Scales of Gold (48 page)

‘And the
Ghost,
’ remarked Nicholas. ‘Pray that she’s beating up to Madeira by now.’

Afterwards, it seemed insane to those who survived that they decided that night to proceed east, instead of boarding the
Niccolò
and simply sailing her home without Nicholas. Except that, of course, Jorge would never have abandoned his quest – to find not just gold, but the permanent source of the gold. And to both Diniz and Godscalc, it would have been cowardice.

The three days they spent in the canoe represented their first taste of real deprivation. They had water, and, choosing their landings with caution, were able to bribe food from unwilling people. Saloum showed them how to cook it on board, and which fish they could trust. Saloum taught the seamen how to propel the boat standing or sitting, and navigated for them until he grew too tired, and had to take rest.

He only slept through the day, and then by snatches, while the others worked in relays, attempting to carry out what he had taught them. By the second night they were all very weary, partly from ceaseless travelling and partly from fear, and strain, and the sudden winds which brought chill to the night, and battered them
with baking dust through the day. The canoe leaked, and had to be baled. Bel and Gelis and Filipe spelled one another in that, because Filipe had no knack for the paddle, and by that time Nicholas and Godscalc and Diniz were helping the others. They had not yet seen any sign of the pinnace.

One man had begun to vomit by then, the kind of bile they had all seen before. Bel helped him as much as she could. While they had not suffered themselves on the voyage, they had witnessed others die at close quarters: from bites, stings, bad food, unexplained fevers. There was little privacy either: simply two open ends, and a long tattered hood made of matting which turned the central part of the boat into a tunnel. In that they hung cloths, and used buckets.

Nicholas appeared not to sleep. No one questioned their speed. It was understood that the party ahead must be caught: if they gained too much of a lead, they might vanish. Unless Lopez really left marks. Diniz said, once, ‘How do we know that we haven’t passed them?’

And Nicholas, poling, his eyes ahead in the dark, had said, ‘Because they’re too few for an ambush. Also, Lopez knows only one route, and that runs from the end of the river. They have to go there, and try to outstrip us.’

He was proved right at the rocks, which blocked the river and ended their voyage. There, Saloum bought information. ‘Lord? A Portuguese ship’s boat with a sail came here yesterday. Its people landed; the boat was dragged to the bushes and hidden.’

‘Burn it,’ said Nicholas. ‘Where did they go? Do they know how many there were?’

‘Eight,’ Saloum said. ‘And they passed north-east, to a place called Tambacounda.’

‘A trap?’ said Jorge da Silves.

‘No,’ said Saloum. ‘There is, drawn on a tree, the special sign that I told you of.’

They left the sick seaman there, at a village, and paid for his care. He clung to Bel, parting, and she kissed him. Then she went out and mounted the donkey they had bought for her. There were only six, for a party of fifteen. Godscalc said, ‘You shame me, the comfort you brought him.’ But all that day, riding, she found herself blowing her nose.

The transition from water to land was disturbing, and not only because of its dangers. On the Gambia they had yearned for dry land, and although the ground heaved beneath their feet when they trod it, they had revelled in the extravagance of their brief excursions; the vivid growth, the strange beasts, the beautiful birds, the
presence of human beings outside the claustrophobic community of a ship. And yet the ship had been there, a retreat and a harbour. Until the last time.

Here, they had only themselves to rely on – the eagerness of Diniz, the instinct of Nicholas, the knowledge of Saloum, the watchfulness of Jorge da Silves. They learned quickly which were the real perils and what precautions might be attempted against them, while accepting there was never total protection. They learned to recognise when they were being spied on, and to keep their weapons concealed and their manner unthreatening.

Children dogged them, just out of sight. Reports were passed on by drums, and by the youths they glimpsed hunting, or herding, or gathering berries or fuel. Before every nightfall, Saloum would try to discover the tracks – of humans, of goats – that might lead to a village, and they would listen for curs barking, or the cry of a cock, and sniff the air for fresh dung and woodsmoke.

Then if they found a place, Saloum would approach it with gifts, always wary because of Doria. But Doria’s party – small, swift, well supplied with food and clothes from the
Fortado
– had no women to care for, and no need to waste time either placating villagers or rousing them against other white men. Doria’s group had been seen, Saloum reported – no one moved in this country unnoticed – but were avoiding the villages, and had not been molested.

