Scales of Gold (69 page)

Gelis said, ‘I think he is dead.’ And looking at those bleak, Baltic eyes, he saw that she had spoken, for once, her true mind.

On the lower Joliba, which men called the river of rivers, Gher Nigheren, the villagers paid some lip-service to Allah, and slightly more to the holy man who came and killed chickens and foretold the size of the maize crop next year. They had, however, learned that Allah, or his servants, liked to know when true Believers met their death, so that words might be said over them by men with their heads bound in cloth and a leather parcel hung round their necks and the necks of their horses. Therefore they sent word up the river when bearers arrived carrying the remains of two men who were certainly Tuareg in some part of their blood, going by their colour, and the shapes of their noses.

Not that either their colour or the original shapes of their noses could clearly be distinguished, as they had been found in the forest, where the hyenas had certainly had a look at them; and where, before that, they had been systematically attacked by both spear and axe, and perhaps by arrows, since the limbs of the older man were both discoloured and distended in places. But that might
have been because the bones in both his upper and lower arms had been broken, and most of the bones of his fingers.

The younger man displayed, too, the gouges and hack-wounds of recent battle, but also the signs of older injuries, and with them an extremity of exhaustion which suggested other causes. That one lay without sound or movement, but the older Maghgrebian, when first brought in, muttered a little.

Dead and dying, the unfortunate men had no money and no possessions and, indeed, might not have been identified as Tuareg except that it was a Friday, and someone from upriver came into the mosque, where the bodies had been laid out to keep them out of the rain, although the walls had begun to dissolve, and the straw of the roof had seen better days.

But it could be seen, of course, that the community’s intentions were good, and messages had been sent off straight away, and straight away answered. They were ordered to carry the two corpses immediately towards Timbuktu, from which city great (and generous) men were setting out already to meet them.

A man and a woman couldn’t travel as quickly as drumbeats. Umar brought men and camels and – in eternal hope – a physician; he and Gelis raced with them down the side of the shallow, rock-strewn, inimical river until they heard the sounds of chanting and horns, and saw the drift of men and women and children strolling cheerfully towards them, with a herd of goats, a hump-backed ox, and two litters.

Umar swung himself down, ignoring the greetings, the people pressing around him, laughing and singing. He used his shoulders to push through the crowd to the litters. A goat stood astride one.

Gelis got down more slowly, and didn’t come forward as Umar drew back the first rain-sodden blanket.

Beneath it was what had been the vigorous bulk of Godscalc of Cologne. The eyes in the misshapen face were intact, and were open. Umar looked down. Godscalc said, ‘He is not dead.’

His eyes had not changed, nor his lips moved. The words, in Flemish, were nothing but breath. Umar said, ‘I hear you. Dear friend,
I
have you under my hand, and
I
thank your God and mine.’ Then, answering some pleading in the open eyes, he turned to the other.

He knew, by then, that Gelis had run forward and had knelt beside Godscalc and that the physician, too, had forced his way through. He kept his back to the girl, and unfolded the cloth, soaked with blood, that lay over Nicholas. He heard the doctor’s voice, speaking gently to Godscalc, and then felt Gelis behind him. Her eyes were turned away. She said, ‘Tell me.’

Umar looked down, unspeaking. He touched the cold skin.

There seemed nothing familiar about the bloodless face, turned to one side, its saucer eyes closed and pushed about by blackened pillows of flesh, scored with white contusions, so that the eyelashes stuck out at unnatural angles. Half his face was raw and marbled, like meat on a stall, and his swollen lips were stuck fast together. Nicholas could not have spoken, even if the bloody mess of his body was an illusion; even if he had been alive. Then Umar saw a shadow move, small as a mite on the torn flesh of the neck, and then a bead of fresh blood.

He said, ‘He is alive, but …’ He stopped, for the physician pushed him aside. Umar rose.

Gelis said, ‘But?’

The doctor said, ‘I can do nothing here. We must take them back quickly. The camel-litters are steady.’

‘But?’ said Gelis again. Her skin was so pale it looked dead.

‘But?’ said the physician testily. ‘But I do not know if either will survive the journey. As it is, this one should not be alive.’

