He drew her closer. “Keep what from me, dear?”
“You remember that time, with the bird, when you told me not to be afraid? Ah, Nicolo, I loved you then—and ever since! That was what I tried to keep from you until I dared to tell you I’d pay my debt with love!”
“And how cruel I thought you were to say I wanted you to pay me!” He was suddenly grave. “Why did you choose tonight to tell me?”
She turned a radiant face to him. “When I heard you say you would have no friends, nothing, I knew that it was time to pay my debt, and I came out here to—to find courage to do it!”
“But, Nejmi, if what we suspect of Venice should be known here in Lisbon, it would count against me. Do you want me, with a blot on my name?”
“What is against you is against me, too, Nicolo. What difference does anything but our love make to us?”
What difference, indeed? His arms tightened about her with a rapturous wonder at what she had said. Yet for her dear sake this plot should be set straight! Aloud he said tenderly, “Why have you kept me so at a distance—hardly ever let me talk alone with you?”
She made no answer until again he urged her: “Why, dear?”
“You know, Nicolo,” she said at last, “that Master Abel and Mother Ruth would have gone away long ago but for me; so, how could I think of anything apart from them?”
“It won’t be ‘apart,’” he promised. “I’ll share you—they shan’t be left alone.”
“And then, too,” she said, looking away from him, “I couldn’t wholly forget how I’d been brought up—how my people—my mother’s people—believe a girl should be brought up.”
He remembered how Scander had spoken of the seclusion of Arab women of her rank.
“And now—” she covered her face with her hands—“see what I’ve done! Among my own people I’d be in disgrace. But you were so unhappy when I said it was Venice that wanted the maps… Ah, Nicolo, I had to pay my debt!”
“Losing everything was nothing to losing you,” he told her ardently. “Yet how could I come to you with even a shadow of suspicion against me? Nejmi,” he asked, suddenly curious, “what made you think of Venice?”
“I don’t know. It flashed across me like a streak of light in the dark. And we Arabs say, when something comes to you like that, it’s sent by Allah.”
Silently he pondered what she had told him. What would Scander say now about the maps?
“I sometimes think, Nicolo,” she went on, “that though my father was a European, my heart is all Arab!”
He assented, though not quite understanding her.
“Do you remember how long it was that I hated all mention of the Way or of anything connected with it? At first I forced myself, because I loved Master Abel so, to touch his maps, his instruments. Do you remember the night I was polishing the compass?”
Ah, didn’t he!
“Now I know that from the beginning it was the will of Allah that my life should be linked with the Way. Else why—” she threw out her hands in a gesture that he recognized belonged only to the Orient—“else why all that horror—my father and mother—and afterward the sea and those men? And at last Master Abel and the workshop?”
“You mean,” he said, with a sudden flash of understanding, “it was all part of the finding of the Way?”
“It was all part of Allah’s will that the Way should be found!” she gently corrected. “Don’t you see, Nicolo, how small all my trouble, even my whole life, seems, when you think of it as part of the great will of Allah? And so, from hating the Way, and then trying to like it for dear Master Abel’s sake, I’ve come to think of it as something of which I’m part. And now, Nicolo, I feel as Master Abel does, as Master Diaz does: I’d do anything for the Way!”
“And I love it,” he tenderly told her, “for its bringing us to each other. From the very first time I saw the fear in your dear eyes I’ve wanted to make you forget all that horror and fright. And that’s what I’m going to do, from now on and forever!”
“Forever!” she repeated, with a strange look. “Did you ever think, Nicolo, how long that word is? That it reaches back as far as it reaches forward?”
“You mean,” he said, softly, “that—that our love, too, is the will of Allah?”
She took his hands and covered her eyes with them. “From the beginning—forever!”