Sometimes Saloum was successful. Then the villages would agree to admit them, and they would sleep in the compound, or on the dirt floor of a hut, crowded with wondering watchers. If he was not, they built fires of their own, and dug and cooked sweet white roots, and seethed maize and beans to go with them.

Sometimes the village they found would be already deserted, and the people hidden, and too afraid to be coaxed. Once Jorge tried to occupy such a spot and was summarily commanded to get out of it by the soft voice of Nicholas. Some of the crew agreed with Jorge, but changed their minds quickly. A community ousted by devils might well come back with poison-tipped arrows. The argument, although short, cost them time, and darkness fell before they reached other shelter. That night, neither Jorge nor Nicholas was popular.

At Tambacounda there was no sign of Doria, but evidence that he had called there in passing, and that the approach of a second white party was suspect, however disarming Saloum’s appeal for admission.

This was not a remote village inhabited by the timid, but a settlement of many huts, and a thorn wall with a gate behind which
the villagers massed, spears in hand, while the headman was sent for. He arrived after some time, accompanied by a tall black man of a different race, wearing straw at his ankles and hung with clattering charms. The headman was frightened and angry, and wished to impound the donkeys and drive the white strangers off. Saloum conversed with them placidly, while fondling a small bag of cowries.

The shells were found sufficient. The barriers were opened. Two cocks were bought and sacrificed, and Nicholas deployed his crossbows to help bring down game for a feast which they ate out of bowls on the warm beaten earth of the compound. There were plenty of children but no luxuries here: no nubile wives, no silk robes from the Medici. After the palm wine had gone round Nicholas went to sit with the drummers and make tunes on a reed pipe and sing, and made the others hop and sing as he did. Manoli trod on a snake; the music faltered at the sound of his scream and then continued, although the grandmothers bent over him, chattering, and crowded about as he was lifted into a hut.

Nicholas cut into the place of the bite and sucked and spat as the blood streamed, as did Godscalc. Every district had its own hopeless remedy. Godscalc plastered on what the crones brought, and bound the blackening foot while Manoli whimpered. He shook his head as he rose.

Nicholas said, ‘Stay with him. I must go back, or they will think it’s bad luck.’ And back he went, playing and singing, but returning to Manoli’s side every so often. Just before dawn, the man died. He had been with Nicholas since the
Ciaretti
. After a few hours’ sleep, they went on.

The terrain was not in itself physically difficult. It was Sahel country in December: undulating plains of yellow grass, sometimes shoulder-high; velvety wastes of crazed mud; a dotting of trees, sometimes green, sometimes skeletal. It was not physically difficult except for the sun. Away from the river, the heat had increased by a third, although by night it was cooler sometimes than was comfortable. But they dare not travel at night.

They covered themselves against sunburn. Godscalc and Bel anointed great angry rashes and chafe-marks. Nicholas bartered their frayed cloaks and sweat-sundered garments for cotton and coarse thread and thorn-needles and, instead of wearing chemises and hose, the men thrust their heads through cloaks formed of joined sheeting, and made themselves voluminous breeches caught at waist and at calf with rush-string. For boots and caps, they had skins.

Bel kept her stout, frayed garment longest of all, and wore her cloak as a veil from the sun. Gelis, abandoning the useless fine
cloth of her mourning, grimly requisitioned two squares of coarse cotton, one to wrap as a skirt and the other, slit for her head, to drape her upper body and arms like a kerchief. What was left, made a Muslim-style headcloth. They spoke little to one another. They were too tired, and saved their strength for survival. But wherever they went, they cast about for the red marks of Lopez and followed them as Jorge followed the planets. The donkeys stumbled.

They were a day behind, Saloum said. It revived the seamen, but however they hurried, the day never seemed to be made up. Saloum, being black, could not look as worn as they did, but his eyes had sunk, and his hair and beard dulled. At the end of a week, they seemed no nearer their quarry and another man had fallen ill. Lying roofless that night, Godscalc said, ‘How long must this continue? We are not overtaking. Doria will find the mines, and Lopez will be killed, and these poor men are dying for nothing.’

‘Doria is not near the mines,’ Saloum said.

Jorge da Silves had overheard him. With heat and low diet the lean face had become leaner, the folds deeper, the eyes brighter still. ‘Not near them?’ said Jorge.

‘Not yet,’ Saloum said. ‘It takes time.’

