Spice and the Devil's Cave (16 page)

He laid down the cloth and paste, and stepped into the court for a breath of freshness. The rain had stopped, and there was a broken sky. Great clouds raced before a clearing wind, and between their dark, fleeing masses Abel saw the sweet radiance of stars.

CHAPTER 13

A Street Quarrel

N
ICOLO
was sitting at a table in The Green Window, finishing the fish that Pedro had fried for his breakfast.

“Hardly out of the water before it was sizzling in oil I” announced the old man, and Nicolo made out that he was expected to praise its freshness.

“You take good care of me, Pedro,” he said. “I'm lucky to be with you.”

“Provisions, these days, aren't easy to get,” Pedro plaintively remarked. “Meat and fish are highest I've ever known on account of so much being needed for the Expedition.”

“Cheer up, Pedro! Gama'll soon be off, and when he gets home, there'll be such a rabble to sign up for the next trip to India, that The Green Window won't hold them, and you can charge anything for a meal; any price you like!”

Nicolo's banter was not so whole-hearted as it sounded. While he spoke of Gama's return he was heavily thinking ‘Where will Nejmi be then? ‘

“That's what I hear,” Pedro hopefully returned, “that prices are going up. There's a tailor friend of mine says he's even going to raise his figure before Gama sails.”

“Good business!” commended Nicolo. Then, because Pedro's mention of a tailor stirred a half-formed thought, “Think your friend would make me a cloak for the big day?” he ventured.

It had occurred to him, some time ago, that he would like to have something new to wear on the day the Expedition sailed. To be sure, Nejmi wouldn't be among the spectators. He had heard Abel say they would watch the scene from the workshop. But, he reflected, afterward he could go up to Abel's. His fancy dallied with the notion: the new cloak with the sunlight in the court weaving patterns on it – and Nejmi near by. Even, he might drop a hint to her that she was its incentive! And at the same time he would make bold and tell her that his ship was to be named
The Golden Star!

“He'd do it fast enough, if he had his regular help/' Pedro replied, “but he's had to loan his men to make sails in the shipyards. You knew Captain Diaz was having two sets of sails for every ship? But I'll tell you where his tailor shop is; and say I sent you.”

As Nicolo neared the address Pedro had mentioned, he became aware of some disturbance ahead. Loud voices rang out and, looking in their direction, he saw a knot of spectators already gathered, and others running to join them. He hurried forward, and came up in time to see, in the centre of the crowd, two sailors making unsteady passes at each other. One of them he knew, by his dress, was a Venetian; the other was unmistakably Portuguese, and they both were half tipsy.

“Funny, what you think you're going to do with those three or four little ships – caravels is it you call 'em?” the Venetian was drawling in bad Portuguese.

“You won't think they're so funny-nor so little – when you see your galleys coming home empty, one of these days,” retorted the Portuguese. “Gama'll teach you a thing or two!”,

“Oh, curse Gama!” shouted the Venetian as he reeled toward the other.

There was a growl from the bystanders, and several started for the Venetian.

“String him up and let him dangle!” cried someone.

Nicolo waited for no more. He dove through the crowd and stepped in front of the Venetian. “Better let me take you back to your ship,” he sharply told him.

“Take me back to my ship, would you?” yelled the fellow. “Get out of my way before I take you where –”

Furiously he swung on Nicolo who, just in time swerved aside, while he, unable to stop himself, shot helplessly forward and struck the ground, face down.

“That's what you Venetians'll come to!” jeered the Portuguese sailor.

Nicolo stepped up to the grovelling figure, and jerked it upright. “Come along with me before you start trouble,” he advised, in a low tone; then, to pacify the crowd, “He doesn't know what he's saying!” he laughed.

“I don't, don't I?” stammered the Venetian. He raised his fist, which Nicolo promptly caught and held.

Suddenly someone pushed toward them, and laid hands on the sailor. A tall, swarthy fellow, Nicolo noted, with bushy black hair.

