“I like Devil’s Cave!” exclaimed Ferdinand. “Sounds exciting.”
Diaz gave him an amused look. “You’d think ’twas exciting,” he told him. “Greatest commotion of wind and water there ever I saw—like ten thousand devils set loose—just as the Arabs believed.”
He sat back in his chair, his smile gone. He appeared to have forgotten the map as he stared absently before him.
Across the table a man eyed him as if pondering something he wished to say. A black-bearded stocky figure he was, not much past thirty, with a long-nosed, forceful face—Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of King Manoel’s court. His father had once been Comptroller of the royal household, and had been intended, in John’s reign, to head an expedition to explore a sea route to India. Vasco, himself, had seen service at sea and had soldiered in Spain and Africa. Lately, with all Europe agog over the Way to the Spices, he’d begun to brush up on navigation, and occasionally came to look at Abel Zakuto’s maps.
“Have you any doubt, Captain,” he at last ventured, “that the coast east of the Cape makes up to India as Mauro showed it?”
“No, I haven’t,” Diaz replied bluntly. “But what use is that if I can’t say I know it does? No, Gama, all I know is only what I’ve seen, and that’s the coast this side of the Cape—barring some score leagues beyond.”
Young Magellan made an impatient gesture. “Covilham had no doubts about the coast east of the Cape,” he said, pointedly.
His tone made the older men smile. This youngster just missed being a nuisance with his ever ready willingness to challenge one’s statements, only that he was always so sure of his facts, and so amazingly well informed! Covilham! What other lad in Lisbon would have known enough to ask this question? For Pedro de Covilham had started out on his great errand to verify by land what Bartholomew Diaz was sent to verify by sea, when this boy was hardly more than waist high—at least half a dozen years before he had come down from Traz-os-Montes to the palace at Lisbon for his page’s training.
“Covilham said it was clear sailing,” Ferdinand persisted, “east of the Cape, now didn’t he?”
From under his grizzled brows Bartholomew Diaz studied him with amused pride. After his own heart, this lad, with the great, sombre eyes that seemed to see beyond ordinary vision. That readiness to question, that rebellion against the passive acceptance of the mass—ah, that was the stuff of which pioneers were made! His own kinsmen, for instance: suppose they had believed all that nonsense about there being nothing beyond Cape Bojador but a chaos of boiling seas. But now, no one would soon forget that John Diaz was the very first of his race to take the dare of the great promontory and double its forbidding coasts; that Diniz Diaz was first to reach Cape Verde, and Vicente Diaz first at the Cape Verde islands; that he, Bartholomew, had sailed farther than any of them—though he did say it, who shouldn’t! And young Magellan, you could depend on it, would go as far some day; perhaps farther.
“But Covilham didn’t come home to tell what he’d found, as Captain Diaz did,” Gama observed. “All we have to go by is that he sent word back from Cairo to Lisbon that he’d got down the east coast of Africa as far as Sofala, and that if our ships would just keep on from Guinea they’d find a clear passage to India and the spices. But, if he didn’t get beyond Sofala, how could he be sure of that?”
“Well, even so—” Ferdinand’s arm shot out to the map, thumb on the Cape, and little finger on Sofala—“all that’s left to prove is the gap between this, where you left off, Master Diaz,” tapping with his thumb, “and this,” tapping with his finger, “where Covilham left off.” Triumphantly he looked around the table to score his point, as he flattened his palm to indicate the reach from thumb to finger tip.
“Yes, anyone can see that’s ‘all,’” Gama drily retorted. “The point is, how much of an ‘all’ is it? If the coast runs north from the Cape to Sofala, well and good; but if, somewhere in between, it should happen to make out to the east, and then down into the frozen south…”
Ferdinand heaved a long sigh. “I’d be willing to stake everything I had to settle it!”
Captain Diaz shrugged. “So would any of us, if there were only one’s self to consider.” Wouldn’t he, he meditated, have “settled” this tantalizing gap, ten years ago and more, only for having to turn back for that doubting, homesick crew of his?
“The one thing to do, King Manoel won’t do—go and find out!” Abel Zakuto quietly stated.