He was referring to Nicholas. Umar thought, as he stepped forward to take the weight of the strapping, how many people had said that of Nicholas, through all his brief life. And he wondered whether it was by their wish or his own, that this had happened. Some of the hostility Nicholas generated had been his own fault, but not all. It was a heavy burden for a man to carry unless he were very sure of himself, and Umar doubted whether Nicholas had ever been as sure as he seemed. That was – that had been – his saving grace.

Chapter 34

S
EPTEMBER CAME TO
an end, and no long procession of bearers left the Metropolis of Negroland to journey south-west to the sea with the possessions of Nicholas vander Poele, Gelis van Borselen and Father Godscalc of Cologne, accompanied by four thousand pounds’ weight of pure gold.

In Timbuktu itself, whose name was currently on the lips of every banker in Europe, all time seemed to have stopped. None spoke of the day, or the month, or the season now slipping away, in case all else were to slip away with it. Death remained an everyday guest, not quite present, but not out of sight, or out of mind.

In the quarter of the imams, the scholars, the ancient mosque of Sankore, the Timbuktu-Koy had made free a house where men of medicine could watch over the ill-advised Europeans whose arrival had promised so much – which still might mean so much – to the future of the city. Brought there so close to death that it seemed impossible that either should live, the holy man and the Venetian Fleming seized the vigorous fancy of the city.

Gelis, leaving to visit them, would find gathering about her on the way a flock of concerned and affectionate people, bronzed and black, Negroid and aquiline, naked or veiled, tattooed, painted, hung with bucket-earrings of gold, or with lips turned down to their bosoms, their hair lush or crimped or shaved or piled on top of their heads. ‘Do they live? Poor lords, everyone knows what pagans will do when they think they are threatened.’

Always, she went to Godscalc first for, broken, desolate, he kept some thread between himself and the living, and sometimes he talked. None of them understood how he, the elder, the unworldly, had struggled to surmount what had happened while Nicholas lay, day after day, unresponding.

Unless it was deliberate. Umar thought so. Umar never left the chamber in which they both lay. As she did, he pieced together
what had happened: the agony of the journey, where land, beast and man had been against them. Godscalc spoke again and again of the valour of Nicholas, early beaten down in Godscalc’s defence and refusing to stop. Until, in the end, Godscalc himself had begged to abandon what he had come for, and had led the way back, to be waylaid by frenzied, terrified men who thought them devils, monsters, leprous magicians who would conjure their wells to be dry, their wives barren, and who had beaten them, and left them for dead.

They had had no means of defence. The night before, suspecting danger, their bearers had fled, taking all the little they had. Afterwards, Godscalc had waked to find himself sunk in the forest floor, his broken hand enfolded in that of Nicholas in a gesture of comfort and – he felt – friendship, but not in expectation of meeting again in this world. Then, he had thought Nicholas dead.

Dry-eyed, Gelis listened. Godscalc began to recover. But not Nicholas.

In October, Umar said, ‘Demoiselle. Gelis …’

And she had stopped him. ‘I am in no mind to leave them.’

He had looked at her gravely: this black, gentle, serious man whose attachment to Nicholas she had seen, at last, for the tremendous and terrible thing that it was. He said, ‘It is for you to decide. The gold is needed. Nicholas founded a bank, and thereby took upon himself the welfare of many people. If it does not reach the
San Niccolò
now, it will be too late. Whether he lives or not, this was part of his plan.’

‘He would want the gold to go,’ Gelis said.

‘He would want you and Father Godscalc to go with it,’ Umar said. ‘The padre could travel. He must go. If what has happened means anything, he must tell the world of it.’

Gelis said, ‘You want me to leave.’

‘No,’ said Umar. ‘If Nicholas lives, and if you choose, from pity or friendship, to stay with him, no one would dissuade you except, perhaps, Nicholas himself, if he knew. In your own world, it might be different.’

He paused. He said, ‘I have ascribed to you friendship and pity, but I do not know your heart. Forgive me, I am of a different race. I must also say therefore that if you wished him punished he has atoned, as few men have ever atoned, to the point of death and maybe beyond. If that was your sole aim, then I beg you to leave him.’

‘In our own world, it might be different?’ she repeated.

