Spice and the Devil's Cave (36 page)

“You say you had one mutiny?” Abel asked. “Was it serious?”

“It would have been, if we hadn't caught it in time. It was the old story: homesick, discouraged men who wanted to turn back. But – well . . .”

“Ah!” cried Abel warmly, “I can guess what you said to that! I've not forgotten what you told me about' turning back' – here, in this very room.”

Gama's fist came down on his knee. “I'd have scuttled every ship first! All I actually did do was to put the ring leaders in irons. I brought them back in irons, too, for the King to pass judgment on them. Then, to show the crew who was who, I threw overboard the navigation instruments. All except your compass. No one knew about it. I kept it always in my cabin.”

Abel leaned eagerly toward Gama. “It proved exact, Vasco?”

Gama now was leaning toward Abel. “You told me it had steered your soul out of hell. Do you recall, sir?”

Silently Abel assented. Ah, didn't he!

“I used to think of that,” the other continued, “when things looked dark, and failure seemed surer than success. And in my sorest need, when I could see Paulo slipping away from me, and I myself seemed adrift, then, Master Abel, your compass did more than steer my ship exactly. I came to need it to steer myself by!”

“Ah, Vasco!” Abel's voice was hardly a whisper. “Who of us doesn't need something by which to steer himself?”

CHAPTER 25

A Letter

O
UT
of a side chapel of the great Sé Patriarchal, Nejmiand Nicolo stepped into the late afternoon sunshine. Behind them came Abel and Ruth, and then Scander and Ferdinand.

Ruth had been first to kiss Nejmi when the old priest had given his final blessing, and Abel first to call her “Mistress Conti.” Rapturously Nicolo watched her as, a little shy, but smiling, she stood with them all around her wishing her joy. Her dress was one of every day. She had refused to have anything new. But it was one of those golden, clinging things that Ruth had made for her, that put one in mind of soft sunset skies. Banded across her forehead, and braided into her hair, were the pearls Nicolo had given her. More than ever, he told himself, she looked her name: a star, radiant and tender.

“I always knew this would happen some day,” sighed Scander. The burnt gimlet holes rested lovingly on Nejmi. “But now that' t
has
happened, I don't deny it makes me feel odd in the pit of the stomach!”

“And me!” declared Ferdinand. He turned to Ruth. “Aunt Ruth, did anyone cry at your wedding?”

She laughed tremulously. “They say it's good luck to have some tears at a wedding!”

“I can't ask anything better for you children than that you'll be as happy as Ruth and I have been,” Abel quickly added.

Nicolo's arm went suddenly around Nejmi. “If I make her half as happy as she's made me –”

An exclamation from Ferdinand stopped him. “Look! I'd almost forgotten.” From under his coat he produced a package wrapped in bright cotton cloth, and handed it to Nejmi. “From Gama-I mean
Dom
Gama! He said not to open it till you get home.”

“There's another present waiting for you there,” said Abel, “from Ruth and me. Go along, you two, and find it!”

“Yes, go and find it,” Ruth repeated. “We – we've an errand. Those bulbs and things for someone who's going to start a garden.”

All morning, Nicolo recalled, she and Abel had been busy at something or other in the court. He'd been too blissful to notice what!

“I'll walk a ways with you, sir,” Scander proposed to Abel, and so would he, too, said Ferdinand.

As they turned away Ruth ran back to Nejmi. “I must kiss you once more, child – you look so lovely!” Her eyes were misty, Nicolo noticed, but she was smiling. Then she was again with Abel, her arm through his.

“You'll come home soon, Mother Ruth, Master Abel?” Nejmi called after them.

As if they had not heard her question, they smiled back at her, and then hurried on.

Afterward Nicolo remembered that they had made no reply. Always would he remember Abel's face in that short moment. The eager eyes were those of Abel the Boy! But neither to Abel the Boy nor to Abel the Banker belonged that look of shining peace, of sweet majesty. A seldom used word stirred Nicolo's memory – Abel the
Seer!

