Navigator

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘But that part of the palace,’ Orm told Robert, ‘was an ambassador’s court. It is a warren of tunnels and spy-holes. Moraima knew all about it. And this priest never thought to inquire.’

  Sihtric snapped, ‘But the vizier learned nothing damaging before you showed up in al-Andalus, Orm, with your addled prophecy, your doves and serpents, your doubts. Nobody before you ever encouraged me to express dreams I had kept safely lodged in the silence of my soul all these decades. You upset everything, Orm, all my delicate arrangements. Now he knows it all ...’

  Robert looked at the two squabbling old men. They didn’t matter to him now. Their babbling of history and prophecy was irrelevant - and so, he thought for the first time in his life, was his father. All that mattered to Robert was the cold steel of the piety he had discovered in himself during his solitude.

  ‘What a touching scene.’ The vizier walked into the room.

  They all got to their feet.

  Ibn Tufayl looked magnificent in his djellaba of the finest silk and spun wool and with his skin shining with oils, yet he swayed, subtly. ‘Three shabby Christians. How low you are. How animal-like. And the stink of you.’

  ‘If you’re going to kill us,’ grated Orm, ‘get it over with.’

  ‘Oh, I fully intend to do that. But there’s no rush, Viking. After all this time we still have much to say to each other. Sit down, all of you.’

  He crossed the chamber, alone save for a single servant who bore a tray of sweetmeats and drinks. He walked stiffly, his posture erect. But Robert saw the cautious pacing of a man concentrating on control.

  ‘The man is as drunk as a Breton,’ Orm murmured.

  ‘Then God help us all,’ whispered Sihtric.

  XXIII

  The vizier sat on a heap of cushions. The servant next to him knelt with head bowed, holding up her silver tray. Robert thought absently that she would tire very quickly in a posture like that; she must be hardened by a lifetime of servitude. Ibn Tufayl was of course aware of their hunger, and he ate his titbits slowly, with evident relish, chewing openly. But his face was flushed.

  He indicated the arched doorways, where the guards waited, eyes white in desert-dark faces. ‘We are effectively alone here. The guards are all Berbers. Almoravids, a fanatical bunch, but fierce warriors. And not a one of them understands a word of Arabic, let alone Latin. Not even this little one.’ He stroked the head of the girl kneeling at his side. ‘So you see, what we say in here will stay with us alone - or rather, with me.’

  Sihtric waved an uncertain hand at the heaps of books in the corner. ‘You have taken my books.’

  The vizier nodded. ‘Your Codex is here, the sketches you stole from Aethelmaer.’ He held up a scroll. ‘So are all your notes and commentaries, and the designs you have developed. All your work is here.’ Ibn Tufayl smiled, malicious. ‘And if I ordered it destroyed, perhaps on a mere whim, it would be gone for ever. The meaning of your life, priest, gone in a heartbeat.’

  ‘You would not,’ shouted Sihtric, his face reddening.

  Orm said, ‘Oh, calm down, priest. He’s only goading you. It’s obvious he won’t destroy your work. It’s far too precious to him for that.’

  The vizier nodded. ‘I’m glad one of you shows some wisdom.’

  ‘But you have your own purpose for them, no doubt,’ Robert said.

  Ibn Tufayl half rose. ‘Do not speak to me, you wolfling, or I will have you eviscerated before your father’s eyes.’

  Robert was shocked by the anger in his face, the crimson glower, the twisted lip, the bulging eyes. He flinched, unable to understand why he should be the focus of such rage.

  Orm’s grip tightened on his arm, hard enough to hurt. ‘Stay calm.’

  Sihtric said, ‘He’s right, though, isn’t he, vizier? You have concocted your own scheme for the weapons.’

  The vizier settled back. ‘Oh, yes. Far beyond your petty notions. It takes a man of vision to see the true path. But oddly, it was you who put the vision into my head, priest. You and your muscled friend here. All your talk of al-Hafredi of Poitiers, this bizarre fantasy of men flung across time, a history averted. Nonsense! Irrelevant! No wonder you Christians fail if your heads are addled with such maundering. And yet the scheme you unfold, Sihtric, of a Muslim expansion across Gaul and Germany - now that is magnificent! The bones of a strategy - a grand one - and in your engines there is the means to carry it out.’

  The vizier stood and paced around the room, energetic, vigorous, red-faced. The servant cowered every time he came close.

  ‘I will continue the development of your engines, the crossbows, the armoured carts, the flying machines. And I will give them to the armies of Seville. Then, reinforced by our brothers the Almoravids from Africa, we will storm across the marches and scatter the barbarian hordes of the Christian kings. Perhaps our new conquest will be as rapid as that of Musa and Tariq - why not? And in five years, or ten, Seville will be established as the capital of a reclaimed al-Andalus, and the bells of the Christian churches will fall silent again.’ He continued to pace, pace.

