Navigator

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘You plunder the intellectual wealth of a higher culture as you plunder our African gold.’

  Peter didn’t rise to that. ‘You can’t translate philosophy without knowing something of its context.’

  ‘Perhaps you think we all wandered in from the desert. Moors have been in this country for five hundred years.’

  ‘I know that,’ Peter said. ‘But the Almohads did come from the desert, only a few decades ago - didn’t they?’

  Ibrahim was predictably offended, and stalked away after his mother. Peter was forced to hurry after them, his feet already aching from his journey.

  III

  A group of people, men, women and children, had gathered in a rough semicircle before the mosque’s northern wall. Perhaps a hundred strong, they all seemed to be Christian. Many wore grubby crosses stitched to their shoulders, the papal symbol of the Reconquest. And they all seemed to be wielding stones, cobbles and lumps of concrete. Even the smallest children clutched pebbles in their tiny hands. It was a stoning, then. The Christians looked hungry for it to begin. There was no sign of any forces of order, of the Christian king’s soldiers.

  But Subh, without hesitation, marched straight into the middle of this mob. Subh’s relatives hung back, but Ibrahim stayed with her, and Peter hurried after them.

  At the centre of the crowd was a boy, dark-skinned, cowering against the wall. He stood awkwardly, dragging one wounded leg. His clothing was filthy and stiff with dark blood, and the left side of his face was swollen and battered. Two men stood near him, both stout and sleek, one expensively dressed, the other a Christian priest in his finery.

  Subh stood proud before the cowering boy. ‘You won’t be harmed, Zawi. Stand straight, and stop that sniffling.’ She glared around at the muttering crowd. The skin of her face shone with fine oils, and the slight breeze wrapped her loose white clothing around her so that her hips and breasts were prominent. In that moment of peril she looked magnificent to Peter, powerful, authoritative. Once again he felt a pang of helpless lust.

  She called out clearly, “‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” Aren’t those the words of Christ, recorded in the gospel of John? What, are you surprised that a Muslim knows the words of your holy books? I dare say I know your own creed better than most of you, and those tatty crosses sewn to your shoulders make no difference to that. Which of you fine Christians has condemned this snivelling boy?’

  ‘I did, Subh.’ It was the fat, finely dressed man who stood with the priest. His purple-dyed silk cloak must have been extraordinarily expensive.

  ‘Alfonso,’ Subh said with disgust. ‘I might have known it was you. What do you accuse him of, muhtasib - mocking the size of your fat arse? If so you’ll have to have half of Cordoba stoned.’

  That actually won her a laugh.

  Alfonso preened, plump fingers plucking at his leather belt. ‘The crime is rather more serious than that, lady. This sand rat of a nephew of yours has fornicated with my granddaughter. My granddaughter, my Beatrice. Come here, child.’ A girl, mousy, plain, stumbled forward from the crowd. ‘Fornicated!’ Alfonso thundered. ‘What do you have to say to that?’

  There was an angry murmur from the crowd.

  Peter murmured to Ibrahim, ‘In Toledo it’s no stoning offence for a Muslim to sleep with a Christian.’

  ‘In this town it is. And Alfonso is the muhtasib, who supervises the market. He is a man of influence in Cordoba.’

  Subh was undaunted. ‘And you have proof of this, do you, Alfonso the Fat? Oh, I’m prepared to believe that this wretched whelp of yours is no longer a virgin. But what else, beyond her word against his?’

  ‘It was him,’ Beatrice said, and she raised an unsteady finger to point at Zawi. ‘He forced me!’

  The crowd murmured again. But the priest looked down at his shoes, uncomfortable.

  Subh, sharp, in control, noticed this. ‘Forced you? Ah, but that isn’t the story you told earlier, I would wager. Is it, child?’

  ‘Yes - no - but it was Zawi, it was!’

  Subh snorted, but Peter noticed she did not call on the boy to deny it for himself. She stalked about, regal, sneering at the stone-wielding crowd. ‘And if so, what did you think of his scars?’ Beatrice said nothing, and Subh went on, ‘Come, child. If you lay together you must have noticed those.’

  Beatrice glanced at her grandfather, uncertain.

  Subh turned to the boy. ‘Show them what I mean.’

  Zawi’s embarrassment apparently overcame his fear. ‘But, aunt—’

  ‘Show them. Drop your trousers.’

  The boy complied, to reveal bare legs and a grimy sash around his waist. The crowd hooted, mocking his skinny legs and his shrivelled cock, and the boy was mortified. But Subh plucked aside the sash, and the crowd gasped at a mesh of scars on his belly.

  ‘The result of a pious mule-whipping,’ Subh said. ‘A childhood gift from one of your sons, I’m told, Alfonso. Child, how could you not notice that?’

