Now the hawsers are coming in. D’Alemquer is bringing the San Gabriel about. He’d have to beat to windward all the way down river with this wind rising. Might make the bar impassable, so they’d have to anchor at Belem. Everybody waving, cheering, laughing, crying…forms and faces on shore beginning to blur…fluttering handkerchiefs, distant good-byes.
One look back, before a turn in the river should shut off Lisbon. Ah, blue hills and climbing houses! Up yonder, in one of those houses, Abel was standing at the windows. He had said they would see it all from the workshop; that they didn’t like to bring Nejmi down town. Ruth would be on one side of him; on the other, Nejmi, with her shining eyes. Star of the Way, old Abraham had called her. Well, however that should turn out, it was her evidence that had started Manoel up, evidence that had come, you might say, from the very lips of Covilham. And presently they would know, one way or the other. The main thing was to keep straight ahead—and overboard with any who talked of turning back, if it took every man jack of the crew. So God on his great white throne be witness!
There went the last of Lisbon, sliced off clean by that turn in the river—Lisbon a-sparkle in the westering sun like a jewelled crest! The streets would be quieting down now, people talking it all over at home, some women crying—the ones he’d seen kissing his men on the quay. Everyone who could would be planning to come down to Belem for the final departure, but that couldn’t be till this wind had died down; another day or two, likely.
But however long they were delayed, one thing was certain: their last night ashore would be passed in the rough little chapel of Belem which the Great Navigator had built, where men of the sea might pray for favourable winds and seas. Ah, he had known, this strange and solitary Henry, that the more alone a man was in his supreme moment, the more dearly would he hear what God whispered in his ear.… A strange thing, Life, giving the praise only to the consummation. For instance, he, Gama, getting all the credit for something that had started before he was born: a stupendous vision of the Great Navigator which had become the precious trust of his intrepid disciples. Diaz, daring the sea, and Covilham the land, had all but given that vision a body, had all but achieved what Henry had dreamed. Then had come Nejmi…that extraordinary night…her breath-taking story told in the language of a child. And now, the Expedition, and himself its Captain-Major!
* * * *
Morning. Aboard the ships at Belem. Everything ready, after these three days of waiting for the wind to moderate. But it had been time put to good use. The crews had been reviewed, their names listed, payrolls made out of wages due on their return. And through it all Manoel had remained at Belem. A fine thing, that, for the men.
Manoel had spent the last night’s vigil with them, too, when they had knelt the still hours through, under the flickering altar candles, each seeking according to his own need. For himself, Gama, there was but one prayer. There never had been but that one—from the hour that Manoel had said, “I want you to go, Vasco”—just man-courage to go forward in spite of entreaties to turn back, in spite of mutiny itself.…
Manoel! Manoel, stepping from the royal barge aboard the San Gabriel; walking with him between lines of men drawn up at attention; giving them all his God-speed; addressing him as the Captain-Major. (Hard to think of himself by that title! ) A last whisper: “Vasco, you’ll do this thing, I know you will!” Worth all the titles in the world, Manoel’s lips at your ear, like that. Put the heart into you, that “I know you will!” So, from ship to ship, reviewing the crews, giving each captain his royal blessing.
Now they were breaking out the Royal Standard at the San Gabriel’s foremast. Please God it should carry the dominion of Portugal to the uttermost ends of the earth!
At last, in midstream. Crowds lining the shore, sobbing, praying. Hark! The priests chanting: Kyrie eleison. And the people responding: Christie eleison. The priests again: Be with us that we may come to our home again in peace, in health, and gladness.… Well, God, in his mercy, grant that the home-coming would be that. But, whatever might happen, the will to go forward!
Running, now, under full sail. Everything set, men at their posts, sails bellying in the wind. Astern, the other ships pounding a white wake to the San Gabriel’s lead. On the poop of the San Rafael, a steadfast figure—Paulo. There was a heart that would never fail one, never ask to put back! Coelho and Nunez, too, fine captains as one could wish. D’Alemquer at the helm might almost be playing with it, so easily it swings in his deft brown hands.
