Navigator

by Stephen Baxter

  Guards stood by, one holding a cloth and a bit of metal, the other a bucket of water.

  Ferron leaned over Agnes. ‘Can you hear me, Agnes? God doesn’t want to see you suffer. If you choose to confess, after it begins, then all you have to do is look at me, as you are now. Do you understand? Is there anything you wish to say to me now?’

  ‘He called me his Agnes,’ she whispered. ‘His precious Agnes. I was no Agnes when he was done with me...’

  Geoffrey’s heart broke a little more.

  Ferron, baffled, irritated, turned away. ‘Do it,’ he snapped to the brothers.

  The one with the cloth stepped up. With casual, brutal strength he grabbed Agnes’s cheeks, forced her jaws open and pushed his metal frame through her lips. It was like a funnel, Geoffrey saw, that kept the mouth wide open. Now the brother laid the centre of his cloth over the funnel and stepped back.

  Agnes was still, save for her eyes, which flickered back and forth over distorted cheeks.

  The other brother stepped up with his bucket of water. With care, he poured a bit of water onto the cloth. The water’s weight forced the cloth into Agnes’s mouth. The brother kept pouring, and Geoffrey saw that the cloth was drawn deeper into Agnes’s throat. At last she swallowed, convulsively, and she coughed and choked, but she could not get the cloth out of her throat. Still the brother poured, and again she gagged, each swallow drawing the cloth deeper down her throat. Soon Geoffrey saw that she was close to panic, her battered body fighting back, immersed in a fear of drowning, of suffocating.

  Ferron leaned over her. ‘All you have to do is look at me,’ he murmured. ‘Just look at me and I’ll tell them to stop.’

  But, though she jerked and thrashed her head against its metal bond, she kept her eyes closed. Ferron nodded for the brothers to continue.

  As the brothers poured more water into her, bucket after bucket, and more of the cloth was drawn into her throat and belly, and her stomach began to bloat, a grotesque swelling under her gaunt ribs.

  Geoffrey, in torment himself, understood the logic. Ferron, as a man of God, wasn’t supposed to draw blood. And nor was he supposed to allow his victims to die. This punishment with water, which would leave no mark, was a method devised with stunning ingenuity to fit this contradictory logic perfectly. It was even cheap, for the cloth and metal frame could be used again.

  A full hour after it had begun, still Agnes would not speak. So Ferron nodded to the brothers, who lifted up the ladder, with the girl’s broken body still fixed to it, and turned it so her feet were higher than her head. As her bloated belly pressed on her heart and lungs, through her crammed throat Agnes let out an animal roar of pain and terror.

  Geoffrey could stand it no more. He lunged at Ferron. ‘You monster, Ferron! How can you imagine that this serves the purposes of Christ? ...’ But a brother grabbed him, pinning his arms.

  XXII

  On the morning of the execution of Agnes Wooler, Geoffrey Cotesford came early to the place of burning. It was another grim February day.

  Eight years after the first auto-da-fé, the burning place outside the walls of Seville had come to be known as the quemadero. A platform had been set down here, with blunt stone pillars, strong and reusable. On the four sides of the platform statues of prophets stood, glaring sternly at those brought here. This morning, wood was piled up around each of the pillars.

  From this place hundreds of souls had already been despatched, wisping to heaven or hell like the greasy smoke from their owners’ crisping bodies.

  As the morning brightened, others gathered for the show, men, women, even some children. Geoffrey had expected that. But the mood among these onlookers was not as he had anticipated. They seemed dull, almost numbed. Perhaps the Inquisition had dug too deep into the vitals of the nation. You came to watch, but not with relish, for you could not be sure you were safe yourself.

  At last the procession reached the quemadero. The crowd murmured and shuffled, and some crossed themselves. Led by Ferron and other inquisitors and flanked by soldiers of the Holy Brotherhood, there were perhaps twenty of the condemned. All carried lit candles. The men walked barefoot, and their feet were white from the cold. But the women were stripped naked, and though their bodies were shrivelled from their captivity they had to suffer taunts from the crowd.

  It was this type of detail, this repulsive lasciviousness at a place of death, that convinced Geoffrey that whatever motivated the Inquisition it was nothing to do with God. If Christ were here, He would surely have stepped forward to protect these suffering ones, even if it meant He had to die in their place. But Christ was not here. Only Geoffrey Cotesford, weak, cold, ashamed.

  There among the huddle of women was Agnes. Geoffrey was surprised she could walk at all. She carried her candle in one hand, for her other arm hung limp. The shoulder looked dislocated; the pain of it, weeks after her first punishment, must have been agonising.

  He couldn’t help but call, ‘Agnes!’

  She looked around dimly. Her eyes seemed unfocused.

  He didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll pray for you. I can’t help you—’

  ‘I can, though.’

  The voice in his ear was startling. It was Abdul Ibn Ibrahim, and he was grinning. He held a bundle of documents.