Everyone always listened to what Abel had to say. He always struck at the core of a situation; led you back to the main argument when you inclined toward side issues.
“He’s too busy trying to manoeuvre his head into the Spanish crown to bother with finding a passage to India!” Ferdinand said, sarcastically.
“He’d have no trouble getting crews,” Diaz grumbled. “Everybody’d want to go! All he has to do is to finish the ships that King John began for an eastern expedition and would have sent out—under your father, Gama—if death hadn’t blocked him.”
There was no one in the room who had forgotten that it was Diaz, himself, who had designed those ships and watched over their beginnings; but only he knew the bitterness of seeing those idle hulls and their half-finished rigging left to rot—for all Manoel seemed to care—in the dockyards.
“It always seemed to me,” Abel took him up, “that John got just what he deserved. Here, years ago, John Cabot came all the way from Venice to beg an outfit to discover a passage to India; the same thing happened again, in the case of Columbus, and John turned both of them away—deliberately lost two great chances for Portugal. Life doesn’t go on holding the door open, you know. There comes a time when it slams it shut in your face!”
“But wouldn’t you think,” Diaz demanded, “with Spain so keen over Columbus’s two cruises that they’re outfitting him for a third voyage, and news that the English Henry is getting John Cabot ready to find a sea passage, that Manoel would be afraid they’d find the way to the Indies first?”
The evening always finished that way: eager speculation, comment, mounting hopes, finally ending against the dead wall of Manoel’s callousness to the big issue of the time.
Bartholomew Diaz pushed his chair back from the table, got up, said good night and went out. Gama soon followed, and only Ferdinand and Abel remained. In fact, it was the usual sequel of these meetings, that the boy would stay on to talk of the all-engrossing topic.
Abel studied him now, as Bartholomew Diaz had, earlier in the evening. But where Diaz had noted evidence of personal traits, Abel read evidence of the national character. The sturdy build, the air of ruthless determination coupled with a certain arrogance toward danger, all reflected, Abel said to himself, generations that had been trained on Portugal’s littoral to the combat of the sea, or hardened in struggles with the Moors.
At this point in Abel’s meditations, his wife, Ruth, came in with a dish of figs preserved in grape treacle from a famous recipe that she claimed came from Palestine. Ferdinand sprang up and greeted her with an affectionate little gesture. He’d been a favourite with Ruth ever since she had seen him as a toddling youngster, when she was visiting friends at Sabrosa, and he knew those figs had been brought in especially for him.
“Help yourself, child, they’ll sweeten your dreams after all that dry talk,” she told him. “How you can spend so much time over those stupid old maps I can’t see. Stuffy in here as a dungeon, too, with all you men hived up together!”
She pushed the map to one side of the table, set the dish at Ferdinand’s hand, bustled across the room, and flung open the door into the garden-court.
Ruth was short and stout, with a way of trotting about as she talked, while she punctuated her remarks with little sidewise nods that reminded one of a bird cocking its head from side to side. Everything about her was intensely practical. When other women’s skirts swept the ground, Ruth’s neatly cleared, and homespun for every day but the Sabbath was, to her mind, wasteful and frivolous. She prided herself on
a fresh muslin cap each morning as much as she did on her clean house and the trim flower beds. Her mind was as practical as her capable hands: anything, for instance, outside of established fact she treated as cobwebs or weeds, and neither Abel nor his friends were under any illusions as to her opinion of the discussions in his workshop.
“You’d stay here in this close air till you choked!” she scolded, as she sat down; then, “Aren’t you going to sample my preserves?” she impatiently demanded, while she pulled at the girdle of her tight-fitting waist.
Abel reached over and helped himself to the confection, meditatively gazing into the darkness beyond the open door. Ferdinand, seething to continue the theme of the evening, watched the older man for a sign to begin.
“Well, Ferdinand, let’s have it!” Abel finally said, his eyes twinkling.