  ‘And then?’ whispered Sihtric. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we will cross the Pyrenees. We will reverse the disaster of Poitiers, three hundred years ago. This time there will be no stopping our advance.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Orm said. ‘I’ve fought with the Normans, remember. Why, they conquered England, the best-organised state in Europe. They’ll put up a tough fight.’

  ‘But they won’t have Sihtric’s engines,’ the vizier said.

  ‘And if you prevail,’ Sihtric said. His voice was hoarse, his face drained of blood. ‘On you will go, I suppose. Slaughtering, burning.’

  Ibn Tufayl’s voice rose, shrill. ‘At last the solemn calm of a single caliphate will settle across the whole of the world, from east to west, from pole to pole. If it can be done once, as your madman wanderer seems to have believed, Sihtric, it can be done again.’ He smiled. ‘I would like to take Rome myself, I think. I will have to decide what to do with the Pope ... You see how you have inspired me? And it will be my honour to achieve it - my honour-I, a new al-Mansur.’ He staggered, almost falling against a wall. He picked up a cup, drained it, found another empty, and cuffed his servant’s head. ‘More. Go, go!’

  She scuttled out, head bowed.

  Orm growled, ‘Get to the point, vizier. What do you intend to do with us?’

  ‘I need what you know. I don’t need you. You will be - drained. And then discarded. But at least you know the great cause your deaths will serve.’ The servant girl returned with a tray of fresh drinks; the vizier grabbed a cup and downed it in one gulp.

  Moraima stared at him. ‘Grandfather - I barely recognise you when you speak like this.’

  He looked at her blearily. ‘When you are old enough to understand, you’ll thank me. And you’ll tell your grandchildren of what you have heard today. But for now, this strange knowledge must be mine alone.’

  Sihtric snapped, ‘What does that mean? You say you have my plans. What of the prototypes I have built? What of the arbalest?’

  ‘Destroyed.’

  ‘And my scholars, my clerks, my engineers?’

  ‘They will not speak of it,’ the vizier said. ‘My Berbers made sure of that.’

  Sihtric’s mouth dropped open, and he slumped, as if fainting. Orm supported him, but Sihtric pushed him away. ‘There were fine minds among them, very fine young minds - the best in Cordoba. All sacrificed to your petty ambition. Murderer. Murderer!’

  ‘Don’t preach at me, you hypocritical fraud. You have ambition enough of your own. You were planning to arm Christians with your magic weapons.’

  ‘I planned to serve Christ’s holy purposes. I am no murderer of scholars and clerks and scribes, of carpenters and wheelwrights and metal-workers. You infidel monster, I will oppose you with every bone in my body.’

  ‘And I,’ the vizier roared, ‘will extract every one of those bones if you stand in my way
.’

  The two of them faced each other, the tottering drunk, the portly, filthy priest, screaming at each other. They were so alike, Robert saw, two foolish middle-aged men who dreamed of reshaping the world. But he knew it was a world which no longer belonged to them.

  Moraima stepped between them. ‘Stop this, father, grandfather. I can’t stand to see you fight.’

  Robert stepped up and took Moraima’s arm. ‘Come away, Moraima. Leave them to it. You’ll only get hurt.’

  The vizier turned on him again, his flushed face a mask of ferocity. ‘Get your filthy paws off her, you Christian animal. I know what you did. I know about the tainted spawn you have planted in her belly!’

  That shocked even Sihtric to silence. Everybody stood still. Moraima covered her face.

  Orm said darkly, ‘Is this true, Robert?’

  Robert looked at the girl. ‘We’ve had no time to talk, no time alone - but, yes, father. I think it’s true.’ And now he understood why the vizier hated him.

  Moraima said to the vizier, ‘How did you know, grandfather? I’ve been to no doctor.’

  ‘But you told one of your friends, who told her friend, who told the boy Ghalib, who, hating Robert, told me.’

  Robert grunted. ‘Ghalib will never forgive me for saving his life.’

  The vizier shrieked, ‘And I will not forgive you, or spare you, for you have defiled her, as this fat priest defiled her mother, my daughter.’

  Robert boldly took Moraima’s hand and drew her behind his back.

  Orm said, ‘Is that what this is all about? Are you really hungry to conquer the world for Islam, vizier? Or are you simply enraged that your granddaughter, like your daughter, loves a Christian? Is that what is driving you insane?’

  The vizier stood tall, his mouth drawn wide, the muscles in his neck spasming. So deep was his rage, so toxic the drink swilling in his body, that for a heartbeat he seemed unable to act, even to speak. The guards fingered their scimitars uneasily.

  But Sihtric was not frozen. He turned to Moraima. ‘Goodbye, my lovely girl, my darling. All my life I have chased such grand ambitions. And yet in the end, if all I leave behind is you, perhaps it’s enough.’

  Moraima asked, bewildered, ‘Father? What do you mean?’

  ‘I will not see Christendom threatened - not through my own foolishness and arrogance. You say that everything I’ve achieved is gathered in this room, vizier. Then it must end, here in this room.’

