He had heard nothing, of course, of the legal action he had asked Gregorio to take, concerning both the Ghost and the Fortado. Again, he assumed Gregorio would do the best that he could: tracing Crackbene, finding Ochoa, bringing Tobie back (if he would come), and Astorre. And with such a cushion of gold, the two complaints hardly mattered. He really believed that they hardly mattered. Simon and the Vatachino could do as they pleased. And Henry was out of his hands. Henry was only safe when out of his hands.
He had heard nothing, and in this place would never hear anything, of Gelis van Borselen. More than a year ago, she had decided to leave, and having done that, there was no reason for her to send him a message. If she had, he would have received it by now, through ibn Said.
He himself sent no letters north, but had reason to believe that the caravans sometimes carried short dispatches from Umar. He understood that they conveyed the information that he, Nicholas, was well, and were intended largely – perhaps solely – to prevent any unnecessary expedition to find him. By the time he, Nicholas, had realised what was happening, it was not important enough even to mention.
In that month of February, while the port was still open, there came news of outbreaks of fighting upriver, where the Mandinguas of Mali were confined by the Songhai in the north, and the Fulani of Futa on the west. There had been some gold on its way, which was lost, and men from several tribes killed.
Abderrahman ibn Said, when Nicholas next saw him, was undisturbed. ‘Some years it happens. There are many peoples of different tribes, different persuasions. In good times, they fight as the Songhai do, because they are vigorous, and yearning for power. When the flood is late, or the locusts have come, then they must fight even more, or else starve.’
‘We were fortunate,’ Nicholas said, ‘to make the journey twice from the Gambia?’
‘You were cared for by Allah,’ said ibn Said. ‘The first time, you brought yourselves only, without merchandise, and how many died? The second time, the Koy’s bodyguard protected your freight. It could never happen again. The present Koy would never risk it again. And another time, Gnumi Mansa may not turn Christian for you. He might find it too dangerous.’
Nicholas looked at the worldly, impassive brown-black eyes. He said, ‘You are saying that there will never be trade between Timbuktu and the coast? It is impossible?’
‘Impossible as trade between Timbuktu and Prester John,’ said ibn Said. ‘If you wish to leave Timbuktu, the only sure way is the desert.’
That night, sitting cross-legged in the forecourt of the house of And-Agh-Muhammed al-Kabir and his sons, Nicholas found relief, as he always did, in the measured voices of his fellow guests reading from the books they had brought, and in the careful unfolding and examination of some momentous topic, with many voices contributing, including his own. He knew every man there as a friend: his spectacles flashed on noses black and ruddy and nut-brown, flat and aquiline.
One of them, a son-in-law of the host, raised his head and said, ‘I hear Akil has raided a village and captured a caravan to the east. Soon he will come for his taxes.’
‘He will be disappointed,’ said another. ‘The Songhai, the Fulani have half the goods this time.’
Nicholas said, ‘Does the Koy know?’ and someone laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. ‘He has been told. Rest. Thanks to you, Timbuktu has never been stronger.’
Afterwards, he remembered hesitating, leaving the house of the Qadi. But it was late, and as quiet as it ever was, for a city filled with humans and animals. The wind thrashed in the palm trees; the air was hazy with sand. Behind some locked courtyard he could hear the wail of a single-string fiddle, and on the outer edge of his hearing, drums beat. He paused at the gates of the Ma’ Dughu and then walked on, because the Koy’s bodyguard had been warned, and he, the outsider, should not stand on one side or the other, but should balance them.
He had chosen to sleep on the roof of his house, and the smoke wakened him. At first, he took the conflagration above him to be that of dawn: against a fierce, crimson sky darkened by sand all below him seemed black – the pillars of Andalusia, the pilasters of Memphis, the blind Arab walls and square houses of this strangest of cities. Then he saw that houses were burning, and what beat in the sky was the glow from the flames. Then the great gongs began to sound, and the horns that he had got Muhammed ben Idir to command in every corner of the city, and Nicholas ran down to the street as he was, calling his servants.