Jorge said, ‘How do you know? Do you know where the mines are? If I thought you knew where they were, and hadn’t told us, I would pitch you into that ant-hill.’

‘Be quiet,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’ll rouse the others. Of course he doesn’t know where they are. He’s helping us follow Lopez.’

‘And of course, that’s all you want,’ Jorge said. ‘Not the gold. You’re worried about the good health of Lopez.’

‘And you are not?’ Nicholas said.

It was later, when Jorge had fallen asleep, that Godscalc crossed and sat beside Nicholas. He said, ‘What did Saloum mean? Do you know? Is Lopez misleading Doria?’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Nicholas. He lay on his face.

‘But Lopez knows you are following,’ Godscalc said. ‘Isn’t he leading you to the mines?’

‘Jorge certainly hopes so,’ said Nicholas. ‘I can’t tell you anything, except that it’s vital to hurry.’

‘You will kill us on the way,’ Godscalc said.

Nicholas rested his head on his hands. ‘We’re dead anyway, without Lopez to lead us.’

Three days after that, they came to the river. On its banks was a settlement larger than any they had yet come across; one surrounded by harvested meadows and cattle with upcurving horns, and whose thatched huts were shaded by silk-cotton and Baobab
trees and defended by fences and matting. They dismounted and waited outside, as they always did, while Saloum conferred at the barrier. He eventually passed inside, taking Nicholas with him.

Seated motionless in the dust, Gelis said, ‘You know what this river is? It’s the Senagana.’

They all knew. She had no need to say it. It was the Senagana, the river at the mouth of which, three weeks before, she had been heartily embraced by King Zughalin. ‘So we appear,’ she added, ‘to be travelling in circles.’ She was in pain, for the same reason that had led her once to bite Nicholas in the hand. It pleased her to deal with it all without mentioning it.

Diniz had learned when not to reply. He slumped, his back to a tree. Perhaps tonight there would be a hut. The headman was a person of consequence: the chief of Boundon reserved some of his wives here. It was unlikely that he would behave like Gnumi Mansa. Even if he did, few of them could take advantage of it. Diniz remembered Nicholas at Tendeba and the display of cheerful simplicity so unlike anything he had seen in him before or since. It had seemed to be genuine.

And now Nicholas and Saloum were in there, reduced to begging for food and shelter for thirteen. That was their whole number now: Jorge with his four handpicked seamen and that fool Filipe; Nicholas with Saloum and Vito and himself; and the padre and the two stupid women. For the rest, their Christmas Mass had been a funeral service.

It was almost true that they were travelling in circles. They had followed Lopez north-east until they had actually intersected the Senagana. Had it been navigable, and had some prophet warned them, they might have saved all these last weeks of travail.

Gelis had intended to say so, until she saw Nicholas return, and watched Godscalc lift himself to his feet, waiting for him.

Like them all, the priest had lost weight, and the big frame beneath the crumpled cotton was blotched and lumpy with bites and abrasions and his boots patched with blood. He hadn’t shaved for ten days. All the men were the same, and most of them grumbled but bore it. The lure of the gold was enough. In Godscalc’s case there was no lure, Gelis saw, only a growing despair, watching the feverish race: Jorge competing with Nicholas in how much speed might be made; Jorge resenting the younger man’s nominal dominance, all the more as it became apparent that it was actual dominance – that Nicholas possessed somewhere the kind of rare sense that told him how to lead.

She had not, herself, expected that. In the political battles of Bruges she had studied the unattractive qualities that made for
plebeian success; extreme ambition being the foremost. She had looked to find it in Nicholas, as well as the common attributes of the soldier: physical stamina, physical boldness, a convenient coarseness of feeling. These, she thought, were all there, but present also was something inborn that advised him in his dealings with people.

On the voyage, he had got his own way with guile. Now he gave orders. No one, placed as they were, could disobey him, but his objectives were not necessarily theirs, and the result could have been gloom and resentment. He had worked to make sure it was not. He endured the same hardships, and worse. He excelled Jorge in concise exposition, so that they knew what they were doing, and why. He taught Filipe the use of a crossbow and took lessons from Vito in butchering. He gave each man his due, and when rest was imperative, he contrived the best of comfort and food he could manage. He supported Bel and Godscalc in their doctoring, and talked them through and over each death. He did it all, as she knew, because he wanted to get to the gold.