  The girl, confused, stammered out, ‘But I did sleep with him. All right, he didn’t force me. But I did. It was in the orange grove behind the—’

  Subh drowned her out. ‘Your word against his! That’s all we have. Who are you protecting, Beatrice? Who? Somebody known to your father - one of his business associates?’ She spat that out with utter contempt. ‘And for that will you take the blood of a boy on your hands? Will you go to meet your Maker with that unforgiven sin on your conscience?’ She turned on the crowd. ‘Will you? And you?’

  As Zawi pulled up his trousers, Alfonso made one last try. He cried, ‘You will not contradict me, woman! The facts of the case are clear! This girl has been violated. This girl, of a line tainted by no Moorish blood or Jewish, a Christian line that has survived since the days of the Gothic kings...’

  But nobody was listening. One cobble was actually hurled, bouncing off the mosque wall harmlessly. But the mood for blood was gone, washed away by the sheer power of Subh’s personality. Even the priest walked away.

  Subh approached Alfonso. ‘Gothic kings, eh? Well, I,’ she said, ‘am descended from Ahmed Ibn Tufayl, vizier to the emir of Seville, and that is no lie. I know the truth about you and your family, muhtasib. For centuries you called yourself al-Hafsun. My family worked with yours, in those days. You were muwallad. But when the Christian kings returned, you conveniently called yourselves Christian once more. Your blood is no more pure than your slut of a granddaughter.’

  And she turned her back on a fuming Alfonso. ‘One of you,’ she called to her hapless relatives, ‘take Zawi home and clean him up. And tell him that if he gets up to this kind of mischief again, especially with a Christian, and especially with a granddaughter of that slug Alfonso, I’ll cut off his cock myself.’ She rubbed her hands as if to clean them of dust. ‘Well, that’s that sorted out. Now, what’s next?’She smiled brightly at Peter. ‘What are you waiting for? Come with me.’

  He dared do nothing else but follow.

  IV

  In the patio of her home, Subh served Peter tea flavoured with the zest of an orange, and dried olives and apricots in thick cream.

  It was May, and the garden was fresh, the leaves on the trees brilliant green, the roses flowering, the blossom on the pomegranates bright red. Somewhere a nightingale sang. This was a typically Moorish setting, Peter thought, an oasis-garden made by folk who cherished life where they found it.

  But Ibrahim stalked about, restless. He seemed very angry that his mother had saved the life of his distant cousin. ‘You lied shamelessly,’ Ibrahim accused her. ‘You knew very well that Zawi slept with that wretched girl. It was written all over him.’

  Peter said, ‘But the scars - the girl didn’t recognise them.’

  ‘He keeps the scars covered up with his sash,’ Ibrahim snapped. ‘Even while making love. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, of course I knew he slept with the whelp,’ Subh said. ‘Why do you think I didn’t question him? For fear he would
blurt out the truth, or still worse profess some undying passion for the spread-legged little she-goat, and get himself put down.’

  ‘And you made an unnecessary enemy of Alfonso in the process.’

  ‘But he is already my enemy. You see, my son, I believe that to lie is wrong, but to allow a foolish boy to be stoned for a bit of careless lust is more wrong still.’

  Ibrahim snapped, ‘Our family has lived in this den of decadence for too long. It has poisoned our blood, which must be cleansed!’ And he stalked off, unsatisfied.

  So Peter was left alone with this woman, her languid form draped on a divan. Impossible fantasies ran through his head.

  Subh sighed. ‘It is a trial to have a son whose soul is so much purer than mine. A reminder of the time when the holy Almohads ran all our lives, and the Almoravids before them.’

  After the fall of Toledo a century and a half earlier, a bruised al-Andalus had fallen under the sway of cultists from across the strait, Almoravids and later Almohads, men of the desert with veiled faces who dressed in skins and stank of their camels, devout, disciplined and cruel. Attitudes hardened on both sides. The popes granted crusading indulgences to knights who fought in Spain, challenging the fundamentalism of the desert warriors.

  ‘The boy means well, of course. But he simply isn’t pragmatic. Are you pragmatic, scholar? Or are you religious?’

  ‘Not especially, though I do plenty of work for the religious houses, mostly the Franciscans. My ambition is to be a philosopher, for which I need to find patrons - like yourself, to whom I am eternally grateful.’ Peter’s career was a new sort, unimagined not so long before. Thanks to the injection of scholarship from the conquered regions of al-Andalus there had been an explosion of learning across Christendom, and all over Europe itinerant scholars like Peter were trying to make a living. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘the task of the scholar is to reconcile all our philosophy with the revealed truth of God.’ That was the official truth, but actually, it seemed to Peter, thanks to the Aristotelian studies of the Moorish scholars, across Christendom the close ties of devotion and scholarship were loosening.

  Subh was still thinking about her son. ‘Ibrahim can’t see that the subtext of the little encounter today is my rivalry with Alfonso the Fat, and the long war he is waging to destroy me. That’s why he was trying to have poor Zawi put down - it’s nothing to do with the law, or what Zawi may or may not have actually done. It’s all to get at me.’