CHAPTER 19
The King’s Marmosets
“A score of marmosets…ordered special for the King…and not a one of ’em saved—”
The words drifted out from a knot of passing sailors to Nicolo hurrying toward The Green Window. Absently he wondered why “not a one of ’em” had been saved. The next moment he was obliged to give way for another group. Where had they all come from—and all at once? Sailors in peaked caps everywhere you looked. Before tavern doors, at corners, swaggering by twos and threes along the street. Never before had he seen the town so full of them; and at so late an hour, too, though for all he cared or knew about time it might have been blazing noon as well as a radiant summer night.
All that really mattered now about time was whether or not it separated him from Nejmi! And all that mattered in the whole world was her happiness. Nothing must stand in the way of that, not even a shadow of suspicion against him though she had said that would make no difference. His good name, doubly precious now, must be without reproach. Yet, how to steer an honourable course? How be loyal to the country of his adoption without dishonouring the country of his birth?
To his surprise he found The Green Window jammed with noisy sailors, whose calls for drinks Pedro was trying to fill, looking like a brown gnome as he scurried from one to another.
Concealed at his old post in the rear of the room, he waylaid the old man on one of those trips. “I’ve seen nothing but sailors,” he declared, “all the way down here.”
“Of course,” returned Pedro. “With ’em all coming in to port and none shipping out, what’d you expect?”
“None shipping out? Why not?”
“Haven’t you heard about the pirates?”
Vaguely Nicolo recalled hearing something or other about pirates, that morning on the docks, with Scander.
“By the way, has Scander been back here?” he inquired.
“Here now. Wanted to know when you came in. I’ll go tell him you’ve come.”
Pedro bustled off, and in a moment Scander appeared, yawning.
“That Marco’ll keep me up all night,” he complained. “He won’t budge from anyone that he can get to talk about this pirate business, and I won’t leave him till I see where he berths. I suppose you’ve heard the latest about the pirates?”
“No, and I don’t want to, until I’ve told you something!”
“What Master Abel says?”
“No—what Nejmi says! That talk about maps between the ambassador and Ferdinand, that you said meant nothing, is the gist of the whole plot!” He forthwith described Nejmi’s instant and unhesitating conviction.
“That child,” said Scander, very quiet and humble, “is right!”
“But you as much as told me I was a fool,” Nicolo reminded him,” when I thought we should follow up the map item.”
“I know,” Scander admitted, “but where you just thought, Nejmi knew! It’s just as she said, when a thing flashes at you out of the dark, you may be certain it’s the truth.”
He glanced at Marco, talking and drinking. “So that’s why,” he mused, “he’s waiting around for the tall chap to get hold of the maps.”
“Of course,” Nicolo agreed. “I’m looking for that chap any time, now, to come here to ask me to take him to Master Abel’s.”
“Had you ever thought he might go there by himself?”
“Yes, and I mentioned it, too. Master Abel seemed sure he could manage him.”
Scander pursed his lips. “Hm! If he wants those maps bad, it’s not going to be child’s play to prevent him getting ’em.”
“You mean,” Nicolo said,
“that one of us should stay by Master Abel, in case—”
He was interrupted by a burst of voices. A group of sailors trooped in, all talking at once.
“And the little beasts a-squealing and a-chattering like demons, and a-clambering up the rigging “—a burly fellow was bawling.
“Yes,” shouted another, “and I a-yelling that they was the King’s marmosets and whoever laid hand to ’em—”
“The King’s marmosets!” Nicolo exclaimed. “That’s the second time tonight I’ve heard about them.”
“Yes,” said Scander. “A ship bound back here from the Verde Islands with a cargo of gold and a score or so of marmosets, was boarded off Morocco.”
“Another one?” Nicolo broke in with an alarmed face. “Besides the two we heard about this morning? If Rodriguez—”
“Don’t you remember, when you first came in, me speaking of the latest pirate attack, and Marco being all taken up with the talk about it?” Scander wheeled around and hurriedly glanced about the room. “I must keep my eye on him,” he murmured. “Look—there he is!”
Absorbed, intent, and as near as he could squeeze to the man who had come in with the marmoset story, sat Marco. “What were you carrying besides marmosets?” they heard him ask.
