The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories [Anthology]

by Edited By Ian Watson

  “I mean no scorn. Who am I to mock the Lord’s creation?” Hisdai leaned heavily against the side of the window. “I am just a poor man who put his faith in dreams. Dreams fly. Only death is certain.”

  Then Hisdai ibn Ezra turned from the window and in that instant beheld a sight that convinced him that madness, too, is one of life’s little certainties. “Blessed Lord,” he murmured, and took one backward step that came near to toppling him out the window.

  Daud sprang forward and seized Hisdai by the arm. “Have a care, O my father. It is not courtesy to leave your faithful so precipitously.”

  “Faithful?” Hisdai quavered.

  “Well, so he has assured me. Although officially he is a priest of Huitzilopochtli, he has confided in me that his heart” - for some reason, Daud swallowed hard - “his heart is devoted to the worship of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent - Uh . . . would you mind if he touched your beard? It would be an honour, and he has promised us so much—”

  Giddy with trying to make sense of the gibberish Daud was spouting, Hisdai found himself face to face with a man unlike any he had ever encountered, even in the years of his widest mercantile wanderings. Straight black hair; deep copper skin marked with tattoos and other scars, wide nose ornamented with plugs of gold and jade, the apparition regarded him with an unreadable expression.

  “He wants to . . . touch my beard?” Hisdai could not tear his eyes away. From the gilded and gemmed sandals on this creature’s feet to the exquisite feathered mantle on his shoulders to the gorgeously plumed headdress crowning all, one thing about the new caller was certain: not even Mahmoud would mistake him or the two burly fellows accompanying him for Castilians.

  As if to confirm this, Mahmoud chose that moment to enter with the refreshments, a dish that was tribute to both Cook’s frugality and his creativity. “Remember to tell ya-sidi Hisdai that the meat is for the Castilian only,” he mumbled to himself, so intent on keeping the heavy tray level that at first he did not really notice the extra people now gathered in the room. “Remember to tell him, or Cook will have my head. Master is -was - so fond of Rover.”

  This apposite consumer warning now went flying out of Mahmoud’s skull as he looked up from his burden and actually saw his master’s additional guests. One wore what looked like a leopard’s pelt, the head a fanged helmet, the other was sheathed in feathered armour with an eagle’s beak overshadowing his keen eyes. Both were heavily armed with eccentric weapons that looked nonetheless mortally effective for all their strangeness.

  Mahmoud screamed, dropped the canine khua-khus, and ran. The eagle-helmed warrior threw what looked like a primitive axe, which nailed the fleeing servant’s sleeve to the doorpost.

  Before Mahmoud could wrench free, he was laid hold of by both bizarrely armoured men and thrust to the floor at Hisdai’s feet, as if for the older man’s approval.

  Daud stepped in at once. “O my father,” he said smoothly, “may it please you to welcome the beloved nephew of the Great Khan Ahuitzotl, the Lord Moctezuma?”

  Without word or hint of their intentions, the three copper-skinned strangers fell to the carpet alongside Mahmoud and assumed positions of the utmost humble submission. Hisdai opened and closed his mouth, wet his lips numerous times, nibbled the ends of his snowy moustache, and in general made every visual preamble to speech without actually managing to utter an intelligible word. He looked as if he did not know whether to object to the display of obeisance at his feet, to demand an explanation, to offer the abused Mahmoud a raise in salary, or just to go to the window, leap for the padded awning below, and make a break for it. There was also the chance that he might miss the awning, but at the moment that did not seem like such a bad alternative to the irrationality besetting him. At the end of his reason, he searched his son’s face and ultimately managed to choke out a hoarse yet eloquent plea:

  “Nu?”

  Daud looked sheepish. “Ah, yes, there was one small matter I forgot to mention about my new friend, O my father.”

