Navigator

by Stephen Baxter

  Mongol armies always advanced in the depths of winter, with their horses fat on the grasses of summer. So it would be, in just a few weeks, that they would fall at last on Vienna. The city would be plundered, torched and razed, and the Viennese scattered to starve on the plains. As the Mongols advanced further west, the Christian princes, hastily uniting, would raise another army, which would meet the Mongols in a pitched battle before Munich. The numbers were well matched. But the Christians would be lured by a false retreat into an ambush, a classic Mongol tactic. Munich would be smashed. The Mongols’ advance would be barely interrupted.

  Next the Mongol force would split once more into three detachments. The first would strike at the Low Countries, plundering the rich young trading cities there before shattering them and slaughtering the population in the usual way. Holland’s dykes would be broken up; the sea would complete the Mongols’ victory.

  A second detachment would spend the summer grazing their horses in the plains around the smoking ruins of Paris, while students from what had been the finest university north of the Pyrenees scratched in the rubble for food.

  The final Mongol detachment would meanwhile cross the Alps and descend on Italy. The vibrant modern cities of Milan, Genoa, Venice - all put to the sword, all destined never to rise again. And then there was the Eternal City. When the Mongols were done, it would be said that Rome had been reduced to the villages on the seven hills from which the great old city had once coalesced. The Mongols considered the Pope a prince, and therefore no hand would be raised against him. Instead the successor to Saint Peter would be thrust into a sack and trampled to death by horses.

  The next season, the squabbling Christian kings of Spain would provide no serious resistance to the Mongol force that marched south through the Pyrenees. And then there was England. The Mongols had learned how to build boats in their campaigns in the far east. By the autumn of that year, London would burn.

  So the conquest would be completed. With its great cities shattered, its monasteries and churches broken, Europe would be reduced to a shrunken population living in utter poverty in villages too small to be worth the plunder, ruled brutally by the khans’ governors and tax-collectors.

  Eventually, the imp said, the Mongols would withdraw, their empire withering away. But the damage would be permanent, Europe cut off from its own antiquity. And, worse, Christ would be lost from the world. With their priests slaughtered, the mass of the population slowly reverted to paganism, finding comfort in the gods they rediscovered in the trees and fields and rivers around them.

  Bohemond, Philip and their companions listened to this dreadful account with growing horror.

  But it need not be so, the imp whispered. Already grievous damage had been done to the cities of Russia, and even to the great Islamic civilisations of the east, which would never recover their sparkling brilliance of the past. But in the west, Christendom might yet be saved.

  A tiny lid opened in the flat top of the box. Inside, revealed to the astonished men, was a pinch of crystals. This, the imp whispered, was a salt of quicksilver. If these crystals were dropped into Ogodai’s milk and wine the next day the ruin of Christendom would be averted.

  And then the box fell silent, and would not speak again, no matter what markings they pressed. The crystals sat in their little tray, silent, beckoning.

  The Christians debated what this all meant. The soldiers like Philip discussed the Mongols’ campaigns. The priests and monks explored the theological nature of the imp in the box: was it sent by God, or the devil?

  And while they debated, Bohemond slipped away.

  ‘By the end of the next day,’ Thomas said, ‘the Great Khan was doubled up in pain. His vomit was copious, while bloody diarrhoea hosed from his leathery backside. His doctors could do nothing. By the following morning he was unable even to pass water, and howled in agony. And by the end of the day after that he was dead. It was a horrible death - but not as dreadful as that inflicted on Brother Bohemond, who was discovered skulking in the Khan’s tent.’

  Like many of the other embassies, the Christian party packed up and fled in haste from the decapitated court. The Mongols’ own messengers spread the news of the Khan’s death to the generals and governors across their scattered domains.

  ‘And that is why,’ Thomas said, ‘early in the year 1242, rather than press his conquest west, Sabotai turned back from the walls of Vienna. For all their conquests the Mongols remain tribesmen, bound by oaths of loyalty to their Khan. So when Ogodai died, their leaders were forced by their own laws to return in person to their homeland, to elect a new ruler.’

  ‘And will they not return to Europe?’ Saladin asked.

  ‘They haven’t yet. They have the rest of the world to occupy them. And as for the amulet - after the envoys had fled from the Mongol city, Philip told me they finally shattered its casing with rocks. Inside they found not the shrivelled corpse of an imp, but bits of wire. Metal discs, like coins, but blank. Other strange little sculptures.’

  ‘Charms, perhaps,’ said Saladin.

  ‘Philip thought they were like bits of an engine. But what its function could be, how it worked - even what drove it, for there was no spring, no lever - he had no idea.’

  Joan said, ‘But whatever it was, why was this amulet put into the luggage of this boy Bohemond?’

