Scales of Gold (74 page)

Margot sat down beside Tobie. She said, ‘You’d quite like Gelis van Borselen. They all had a bad time, but she’s well enough. Lucia de St Pol took her with her to Scotland, and I suspect she’ll end up at Court like her sister.’

‘Why Scotland?’ said Tobie. His nose twitched. Julius remembered how his nose twitched.

‘Not for any of the reasons you’re thinking of,’ Margot said. ‘The van Borselens are related by marriage to the monarchs of Scotland. Gelis didn’t have any money. And David de Salmeton was taking a very great interest in her.’

‘What?’ said Tobie. He sat up, and a belch of horse emerged from three different gaps in his cuirass.

‘Really, Tobie,’ said Margot. ‘You must go off and get yourself clean. I know all about David de Salmeton, and I’ve seen what Martin his partner can do. I gather Gelis knows even more. The interest wasn’t reciprocated.’

‘De Salmeton goes to
Scotland
?’ Julius said. He hadn’t heard that item of gossip. Because, obviously, Gregorio hadn’t told him. Gregorio had been to Venice once, briefly, and had divided his time between the business and Margot, which suited Julius. He had left Margot because he was coming back.

Margot said, ‘He’s not in Scotland at the moment, with Tommaso Portinari throwing his weight about in Bruges.’ She turned to Tobie. ‘Remember Tommaso?’ Julius wondered if she had a soft spot for Tobie.

Tobie’s short pink mouth widened, as if he had a soft spot for Margot. ‘Finger-rings. I always said he would kill to get control of the Bruges Medici. How’s he enjoying it?’

Margot laughed. She was a handsome woman, if over-opinionated. ‘Remember Controller Bladelin’s palace in the Naalden Straate? Tommaso’s bought it. For the Medici. For visiting officials. For himself to entertain in. He’s one of the Duke’s counsellors now, did you know that? And a diplomat. He’s one of the envoys arranging the English marriage for the Duke’s heir. If it happens, there’ll be enough velvet on order to keep the Medici in profit for years. And the rest of Bruges. Diniz is ecstatic at the mere thought of it.’

‘You mean Gregorio,’ Tobie said. ‘But tell me first. What happened to Diniz?’

Margot laughed again. She said, ‘How do you remember him? A frightened boy, swept from Cyprus by the hated Jordan? You will be surprised. He works for the Charetty company.’

‘The …?’ said Tobie. He stopped.

‘As their deputy manager. In Spangnaerts Street, but with special reference to the dyeshop. Why are you laughing?’

‘At Nicholas,’ Tobie said. ‘Nicholas the glorious, the devious bastard. Oh, where in God’s name is he? It’s a feast, it’s meat and drink, it’s the greatest game in the world, but it isn’t the same without Nicholas.’

The message came two days later, on a Barbary ship. Nothing for the Banco di Niccolò was ever delayed in Venice now. Handed ashore, it was taken by runner direct to the Bank, where Julius seized it. He flung open the doors to the chamber (the painted, the tapestried, the elegant chamber) where Tobie was talking to Margot.

Julius said, ‘He’s coming. Nicholas. He’s crossing the Sahara next month. He should be on the coast by September at the latest. We have to send the
Ciaretti
to Oran.’

He couldn’t see himself, his face flushed, his eyes shining, but he saw the reflection of it, had he known, in Tobie’s face, and in that of Margot. Margot cried out, and ran forward. Somehow, he found himself hugging her. She kissed him, and they both turned to Tobie. Tobie, his face scarlet, said, ‘I want to be kissed,’ and she hugged him as well. She was crying.

Tobie said, ‘Let me see it. Not you, woman, men first; you get the wine and the cups. Let me see. What does he say?’

‘It isn’t from him,’ Julius said. ‘Or at least, it isn’t his writing. There. Just the instruction, the bastard, as if it will be easy. September. She’ll have to sail in July. Where
is
the
Ciaretti
?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Margot said, jug in hand. ‘My heavens, you’ve got enough ships. The
Adorno
, the
Niccolò
– you can get one of them ready.’

‘And I shall sail with her,’ said Julius. He emptied his cup, tossed and caught it.