The fires had begun near the northern gate and all those who lived in the quarter, but for the officials, were trying to escape. He could hardly get through the lanes for the throng running against him, their children in their arms, their goats, their cows following. Others, like himself, had seized brooms from their racks and were forcing their way to the danger; he called to them, making sure they remembered the scheme. Some to the fire; some to the pools, the canal, the wells, the fountains, the buckets. Brought up in Bruges, he had always known what to do in a fire. Unless it was destroying his own business and home. Unless his father had started it.
Umar said, ‘Where is it?’
Of course, Umar would be there. His house was not in danger. From the roof, as if Donatello had been there, outlining it for him, Nicholas had memorised the course of the fire. One main source; two subsidiary ones. Not the palace. Not the three mosques – or not so far. But the shops and houses nearest the north gate where a drunken army might descend for food and drink and girls and – being short of money and temper – might kick over a brazier, fling a brand in a disapproving householder’s face or even, less carelessly, decide to see just how efficient the young Koy and his army might be, and how easy it might be to frighten them.
Running, Nicholas gave Umar his orders, and saw Umar leave. Still running, he came up to the first of the great houses and saw their servants doing what they had been taught to do: to drench, to dowse, to dig. Then he came to the seat of the blaze, and a dozen men with him, flinching back from roaring, wind-smashed tatters of fire and gush upon gush of hot sand, flung frying upon beast and man.
The straw huts of the outskirts had caught the first sparks and stood burning like haystacks, with no one still living inside. The houses of pressed mud or mud-brick had fared better, but most were thatched, and full of matting and blankets and rugs, as well as people. It was still possible to drag children out: to gather up the frightened and hurt as they staggered into the streets and rush them to safety, sheltered from the tearing wind with its ash and sand, its sizzling sparks, its burning gobbets of straw and nooses of whirling Baobab rope.
Some of the people Nicholas carried that night were known to him; some tried to smile. One woman, when he touched her, had a smile which didn’t change, and the heat of her arms seared his hands. By then, the fire had reached the large houses.
If ever Nicholas had wondered what he would choose, he learned to know that night. He, who had seen his father in Bruges cast into the fire the ledgers that contained all his hopes, that night in Timbuktu broke through door after blistered door, their metal patterns red-hot and spitting and smoking, and, ignoring the burning books, the priceless, curling scrolls, the smoking vellum, rescued the people. Not the scholars, who were quick to comprehend, and fit, and able to act, but the others: the households of servants and their families; the grooms asleep behind the plunging mules in the stables; the elderly, lost and bewildered in smoke-darkened rooms. And gradually, as the streets and houses were cleared, the flames began to hesitate at the ditches and to shrink under the onslaught of water. White steam became mixed with the smoke, and the hissing of water with the crackling growl of the fire. It was being contained.
Nicholas had suffered all this before, long ago, on a hill-top fortress in Cyprus. Then, the blaze had been intentionally started. He knew, as if he had been told, what kind of part Akil had played in all this: half deliberate, half experimental. As his work slackened and he could think, it became clear to Nicholas that it would not be possible to bring the comma
nder to book; that the Koy was not strong enough to deal with the crisis this would evoke. As the fire had been contained, so must be its repercussions. As he worked, Nicholas began to talk to the people about him.
It was over by dawn. By dawn, a quarter of the city had gone, but the rest had been saved. By dawn, Nicholas in the Ma’ Dughu, with the Katib Musa and the members of all the great houses, had drawn the commander Akil ag Malwal before the young Koy and with determined voices had defined the mistake, reduced the disaster to an event which would not happen again, and for which there were both remedies and compensation. No one there was in any condition to say more, nor should more have been said.
They dispersed, having arranged to meet in due course. But meantime, no retribution would be wreaked. The breach had been closed, at the expense of twenty lives and a suburb destroyed.
‘But it will happen again,’ Umar said, in the house of crying babies and frightened wife to which he had taken Nicholas to bathe his blisters and rest. Even with the shutters fast closed, the acrid smoke crept into the room, so that he ended the words with a cough. His hands and face, too, were grey with scorching.