  ‘I think that’s clear enough. It was put there so Bohemond should kill Ogodai. If he had lived, Christendom was lost. If he died, Christendom was saved. As simple as that. So he had to die.’

  ‘But who could know this? ... Ah,’Joan said. ‘A prophet. Or—’

  ‘Or a meddler with time,’Thomas said. ‘A Weaver. A man, or an angel or a demon, with the power to speak to the past. A man stranded in this dismal future wrecked by the Khans, who managed to send back this imp-in-a-box - just as somebody, somewhere, somewhen, sent back - perhaps, perhaps! - the designs of your war machines to a young boy’s addled head, and somebody else sent al-Hafredi back to the time of Charles Martel, and somebody else whispered in the ear of your ancestress Eadgyth, and, and...’

  ‘But this was not the work of al-Hafredi’s people.’

  ‘I do not believe so. A different method was used to persuade the minds of men - an imp in a box rather than a human being thrown into history. And, though it is not clear, it seems that the makers of the amulet sought a different future from that described by al-Hafredi.’

  Saladin struggled to absorb these dreadful ideas. He feared they were heretical, feared that even to speculate about such matters in the darkness of his own head might be to commit a sin.

  But his mother briskly focused on the practicalities. ‘I see your point,’ she said to Thomas. ‘He who sent Ogodai’s imp may or may not have been our Weaver. But this does seem to prove that time can be spanned by an agent’s will, be he human or divine.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Thomas’s rheumy eyes were bright.

  ‘Well, it’s clear what we must do now. The veracity of the Codex is proved to be more than plausible.’

  ‘You never wrote back to your cousin Subh?’

  ‘I was never sure about that. After all Subh is a Muslim. Yet we need the Codex.’

  ‘You’re thinking of going to Seville yourself?’ Thomas asked cautiously.

  ‘Of course! I will dig up that mosque with my bare hands if needs must.’

  ‘But the armies of the Castilians are moving in on the city. Soon it may be besieged.’

  ‘All the more reason to move quickly, before some other chancer happens on the plans - or worse, Subh herself.’ Her eyes were cold. ‘I am sure now that this is our opportunity, our chance to revive our family’s prospects. We must take it without hesitation.’

  Saladin gladly put aside the strange mysteries of the ever-changing tapestry of time, and grasped the essence of this new mission. ‘We are going to al-Andalus?’ He bunched his fists. ‘There are many Muslims there. I shall take the Cross!’

  Joan stroked his cheek fondly. ‘T
hat’s my boy.’ She stood. ‘We have much to do.’ Briskly, still talking, planning, scheming, she led them out of the room.

  Thomas hurried after her. ‘Of course there is still the question of your enigma: Robert’s scrap of cipher, which may or may not have something to do with that phrase in Subh’s letter - Incendium Dei. As it happens I have heard of a young man who may be able to assist us, another Franciscan, a bright young philosopher at Oxford who is becoming notorious for his radical philosophies. His name is Roger Bacon...’

  XVI

  AD 1247

  There was trouble at the pontoon bridge. A suspicious mob, a suspected spy, a near-riot - and the potential for real disaster for Seville, if its only bridge across the Guadalquivir were damaged.

  This news was brought to Ibrahim’s office by a sweating, panicky soldier. Ibrahim summoned Abdul, a captain of the palace guard, and told him to assemble a unit of his troops. Then he ran out of his office, without waiting to see if Abdul and his soldiers followed.

  From the emir’s palace, the fastest way to get to the bridge was to cut down to the river and follow the bank, and that was the way Ibrahim headed. Even so it was tough going, for every open space, every street was cluttered with refugees and their belongings. Ibrahim was forced to wade through this throng as through a sea. By the river it was almost as bad, but troops stationed here kept a path cleared along the bank, and once he was in sight of the water Ibrahim was able to make faster progress.

  It was a bright spring day, he noted absently. The river water glistened prettily, and the orange trees were in bloom. But this year, the hungry would not leave the fruit on the branches long enough to ripen.

  It wasn’t hard to find the source of the trouble. The mob had caught their man at the abutment of the pontoon bridge. Ragged, already bleeding, his head hidden by a hood, the quarry had backed a few paces onto the bridge.

  ‘Let me scatter them, sir.’ Abdul, a veteran of the sieges of Cordoba and Valencia, was a tough, competent man of about thirty-five, who wore a black patch to hide the empty socket from which a Christian arrow had taken his right eye. ‘A charge will do it.’

  Ibrahim trusted Abdul with his life. But Abdul thought in a soldier’s blunt, direct terms. Ibrahim’s job was to see the wider picture. ‘We can’t risk the bridge,’ he said. Seville had only two arteries to the wider Muslim world: the river, which was gradually being blockaded by King Fernando’s fleet, and this pontoon bridge, which linked the city to the suburb of Triana and the Muslim communities beyond. ‘You charge them and they’ll be on that bridge for sure. All it will take is one of those idiots with a torch to start chucking fire around, and we’re all sunk.’