‘No, you won’t,’ Margot said. ‘You’ll be in Scotland with Bonkle by then, and Gregorio will be here. And over my dead body is Gregorio going to Barbary. No, my sweet men. This ship may have to wait in Oran a long time, and if she has to stay all autumn and winter, then she’ll do so. The ship herself will be his welcome. The rest can wait.’

‘Maybe,’ said Tobie.

*

The May
azalai
did not come. The sun burned; the temperature began to rise daily. After waiting all month, Nicholas began to assemble a caravan of his own.

It wasn’t easy. Now the worst of the summer heat was upon them, and no camel-trains would arrive until autumn. He spent some time talking to agents; persuading those with heavy stocks or a willingness to run into debt to add their camels and drovers to his. It need not be too expensive, he explained. There were always caravans going north from Arawan, and he would join his force to theirs, and share costs. He only realised afterwards that when they agreed, it was because Umar also had spoken to them.

All the same, he had to use most of his reserves to hire his own camels and six men to drive and defend them: eight hundred ducats to take himself and his provisions and the few objects he had selected on the long journey north. It was two thousand miles to Oran. It was five hundred miles to the salt mines at Taghaza, where Umar would leave him.

The eventual caravan, it began to appear, would amount to some two hundred and fifty loaded camels, of which six would be his. There would be rather more than that number of people.

So small a company demanded experienced men. The dealers, drovers and guard who made up its larger part were mostly veterans of the double trans-Saharan journey. There were not many of them. No one tried the two-way crossing more than once in twelve months, or, indeed, more than five times in a lifetime. But Umar was only going to Taghaza and back, and Nicholas was crossing once only. The camel-station at Arawan was four days away, and a guide had been selected to take them there.

Nicholas had, in the end, only formal farewells to make, since it had long been known he was leaving. He was given a feast in the Ma’ Dughu, which the commander Akil also attended. The Koy made his gratitude known, but also made it known, behind his hand, that Europeans belonged on the coast, and it was time that this man returned there. The sultan Akil was amiability itself, in his regard for what the lord Niccolò had done, for the benefits he had initiated, for the wisdom of his decision to leave. The evening was long, and exhausting.

The farewells of the scholars had been different. He possessed already a cargo of books; it was his main burden. Every teacher had a parcel for him: of some exquisite original, or of a manuscript carefully copied. The imams, the judges, the Qadi reminded him in grave, exquisite Arabic, of his mistakes and of his achievements in that order, and of all they had spoken of doing together. The talk developed, as of habit; each visit extended far beyond the time
he had planned. He conversed unsleeping with his friends in all those last days, as a man facing the desert drinks water. But it was not water he drank.

He took his leave of his servants, and of those many men and women of every kind who had become friends, and he distributed gifts to the utmost of his means, and received them in turn. One of the many graces of this strange society was its attention to gifts; his own had been made for the most part by his own hands, and were mainly for children. For the scholars he had prepared works of another kind. Last of all, he went to make his peace with Zuhra.

She stopped his speech with her hand. ‘I know. I, too, would have him refrain from this journey. But how would he think of himself, did he stay? How would we live, Umar and I, if between us lay this thing that I had stopped him doing? It is only to Taghaza. It is nothing.’

‘It is not nothing,’ Nicholas said. ‘Zuhra, I am a child of Umar’s strength as much as your children are. I would not exist but for him. And you are for him what he has been to me. I know he feels he must come, and I cannot stop him. But his force comes only from you, and he will return to renew it. He will return.’

He was not sure. He had to seem sure.

He spent the last night alone, walking the lanes of the city, and finding one lamp lit, in the gateway of the imam, the Katib Musa. As he hesitated, the porter’s voice spoke. ‘Lord. The Katib is asleep. He asked, if you passed, that you would enter, and sit in his library.’

He sat until dawn, with the books under his hands, and his cheek on them. Then he rose, silent and stiff, and went for the last time to his house.

There are few wells in the Sahara, and the journey between them depends on navigation as exact and as strict as that employed by a captain at sea, venturing out of sight of his port, and into waters unknown. In time of clear skies, the Sahara caravan makes its way as the birds do, and the captains: by the sun and the stars, and by whatever landmarks the sand may have left. But the winds blow, and dunes shift, and the marks left by one caravan are obliterated before the next comes. And so men will wander, and perish.