“Been drinking again, eh?” he asked with a strong foreign accent; then, aside to Nicolo, “Shipmate of mine,” he explained, as he walked the other man away.

The sailor looked back at Nicolo. “I'll settle with you, yet,” he called, “you cursed Portygee!”

Nicolo burst out laughing. “As it happens, brother, I'm a Venetian!” Then, as the bystanders, including the tipsy Portuguese, had moved off, and there seemed no more chance of trouble, he continued on his way to the tailor's.

Some distance on, he was aware of someone falling in beside him: the tall, dark stranger!

“Lucky for me that you interfered,” the man laughed, in his foreign accent. “If the crowd had got their hands on that mate of mine –”

“It might have been serious,” Nicolo agreed.

“That chap,” pursued the other, “is the handiest you ever saw on a deck. But he can't keep away from drink, and then there's no lengths to which his tongue won't go!”

“It was a poor time he chose, with the mood Lisbon is in just now!”

“Yes, the town's gone mad over Gama,” the stranger admitted. “I stopped in here to see if I could pick up a cargo – being a small trader, myself – but a fellow has no chance at all at his own affairs, with everyone taken up with this Expedition.”

“I'm in exactly that fix,” said Nicolo. “I've a caravel half built, and there she'll stay till Captain Diaz gets through with my men!”

“You in the ship-building business?” The eyes under the bushy, black hair narrowed. “And didn't I hear you say you were a Venetian?”

Nicolo admitted this was so.

The man studied him with unconcealed curiosity. “Queer, you coming here, when you've about all the trade and ship-building in your own town. You must have heard some strong stories to make you shift to Lisbon.”

“To my way of thinking,” Nicolo replied, “what Captain Diaz did is strong enough to make anyone shift.”

The other shrugged, and laughed. “Come, now! How can you tell that what he says is true?”

Immediately Nicolo was on the defensive. “If you knew Bartholomew Diaz as I do –”

“Oh, you know him, do you?” The note of eagerness made Nicolo wonder.

“Come in and have a drink, won't you?” added the stranger, as, at that moment, they were passing a tavern.

Nicolo suddenly remembered the tailor, but it was a hot morning, and he was thirsty! He followed the man into the tavern, and while they drank their wine, they talked about Portugal's slave trade.

“They say,” said the seaman, “there's a fortune in it.”

“Nothing like what there'll be in spice, after Gama gets things going in the East!” Nicolo confidently returned. With the relaxation and glow that the wine spread through him, he felt aggressively optimistic about Portugal's future.

“I hear that your friend Diaz is outfitting this Expedition. I suppose he's providing for a long cruise?”

“You'd think so, if you could see what he has ready for those ships! He has everybody working day and night, from packing provisions to casting cannon and caulking hulls. And he's bought up all kinds of merchandise to send, too: cloth and silks and jewellery and so on.”

“Gh, reckoning on trading it?”

“Yes, and to give as presents to the native kings. There's nothing Diaz hasn't thought of!”

“You've been abroad, have you?” Again that note of eagerness!

Yes, Nicolo acknowledged, he had.

“Squat-built things, those boats, aren't they?” commented the other. “That square rig, and top-heavy castles, too!”

“How else could castles be,” Nicolo defended, “but big and substantial, with the fighting that's to be done from them?”

“Expect fighting, do they?” The black brows were raised a trifle.

“Well, they're going prepared!”

The stranger s eyes appeared to explore the depths of his mug. “I suppose Gama figures on using gun powder?” he casually offered.

“If he has to! There's a trained squad for the powder pots and cannon,” boasted Nicolo, secretly pleased to exploit his friends. “And besides that,” he rambled on, “there are enough javelins and crossbows and pikes and –”

He checked himself with a curious and unaccountable feeling that the eyes under the lowered lids were only pretending to look into the mug, and that they were really taking stealthy account of what he was saying. Were they, too, a trifle derisive? It rushed over him that the questions might have been bait to make him talk. He was uneasily conscious that, proud of the Expedition, and eager to defend his own position, he had been only too willing to tell – to a stranger, at that – all that he knew. As well as he could, he picked up his broken sentence, and ended, a little lamely, “here's nothing that Diaz forgets or overlooks!”