  Abdul pursed his lips. ‘Let me guess. You want to go and talk to them.’

  Ibrahim grinned at the tough soldier. But he wondered, not for the first time, how it was that he, who had always thought his destiny was to be a warrior, had finished up being a cut-price diplomat. ‘Our job is to keep order, above all, captain. Let’s see if we can do that without breaking any more heads.’

  ‘And when it goes wrong, my boys will sort it all out and save your arse for you. Again. Sir.’ But Abdul smiled.

  ‘Fair enough. Wait here.’

  Moving rapidly to mask his own fear, Ibrahim walked the last few paces to the bridge, and stood boldly between the mob and its prey. He glanced at the victim, who was a slim man, breathing hard, his face so bloodied it was unrecognisable.

  Then Ibrahim turned to face the mob. The crowd was perhaps fifty strong, mostly men, a few women. They were all as ragged and dirty as the man they hunted. Ibrahim knew these people. Without homes, without hope, they were profoundly afraid. But fear was easier to bear if you could find somebody to hate.

  He spread his hands to show he was unarmed. Abdul was watching closely, his hand on his scimitar.

  Ibrahim called, ‘Why are you here? Why do you keep me away from my prayers?’

  There was an inchoate growl. One man waved a ragged bit of parchment in the air.

  ‘You.’ Ibrahim picked on the man and strode forward. ‘Come here!’

  The man instinctively stepped forward, and the crowd pressed back. Suddenly the man looked less certain, for he was once again a man, himself, and not a component of the mob.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ snapped Ibrahim. ‘In me, you face the authority of the vizier. Tell me!’

  ‘I am Gabirol,’ he said reluctantly. He was probably no older than Ibrahim.

  Ibrahim nodded. He turned to Abdul, who made a show of writing down the man’s name. ‘All right, Gabirol. My goal here is to secure the peace. That’s all I care about. We can’t have crowds running around with torches and knives, and we can’t have citizens torn apart on our streets—’

  ‘He’s no citizen,’ Gabirol snapped, and his anger surged. He waved his bit of parchment at the man on the bridge. ‘He’s a spy! A spy for Fernando, for the Christians.’

  A city under threat was rife with rumours, riddled with imagined traitors and spies - and perhaps a few real ones. ‘And how do you know that?’

  ‘Because of this! This is what he was carrying when he was found.’ He held up the parchment again.

  Ibrahim took it gingerly. Streaked with blood, it was covered with sketches of what looked like fish. Perhaps they were anatomical drawings. But when he looked more closely he saw that there were bits of machinery inside each ‘fish’, gears and levers and pulleys, and sketches of tiny men who pulled on oars or worked at capstans.

  He growled, ‘Oh, Mother, what have you done?’

  Abdul looked at him. ‘What was that, sir?’

  ‘Never mind. So, Gabirol, you think he’s a spy because of these sketches.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? Everybody knows Fernando wants to block up the river. Maybe this is the way he’s going to do it, with these fancy ships—’

  ‘It’s the shape that gives it away.’ A woman stepped forward now, her face twisted into a fearful rage.

  ‘What shape?’

  ‘The fish! Everybody knows that’s a Christian sign. I’ve seen it daubed all over the walls of the mosque in Cordoba, a desecration. I’ve seen it for myself! Doesn’t that prove he’s a Christian?’

  ‘Oh, for the love of Allah.’

  But the mob began to growl again. Ludicrous the root cause might be, but the situation was dangerous.

  Ibrahim nodded to Abdul. ‘Captain. Take this man.’

  Abdul muttered orders. Two of the troops went onto the bridge to seize the ‘spy’, who did not resist when they took his arms. The rest lined up briskly alongside Ibrahim, forming a barrier between the mob and their prey. They kept their swords in their scabbards, however.

  Ibrahim raised his arms again. ‘You can see we have taken this man. If he is a spy, we will soon discover the truth and will do something about it. So you don’t need to pursue him any further. Go to your homes - go to your prayers. But you with the torches,’ he said with a note of command, ‘douse them in the river first. The city is too crowded to risk a fire.’

  He turned away without waiting to see if they complied. But he murmured to Abdul, ‘Make sure they obey.’ He turned to the captive. ‘And you,’ he said, ‘are in my charge.’ He handed him back his bit of parchment with the fish-ship designs.

  The man took it. ‘Thank you.’

  Although his voice was gruff, Ibrahim thought he recognised his accent. He stepped forward and, carefully, not wishing to exacerbate any injuries, he lifted back the man’s hood. His hair was bright blond.

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Hello, Ibrahim.’ The English scholar grinned, then winced as he cracked his bruised lips.