  He reached once more into his pouch and pulled out a rolled parchment on which was a meticulously copied drawing of a venerable-looking gentleman - bearded, fair-skinned - whose preferred mode of transport was obviously a raft made out of live snakes. “I made the drawing myself, copying it from one of Lord Ahuitzotl’s holiest manuscripts,” he said, showing it to Hisdai. “This is Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, the god who departed, sailing away to the East, but whose return has been foretold. Specifically foretold. Promised, I should say, for a few years from now. Of course, as I told Lord Moctezuma, who are we to quibble if a god shows up for his appointments a trifle early?”

  He tilted the page so that the light might fall on it from a better angle, and hopefully prompted his father, “You do see the resemblance?”

  Hisdai’s reaction to this unsought Annunciation would remain one of Time’s unfinished mysteries. From somewhere beyond the walls a long, blood-chilling ululation shivered the air and tore all attention from every matter save itself. It was a scream beautiful in its ghastly perfection. Not even the most ignorant of hearers could command a sound that horripilating with the muezzin’s common cry; not unless the muezzin had suddenly been seized with the urge to boil himself alive slowly, in a vat of vengeance-minded lobsters.

  At the fearful outcry the primal instincts of every man in that small room asserted themselves. Mahmoud tendered his resignation and bolted. Hisdai clutched his grown son protectively to him as if Daud were still a child. Moctezuma and his entourage calmly lifted their heads and smiled: quaint, nostalgic smiles such as other folk might wear on hearing a dear, old, familiar cradle-tune.

  “Oh, good,” said Daud. The model of unflappability, he disengaged himself from his father’s arms and brought a stub of charcoal and a much-folded document out his shirt bosom. The blood of generations of steel-nerved merchant princes never flowed more coolly through his veins as he consulted the parchment, checked off an item, and remarked to all concerned, “I see the rest of the cargo has arrived.”

  On the battleground before Granada the troops of the Catholic Monarchs knew that already.

  In spite of Hisdai’s protests that he had no place on the field of combat, his son, Daud, and his newfound retainers insisted that he accompany them to the city gate to view the proceedings. Shock did little to diffuse Hisdai’s innate stubbornness, and he put teeth in his refusal by making that long-contemplated leap out the window.

  To no avail. There were more of the eagle-helmed Cathayans in the patio below, the translator Moshe ibn Ahijah with them. They simply waited until he stopped bouncing, then (with ibn Ahijah’s able intervention) hailed him as Lord Quetzalcoatl, All-Powerful Sovereign, Saviour-Whose-Coming-Was-Foretold-For-A-Few-Years-Later-Than-This-But-Who’s-Counting?, and hauled him off to see how well his loyal people served him.

  So it was that Hisdai ibn Ezra came to witness the end of the siege of Granada and the grim finale to all the Catholic Monarch’s dreams of finishing the Reconquest. Instead the Reconquest finished them. As he stood upon the battlements of the city, Hisdai beheld a vast force of Cathayans sweep through the Christian ranks with astonishing zeal and ferocity.

  “Incredible,” he remarked to Daud. “And yet they make such delicate porcelains.”

  “I just hope Lord Tizoc and those jaguar knights of his find you a throne quickly,” Daud replied, not really listening. “This is going to be over sooner than I thought.”

  “And why should I need a throne?” Hisdai inquired.

  “Why, to receive the captives!”

  “Captives?” The old Jew made a deprecating sound.

  Twenty minutes later he was making it out of the other side of his mouth as he gazed down at his noble prisoners and felt distinctly uncomfortable. It was not the fault of his seat - the throne was the best Lord Tizoc’s men could transport from the great Alhambra palace on such short notice - but of Hisdai ibn Ezra’s new position. During his previous interviews with royalty, he had been firmly e
ntrenched on the giving end of any and all obeisances, grovels, and general gestures of submission. This was different, and would take some getting used to.

  Not all of the captives were making the transition any easier for the former merchant. Queen Isabella of Castilla y Leon was the only woman who could kneel in the dirt at the foot of a god’s throne and still make it look as if everyone present had come to pay homage to her. Her husband and consort, Ferdinand of Aragon, crouched beside her, eyes hermetically shut, whimpering, any pretence of royal pride long since abandoned. Unlike his mate, he had been in the thick of the last battle and seen too many sights that properly belonged in a sinner’s nightmare of hell.