A white swirl ahead. The bar! Feel the ship responding to d’Alemquer as he luffs her a little to meet the swell…as he eases her on. How confidently she leads the way! How confidently the other vessels follow!… Past shoals, through treacherous cross currents, and so, out into mid-channel.…
Over, at last! Over the bar.… Lisbon behind.… O God of battle and of sea, before Thee do I swear never to turn back one span of the way!
CHAPTER 15
Rumours
Scander, bent over the table, meditated a long minute before he took a ruler, and carefully laid it on the unfinished map. Nicolo covertly watched the faces—Abel’s, Ruth’s, Nejmi’s—waiting for his instructions as for a judge’s sentence. That rapt attention was, of course, to be expected from Abel, but from Ruth!… A different Ruth from the one whose chief concern in the workshop used to be the “clutter” on floor and table. Had it been those days of death and threatened exile that had so changed her? Changed her into this person who brought her work to sit beside Abel—to brood over him with tender eyes when he wasn’t looking? And Nejmi who once had shunned the mention of maps… Her head was as close to the drawing as Abel’s!
“There!” Scander finished his measuring, and with the ruler beat a gentle tattoo on the table edge. “That’s as near right as I can reckon. Safe to ink it in now.”
Abel’s waiting quill was promptly dipped into ink, and then applied to a pencilled outline. Nejmi’s eyes travelled with the quill point; Ruth put down her sewing, and watched until it came to rest.
Abel straightened up, and surveyed his work with satisfaction. “How Bartholomew would like to watch this map grow!” he mused aloud.
“What are you making now, sir?” Nicolo drew up closer.
“The Spice Islands,” Scander replied, as Abel was already engrossed in the next outline. “Near as I can remember them, that is.”
“We’re going to draw little trees on them to show that the spices grow there,” Nejmi added.
“Not only that, but we’ll write the names of the important products where Scander says they’re shipped. It will be of the greatest help to merchants.” Abel spoke without raising his eyes from his work, in the absent, jerky tone of one trying to keep his mind on two things at once.
“Like this. See!” Ruth dropped her sewing and indicated a port. “That’ll be marked ‘Slaves and Ivory’!” she importantly announced.
“No, not them from there, ma’am,” Scander corrected with an amused smile. “From here!” He pointed to the East African coast: “Mombassa and Melinde.”
“It’s a long way to the Spice Islands,” Nicolo observed, as he watched Abel’s quill, “much longer than we’d thought.”
“But,” Scander broke in, “see how cheap you’re going to get your spices, bringing ’em all the way by water. Why, I’ve seen cargoes re-shipped and re-caravaned as many as five times between Aden and the Mediterranean, and a fat toll piled on to the price every shift!” As he glanced at the map, an idea seemed suddenly to strike him. He dropped the ruler and sat back, staring before him. “I never thought before what the route ’round the Devil’s Cave would do to the Red Sea!”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Abel mildly suggested, “if the Soldan of Egypt had something to say on the subject.”
Scander’s eyes were faintly amused. “Well, seeing as he depends on those tolls for a living!… I can’t picture it,” he went on reminiscently. “That sea all a-boil with craft bursting their seams with stuff from everywhere—d
ead as a pond!”
Involuntarily Nicolo thought of Venice—of the Mediterranean. They, too!
Nejmi’s voice broke in on him. She had straightened up from watching Abel, and in her eyes was the horror that came even now when she was reminded of the past. “Will Aden be ‘dead,’ too, Scander?”
He nodded, his eyes soft, as always, when he looked at her. “I expect, child, we’d hardly know it in a few years. As far as I can see,” he meditated aloud, “the whole world’s going to be made over!”
“And all,” Abel threw over his shoulder, “all, for a fragile thing of wood and canvas that is daring the unknown!”
“It’s the same to me who gets the blasted spices,” Scander observed.
“What?” protested Nicolo. “You wouldn’t care, for instance, if Gama failed, and some other country stepped in on the spice trade ahead of Portugal?”
Scander took time to spit. “No, I wouldn’t care, knowing it’s as sure as I sit here that whoever gets the spice is going to settle for it in blood. But Master Gama’s failing—that’s something else. I’d give a year of my life to see him walk in here, this minute, and tell us he’d found everything as we”—he jerked his head toward Nejmi—“as we said ’twas!”
