Navigator

by Baxter, Stephen

  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 that,’ 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 with the Christian monarchs about the terms of his almost inevitable capitulation.

  And Geoffrey spoke of Cristobal Colon.

  ‘Since the destruction of the manufactory, that day when Bartolomeo Colon was driven away from England with the stink of smoke in his nostrils, we have been winning the argument. Now we are approaching the culmination of years of work, Harry. Cristobal Colon has a thorough and well-worked-out case for his journey to the west.’

  Harry said gloomily, ‘But Colon has plenty of enemies at court, who think he’s an obsessive buffoon, and sometimes it’s hard not to agree with them. And after all these years he’s growing sick of Spain. He thinks he’s being strung along. It’s said he’s planning to approach the King of France next.’

  ‘Have faith, Harry,’ Geoffrey said with good humour. ‘Have patience! It has been a long haul, but just a little further. This chap de Santangel, who Colon is meeting today, is more businesslike than most courtiers.’ A wealthy Aragonese, Luis de Santangel’s family had served Fernando’s ancestors for centuries as merchants and lawyers. Now de Santangel was treasurer of the Holy Brotherhood, the monarchs’ religious police. Geoffrey said, ‘De Santangel is a man of money, not of God. He will see Colon’s plan as a good business proposition, and I am confident he will back our case. You’d get on with him, Harry.’ He grinned. ‘Two men of business together, carving up the future! I can see it now.’

  Harry wasn’t in the mood to be teased. ‘But Grace Bigod is here at the court. Hovering around that monster Ferron, damn his cold heart. Ferron longs for war, you know, and so does she. I think they’ve both gone mad.’

  Geoffrey shrugged. ‘Grace must continue. She has invested her whole life in this project, even passing up her chance of children and grandchildren. But whatever Grace and Ferron do or say, it is a critical time.

  ‘The monarchs’ heads are full of fantasies. Isabel dreams of exploration. And on the other hand Fernando really believes, I think, that he is the Hidden One, the new King David who will return the Ark of the Covenant to the City of David, thus heralding the Second Coming of Christ, and the kingdom of God upon the earth. And so on! Thus the monarchs are predisposed to be swayed either way - west with Colon to find a new world, or east with the Engines of God to continue the logic of their Reconquest.

  ‘This is the time. The war against the Muslims is almost won. Soon, for a brief moment, the souls of the monarchs will be fluid, their purposes fulfilled, their dreams unlocked. And in this moment the future must be fixed. It is now or never for Colon, and the rest of us - perhaps the whole world.’

  Harry felt he had already burned up too many years of his working life on this extraordinary project. ‘Let’s hope that we really are reaching the end of this long game, Geoffrey, one way or another.’

  The friar nodded. ‘Yes. But, remember, Harry, the true game of the future is only about to begin.’

  And at that moment Harry saw Abdul Ibn Ibrahim walking towards them. He was carrying a small wooden box.

  Geoffrey rushed to him and clasped his arms. ‘Abdul! I didn’t know you were here. I haven’t seen you since that terrible day in Seville. What became of you?’

  Abdul’s face was stony. ‘I was forced to leave Seville, of course. I returned to Granada, where I went back to the emir’s court. Now I find myself working on the finer points of our capitulation treaty.’

  Harry was as glad to see Abdul as Geoffrey was. But he could see how grim his mood was. ‘What’s wrong, Abdul? You know I’ll always be grateful to you for having saved Agnes from Ferron.’

  Abdul sighed. ‘But it is Ferron who has sent me here today.’

  ‘Ferron did?’

  ‘He sought me out. And he gave me this, to present to you.’ He handed Harry the box.

  Harry took it. It was finely made of cedarwood, an expensive gift.

  Abdul said, ‘Ferron’s message is this. You must not support your champion any more, Harry. When Colon presents his case you must speak out against the arguments you have helped him develop. Otherwise you must stay as silent as your sister.’