“Yes, sir!” The boy’s hand smote the table with a blow that made Ruth jump, and his sombre eyes blazed. “I can’t get over it, Master Abel—the shame of it! Here’s the merchantmen of Venice and Genoa bringing back the goods of the Orient, and trading with everybody all up and down both sides of the Mediterranean, their flags flying as complacent as you please, here in Lisbon harbour, as if they owned the place, while our ships sometimes—only sometimes, mind you—get left-over cargoes that no one else is keen about. Think of it—Portugal taking the leavings of Venice, by heaven! Why shouldn’t we be bringing back the cargoes from the Orient? I don’t mean by way of the Mediterranean, either!”
“I know, I know,” Abel nodded. “You mean direct from the Orient, around by the Devil’s Cave.”
“Heavens, yes! Of course that’s what I mean,” Ferdinand snapped out. “Then where’d Venice and Genoa be? And Spain and England?”
“I declare,” laughed Ruth, “I believe you’d like a chance to spite Spain and England!”
“Don’t you think for a minute that they don’t feel the same way about us!” the boy retorted. “Aren’t they both doing their best to crowd us out of the race for India? And we could have been there before Spain ever thought of sending out Columbus, if we’d only followed Captain Diaz’ lead! But now, Spain claims that Columbus has reached the Orient; by way of the west, to be sure, but still reached it.”
“There is no doubt Columbus has found something,” Abel said thoughtfully, “but whether it’s the Orient, or even any part of the Orient—Look here, Ferdinand,” he broke in on himself, “you know, and I know, that those half-naked savages and those rude gewgaws that Columbus brought back don’t tally with the great cities and the costly trade that men who’ve been in the Orient tell about—men like Marco Polo and his compatriots Conti, and Cabot, and even our own Covilham.”
“Well,” Ferdinand offered, “to do Columbus justice, all he claims is that what he’s found is the undeveloped outskirts of Cipangu3 or Cathay.4 But if we could settle what we’ve all but proved,” he pursued, in a low, vehement voice, “if we could reach India by way of the Cape, then, Portugal—Lisbon—” He broke off, his face working.
“Lisbon would be,” Abel finished for him, “the port of entry to Europe of the Orient’s trade. Lisbon would be—what Venice now is!”
“But if we lose,” the boy choked out, “if we lose, we’ll have to stand by, while Spain, or London gets the trade. And yet, Manoel can’t see it! The biggest chance the world has ever offered—and he letting it slip through his fingers!”
“Just listen to the child!” cried Ruth. “Breaking his heart over something he doesn’t even know exists!”
“Don’t say that!” Ferdinand said, sharply. “I’d—I’d—stake my soul that the Way of the Spices lies as plain as a road from us to India, just as Covilham says.” He turned almost pleadingly to Abel. “You believe that, Master Abel, don’t you?”
As Abel started to speak, the two others saw his lips, even in the very act of forming an answer, freeze into stark amazement, his eyes focused on some object behind them.
With one impulse they whirled about to see, poised in the doorway, as if in arrested flight, a bare-legged, ragged figure. Out of the pallid face stared great, dark eyes dilated by a madness of fear that wiped out every other expression.
For an astounded moment Ferdinand waited for the apparition to vanish—as it had come—like a wraith. No!… That was flesh, human, alive, that quivered under the torn breeches, and that was blood on the thin hands—one could even see where it had stained the tattered coat. Just a poor, frightened lad, of perhaps his own age!
A chair scraped the floor—Ruth ran past him to the door, and drew the pitiful figure inside. All at once he heard her cry out, saw her draw back. He started forward—as suddenly halted. Had he seen—or imagined—two braids of long, dark hair tucked under the ragged coat?
“It’s a girl, Abel—a girl!” Ruth was stammering.
At the sound of her voice the terror-stricken eyes glanced back into the court; then, like a wild creature seeking cover, the girl seized Ruth’s hands and dragged her into the room beyond the workshop.
“Someone is hunting her!” Abel cried. “The door, Ferdinand—quick!”
Ferdinand was out of the room, across the court, and already turning the key in the outside gate, when Abel, coming up, a little out of breath, reached out and tried the heavy door. Too amazed to talk, they stood, looking at each other.
“You’d think,” Ferdinand said under his breath, “that we’d have heard her come in, or that someone would have seen her climbing the hill up here.”