“You will see him!” she declared, with that look in her eyes as of sunlight in a deep, deep pool. “Some day you’ll watch him sail up the river!”
Ferdinand’s head suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Watch whom?”
“Where did you come from, so early?” Ruth asked him, as he stepped into the room and nodded to everyone.
“Oh, the King thought it was too warm to drive out, so I’m off duty for a while.” He stood for a minute near the open door, and mopped his forehead.
“Summer’s here, full force,” he declared. He turned to Nejmi. “Who was that you were saying would ‘sail up the river’?”
She was bending over the map, and hardly looked up to answer him: “Master Gama.”
“I thought so! Do you know,” he went on half talking to himself, “as I came up here I was thinking about the day he went away. My, but it seems a long time! People have begun to talk, too, about it’s being too long—going on two years.”
“Come see how this map’s gone ahead since you were here,” Abel broke in with apparent irrelevance. But when he had pointed out the freshly inked outlines, he quietly observed, “He could hardly have taken less than a long time to go as far as that, could he?”
“Still, sir, there’s no denying it’s being whispered around that Gama said he shouldn’t return, if he didn’t find the way to India.”
“Yes,” Nicolo agreed, “a man was complaining to me, today, that business hadn’t come up to people’s expectations, when Gama first went away. This chap had bought up land for warehouses, but now he didn’t know whether or not to build.”
Abel laid down his quill, and sat back in his chair, and in his face was a look of bitter reminiscence. “They’ve forgotten the time they were climbing over each other to get information about the Expedition, so they could make something out of it! I remember someone’s coming to my office about that very matter of new warehouses.”
He broke off, and there was a conscious silence in the room, for this was one of Abel’s rare references to the office and the business he had given up in those black and terrible days of Manoel’s decree against his Jewish subjects.
“That’s just it!” Ferdinand contemptuously burst out. “All that they thought of was the trade Portugal was going to get from Gama’s finding the Way, instead of the glory of just finding it!”
“I suppose,” Nicolo shot back, with some heat—for somehow, he felt that Ferdinand was covertly thrusting at him—“that you’d be satisfied to give Portugal the glory, and Spain the trade.”
“You’re both right,” laughed Abel. “Ferdinand hates to see adventure made into business—and Nicolo asks what good is it unless it is?”
“Well, what is there to exploration,” Nicolo insisted, “if it’s not put to use? You heard what Scander said about the Red Sea when the Cape route gets started. Those who don’t follow the current are left in the backwash. If Venice doesn’t take care,” he added, “that’s what she’ll come to.”
Ferdinand looked up, as if to reply, when Scander playfully nudged him. “The trouble with you, youngster, is that all you can think of is to go to sea and find something!”
“And just as soon as I’m through my tour of duty,” Ferdinand retorted, “you’ll see me go!” His eyes returned to Nicolo. “Speaking of Venice,” he said, “Manoel and your ambassador are having a good deal to say to each other these days. It seems that Venice wants to know if we’re going to keep a rigid monopoly on the Oriental trade—just in case Gama finds the passage to India!”
“What?” Nicolo exclaimed. “I thought Venice scouted the idea of the Cape route!”
“Then some of them must have changed their minds. And that’s not all, either,” Ferdinand chuckled. “I even heard that if we don’t let Venice keep her monopolies in the East, she’ll get Egypt to make trouble for us!”
A minute of dumbfounded silence followed this amazing announcement. “It may be just gossip,” Ferdinand added.
“Gossip or truth,” Abel said at last, “it’s astounding. Does Manoel appear to be disturbed?”
“Well, he isn’t in as high spirits as when Gama went away, especially since people have begun shaking their heads over Gama’s long absence. What with these rumours from Venice, and England’s having sent Cabot on two voyages, and Columbus back from his third voyage—and yet never a word from Gama…”
“Bah!” snorted Scander. “What’d Cabot have to show for his two trips? A snare or two, and some fish-net needles that a civilized Arab’d laugh at. If ’twas any part of the Orient that he struck, ’twas the part next to nowhere! Anyway, John Cabot’s dead, this half year; out of the way for good. And Columbus…a few pearls! Why, talk about pearls, I’ll lay you those things he’s showing around Granada would look like pebbles ’side of what I’ve seen in the bazaars.”