The guide Umar had chosen for Nicholas was a Mesufa Tuareg, and blind. For two days, walking or riding, he turned the white jelly of his sightless eyes to the light and the wind, and opened his palpitating black nostrils to the report of the dead, scentless sand which was neither scentless nor dead, but by some finesse of aroma proclaimed its composition and place. At each mile’s end, he filled
his hands with the stuff and, rubbing, passed it through his brown fingers. Then he smiled, and said, ‘Arawan.’

‘Umar,’ Nicholas said. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

To begin with, they spoke very little. With the rest, they walked through the first night and part of the day, halting rarely. Sleep was brief, and taken by day. During the worst of the heat, they lay with the camels under the white, shimmering sky, and ate, and rested.

Their drovers made tents of their mantles, but Umar’s hands erected the light, makeshift awning that sheltered Nicholas and himself, and arranged the cloths, coated by Zuhra with mercuric paste, which they wore against the sting and bite of the pests of the desert. Then, mounting while the sun still glared upon them, they rode until dark, each man his own tent, alone under his own cone of shelter. The chanting, the chatter stopped then, and even the goats became silent.

The nights were marginally cooler. Then the riders revived, and dismounted, and unlashed the bullock-skins of warm water, and drank, and filled the leather bags at their sides. And the camels had their one meal of the day, from the fodder they carried themselves.

The company was congenial enough, and consisted of men and women and children, for there were families going to Arawan. As the heat became less, they grew lively. Every hour, the ropes on the loads needed adjusting: a camel would kick and bite and, roaring, disrupt the procession; the goats would stray; a dispute would break out over some trifle. At such times, the caravan carried its own clamour with it, like a long, narrow household perpetually singing, arguing, quarrelling, cackling. They hardly stopped for food, except during the enforced sleep through the heat, but passed between them gourds of maize and sour milk or rough bread. The fresh food had spoiled by the second day.

On the second day, the blind man came to them both and said, ‘Lord? You have been generous.’ He spoke to Nicholas, but his eyes were on Umar, the katib, the man of learning.

Nicholas said, ‘You have need of something?’ He kept his voice low, like the other’s.

The man said, ‘It might please my lord to know that many horsemen have passed this way to Arawan recently. Not today. Perhaps three days ago.’

Nicholas said, ‘Someone told you?’ The pale, shining sands were everywhere pristine.

‘My nose,’ said the man. ‘The manure has been covered while fresh. It is unusual.’

‘It’s Akil,’ said Umar, when they were alone. ‘Not the commander
himself, he was at the banquet. He must have sent his troops on. Arawan is a Maghsharen settlement.’ They sat within their makeshift tent, their clothes soaking. A camel groaned and someone, irritated by their voices, coughed and spat. It was time for sleeping.

Nicholas said, ‘Would Akil’s men dare to attack us?’

Umar was repairing the thong of a slipper. The needle slipped in and out, as it had done when, manager of a large household, he still contrived to keep his master’s garments in order. In Cyprus, in Trebizond.

He said, without looking up, ‘He would perhaps tell them to hold our six camels. Let the others go on, and then send us off alone on some pretext. We should be reported murdered by wandering bandits.’

‘You think he wants that?’ Nicholas said.

‘I think he knows the Koy wouldn’t mind. Akil has shared the power with the Koy for thirty years. I think he doesn’t want competition from Europeans and Christians traversing the Sahara. He wants to trade with them at the coast, on his terms. Now,’ Umar said, ‘you are going to ask me why I didn’t think of that, before I brought you to Guinea.’

‘You didn’t know. I’m going to ask you something else. Must we stop at Arawan?’

Umar put down his needle. His thread had broken. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I’m not. Answer the question,’ said Nicholas.

‘We could avoid Arawan,’ Umar said. ‘But the rest of this caravan won’t. Some are staying there. The others only came this way to pick up protection. It’s late in the season. Two or three hundred camels are rather few against troops of armed Berbers.’

‘Six would move quickly,’ said Nicholas.

‘Until the nomads observe them,’ said Umar. ‘And it means only six camels to carry food, fodder and water, our belongings and us, if we tire. It leaves no margin for sandstorms or straying or accidents. And lastly, if we don’t get to the water at Arawan, there are exactly two hundred miles between the first well after that and the next one.’ He had rethreaded his needle. He said, ‘I think we should avoid Arawan.’