregorio should sue the Fortado, especially if Melchiorre had survived to give evidence. He thought it likely that my lord Simon and the Lomellini brothers would fall out, once Simon found the Vatachino had shared in the Fortado. This might make it easier for Diniz, with Gregorio’s help, to expand the Ponta do Sol property. He had said precisely how much of the gold should be spent to that end, and how much in Bruges and Venice. He had recommended that, having established Jaime in Madeira, Diniz should consider whether his mother wished to remain in the Vasquez home in Lagos or return nearer her relatives. Nicholas suggested that Diniz take her to Bruges, where she could stay meantime in the house of João Vasquez, and close to the van Borselen family.

  ‘Why?’ Gelis had said, when Nicholas had been physically present, seated among them, reading from the papers.

  He had looked up. ‘Your sister married Lucia’s brother.’

  ‘But she’s dead. And the child isn’t there. That’s why I went to Lagos. Simon doesn’t let the child come to Bruges. You would think he was frightened of something.’

  ‘I can’t think what,’ Nicholas had said; and went on reading.

  So Lucia and Diniz were meant to go to Bruges, while Gregorio stayed to complete his work on Madeira and see the San Niccolò restored and turned round with a fresh cargo. And the rest of the money was to be dispensed in Venice, but the notes had not said how. Or not the parts she had seen. Perhaps he guessed that she was not quite disinterested.

  The plans were all provident, careful. They had to be. It would have been different, had the Ghost’s cargo also survived. And, of course, there was no saying that the San Niccolò itself would arrive. It might be lying now on the bed of the Gambia. It was lack of news that made her so restless.
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  The news staggered in. First, from downriver. The two mad white men had been attacked by idol-worshipping black men, who had killed their guide and threatened their encampment with spears, but the party had driven them off, and had been seen making for Gao.

  Then news from the Gambia. The white boy who escaped from the Joliba had returned to the blue ship on the Gambia, and that ship had set sail. The time, from the account, must have been mid-February. So the Fortado had gone off, with Filipe.

  In May, three months after Bel and Diniz had gone, Gelis heard that the other white party of madmen from Timbuktu – with one mad white woman – had arrived on the Gambia, boarded the black ship with King Gnumi, and left. The San Niccolò was on her way home.

  On hearing the news, she hurried over to Umar’s house, where she could share her delight with him and his wife of five weeks. Zuhra slipped out, halfway through the excitement, to vomit briefly outside. She came back smiling, and all her aunts and cousins laughed and patted her. She was fifteen, and pregnant by Umar her husband. Gelis went home, and settled down at last to her studies.

  There was only one further report from the east, from a caravan coming through from Takedda with copper. They had come across cowrie shells which had originally been bartered by two white men for food, and skins for their feet and a night’s shelter from the rains. The rains, as everyone knew, were unhealthy in that region, which was why wise men kept to the north. But then, wise men went to Cairo or Mecca, not south through the swamps and the forests that led to the mountains.

  Saloum, who returned in June from the Gambia, came to see her, and talked about it as he sat on her cushions. ‘You will forgive me. He is your holy man. But I thought him a man of doubts, your Father Godscalc. I would not have thought him so brave for his faith.’

  ‘You were brave for yours,’ Gelis said.

  ‘But I am sure of Paradise,’ Saloum said. ‘That is, is it not, why Muslims are supposed to be strong? But I have seen a man do more than his best, just from fear of fear.’

  ‘Or from love,’ Gelis said.

  ‘Or from fear of not being loved. Man’s heart is a thing made of sand. You know there is unrest on the river?’

  ‘Unrest?’ Gelis said.

  ‘Your friends chose the right time to go home, and the right ally. King Gnumi had looked after your ship. He told me there will be trouble.’

  ‘Between the two Kings?’ Gelis said. ‘Because of what happened to us?’

  ‘That! No,’ Saloum said. ‘That was no more, forgive me, than a crossing of spears during an elephant hunt. This is war.’

  ‘In the east too?’ Gelis asked.

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘But not Timbuktu.’

  ‘Timbuktu? One can plunder it, but one must possess it to make use of its commerce, and this requires more than a sudden raid by hot-tempered neighbours, or by the drunken youths from this village or that, shaking their assagais. It requires a ruler,’ said Saloum. ‘A man of power, with an army behind him.’

  ‘There can be few of these,’ Gelis said, ‘stronger than Akil or Muhammed ben Idir.’

  ‘Few. Luckily few,’ Saloum said; and went on to praise the white woman, and Diniz.

  By then, the great heat had begun, and the regular rainstorms, of which the first had been so freakish and so memorable. The drifted sand steamed in the streets, but there were days when the sky was bright blue, instead of the dust-coloured grey of harmattan-time, and when it produced no rain at all. Nor, when it did, was it the kind of torrent that fell further south, and turned obscure tracks into sinks of waist-gripping mud, and formed pools of thick teeming water, they said, which could cause a man to die through one drop on his skin.

  Gelis roved the city during these weeks, and on one of these walks, met the Italian.

  She assumed, that is, that he was a native Italian because she heard his voice first. She was kneeling on a piece of open ground at the time, poking with a stick at a bank of sand, the usual large moulded seat upon which house-owners sat to take air. In this case the house behind it was ruined, and the rains had caused the bank to open and slip, revealing the debris that had lain under it. The brilliance of a glaze had attracted her attention; the stick was in case of scorpions, and her two servants stood patiently behind her, along with the deep circle of men, women and children that gathered good-humouredly wherever she was.