“Raw gold, mostly, and as rich as I ever saw,” the man ruefully replied. “I’d have made a gift of it to the swine if they’d let those marmosets alone. Why, those marmosets—ordered special for King Manoel, they was—would’ve brought me in a snug bit.”
“Lose the gold, too?” they heard Marco inquire.
“Every grain of it! And then they turned everything inside out looking for—spice! Did you ever hear the like of that?” he demanded from his audience. “Spice!”
At that word there was a sudden lull. Those who could, edged nearer him, and others craned their necks or stood up on benches to see him.
“I asked ’em how was I to get hold of spice—which doesn’t come except from India—and all they did was to go on searching. Even started to break in the bulkheads!”
“Yes,” put in another voice, “and they swore we were helping Gama get his cargo to Lisbon secret-like!”
Scander nudged Nicolo—“Look at Marco!”
Eyes glittering, lips caught hard between teeth, Marco, transfixed, sat staring at the last speaker.
Nicolo watched him a moment, and lightning-like came conviction: “He knows something about this pirate raid!”
“I was only waiting for you to say it!” agreed Scander. “By the saints—” as Marco suddenly rose—“he’s going! I’ll have to follow him.”
“Here then, quick!” Nicolo jumped to fling open the back door, and as Marco, shouldering through the crowd, disappeared through the front, Scander dove out of the rear.
Pedro, in high feather, stopped to whisper to Nicolo that never had his money bag been so heavy. If only the pirates would keep Lisbon bottled up a while longer, he’d presently be rich enough to retire.
Yes, thought Nicolo, but what if, at this moment, Rodriguez was fleeing with empty holds before those robbers?
He went back to his seat where, hidden in shadow, he could watch and listen. What did it all mean, this sudden onslaught of pirates, and their absurd demand for spice?
There again! A fresh batch of arrivals and loud cries for a retelling of the tale of the King’s marmosets! Of the search for cloves—nutmegs!
“Must have thought you was Gama, back from India!” someone sputtered thickly, and was rewarded for his pleasantry by a shout of drunken laughter from his cronies.
But back in the shadows, Nicolo neither heeded nor joined in that laughter. In a daze he was whispering to himself the jest just stammered by that maudlin voice: “Must have thought you was Gama back from India.” Almost to a word, he now recalled, what that captain had said, this morning, on the dock: “Must think I’m Gama.”
Suddenly a memory of a flushed face flashed before him, an angry voice that yelled, “I’ve seen Gama. You won’t see him again!” And staring at that fancied face, Nicolo was seized with an overpowering impulse to shout with laughter at himself, at this roomful of blind fools. Here he was, puzzling, twisting, straining after the truth, and there, staring him out of countenance, was the truth! If it had been less plain, less evident, he’d have seen it more easily. The pirates were lying in wait for Gama! Primed, of course, by those who had spied on him: Marco and his companion, perhaps others.
But that final word of Marco’s “You won’t see him again!” He had dismissed it as nonsense, but now— He became aware that his heart was pounding, that a cold terror had burst out on him. He knew now it was for more than to waylay and to plunder Gama that the pirates were waiting.… “You won’t see him again!”
“Gama must be saved. Must be saved!” he heard himself saying, and realized that he was beating his knee with his fist. Fool that he was not to have seen this thing sooner, for now there was no time to spare. Hadn’t Scander said only six months from the Devil’s Cave to Lisbon? And if Marco had seen Gama somewhere near there, and Marco were here, then Gama must be near. He started up. He must see Scander. Then he remembered: Scander was somewhere, following Marco. Besides, what if Marco’s mate were to appear here to ask about Abel’s maps?
Maps! He’d forgotten about them in this terrifying discovery. What was he to do, which clue follow first? Gama or the maps? What was the part of Marco and his companion? Were they in league with Venice to steal the maps? In league with the pirates to destroy Gama? His heart seemed to stop as a new possibility leaped to his mind: was Venice in league with the pirates?
