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

  Gregorio, sitting, had set his hand on one twisted arm. ‘What happened?’

  ‘My Church is too demanding, and so am I,’ Godscalc said. ‘Nicholas came with me to Ethiopia, and we found together that it is legendary because it cannot be reached by two men, with only six months and their own strength to support them. We turned. We were within reach of the Great River when this happened. I was able to travel, but Nicholas was not.’

  Gregorio lifted his eyes. ‘It must have been a hard choice,’ he said to Gelis.

  She didn’t reply. Godscalc said gently, ‘He was very ill. Umar has promised to bring him to the coast when he can travel. We thought he deserved peace.’

  His eyes were still steady. Gregorio said, ‘You are saying that he might not recover?’

  It was Gelis who answered – a changed Gelis also, he saw: her face fine-boned and sunken and frail, her body an outline of long, slender bones. She said, ‘They say he can heal, if he wants to.’

  Which was the most frightening thing he had heard.

  In Bruges, their triumphant arrival was repeated. The San Niccolò rowed into Sluys as, six and a half years before, the Venetian trading galleys had entered the harbour, with the Guinea slave Loppe aboard one of them. Now Loppe was home, and with him was Claes, the apprentice who had befriended him. Claes, now Nicholas vander Poele, a name known to all Bruges, and all Florence and all Venice. A name known in Lisbon, and Cyprus, and Constantinople, and even in Scotland. Perhaps especially in Scotland.

  Simon de St Pol of Kilmirren was not at Sluys as he had been, those years before, to quarrel with his wife’s bastard and to initiate, by the accident of his nature, the feud which had taken hold of their lives. He had gone to Scotland, and his son had not been seen by his kinsfolk in Bruges; nor had Bel, the Scots companion of Simon’s sister.

  Simon’s sister was there, though, on the quay, dragged by Diniz her son, although she needed little persuasion. With them was the whole staff of the Banco di Niccolò and the Charetty, including the two Charetty girls. The merchants of Bruges were there, every last one of them, including Anselm Adorne. And although her parents were dead, Gelis received her own welcome, from the comte de Veere her uncle himself, and from his son Wolfaert her cousin, and from Paul, Wolfaert’s son by his mistress.

  Once, Paul would never have appeared at a ceremony, but Wolfaert no longer had either a wife or a legitimate son. The Scots princess and her son had both died, and the Scottish prince they were rearing had left. Small wonder the Borselen family longed to see Katelina’s four-year-old Henry: see him, bring him up, make him their own. It was why Simon hid him away.

  They all came crowding on board. Gelis left Gregorio to tell the worst of the story: she saw Lucia’s eyes light up at the news of the gold; she saw Diniz bite his lip and, leaving, scramble below to kneel beside Godscalc; and Tilde de Charetty running to follow. She saw the smile on Adorne’s long, poet’s face alter to a look of concern. She saw all the expressions man’s face could hold of greed and envy, calculation and pleasure.

  She saw dark, long-lashed eyes resting on hers, belonging to a man of middle height with loose dark hair, and fine jewels, and two beautiful hands, one of them stretched gracefully to gather one of her own, and raise it to his lips.

  ‘Unless you have been warned to avoid me?’ said David de Salmeton.

  In Timbuktu, the Feast of St Nicholas came and went, such a celebration having no place in the Muslim calendar. If Nicholas felt rather more than a year older, he didn’t say so. He had, in any case, other things to occupy his attention.

  In January, Umar’s first child was born. It was a son. By March, Zuhra was pregnant again. Nicholas felt only delight on Umar’s behalf. He himself had no yearnings as yet: his body had been too abused, too broken. If he did, he knew that some gentle child would find her way to his bed, not from Akil this time. He was not sure what he would do. He was not sure how he wanted to order his life, except that he needed to know more.

  Now he could walk, he spent half his time with the imams; with the teachers, the thinkers of the Sankore Mosque; the judges who passed on their learning; the scholars attached to the other great mosques, the Sidi Yahya al-Tadulsi, the Jingerebir.