  The voice said, ‘You have found some tiles, madonna? They are very old. I have a few in my shop.’

  The Italian was perfect, like Umar’s, but it was not Umar’s voice. She looked up.

  It was a Berber. Or no, it was a bearded man of the Maghgreb with bold, high-coloured features closer to those of a Tunisian Arab. He wore a magnificent turban, and his boots, under her nose, were of embroidered crimson kid under a robe of – she would have sworn – Lucca velvet.

  She straightened. She said, ‘We have not met before,’ in Italian. All the circle beamed and murmured with pleasure.

  The man said, ‘No. I have been with my brothers in Tlemcen. I came back with the spring azalai.’

  She had seen it: the biggest caravan from the north. It had been fifteen miles long. She said, ‘You are a trader? With the Italians?’

  He said, ‘Would the madonna care to see the silks I have brought? My humble house is nearby, and my wife would be honoured to offer refreshment. My name, as all around you will tell you, is Abderrahman ibn Said, and I am a merchant of Timbuktu. And you are madonna Gelissa from the King of Portugal’s ship, about whom everyone in this city has told me. Pray come. If the tiles intrigue you, my boy will stay and dig for you. He will bring what he finds.’

  She accepted. In his large, well-furnished house, she met his wife and his family: ‘This is the madonna from Lagos who is a friend of Umar ibn Muhammad al-Kaburi, and of Saloum ibn Hani and many others.’ Then, as they sat on cushions fingering sweetmeats and supping sherbet: ‘This is the lady who likes to see how the maize grows, and the rice, and the sorghum, and who ponders our storehouses and likes to watch which irrigation channels silt up, and how bricks are made, and baskets woven, and leather cured. This is a lady of many talents.’

  ‘I am curious,’ Gelis said. ‘I am fortunate, to have time to spend in your city.’ Neither of them had mentioned her fortune in gold.

  ‘You prefer, as I do, practical matters. And, of course, matters of history. You were right. The tiles were precious, even broken. You also read?’ said the Arab. He hadn’t mentioned Nicholas, either.

  She said, without answering, ‘I should be interested to see the silks you spoke of. One brought cloth to my house, perhaps from these very stockrooms in your absence. Someone buys them for you in Europe?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the man. A little ape jumped on his lap, and he tickled its chin. ‘A man called Benedetto Dei. He travels on the Cyprus galley this year, but I hope to tempt him to Timbuktu when next the fleet comes to Barbary, or passes with alum for Flanders.’

  He set the ape aside. ‘But all is upset now, after the death of the old man. Cosimo de’ Medici, father of Florence. A loss, a terrible loss. The son is proving a hard man on his managers; Tommaso, who thought to have all his own way, is in despair. You come from Bruges. You can imagine.’ Somewhere, someone was milking a goat.

  ‘Tommaso Portinari?’ said Gelis. It was the sort of naivety she used to deplore in Diniz Vasquez. She shut her lips quickly.

  ‘Of course. We are all Medici agents,’ said ibn Said. ‘I and my brothers; Benedetto Dei; Tommaso Portinari, who, of course, also manages the office in Bruges. We all import from the firm of Medici, and execute orders. You will realise, therefore, that the silk is of the first quality.’

  She examined the silks. She expressed a wish to see all his imports. She said, ‘Forgive me if I have not understood you. You do not purchase these goods direct from their source, but you receive them from the Medici agents and then resell, paying commission to the Medici?’

  ‘That is so,’ he said. If he felt surp
rise, he was far too subtle to show it.

  She said, ‘I know salt coming over the Sahara can increase its price by four times, and no doubt the profit is high, too, on other goods.’

  ‘The expenses are high,’ said ibn Said. ‘The double journey takes four or five months – six, if the camels are to be rested. You know, perhaps, the cost of a camel, yet they cannot survive this expedition more than a very few times. And men are hired and die, or are waylaid by parties of robbers. There are few waterholes, and the way hidden by sandstorms. One mistake in the desert, and whole caravans can and do perish. The sands are half made of bone.’

  ‘So, soon men will bring it by sea?’ Gelis said.

  His eyes were large and dark as the pool of the harbour at Sluys. ‘Did you find it easy to do so?’ he said. ‘And as you have found, although men and camels like water, silk does not.’

  ‘I see that,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you knew what price such fabric sells for in Flanders. Especially fabric with the flaw which, as you see, runs through this cloth; or with the faults in the cropping you see there. The licence fee for selling such cloth should not be too demanding.’

  ‘Madonna. you interest me.’ said Abderrahman ibn Said, merchant and agent. ‘Let us sit down and talk.’

  Gelis did not, in the normal exchanges with Umar’s household, find it absolutely necessary to discuss her visits to the households of merchants, although she found that Umar, too, had begun to offer some of his European experience, tactfully, to the city fathers. If he sought a public appointment, he failed to receive it. The Timbuktu-Koy, in poor health, seemed little interested and his son deaf to advice. She noticed, for ibn Said told her, how the Koy’s taxes had abruptly increased, and how much profit had been peeled from the latest caravan.

  ‘It is not wholly wise,’ had said ibn Said, in his meaningful way. ‘Merchants stay in Timbuktu because it is profitable. But there are other towns.’