  Harry was confused, but frightened. ‘My sister’s safe in England. And she’s never been silent.’

  Abdul said nothing.

  Geoffrey touched Harry’s shoulder. ‘Open the box, Harry.’

  The lid lifted easily, on oiled hinges. Inside was a glass vial, which contained a slab of meat, pickled in some preserving liquid. It took Harry long heartbeats to recognise what it was, from the bloody stump, the shape of the tip. It was a human tongue, severed at the root. In the lid of the box a note was tucked. Harry took this and unfolded it, and read: ‘AGNES WOOLER.’

  ‘He took her back,’ Geoffrey raged. ‘He took her back!’

  XXV

  In the monarchs’ audience chamber expensive tapestries hung from the walls, showing such scenes as the Virgin Mary hovering, ethereal, over crusaders who stormed the walls of Jerusalem. And the wooden floor was covered with rich Persian carpets, a gift from Boabdil in Granada to his effective masters. This chamber, at the heart of Santa Fé, was grander than any room Harry had ever been in, even if it was just a mock-up of wood and waxed cloth. And it was full of courtiers. They reminded Harry of exotic birds, preening and gossiping, curious about the latest trial of a favourite of the Queen.

  They were curious because here, on benches before a throne-like chair, opposing factions prepared to debate once again the matter of Cristobal Colon.

  The throne was occupied today by Luis de Santangel. A portly, sensible-looking man of perhaps forty, dressed expensively, he looked what he was: heavy with money, and an influence at the court. Even if he approved Colon’s proposal it would not be the final verdict, which as always lay with the monarchs. But his word carried a good deal of weight.

  Harry, Geoffrey Cotesford and Abdul Ibrahim were here under the sponsorship of Antonio de Marchena, the friar from the monastery of La Rabida at Palos who had supported Colon’s dream of sailing the Ocean Se
a since he had first come to Spain.

  Opposing them was Hernando de Talavera, once Isabel’s confessor and still the court’s principal theologian, and his party of sea captains, geographers and astronomers, and a few clerics. While de Marchena had always supported Colon, Talavera had opposed his case just as steadfastly since he had first presented it six long years ago. Over the years, as Colon refused to give up and disappear, Talavera had grown steadily more exasperated, and was now quite determined Colon would never get his ships.

  And, sitting in the front row of courtiers, there was Diego Ferron, who campaigned for Colon to become, not an admiral of the Ocean Sea, but a general of the final war with Islam, leading forces equipped with Grace’s Engines of God. Ferron had Moorish attendants with him: a slim, dark woman wearing a jewelled veil, and a servant girl who sat silently at his feet, face covered by her veil, even her eyes invisible. It seemed strange to Harry that this man who was arguing for the violent destruction of Islam should have Muslim servants, but these were the last days of Granada, and Boabdil, cornered and compromised, was lavish in his gifts of people as well as objects to the court of the monarchs.

  Harry stared at Ferron, but he would not look back. After Agnes’s destruction of the engines there was only hatred between the two camps, he thought, a hatred that could surely only end with the destruction of one or other of them - and, perhaps, of Agnes.

  Now a shiver of excitement ran around the crowded room. Harry looked around.

  A man strode boldly into the room. He was dressed in a long black robe like a monk’s habit, and he carried a bundle of maps and books under his arm. He was tall, and his swept-back hair was almost pure white, with at the temples traces of a vanishing russet red. His brow was broad, and his imposing face was dominated by a strong nose; his skin was somewhat freckled, a sea-farer’s face, and his eyes were grey-green - the colour of the ocean, Harry thought. He looked like a Roman senator, a revenant from a grander age than this. Yet there was anxiety in his sea-green eyes as he fumbled to lay out his charts and books on a table before de Santangel. Some of the courtiers even laughed. And, Harry thought, looking at that shock of white hair, though he was only just forty years old he was already growing old in the pursuit of his single dream.