  ‘Abdul? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Being my deceitful, conniving, conspiratorial self.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The Inquisition,’ he said, ‘is the logic of our times - of your times, of this age of Christendom. The Reconquest and all your crusading has militarised Christianity, which was once a faith of love. Frightened and ignorant, terrified by the march of infidels, stirred up by holy fools and greedy monarchs, you fall willingly into the thrall of these perverted prelates. Well, there’s nothing I can do about the flaws in Christian souls. But perhaps I can save one helpless woman. Come.’ And he strode forward, boldly approaching Ferron.

  Geoffrey, confused, could only follow.

  Abdul stood right in front of Ferron, forcing the whole procession to stop. The situation couldn’t have been more public, with the inquisitors, the brothers, the crowd, even the condemned looking on.

  Ferron glared at Abdul and asked him why he was here.

  ‘It’s a matter of grave concern,’ Abdul said. He tapped his sheaf of documents. ‘I must discuss it with you.’

  ‘What, here? Now?’

  ‘There is no time to delay. Please, brother. It is a matter of death, or life.’

  ‘Whose life? Whose death?’

  ‘Yours,’ said Abdul.

  Ferron stared. Then he allowed Abdul to draw him aside, but he waved the procession forward. As the brothers made the condemned kneel before the posts, he snapped, ‘Make it quick, mudejar.’

  Abdul indicated the sheaf of papers. ‘A witness has come forward. To testify against you, brother. He has the testimonies of others to back him up.’

  Ferron stiffened. ‘And what is his allegation?’

  For answer, Abdul held out his hand. It contained a round sliver of bread, a communion wafer. ‘This was found in your office.’

  And Geoffrey immediately understood.

  At the heart of the crimes routinely alleged of conversos, supposedly lapsing from Christianity to Judaism, was the theft of consecrated wafers. It was easy; when fed it by a priest you could just slip a wafer under your tongue and keep it there, unconsumed. But, once consecrated in the Holy Mass, its substance had been transformed into the flesh of Christ, and so the wafer held potent magic. For example, some years back there had been a rumour of a conspiracy to spike the water supply of Seville with communion wafers and the mashed-up heart of a Christian boy, a blasphemous toxin that would drive Christians insane.

  There was fear in Ferron’s eyes; it was well known he was of converso blood himself, and this was a silent accusation of a very grave crime. ‘Who gave you this?’

  ‘Well, you aren’t entitled to know t
hat,’ Abdul said. ‘Strictly speaking, by the rules of your Inquisition, I shouldn’t be showing you this evidence at all, for you don’t have the right to see it. And of course you are presumed guilty once an allegation is made. Have I got that right?’

  ‘It’s a lie. An evil, devil-spawned, malicious lie.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Abdul heartily. ‘Then the processes of the Inquisition will have no difficulty establishing exactly that fact. But perhaps it would be better to save everybody the trouble of putting you to the question.’

  ‘What is it you want, mudejar?’

  ‘Agnes Wooler.’

  Ferron stared at him, and then looked at Geoffrey. ‘I nearly broke this girl seeking answers about her conspiracy. But those answers were staring me in the face, all the time. If I ever see you again—’

  Abdul grinned, and he held up his fist, enclosing the host. ‘Threats are so ugly.’

  Ferron turned away. He walked onto the quemadero, grabbed Agnes by her good arm, and marched her away from her stake. Another inquisitor flapped after him, muttering about irregularities, but Ferron waved him away.

  He brought Agnes to Abdul and Geoffrey. She looked grotesque, her feet and hands blue with the cold, her nipples hard as pink pebbles. Her bruised face was empty.

  Abdul dropped the communion wafer into Ferron’s hand. In return Ferron released the girl. She stumbled, and Geoffrey took her thin, shivering form in his arms.

  Ferron glared at Abdul and Geoffrey. ‘This isn’t over.’ He turned away.

  Geoffrey nodded. ‘So the battle for the future is joined.’

  ‘But for now,’ Abdul said, ‘we must concentrate on the needs of the present.’ He took off his thick Moorish cloak and wrapped it around Agnes’s bare shoulders.

  XXIII

  AD 1491

  James loved to climb into the hot, silent air over Granada, to escape the squabbles of mankind and the conundrums of morality, to ascend into the realm of birds, and clouds, and stars, and God. The clean, harsh breeze of Spain was even more conducive to supporting his flight than the soggy air over England’s green hills. And in long hours of practice he had learned to coax his machine ever higher into the sky, even after the elastic energy of its launching crossbow was exhausted. The trick was to seek out rising masses of warm air, invisible fountains in an atmosphere like an ocean, that would lift him up like a leaf on a breeze.

  And, that bright October day, he had never seen anything quite as extraordinary as Granada, the last Moorish kingdom, and the Christian military city drawn up before it.