  Latterly, the imams had allowed him to enter the Sankore, 120 feet long, eighty feet wide, with its five naves and forest of masts. Of columns. Of slender columns, like those of a caravel. He had been admitted, dressed as he always was now, in the loose robes that men found comfortable, with his hair bound with a scarf, rakishly knotted.

  Afterwards, he would talk about what he had heard, and even dispute it, but never with heat, and the habit of orderly, dispassionate appraisal was one he gladly acquired. He spoke and thought in Arabic, and could make himself understood in Mandingua and some of the other vernaculars. He had almost forgotten his French, his Flemish, his Tuscan.

  There were exceptions. Abstract thought, for him, could never occupy all his mind when there were also practical things he could do. The deficiencies of the city were well known to him, and some of them could be simply repaired. Going about it, he was taken aback, now and then, to find that some problems had already been touched on, and even attacked. Umar had not told him that Gelis had been active in Timbuktu during the six months he had been absent. It raised, again, the question of why she had left. For a while, Nicholas returned quietly to his teachers, to think about it.

  About that time, he was called upon by the cloth merchant Abderrahman ibn Said, of whom he had heard, and who, breaking into unexpected Italian, seemed to be offering him a consultative partnership in his business. They talked of other things: the disruption of trade caused by the Songhai and their perpetual raids; the greed of Akil; the iniquity of high taxes. Ibn Said gave the impression that he was accustomed to receiving advice. Nicholas spent some time with him and saw him out, smiling. Gelis, again. And Tommaso Portinari, by God.

  Having no official position, all that he did required the sanction of the Timbuktu-Koy or, latterly, as the old man grew feeble, of his son, whose name was the same as Umar’s. A heavy youth of limited intelligence, the Koy’s heir made few objections, unless the proposed improvement threatened to cost more than he thought worth his while. Matters were helped by the fact that Umar himself – Loppe – was now teaching, and held a post of some little power. And even without the Koy’s experienced, if erratic, hand on the helm, the city was still being centrally run, from the magnificent palace of the Ma’ Dughu.

  Visiting the Koy, Nicholas was conscious, even in weakness, of the pleasure – the virtue – he received from its sweet columns and shining tiles and carved arches, its painted ceilings and grilles, from its pools and fountains and the heady, strange pot-pourri of its inward life: the camels tied in its yards, the petted apes, the bright birds, the extravagant leopard skins strewn in its chambers; the sounds that mingled the voice of the jungle, the rainforest, the savannah with the clear, miraculous voice of high learning.

  He felt in no sense superior. He knew that not only Umar but many of the thoughtful, witty men whose conversation he sought had passed many years in the world outside the Land of the Blacks; they, as well as he, knew the singularity of what they and their forerunners had created.

  He walked therefore with an open heart as well as an open mind, and accepted all that was offered his senses: the beating drums, the braying African horns mingled with the ululation of Arabic voices; the clank of gold, crude and solid as iron, hung upon naked, slender black bodies; the chanting voice of the storyteller and the singing voice of the imam, reciting the Koran. As the season changed and, once more, coolness returned to the night, Nicholas rested by scented fires in the Koy’s flowery courts and watched unfold, beguiled, the spontaneous expression of many kinds of happiness, from the clapping hands, the rhythmic, light-hearted dancing of the young to the gentle ambulation of the Negro philosophers in their spotless white turbans and robes, agreeably discoursing, or exchanging verses, or drifting to repose in some bower to take their
ease, and refresh themselves, body and spirit.

  It was what Timbuktu offered. Umar had known. Umar, through Saloum, had wanted to draw Nicholas here. Nicholas remembered his words. It will bring you what your heart and your soul both have need of.

  Umar had meant Timbuktu. He had called it the terminus.

  Chapter 35

  BY THE TIME the rainy season had come, Nicholas knew that it was true, and that he was indeed free.

  Wisps of information always reached Timbuktu from the caravans. Sometimes several copies of the same packet would arrive; sometimes only part of one would get through. The most reliable were those addressed to ibn Said, although these were narrow in scope, and referred almost entirely to the doings of Tommaso Portinari, manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici bankers, and counsellor to Duke Philip of Flanders and Burgundy.