Nicholas said, ‘They managed well. They will do better if it happens again. And there is time to rebuild before the rains. How could Akil be so stupid? Their trade disrupted, their precious books lost, and the young Koy ready to be provoked by every challenge.’ He broke off. ‘Oh, Christ God, the books.’
‘Do you wish you had saved them?’ said Umar. He stood, his face masked in the creams Zuhra had smoothed on his skin, his burned hands hanging loose. He was not looking at Nicholas.
It was the tone that made Nicholas look up. Seated on the low bed, his head bent, his hands dropped between his knees, he had been thinking of the two libraries he had seen and known, their contents now ashes. Now, his senses quickened, he listened to Umar’s voice. He said, ‘You would have put them first? Before ordinary people?’
‘I have put them first,’ Umar said. ‘The jurists, the scholars, the libraries. Is that not why I came back? Of course, I thought, they cannot always be saved. Of course, disasters occur. Teachers are killed, schools destroyed, books unhappily burned. But properly nurtured, the tradition of learning continues.’
He broke off. He said, ‘If, that is, one is not forced to make the choice that you made tonight. When such a thing happens, one man cannot be expected to save both people and books.’
‘Umar?’ Nicholas said. He rose, but without coming closer. He said, ‘Do you think I don’t know why you have done what you have?’
Umar faced him. There was nothing comic about the daubs of white on his brow and cheekbones and nose, on either side of which his eyes shone, black and white. He looked fierce, like a witch doctor himself.
He said, ‘I brought with me the greatest magician in Europe, but what I dreamed is impossible. It is too soon; there is too much against us; it is the waste of a life.’
‘You have decided,’ said Nicholas. He felt pain, but was too weary to consider where it came from. He said, ‘You had so many motives, Umar. You wanted Father Godscalc to see the plight of the slaves, and how that traffic might worsen. You wanted us both to find that the way to Ethiopia was impossible, the tribes far from conversion. You wanted me to find the gold that would free me from responsibilities, and yet not find its source. You wanted us to discover the futility of founding stations in the interior, of attempting trade between the coast and this place. You wanted my help, but you wanted Timbuktu to remain untouched, sacrosanct, a shrine of learning, a repository of the world’s wisdom, forever fuelled by its trade, but safe from the Christian armies of Europe.’
He stopped. ‘I saw that. You must have realised it. I agreed. I stayed.’
‘Yes,’ said Umar. He raised his hands and held Nicholas at arms’ length, a blistered palm on each shoulder. ‘As we once said, we did not confide in each other; but you stayed. Why, Nicholas?’ His hands tightened, then dropped.
Nicholas sat. He didn’t say, ‘For your sake,’ for that was not what Umar wished him to say, and it was not really true. He said, ‘I thought I told you. I agreed with what you were trying to do.’
Umar sat also, but not close. He said, ‘You saw what I wished for the city.’
‘And what you wanted for me,’ Nicholas said. ‘You have large ambitions, Umar. You wished to save the magician, as well. A shrine of learning, a repository of wisdom, safe from the corruption of Europe. You have brought me here to be shriven. I am willing to think you have succeeded.’
‘No!’ said Umar, and rose. A child cried out somewhere, and he moderated his voice. He had begun to pace back and forth. He said, ‘I have begun to see that I was wrong. Tonight, I knew it. Timbuktu is no more a haven to you than Trebizond, or Urbino, or the studios of the Florentines would be. Timbuktu is threatened like others with dangers, and yet is as a child among others, a child which will be none the better, Nicholas, if its guardian is wise, and sensitive to the awfulness of his burden.’
He turned, and a tear had melted the cream on one cheek and ran white down to his mouth. He said, ‘Timbuktu requires a guardian of its own kind, who is strong, and lives for the day, and does not torture himself over the choice between a book and a woman. I was wrong,’ Umar repeated. ‘You should not be here. You should go home.’