  The Alhambra was like a vast ship stranded in the middle of the land, like the Ark fallen on Ararat. Somewhere in that fortress poor Boabdil was holed up, perhaps the last emir al-Andalus would ever know. The city of Granada was a splash of grey around the Alhambra itself, studded with the glittering gold of mosque roofs. The air over the city was brown with smoke this morning, for Granada was swollen with refugees. And he could make out a thin black line of caravans and mule trains heading south, Muslims fleeing further towards the Strait and the welcoming lands of Africa.

  As he wheeled away from the fortress James flew over Santa Fé - ‘Holy Faith’, the Christian city-camp set out on the plain before Granada. Within a circle of walls and ditches it was a crucifix of buildings, with a glittering pile of weapons where the crucifix’s upright and crosspiece intersected. Santa Fé looked solid, centuries old, and yet it had been thrown up virtually overnight when the monarchs had brought their armies to within sight of the Alhambra. The speed of the construction had bewildered the Muslim defenders, but it was another of Fernando’s ruses; the ‘city’ was more wood frame and cloth than stone.

  So at last the war had come to Granada itself. It was now two years since the final defeat for El Zagal, the Valiant, brother of the dead emir Muley Hacen. Now there was only Boabdil, an emir so hapless that the Christians called him El Chico, the little one, and even he called himself the Unfortunate. Defeated and imprisoned more than once, he had already agreed terms of a final surrender. But his own people were revolted by the way he had rejoiced at his uncle’s fall, and Boabdil had been forced to make a show of resistance. So Granada was besieged, with sixty thousand caballeros assembling at Santa Fé.

  And in that long summer of siege and negotiation and simmering tension, of almost gladiatorial combat between Christian and Muslim champions, Cristobal Colon had once more been summoned to court. There would be yet another hearing of his case, here in Santa Fé, and one more chance for Grace Bigod and Diego Ferron to make their counter-case. Three years after the disaster of the burning-out of the manufactory of the Engines of God, Grace and Ferron still hoped that Colon, who clearly believed himself a man of destiny, could be seduced into leading a new army east in a final war against Islam.

  And here was James, flying high in the air, ready to play his part. James’s flying machine had been unharmed by the sabotage of the manufactory. So the plan was that as the latest debate over Colon’s destiny reached its turning-point, the minds and souls of the court would be uplifted by the vision of a man-machine in the sky, with the cross of Christ painted bright red on its gossamer wings, suspended in the air like an image of the returned Virgin Mary, who in the last days would be seen in the sky with the moon at her feet.

  James had become increasingly uneasy about the ardour of Grace and Ferron. He continued to find it difficult to reconcile a war against the Muslims with his own personal relationship with Christ, the prince of peace. They, however, both longed for the final cleansing war against Islam, to be waged with Grace’s machines - and Ferron, burning with an Inquisitor’s cruel moral certainty, really seemed to have come to believe in the approach of the end days.

  But James banished his doubts and fears by pouring his energy and imagination into mastering his man-bird. He couldn’t believe that the sheer beauty of the flying machine could be sinful, no matter for what purpose men intended to use it.

  So he flew high over Santa Fé, making a circle over that shining heap of weapons. He saw a few faces turned up towards him, pale dots lifted to the sky. He was so high they would surely believe him an eagle or a buzzard, for you didn’t expect to see men suspended in the air. The shock would be tremendous when James came dipping down out of the sky and all could see it was a man, not a bird, suspended by the ingenuity of the human mind, and that the cross of Christ burned on his wings. He grinned at the thought of it, and made a mental note to admit his sin of pride to his confessor.

  Then he tugged at the cables that controlled his wings and ducked away, soaring over the Alhambra and heading for his landing site.

  XXIV

  On the ground, at the heart of Santa Fé, Harry Wooler peered up at the hovering bird - if it was a bird. He hadn’t forgotten what he had seen over Derbyshire, on that dramatic day of destruction three years ago. He said to Geoffrey, ‘If he drops any of those eggs of fire this city of wood and cloth will burn like a hundred-year-old timber pile.’

  Geoffrey Cotesford peered up, uninterested. ‘One toy machine in the air won’t make much difference. The boy flying that thing is a Franciscan, you know. James of Buxton, a bright lad according to his abbot. Now his head has been turned by these gadgets, by all this talk of war. As I’ve researched these prophecies I’ve discovered they have a peculiarly corrupting effect on scholars and holy men who should know better. A priest called Sihtric, who lived through the Conquest. A scholar from Oxford called Peter, who was burned to death during the siege of Seville. And now this James. A waste of good brains, a steady seducing of souls away from God’s true purpose...’

  They were walking down a broad street of trampled earth. This was a military camp, and in the low buildings around them the soldiers did what soldiers always did: ate, slept, wrestled, picked their feet, and complained about the food. There was a surprising number of Muslims here, talking to Christian officers in tight, tense groups. Even while the siege of Granada continued, Boabdil’s court was in negotiation wi
th the Christian monarchs about the terms of his almost inevitable capitulation.