  From these, Nicholas heard that Duke Philip still lived, although his heir’s wife had died, and there was a scramble afoot to replace her. Tommaso thought the new bride would be English. Tommaso knew all about that because France, too, wanted English marriages, now it looked as if the Yorkist King was going to be permanent. Tommaso did some work on the side for the King of France. Or appeared to. France and Burgundy were virtually at war, and Tommaso could be useful to both sides.

  He sent, as usual, some bales of casually packed silks with a large invoice attached. ‘The lady was struck by these terms. By the Medici terms,’ said ibn Said absently. At the time, Nicholas, amused, gave him some advice.

  The next caravan after that brought to Nicholas, better than silk, the news he had silently longed for. The San Niccolò was at anchor in Lisbon. Godscalc and Gelis were safe, and his gold. So he could do as he wished.

  He was mobile now, too. When the river would allow it, he visited some of the places he had passed full of fever on that first journey from the Gambia. He found his way to Djenne, and looked at bricks, among other things. He rode out to quarries. He talked to planters and fishermen. When his Feast Day began to approach again, he brought Umar to sit by his fire and said, ‘Tell me about the Songhai.’

  By leave of the Koy, he had continued to reside in the house to which he and Godscalc had been taken. It was close to the schools, and he could pay for it. One of his earliest anxieties had been that he might be living on charity, or at Umar’s expense. Umar had reassured him. When the San Niccolò left, part of her gold and part of her cargo had remained, to support Nicholas. ‘For life, should you wish,’ Umar had concluded, smiling.

  The unbroken gravity of his European days had left Umar now: in his own home he sat writing and crooning, his infant son sprawled on his lap; in a week or two, in December, his next child would be born. Among his own, he was loved and respected. Visiting Nicholas, he bent on him the same friendly, considering gaze he always used, and answered his question.

  ‘Long ago, the Songhai came from the south and settled in villages all down the Great River for a thousand miles, where they made a living as farmers and fishermen. They looked like me’ – he smiled again – ‘although perhaps not quite so big. Then, six hundred years ago, they were conquered by Muslims, the Lemta Tuareg from the north, who made Gao, where you have been, into their capital.

  ‘And they prospered, so that the King of Mali became envious and one of his generals conquered Gao, and then Timbuktu. As a result, all the Songhai kingdom became part of Mali until in time Mali weakened, and others rushed in. In the case of Timbuktu, the Malians were driven out by Akil, the commander of the Maghsharen Tuaregs, as you know.’

  ‘Who allowed a Timbuktu-Koy to rule, at a price,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Of course. And now, a new, gifted leader has appeared in the Lemta dynasty of the Songhai, who seeks to recover what the Songhai kingdom has lost, and add more. Where he is fighting, it is dangerous to travel, and as you have found, there are some here in the city who fear he will take advantage of the divided authority to pounce. But, Nicholas,’ Umar said, ‘have you not heard this from the Timbuktu-Koy or his son?’

  ‘Who carries news in Timbuktu? The storks?’ Nicholas said. ‘Yes, the Koy’s son called me to the palace this morning. The city is frightened, and has lost confidence in Akil and his garrison, who descend at tax-time and drink fermented liquor, and break open warehouses and sometimes help themselves to maidens who complain that they were not willing. The Koy’s son wishes to know how a city of the north would defend itself.’

  ‘And you said?’ Umar asked. He wore the bland expression that Nicholas enjoyed most.

  ‘The same as I said to the commander Akil, who called me in yesterday and asked the same question. There are things that can be done. If they wish, I shall help them. But Timbuktu is not Djenne. It has no natural defences. A higher wall will deter an ill-equipped enemy. A larger garrison, well armed and provided with food and water, could sustain a short siege. But do you wish a large garrison? There has been trouble already. Attack may not come, or may be intermittent. Even Astorre and his soldiers would find such heat, such idleness tiresome, however well they were exercised and diverted. And these are nomads, unaccustomed to staying long anywhere.’

  ‘Akil consulted you?’ Umar said.