The next moment, putting Nejmi's cloak around her, he forgot everything but her. “Let's go home, darling!” he whispered, only half believing that this wasn't all a dream.

She slipped her hand into his, and they started off.

“I'm so glad ‘home' is that dear house, aren't you?” she asked him.

“But you'll love, just as much, the one I'll build, won't you?”

As they reached the top of the long flight she said in a low tone, “I love these stairs! They've always meant warmth and light and safety after the dark and the cold.”

He flung open the gate. “I love them because they've always meant
you
at the end!”

Together they stood looking about them. All so familiar, yet so rapturously unfamiliar! Into the western windows, and out into the shadowed court, flooded the sunset's gold.

“Let's open Master Gama's present in the workshop.” Nejmi nodded toward the doorway.

“You must say
Dom
Gama now,” Nicolo laughingly reminded her.

“Then, afterward, we'll look for our present from Master Abel and Mistress Ruth! Where do you suppose it is?” she said, as they entered the workshop.

Almost as she spoke, a folded paper on the table caught their eyes.

Nicolo bent over it. “It's addressed to us both.”

“It's about the present!” exclaimed Nejmi. “See if it isn't.” Hastily she laid Gama's package aside, and looked over Nicolo's shoulder.

He opened the paper and ran his eye over the first lines. “Why – why what does this mean? Listen!”

He began to read:

“T
HE
W
ORKSHOP
,
The morning of Nejmi's wedding day.

“You two children are in the workshop, and you're wondering where the present is that we told you to find. You've already found it! Yes, when you opened the gate and looked within: the court, the house-your present from Ruth and me. (No need, Nicolo, to build another home!)”

A quick cry stopped him. “Ah, Nicolo – Nicolo!” Nejmi's hands were suddenly gripping his.

He stared at her in startled alarm. She was trembling, and very pale; and in her eyes was a look of tenderness and grief that wrung his heart.

“I – I know now what the letter means,” she said, very low. “Read on, Nicolo.”

So, with his arm around her, her face against his, Nicolo “read on”:

“We thought you might guess, when we were cutting those slips this morning, and taking up those bulbs! They are for our new garden – child of the one we planted together. So shall we take with us a little of the homeland. (Ruth say she can coax yellow lilies to grow anywhere.)

“How could we tell you before? No, this was the better way: for you not to know till we are gone. But through Rabbi Joseph you will hear of us in our new home – when it is safe for us to send him word. Go and see him sometimes. Perhaps he'll whisper to you how, one late afternoon, Ruth and Abel Zakuto went in at his front door. How, a little later, a middle-aged carpenter, carrying his tools, walked out of the back door. How, still later, a woman with a basket of vegetables on her head, also walked out of that back door. (They were not to be seen together, you'll understand.) That is all that Rabbi Joseph actually saw! But, for yourselves, imagine, now, the middle – aged carpenter and the vegetable woman on a trading vessel speeding down river – into the sunset!

“Nicolo, your business will grow with Lisbon's great, new traffic. You may want more capital. Use mine freely. I meant it that way when I deposited funds with you, my boy. What I need of it you may send me through Rabbi Joseph.

“There will be another workshop! (Ruth says that even if, at first, we have to live in two rooms, one of those rooms shall be a workshop.) Other Ways are waiting for their Covilham, for their Diaz, for their Gama! The rims of new worlds already peer above the western horizon. Columbus has shown us them. So, there must be better compasses, better astrolabes. One of these days Ferdinand will be starting off to discover something. He knows who will make his navigation instruments for him! Bartholomew, too. Who can tell but he'll be needing a compass for the next expedition to India? (When he comes home to build the new fleet, show him and Vasco the maps Scander helped me to make.)

“Our undying love, Ruth's and mine, to you both: to you, Nicolo; to you, Nejmi – Star of the Way!

A
BEL
Z
AKUTO
.”

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