“Suppose you’d gone away when the others did, and I’d locked the gate after you,” Abel meditated aloud, “where might this poor creature have wandered?”
“I’m glad I stayed,” Ferdinand said, soberly, falling into step with Abel who had begun to pace slowly up and down the court.
Without speaking, they walked its length and back. Unconsciously they muffled their steps on the stone flags, as though they listened for some clue from the night.
To Abel, the very garden about them was an expression of what was in their minds. The gray old fig tree, the laden damsons that his own hands had trained along the wall, even the beds of dew-sweet flowers seemed to listen, to wait.…
“Where in the world did that child come from?” he mused aloud.
“She might have been brought in on a slave ship,” Ferdinand threw out at random. “But slaves are black as ebony,” he quickly amended, “and this girl has skin—well—like ivory, with sunlight striking across it.”
He was a little embarrassed at this lapse from his usual literal speech, but Abel seemed not to notice it.
“Exactly,” he rejoined, “like yellowed ivory, or like those lilies of mine in moonlight. However, that idea of yours is something to follow up. We can very soon find out at the docks whether any slave ship has put in here.”
From the court they could see Ruth’s shadow moving about in the lighted room where the girl had fled. At last, the light went out, and Ruth appeared at the workshop door.
“She’s quieted down a little,” she whispered, as Abel and Ferdinand stepped into the room.
“What does she say?” Abel eagerly demanded. “Did she tell you—”
“‘Tell’ me!” Ruth echoed with fine contempt. “I don’t believe she can speak a word of our language. I tried to talk with her, but all she did was to huddle in a corner, and stare at me with those big, terrified eyes. She acts almost as if her brain was turned. But when I gave her some warm milk, she drank it like a kitten, and she let me bind up her poor hands.”
“Did you see how they’d bled over her coat?” Ferdinand broke in.
“It’s clear enough that she’s had a terrific fight to escape,” Abel thoughtfully observed.
Ferdinand got up to go. “I’ll look around the docks tomorrow, and see what craft are in,” he said. “Perhaps I might pick up a clue about her.”
Ruth started up with an alarmed face. “But mind you don’t do or say anything that’ll rouse suspicion! Those she was running from must be lying in wait for her,
right here in town, and if they should find her, it’s my belief the child would die of fright.”
“Don’t be afraid, Ruth,” Abel assured her, curiously touched by this new tenderness. “Not a soul outside of us three shall know she’s here.”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” Ferdinand declared, “and my ears and eyes open. No one shall drag a word out of me!”
“Right!” Abel took him up. “So it’s just between ourselves to discover where she comes from.”
“Compared with which even finding the Way of the Spices might be simple!” Ferdinand laughed, as he took himself off.
CHAPTER 2
Nicolo Conti
From the rail of the Venetian merchantman, the Venezia, Nicolo Conti watched her crew send the last of the Lisbon consignment of sugar hurtling to the long quay. The Venezia had come in late the day before, and by the time she had made her way past Portuguese fishing boats and English vessels, Spanish galleons and Dutch, and found a berth between the craft tied up to the sea-wall, there had not been time to finish unloading. The crew now was hurrying, for they were already overdue, and it was nip and tuck to catch the flood tide over the bar.
Someone behind him spoke his name, and Nicolo turned to see a rugged figure coming toward him. “Got your luggage together, Conti? We’re about ready to go.”
“It went ashore first thing this morning, Captain. All I’ve to do is to get myself ashore.”
“Unless,” said the Venezia’s captain, looking hard at Nicolo, “unless—you change your mind, and go back with me. I’ll give you the best accommodations on board!”
Nicolo laughed good-naturedly. “I’m not going to change my mind, sir!”
But the captain was not to be put off: “Venice was good enough for all your people,” he insisted. “That’s where they built their fortune and there’s where you should stay and increase it, instead of risking it on the wild talk these Portuguese have started over this chap Bartholomew Diaz—” He broke off as the mate came for orders; then, “Don’t go yet,” he told Nicolo, as he went off with the officer. “I’ll be back to say good-bye.”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 76