  ‘You might call it that,’ Nicholas said. ‘He sent a troop of horse to bring me, whether I wanted or not, and informed me that if I wished to continue to live and spy in idleness, I should work for my permit. They have some old hackbuts, but no knowledge of how to make balls.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Umar. His expression had changed. ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I have told you,’ said Nicholas, ‘but not so that you will take any action. They wish to preserve the trading metropolis that is the source of their wealth. It is worth preserving. So is your greater heritage. Katib Musa has not begged me to show him how to use a crossbow in defence of the ulama, but he does not need to. Of course I shall help, but there is not a great deal that can be done.’

  ‘Without you,’ Umar said, ‘nothing could be done at all. I shall complain to the Koy on your behalf.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘It is the enmity between these two that will admit the Songhai. Let me stay uncommitted. Let me do what I can for them both. Umar, what am I learning for, if not for such as this?’

  There was a silence. Then Umar said, ‘It has been my prayer that you would find something more at the end of your search. Oh yes, if the city is threatened, I am not too proud to ask you how it should be defended, so long as you think it of worth. If it should be better run, and it pleases you to devise how to enhance it, every man here is your slave. So long as, in the end, there is something for you that you would not otherwise have had.’

  Nicholas said, ‘You know the school, and the teachers. You know what I have had. Do you want me to tell you what it means to me?’

  ‘I know what it means to you,’ said Umar slowly. ‘And so do your teachers. One has only to watch. But only you know what use you will make of the powers it gives you.’

  ‘That is true,’ Nicholas said. ‘And as a teacher, you will know that one does not offer a gift, and then require an accounting.’

  ‘I think perhaps,’ Umar said after a moment, ‘that is –’

  ‘Unfair?’ said Nicholas quickly. ‘It was. I am sorry. You hoped I would begin to discover what I wanted to do with my life. You hoped I would find a confidant, since you think I need one. But Umar, what confidant did you ever allow yourself before you came home? Until that moment, whom would you trust, whom would you burden with your hopes and your doubts and your fears, and still call yourself a grown man?’

  There was a long silence. Then Umar said, ‘Nicholas, it is not always a mark of weakness to lay a burden on someone else, so long as they can bear it. I might have put my faith in you, but you were not yet a grown man.’

  It was the cruellest thing he had ever said. Nicholas answered at once. ‘Do you think I should disagree with that? No, it is not a mark of weakness, having found the right person, to ask help of them. But it also depends on
the nature of the burden.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ Umar said. ‘That is vanity speaking still. Nothing matters but what you are. You yourself.’

  ‘And you think I had better find out,’ Nicholas said. ‘Well, you are probably right. Self-knowledge is not sold on the Rialto. And if it were, few people would buy.’

  After that, Nicholas was patient and did nothing to offend Umar, or his other friends, or those who ruled the city. As he had offered, he used the cooler months at the start of the year of 1467 to strengthen the defences of the city, and when Akil, restless once again, collected his garrison and, with well-oiled hackbuts, galloped off to cause trouble elsewhere, Nicholas took the Koy’s bodyguard under his wardship and initiated a month of hard, brutal, competitive sports. At the end of it, five men had been killed, twelve injured, and fifty had joined from the city, with more begging to come. And he was fit again.

  Little news came over the Sahara but not, he thought, because of any action of Umar’s to prevent it. What did come was either painfully specific – ibn Said’s brother in Tlemcen had had another son – or painfully general – the English had forbidden all trade with Flanders, and so Bruges was suffering. The old Duke of Burgundy’s son, like the son of their Koy, was afraid of no one, and fighting every day in some cause or another, mostly in France.

  It added point to the news when the old man, the Timbuktu-Koy, actually died, and the new Koy, his son Umar, dispensed with the counsel of Nicholas and took over control of the Koy’s force himself. Umar’s second son was by then two months old, and named Umar Niccolò in honour of Nicholas rather than his Christian Feast Day. Umar spoke of Godscalc at the time, although not for long.

  There had been no news, of course, of the priest or of Bel or of Diniz, since the report that all three had arrived safely in Portugal. Unbidden, there came to the mind of Nicholas, now and then, the recollection of his twenty-five pages of instructions. He knew the gold had reached Lisbon, where it would be converted into transferable funds. He had no doubts that Gregorio and Julius would have disposed of it as he wanted, resuming all that he had begun in Venice and Bruges, Cyprus and Alexandria and Scotland. They should by now have an agent in Scotland.