In a torture of uncertainty he felt himself tossed in a swirl of angry currents, yet always he clung to one thought: Gama must be saved! Gama and the Way must be saved for Portugal. The Way, for which dreams had been dreamed, for which hazard incredible had been risked and the sacrifice supreme had been made, mustn’t now be lost!
He crossed his arms on the back of his chair and dropped his head on them. He must think this thing through. His own loss, loss of friends, of business, seemed now really nothing compared to the loss that threatened Portugal. He had told Nejmi he loved the Way for its bringing them together. Now he knew that he loved it for itself.
He raised his head and studied the roistering room. Seamen of every age and degree still jostled for standing space, and drank and caroused. If, somehow, they and their vessels now bottled up in Lisbon harbour could be got to go out as one fleet, to be stationed at points, some of which Gama was bound to pass—at Cape Verde, the Canaries, the Madeiras, even as far north as St. Vincent’s—they would soon have those Moroccan thieves on the run, and Gama would be saved. But what could he tell them to make them go? They wouldn’t listen to him, to a land-lubber. Yet they might to Scander—if he’d only come!
He’d wait here for him, Nicolo decided, and not go to bed, for it must be nearer morning than midnight. He put his head down again on his arms, and in spite of the uproar that filled the inn he felt himself dozing off. Once he started at his own voice: “Gama must be saved!” Had he been dreaming—talking in his sleep?
Almost immediately, it seemed to him, someone was gently shaking him. He opened his eyes. Scander was bending over him and smiling. Through the huge window streamed the eastern sun. The little inn was empty and quiet except for Pedro sweeping the floor, and for the voices of people passing the open door. What were they all talking about so earnestly?
“Sat up all night, did you, lad?”
Nicolo scanned the tanned face. There was a curious glint in the burnt gimlet holes. “Scander, you’ve heard some news!”
“So’ve you!” Scander shot back. “Let’s have it.”
“Gama must be saved “—the words he last remembered saying before he had waked. “We must save him, Scander!”
“How’d you come to see that?” Scander asked, with the odd glint still in his eyes.
“The wonder is that I didn’t see it sooner! It flashed on me while they were telling h
ow the pirates kept searching for spice and dropping remarks about Gama. What else could those raids mean, one after the other, in the very place where Gama was sure to pass, but that the pirates were expecting him? And that spice talk! Who but Gama could have spice? What’s the matter with our Portuguese crews that they didn’t suspect what was up?”
“Likely would have, if they hadn’t got used to thinking Gama was dead. The only reason the pirates don’t think the same is because”—Scander paused significantly—“because they’ve been told different.”
Nicolo nodded. “Of course. By Marco and the other one. There was something else that came to me last night, what Marco told me that first time: ‘But you won’t see him again.’”
“Just so,” said Scander. “Seemed as if you took the words out of my mouth when, first thing, you says to me, ‘Gama must be saved.’”
Nicolo gave him a keen glance. “Then something you found out since I last saw you put that into your head. The minute I looked at you I saw something had happened to you.”
“Yes,” said Scander. “This morning, just after I came ashore.”
“Ashore? Where’d you been?”
“I stayed up all night, same as you,” grinned Scander. “You remember I dodged out after Marco? Well, I followed him right down to the water-front. I could see by the way he stepped along he was worked up, just as he was when he was listening to that fellow whose ship was boarded. Now what was there about that talk, I kept asking myself, to excite him?” He paused as Pedro, smiling and complacent, came toward them. “Don’t let him suspect anything’s up,” he warned in an undertone.
“Well, Pedro,” laughed Nicolo. “I can see you made a good thing of last night.”
Pedro reiterated his hope that not a ship would leave Lisbon harbour for a long while yet.
“Did you have a good rest, Master Conti?” he anxiously inquired. “I tried to wake you so you could go to bed, but you were like the dead! Why,” turning to Scander, “he slept through all that noise the town crier made—and he beating his drum in the square just yonder! And afterward, everyone that passed the door was talking about it, but Master Conti never so much as lifted an eyelid!”
The Young Adult Award-Winners Megapack Page 93