“I suppose,” Ruth ventured, “that the Queen’s dying so soon after they were married has something to do with Manoel’s low spirits.”
Ferdinand grinned. “Not so you’d notice it! Already he has his eye on her sister.” His face changed, and he thoughtfully observed, “But there’s no doubt that he misses talking to Gama and Master Diaz; and I’ve even heard him say—” he stole a look at Abel—“that he wishes Master Abraham were here to consult the stars about what’s happening to Gama.”
“Humph!” A dull red spread over Abel’s face, and it was several moments before he said, “It’s precisely my opinion of Manoel that he’d be willing to use poor old Abraham after he’d done him all the harm he could.”
“Is he—poor?” Nejmi asked, and Nicolo saw that her eyes were very tender.
“Well, you know he could take nothing with him,” Abel reminded her, “not even money. But he’s happy enough, I dare say, there in Tunis, and at least he’s doing what he likes best: writing the history and genealogies of our people.”
Ferdinand cleared his throat, and fidgeted in his chair, his eyes watching Abel. “Would you,” he at last blurted out, “would you, sir, come to Manoel, suppose he asked you?”
Nicolo saw Ruth drop her sewing with an exclamation, and Nejmi glance wonderingly from Ferdinand to Abel. Even Scander was stirred to sit up with new interest.
“I?” Abel’s brows were scornfully raised. “I go to Manoel?” Suddenly, he gave Ferdinand a shrewd look. “What made you ask?”
Ferdinand laughed a little sheepishly. “Fact is, sir, I’ve heard Manoel hint that he meant to get you to read the stars for Gama’s fate!”
“H’m!” was all that Abel had to offer to this confession, and then, as if indifferent to the incident, he asked Scander a question which brought their heads close together over the table.
Ferdinand moved up to watch them, and Ruth went on with her sewing. Nejmi had lef
t her place by Abel and, with her back to the room, was leaning out of a window.
From his seat, near the door, Nicolo studied her. Soft, dark braids against the pale gold of her dress.… Where did Ruth find those clinging, foreign-looking stuffs that she made into Nejmi’s dresses? Invariably of some shade of gold, and unmistakably chosen for the delicate, ivory face. By the droop of her head he knew the look in her eyes: the shadow of sadness that hinted the reality—the remnant of the old fear.
He was debating joining her, there by the windows, when he saw her slip noiselessly into the next room and, presently, appear in the court. Apparently, no one but himself had noticed her go. He watched her as she wandered from flower-bed to flower-bed, gathered a spray of this or that, fastened a straggling runner, stripped off a faded bloom.
It was characteristic of her, he reflected, that she never stayed long, even in their intimate group. Spoken to, she would answer smilingly, but, as it were, from afar. Sometimes she volunteered a comment, but, again, from afar. The same delicate aloofness, the same exquisite remoteness, symbolic of her name. Was it intentional, this elusiveness, or instinctive, inherited? Hadn’t Scander once said something about the reserve of Arab girls? Now and again, Nicolo recalled, she had let him come near, but the next time she was sure to offset the seeming intimacy. If he should go to her now, moving about in the flowery fragrance…
Someone brushed past him into the court—Ferdinand!… Now he was sitting beside Nejmi under the old fig tree. He, too, had seen her leave the room, but had acted while he, Nicolo, had deliberated! He felt his cheeks burn in fury at himself, at Ferdinand. He suddenly realized that he was staring at them, and turned his head. He mustn’t appear to watch them, but from where he sat in the doorway, he could plainly hear them.
Abel’s and Scander’s talk resolved itself into monotone, occasionally broken by Ruth’s higher key. He became conscious that Abel was raising his voice, as if he were repeating something.
“What’s that, sir?” Nicolo hastily asked.
“Why, I was calling Venice pretty high-handed, demanding to know what Manoel proposed to do about the Indian trade. What do you think?”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 88