‘Because of one fire?’ Nicholas said. ‘Because of Akil? Because of the Songhai? I, who have dealt, for God’s sake, with Marietta of Patras?’
‘Stop,’ said Umar.
Nicholas stopped. He said, at length, ‘You would send me back? You think it would be better than this?’
‘I have changed my mind,’ Umar said.
‘Then,’ said Nicholas, ‘would you come with me? With Zuhra, the children?’
‘This is my home,’ Umar said.
Nicholas got up. ‘Then to hell with you, Umar,’ he said. ‘You tell me to my face how you tricked me, used me, manipulated my life the way you believed it should go. You didn’t discuss it with me because – what was the phrase – I wasn’t yet a grown man. You are not discussing it now. I hear an announcement, that’s all. I have made a mistake. I am sorry. Goodbye.’
‘No,’ said Umar. The track of the single tear showed, but no others.
‘Yes!’ said Nicholas. ‘And I, too, see no need to discuss it.’ He walked to the door, and thrust it ajar. ‘You chose to bring me,’ he said. ‘Now I choose to stay. Go to your own room and sleep. I want some rest without you.’
He expected Umar to argue. Instead, the other man hesitated, and then bowed his head and walked out. Even in misery he looked magnificent.
Nicholas sat. After a while, he found he had covered his face.
The next day, at the Timbuktu-Koy’s palace, Nicholas expounded his plans for the rebuilding of the burned quarter of the city, and for an elaborate project, to be completed before the first rains, to bring water under pressure to those parts most at risk from future fires. He had some books, with diagrams in them, and had made more drawings himself. At the back of his mind were a number of talks he had had over the years with the best engineer he ever knew, John le Grant. He had, on occasion, wished John were with him, and then immediately cancelled the wish.
The Qadi, the Katib Musa, the judges lacked John’s skill, but were familiar with ancient sciences, and could bring their intelligence to bear on a problem. The discussion lasted some time, until the Koy grew restless and closed the session. There was to be a public execution of the men who had started the fire. Akil, defiant and sallow, had nevertheless agreed. The Koy was eager to attend it. You could see Akil noting the eagerness.
Umar had attended the meeting and, as he left, fell into step beside Nicholas. They had not spoken that day. Umar said, ‘You had no sleep.’
He had had no sleep, and no energy left to confront Umar. Nicholas said, ‘It seemed best to force an agreement while the fire was in everyone’s minds.’
‘Yes,’ Umar said. ‘They forget easily. Your scheme.’
‘Yes?’ Nicholas said.
Umar said, ‘It is complicated. It is more complicated than the wheels which run the fountains.’
‘But I shall be here to operate it,’ Nicholas said.
‘And after you?’ Umar said.
‘I shall teach. I shall leave notes. Once,’ Nicholas said, ‘you were happy to leave it so. Why despair now?’ They had arrived at his house. He waited. ‘Umar? Do you want to come in?’
He tried, exasperated, to put a real invitation into his voice. But to his relief, Umar shook his head and walked on.
The following night, Nicholas was roused from his sleep gently by anxious, frightened servants. The commander Akil ag Malwal had entered the gates with his troops, and now stood at the door. It was a matter of taxes.
It was a matter, very obviously, of Tuareg reasoning. In the absence of Akil, Nicholas had ingratiated himself with the Timbuktu-Koy. He had strengthened the bodyguard. He had set forth plans for fortifications and safety, as if such a fire could ever happen again. Meanwhile, the commander Akil himself had experienced a sharp drop in income. Being currently at a disadvantage with the Koy, he proposed to extort what he could from the Christian.
Diplomacy was not Akil’s way. Entering, he came to the point. Men had remarked that the city’s guest, the Flemish trader, had paid some minor tax on that part of the gold and ship’s goods he had by him, but yet had engaged in no subsequent trading. Did he intend to continue bringing his ship’s merchandise to Timbuktu? Did he intend to take part in the Sahara trade? Or did he intend to remain as a perpetual resident of the city to which he had come, therefore, under false pretences?