  Ferdinand and Isabella were not alone. Sultan Muhammad and his mother were with them, the regal quartet linked at the necks with a single rope whose end was fast in the hand of Moctezuma’s finest jaguar warrior.

  Off to one side Christopher Columbus crouched within a ring of eagle knights - the “cargo” of that ship he had abandoned because he thought a shipment of gold had the greater worth than a shipment of heathen ambassadors. The error of his commercial instincts had just been proven beyond doubt on the battlefield.

  Using care, so as not to upset the towering headdress his new subjects had insisted he wear, Lord Hisdai ibn Ezra y Quetzalcoatl beckoned Daud nearer. “This is wrong,” he whispered.

  “Try it for a time; you may like it,” Daud suggested.

  “But this is blasphemy!” Hisdai maintained, pounding on the arm of his throne. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me, says the Lord!”

  “Well, you have no other gods before Him, do you, Father? And if your new subjects choose to worship a Jew, they won’t be the first. Given time, they might even convert entirely. If Judaism is good enough for your Lord Quetzalcoatl, I will tell them, it should be good enough for you! It won’t take long. Moshe ibn Ahijah only had to explain to them about horses once when we reached Tangier, and you saw how well they handled the Castilian cavalry.”

  “Yes, but to eat the poor beasts afterwards—!”

  “Well, they do have their little ways ...”

  Hisdai considered this. Unfortunately his meditations were interrupted by Queen Isabella, who decided to make her royal displeasure known by spitting at his feet and calling him a name that showed her deep ignorance of Jewish family life. Two of the jaguar warriors sprang forward to treat her sacrilege by a method whose directness would have warmed the figurative heart of the Inquisition. Only a horrified shout from Hisdai made them lower their obsidian-toothed warclubs, still sticky with assorted bits of skullbone and brain-matter collected in the course of the recent fray.

  Moctezuma himself came before his chosen Lord, bowing low. “O august Lord Quetzalcoatl, mighty Plumed Serpent, bringer of the arts of peace, what is your will that we do with the graceless devils who dared attack your chosen stronghold and those who so poorly defended it until now?” His bastard blend of Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Castilian, Greek, and Latin was really quite good for one who had only picked up snatches of the tongues on board a sailing vessel.

  “He means the kings,” Daud whispered. “Both Catholic and Moorish. And Granada.”

  “I know who and what he means,” Hisdai snapped back, sotto voce. “I still don’t know why he has to mean me, with all those barbarous names. What have I to do with the kings anyway?”

  “Well, you’ll have to do something with them. Your new subjects expect - they expect . . .” Daud hesitated. Having witnessed the aftermath of more than one battle while visiting the Great Khan Ahuitzotl’s court, he knew just what these people expected and how touchy they would be if they didn’t get it. On the other hand, there was no way short of a new Creation that his father would consent to what Lord Moctezuma had in mind, even in the name of religious freedom.

  Daud was pondering this dilemma when he heard his father exclaim, “Stop pestering me, Moctezuma! I tell you I don’t know what I want done with them! Can’t it wait?”

  “Puissant lord, it cannot. If we do not feed the sun—”

  “What? Feed what? Daud, you speak this man’s tongue better than he speaks ours, see if you can understand him. What is he trying to say?”

  Daud smiled as a second, figurative sun shed the lovely rays of revelation within his mind. “Never mind, Father,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything. You go ahead to the palace. You know they cannot start the banquet without you.”

  Reluctant as he was to leave loose ends behind him, Hisdai was still too flummoxed to do other than comply with his son’s suggestion. Flanked by jaguar warriors and preceded by eagle knights, he allowed himself to be led up to the splendours of the Alhambra, where the promised victory feast awaited. Word of the bizarre conquest had spread rapidly through the Jewish population of Granada, and mad celebration followed. With the help of Moshe ibn Ahijah’s linguistically talented family, Jews, Cathayans, and the always pragmatic Moors had cooperated to lay on a wondrous repast in very little time. Cook was in his glory. There was not an empty goblet nor an occupied kennel left in all the city.