‘There is your dead sister,’ he said. ‘There is his father. His grandfather. The battle for money and power to keep his independence,
to defy and defeat them. In all that, you are his natural antagonist. You may be so no longer, but you are still part of the war he is fighting. It does not promise peace.’

‘You think he should stay here?’ said Gelis.

‘He has no choice, for the moment,’ said Umar. ‘If he recovers, as you know, he is his own man. He will decide.’

‘But too late for this ship,’ Gelis said.

‘Take this ship. If he – if he wishes to follow,’ Umar said, ‘I shall carry him myself to the coast. I shall find some means – a Portuguese vessel – to send him home. There will be only one season lost. And if you do not know your mind now, you will know it by then.’

It should not have disturbed her. She was afraid sometimes that Bel understood her. So perhaps did this man. Then she remembered, and interpreted, the hesitation. She said, ‘You don’t think he will recover.’

‘They say he might,’ Umar said. ‘They say he can. Do you know who is his heir?’

The gold. She searched his face, but it showed only fatigue and distress. She said, ‘His partners, so I suppose; apart from the claims of the Bank. He has no family. No –’ She halted.

He said, ‘No recognised family. In death, it might be different. In death he might receive what he always wanted.’

He said no more. For a moment, she felt too sickened to speak. Then she said, ‘Simon hates him.’

‘It is a great deal of gold,’ Umar said. ‘For an inheritance such as that, would Simon not proclaim Nicholas as his son, having Henry to succeed him, and being free of Nicholas for ever? If it has struck me, it must have occurred to Nicholas too.’

‘I think,’ Gelis said, ‘that Nicholas values life more than you think. I think he likes fighting more than you think. I think you are speaking of a weak man, and that he is not.’

‘I am glad you think so,’ Umar said. ‘So you will stay? Or you will go?’

She said, ‘I will come to see him tomorrow, and decide.’

But she had already decided. She sat beside Nicholas the following day, and left whenever the doctors came to examine the bones they had rebroken and set; renew the ointments; change the nature of the liquids with which they hoped to nourish his body; ask him soft, patient questions to which he gave no reply.

Alone, she did not talk to him. She sat paralysed when, once, the abyss of his gaze opened, and he looked straight into her eyes.

She expected perplexity. She saw the reverse: full awareness. Then his eyes closed abruptly again.

Later, she called at Umar’s house, and told him that she meant to leave with Father Godscalc, and the gold. She did not tell him why.

The city of Bruges in November was damp, cold and wet, like the rest of Flanders. Diniz Vasquez, arriving there straight from the interior of Africa, promptly fell prey to the worst cold in Europe, which he treated by wearing two shirts, a pourpoint, a doublet, a large hat and a thick velvet cloak lined with marten. He had never been happier in his life.

He didn’t mind that his mother had insisted on coming. She was in the Vasquez house, and he saw little of her. He didn’t mind that Gregorio, having taken him there, stayed two weeks and left to go back to Lisbon. Gregorio was expecting the return of the
San Niccolò
with a breathtaking cargo of gold, and Gelis, and Godscalc, and Nicholas. He, Diniz, had wanted to go back to Guinea on the
Niccolò
, but now he was glad that he hadn’t. He had been a child when he had last been in Bruges. Bruges had changed. Bruges was full of girls.

Bruges was a rich, civilised city with well-maintained roads and canals, and proper administration and defences. It was inhabited by gentlemen, by prosperous traders, by busy, industrious craftsmen, and was one of the three great money markets of the world. Its streets and waterways were lined by handsome stone houses, comfortably furnished, where he could sit eating eggs and collops and shred-pie and talk about millet and sweet roots and Baobab juice with a great cup of good wine in his hand. And about serpents with a hundred teeth and four legs (which was true) and about the way gold was found in the nests of ants as big as cats (which was not strictly true, but which everyone took for gospel in any case).

It was a pity he had not been to Ethiopia (the younger ladies were thankful he hadn’t tried) but it had been found to be too far away. He felt guilty, knowing that Nicholas and Godscalc were attempting that very journey, but he had been told not to mention it. In any case, no one seemed concerned. He had been to the end of the world. He was a hero.