  And Sihtric jumped up at the wall, grabbed an oil lamp, and hurled himself on the heap of manuscripts in the corner of the room. The lamp broke under him, and fire blossomed around him, licking eagerly over the stacked scrolls and books, and Sihtric’s robe. Ibn Tufayl let out a bellow of drunken despair, and threw himself at the fire. Orm grabbed him, whether to hold him back or to wrestle him Robert couldn’t tell. But in a moment the two of them had toppled into the blaze on top of the squirming priest.

  It had only taken a heartbeat. The room filled with smoke. The screams of the three men were high and terrible. Moraima lunged forward, but Robert held her.

  The guards ran into the room. Some of them tried to drag the bodies from the pyre, only to be burned themselves and driven back, and others, with more presence of mind, ripped hangings off the walls and hurled them on the fire. The smoke was dense now, and, his lungs seared, Robert began to cough.

  ‘Robert. Hsst. Robert!’ The voice carried to Robert through the roaring of the blaze, the panicky shouts of the Berber guards. Ibn Hafsun the muwallad stood in an archway, only dimly visible through the billowing smoke. ‘Let’s get out of here. Bring the girl. Move, while you have a chance. Come on!’

  Dragging an inert Moraima, Robert hurried that way. The guards were too occupied with the blaze, and the smoke too thick, for them to be seen and stopped.

  But as he reached the arch the little serving girl stopped him. ‘Please,’ she said in heavily accented Latin. ‘Please!’

  Robert, anxious, tried to get past. But, her face soot-streaked, a burn livid on her right arm, she held up a scorched scroll, wrapped in an animal skin. She pointed at the blaze. ‘Priest, priest!’

  Robert grabbed the scroll and ran out, dragging Moraima, following Ibn Hafsun.

  XXIV

  Ibn Hafsun, Robert and Moraima slipped out of Cordoba. They rode down the Guadalquivir towards Seville, a bigger city where, Ibn Hafsun said, it would be easier for them to lose themselves, while the fuss died down.

  Ibn Hafsun was vague about why he had saved them. ‘I brought you across Spain, Robert, for a fee. I suppose I’ve always felt responsible for you. I didn’t mean to lead you into such peril - and nor did I mean to play a part in the deaths of Sihtric and Orm.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Robert said.

  ‘Perhaps not. But I’m a muwallad, Robert. A Muslim, but with a healthy dose of ancestral Christian guilt left in my bloodstream.’

  As they journeyed along the course of the great river, Robert was distracted by the changing landscape. Al-Andalus might have declined since the end of the great days of the caliphate and the fitnah, but there was prosperity here. Huge ships sailed the length of the river, laden with goods. Near Seville the land was heavily farmed. Plantations of sugar cane sprawled amid ranches and stud farms where tremendous herds of horses flowed.

  As they travelled, each morning Moraima was ill.

  The two of them spoke little. Moraima was immersed in her loss and the churning of the new life inside her body. And Robert, brooding on Orm’s death, his head full of the stern strength of his new faith, found he had nothing to say to her. In the evenings, in taverns or camped out in the open, Ibn Hafsun watched them sitting apart in silence, and sighed, and rolled over in his blanket to sleep.

  Seville itself was bustling, prosperous under the Abbadids, the ruling family. Ibn Hafsun said that the river was navigable from the sea to this point, making Seville a natural port. There was a fortress here, built centuries ago by Cordoban governors. Now it was being extended by the Abbadids into a palace to be called al-Murawak - ‘the Blessed’. If Cordoba’s great days were over, it appeared that Seville’s still lay ahead.

  They came to a place a little way to the north and west of the fortress walls, where a small mosque stood. Ibn Hafsun said, ‘You say Sihtric spoke of a great mosque to be built in Seville. If it is to be built anywhere, I judge it will be just here, for the position, close to the palace, is ideal.’ He glanced around at the somewhat shabby mosque, the tangled streets. ‘It’s unprepossessing now. But it would be fascinating to come back in a century or two, and see what time has made of this place.’

  Robert glanced at Moraima. ‘We should make plans,’ he said. ‘Ibn Hafsun has brought us this far. Now it’s up to us.’

  ‘I have family in the city, on my mother’s side,’ Moraima said. ‘The aunt who would have raised me. We could stay with her. She wouldn’t betray us. She never liked grandfather much.’

  ‘Or—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Or we could take a ship for England.’

  They eyed each other. Moraima’s face was full of her loss, of her father and grandfather. A loss that, perhaps, she blamed him for, in some indirect way.

  And Robert saw her from a distance, as if through a window of stained glass.

  He was fourteen years old, and was battered by contradictory experiences. In a few days he had lost his father, but he had found a core of true Christian faith. When he had first travelled across al-Andalus his soul had opened up to its light and its beauty. But now he imagined a day when this country would be studded with solid churches and cathedrals, and the folk working these rich fields would all be good Christians. He imagined that future, and dreamed inchoately of playing a part in bringing it about.