  Hisdai had barely taken his place in the feasting hall when Daud returned and whispered something in his ear.

  “A job?” Hisdai echoed. “That renegade Genoese betrays us and you give him a job?”

  “Why not?” Daud made a lazy, beckoning gesture, and one of Moctezuma’s doe-eyed waiting-women hastened to fetch a tray of chilled melon slices. As part of the Great Khan’s favourite nephew’s entourage, these select highborn ladies had been definitely off limits for the course of the voyage. Now, however, they were just another gift to Lord Quetzalcoatl’s household. “You didn’t want to be bothered.”

  Hisdai lowered his eyes. “I feared having my enemies in my power. Nothing reduces a man to his animal nature faster than the opportunity for exacting unlimited revenge.”

  “Most admirable. Which was precisely why I sent Christopher Columbus to deliver your will to our - I mean, your new subjects.”

  “My will? How, when I never stated it?”

  “Not precisely, perhaps, but I assumed you wished the captives be shown mercy.”

  “True.”

  “You just couldn’t trust yourself to say as much with Isabella addressing you so - unwisely.”

  “And shall I trust the Genoese to do as much? The Catholic Monarchs scorned him once. Has he the strength of character to resist paying them back now?”

  “Perhaps not.” Daud ogled the waiting-woman, and she returned a look of most exquisite promise. “Which was why I told him Moctezuma has already been advised that the fate of one captive is the fate of all.”

  Hisdai relaxed visibly. “My son, you are wise. But - you did tell him to request compassionate treatment? You are certain? Does Columbus know enough of the Cathayan tongue to make himself understood beyond doubt?”

  Daud sighed. “Alas, no. Christopher Columbus is a man of vision, not linguistics. Which was why I took the precaution of having Moshe ibn Ahijah translate the exact words our once-admiral should relay to Lord Moctezuma.”

  The waiting-woman knelt beside him with seductive grace, offering her tray and more besides for Daud’s inspection. Rumour had it that she and the others were ranked as princesses in their own land. Idly Daud wondered whether - the lady’s eventual conversion permitting - such a match would satisfy Hisdai. So caught up was he in these pleasant musings that he did not hear his father’s next question.

  “Daud! Daud, wake up. I asked you something.”

  “Hmm? And what was that, O my fondle - father?”

  “What he said. What you told the Genoese to say.”

  “Oh, that. I kept it simple. I told him to say—”

  From somewhere outside a loud cheer from many throats assaulted heaven, loud enough certainly to cover the lesser cry of one man surprised by the religious practices of another.

  “ - have a heart.”

  <>

  * * * *

  Ink From the New Moon

 
; A. A. Attanasio

  Here, at the farthest extreme of my journey, in the islands along the eastern shores of the Sandalwood Territories, with all of heaven and earth separating us - here, at long last, I have found enough strength to pen these words to you. Months of writing official reports, of recording endless observations of bamboo drill-derricks and cobblestone canals irrigating horizons of plowed fields, of interviewing sooty laborers in industrial barns and refineries roaring with steam engines and dazzling cauldrons of molten metal, of scrutinizing prisoners toiling in salt-canyons, of listening to schoolchildren sing hymns in classrooms on tree-crowned hilltops and in cities agleam with gold-spired pavilions and towers of lacquered wood - all these tedious annotations had quite drained me of the sort of words one writes to one’s wife. But, finally, I feel again the place where the world is breathing inside me.

  Forgive my long silence, Heart Wing. I would have written sooner had not my journey across the Sandalwood Territories of Dawn been an experience for me blacker than ink can show. Being so far from the homeland, so far from you, has dulled the heat of my life. Darkness occupies me. Yet, this unremitting gloom brings with it a peculiar knowledge and wisdom all its own - the treasure that the snake guards - the so-called poison cure. Such is the blood’s surprise, my precious one, that even in the serpent’s grip of dire sorrow, I should find a clarity greater than any since my failures took me from you.