The man's eyes, as he raised them to meet Nicolo's, were indifferent. “No doubt,” he said, casually, “no doubt at all.” He turned as a snatch of talk floated in from the street. “Ah,” he said, pleasantly, turning back again, “I see the news has begun to get around.” Then, as Nicolo looked mystified, “About the Jews, you know,” he explained.

“What do you mean?”

“Why, the Pope's taken a hand, and made Manoel give them twenty years before they have to quit the country.”

Nicolo's heart leaped to his throat. “Twenty years! Who told you?”

“Well, the proclamation hasn't yet been read,” was the evasive answer, “but it's going to be!”

In a tumult of hope and fear, Nicolo made some excuse, and went out. He must go right up to Abel's to find what he knew of this matter. How, he suddenly wondered, had this stranger got the information before it was made public? Yet, as he struck across to the hillside, he forgot everything but that he was keeping buoyant step to a measure his heart was beating:
Nejmi
–
Nejmi!

The moment he opened the gate, and saw her and Ruth in the court, he knew, from their faces, that they had learned the news. He ran to them, stammering he hardly knew what, and seized Ruth's hands.

“I've just heard!” he choked out. He looked full at Nejmi. “Nothing's ever made me so happy!”

Between smiling and crying, Ruth was saying, while she fondled his hand, “You're a good boy, Nicolo! Yes, twenty years is a long time, a long blessed time.”

Nicolo glanced about. “Master Abel. . . where is he?”

“Come!” Nejmi whispered happily, and tiptoed toward the workshop, while he followed, with a delicious sense of new intimacy. At the threshold she stepped aside, finger on lips, and gave him an ecstatic little push, so that he might look within.

Sunlight flooded the room; files and pincers strewed the bench; the floor was a litter of fresh shavings; and, in the heart of the happy riot, bent over the unfinished astrolabe, sat Abel. Rapt and absorbed, blind and deaf to all but his enchanted plaything-Abel, the Boy! Yet, not wholly the Boy, as Nicolo recalled him on that first visit to the hill-top house, for these last months had taken an irrevocable toll of his eager spirit.

Nicolo turned to glance behind him. Ruth was crying softly. Strictly speaking, his own eyes weren't dry! But in Nejmi's was a light like sunshine at the bottom of a deep, deep pool.

Her hand touched his arm to draw him back, and they tiptoed noiselessly away, behind Ruth, who was whispering, over her shoulder, that he must see the pear preserve she was making for Gama.

He was made to look into the kettle of ruby syrup and translucent slices of fruit, and then to sample a spoonful dipped out especially for him.

While he lingered, Nicolo wondered how he could manoeuvre a moment alone with Nejmi. At last, over Ruth's head, he caught the dark eyes – and held them. In an ecstasy, he heard her say she would go with him to the gate!

As they passed the workshop, they glanced through the doorway at Abel and Nicolo whispered, “If it hadn't been for you, that night, with the compass frame –”

She seized his arm. “Do you think he guessed? Ah, Nicolo,” she rushed on, “it broke my heart to see those idle instruments that used to be so busy . . . darkness, instead of light and voices! It was as if someone-” she caught her breath, sharply-” someone that we love had died!”

“Nejmi – Nejmi!” he cried. “You're thinking of your – of what happened there in Aden! Ah, Nejmi!”… How could he keep from pouring out his heart?

“Why, Nicolo, I didn't mean to distress you with my troubles.” Now she was the calmer of the two. “I don't often let myself think about all that. I mean to keep it locked up in my heart, only, sometimes, it bursts the lock!”