  ‘Why would he wish to do that?’

  ‘Because I work against him. He offends me, in his hypocrisy, his exploitation of the mudejars, and the size of his arse.’

  The term ‘mudejar’, al-mudajjar, meaning literally ‘the tamed’, referred to Muslims still living in Cordoba, Toledo and other territories reconquered by the Christians. There was work for them to do, as clerks, accountants, lawyers. The more enlightened Christian rulers and wealthy folk even employed mudejar artisans to restore or rebuild their houses and palaces in a Moorish style.

  ‘And in Cordoba,’ Subh said, ‘Alfonso has spent the six years since the city’s conquest establishing himself as a middle man. Wealthy Christians find it easier to deal with a man who presents himself as a Christian, you see, than with the children of the desert - even though ten years ago “Alfonso” was as Moorish as an Almohad. So Alfonso sells Moorish work at the highest prices, while paying the Moors a pittance, and growing rich himself in the process. Why, he even exploits some of my own family. Can you believe that? He despises me, you see, because I stand up to him.’

  ‘You were very brave to face down the crowd.’

  ‘Brave for a woman, you mean?’ She snorted. ‘Well, I have to be strong, for all the men have fled. It was a bad time when Cordoba fell. My husband was already dead, killed fighting the Christians. Then King Fernando laid siege to the city. We capitulated; after six months we had no choice.’ She paused, and her eyes were distant. ‘Best not to speak of those times. That first evening a bishop entered the mosque to “cleanse” it, as they put it, and rededicate it to Christ. And they took away the bells of the church of Saint James, and returned them to Santiago de Compostela from where they had been stolen by al-Mansur, more than two centuries ago. Christians don’t forget, or forgive! - but then,’ she said fiercely, ‘neither do Muslims. When the city gates were opened to the Christians, those who could afford to do so fled south, to Seville or Granada, even across the strait to the Maghrib.’

  ‘Why did you not flee?’

  ‘Because,’ she said grandly, ‘those left behind, the marginal and the poor, the toy-makers and the saddlers, the farmers and the potters, good Muslims stranded in a Christian city, have nobody left to stand up for them. And besides I am the descendant of a vizier. As you, in your rummaging in the libraries of Toledo, have proven for me, I hope.’

  Her warm look stirred his blood again. But he paused, for he knew that what he had found in Toledo was more complicated than that.

  She recognised his hesitation. ‘Don’t tease me, Peter of Toledo. Did you find what I wanted?’

  ‘Yes. And no.’

  She made a gesture like swatting a fly. ‘A typical scholar’s response - infuriating ! Is that all I get for my money?’

  ‘In the archives I explored in Toledo,’ he said carefully, ‘I found answers to your questions - and more. Some of this will please you. Some of it will not.’

  ‘Tell me, then. Did you find my ancestor?’

  ‘Yes.’ In fact that part hadn’t been hard. Even in the fractured age of the taifas, the Moors had always been fine record-keepers. ‘Yes, there was a vizier; his existence isn’t just a family tradition. And his name, as you know, was Ahmed Ibn Tufayl. I can prove a direct line of descent, in places through the female line, to you.’

  ‘Hah! I knew it! Oh, every Muslim in Cordoba claims descent from one royal lineage or another. But I knew we were different - I knew it.’

  ‘I have some details of his career’ - and Peter patted his bag - ‘but what may interest you more is not how Ibn Tufayl lived, but how he died.’

  V

  ‘Much of this was written down after his death by his granddaughter, Moraima, who survived him.’

  ‘My distant grandmother,’ Subh breathed, eyes heartbreakingly wide.

  ‘Over a hundred years dead.’

  Peter summarised for her the story of Sihtric, the priest from England. ‘Who as you know,’ he said cautiously, ‘fathered Moraima by Ibn Tufayl’s daughter.’

  She sighed. ‘We’ve learned to live with that, I think.’

  ‘The question is why Sihtric came to Spain. He approached Ibn Tufayl for sponsorship for a project: the development of designs for marvellous weapons called the Engines of God.’

  Subh’s eyes widened at that. ‘Weapons?’

  ‘These designs had a mysterious origin,’ Peter said. ‘Or murky, you might say. They were supposed to be the result of visions, divine or satanic, implanted in the mind of an English monk, now two centuries dead, who—’

  Subh waved her hand impatiently. ‘I’ve no time for visions and miracles. Tell me about these weapons. Did Sihtric build them? What became of them?’

  He told her how Sihtric, with great difficulty, had got as far as a few prototypes. ‘But there was something missing, so Sihtric came to believe. An agent he called Incendium Dei - the Fire of God. It was something like Greek Fire, perhaps - though there I’m guessing. It was mentioned in the designs, but nothing the alchemists could crack.’