Navigator tt-3

by Stephen Baxter

  For four nights the bombardment continued, and for four days the Moors attacked. James didn't sleep for a single hour. It was a time of utter misery, for besieged and besiegers. In the Christian camp, the supply lines to Cordoba were fragile, and all there was to eat was a disgusting mixture of flour in pork fat.

  Relief came when the last of Ronda's towers was demolished, and the walls crumbled. James stood beside the silent bombards, watching the end game of the siege as the caballeros swarmed into the city, and the screams began.

  XII

  A week after the Moors' capitulation, James and Grace were able to enter Ronda.

  Walking in from the Christian army camp they passed a complex of buildings, arched roofs and domes, sheltering in the lee of the smashed city walls. It turned out to be a bathhouse; a marshy, steamy stink lingered in the air around it. The baths were working; on a squat tower the donkey patiently turned its wheel, watched by a Moorish boy with a switch, drawing up river-water to be fed via a slender aqueduct into the baths. Today the men who filed through its rooms were Christian soldiers, but the women who went with them were all Moorish. James wondered how many of them had a choice.

  James and Grace made their way over the bridge across the gorge. The bridge was battered, but it had survived the bombardment. The gorge's walls loomed above them, and James peered up curiously. The limestone was cracked vertically and horizontally, heaped up in tremendous blocks as big as houses.

  They clambered up steep cobbled paths into the city itself. Squeezed onto its table-top of rock and hemmed in by its walls, Ronda was cramped and crammed. The bombards' shot had created great splashes of shattered stone, as if immense raindrops had fallen from the sky. There was a prevailing stink of rot and raw sewage, even a week after the water supply had been restored. Soldiers worked, picking through the rubble, searching for bodies, pocketing anything worth stealing. No Moors were about. The soldiers said that everybody was either dead, fled or hiding.

  With Grace leading the way they cut through the centre of the town, heading for the cliffs on the north-western side. The warren of streets was studded with fine houses, mosques and bazaars.

  They came at last to the western boundary of the city, where the town simply came to an abrupt end, for the plateau on which it had been built fell away in columnar limestone cliffs. James looked down over a flood plain, a land of farms and orchards through which a river snaked lazily. It was all so far below him it was like staring down at a vast map. But much of the land was brown or black, the crops and trees burned out, and sluggish threads of smoke rose to pollute the heavy air.

  And as he reached the very edge of the cliff James stepped into an updraught of warm air, blowing strongly from the ground below. Down there in the valley a breeze was blowing, but when it reached the vertical cliff face the moving air, with nowhere else to go, washed upwards in an unending invisible stream to ruffle the cloak of a curious English friar. For a heartbeat he was able to lose himself in simple wonder at this unexpected physical phenomenon, a fragment of the rich beauty of God's creation.

  Then Grace plucked at his arm. 'Look,' she said. 'Haven't you heard the cheering? There she is…'

  Reluctantly he turned, and immersed himself once more in the affairs of men.

  A procession was approaching, advancing along the broad road that lined the cliff: gilded people, merchants and courtiers, senior military men dressed up like peacocks, a splash of Christian colour in this conquered Moorish town. Many of them had crusaders' crosses exquisitely stitched to their shoulders or breasts. There were some Moors in the group, grandly dressed themselves with their jewelled turbans glinting: the rich and powerful under the old regime, he supposed, now hoping to keep their wealth and influence under the town's change of ownership.

  At the head of the procession, walking slowly, was a black knot of prelates, somehow sinister in their darkness. And at the heart of this group, shining in a gown of bright colourful silks, was a tall, imposing woman, her features strong, her eyes chips of aquamarine. Her chestnut brown hair was tied back under a small, delicate turban, for when she entered a conquered town she had a custom of dressing respectfully, with a nod to the Moorish style.

  It was the Queen, of course, Isabel of Castile. As she passed her soldiers cheered.

  'Magnificent, isn't she?'

  Diego Ferron had joined them. The Dominican friar, tall and wire-thin, wore a robe so black it seemed to suck the daylight out of the air.

  With him was a Moor, a portly man of about fifty with an expressionless, weather-beaten face. He carried a sheaf of documents under one arm, and he waited, eyes empty, at Ferron's side.

  Grace took Ferron's hand and kissed it. 'My good friar. You found me, I'm so glad.'

  Ferron nodded. He glanced at James and made a curt sign of the cross to him with two upraised fingers. 'And I'm glad you are here at this moment of triumph, madam. Even now King Fernando is composing his letter of jubilation to the Pope, I'm told. Oh, I should introduce my mudejar.'

  The Moor smiled. 'I am Abdul Ibn Ibrahim. By profession I am an astronomer. Today I serve the friar.' He said this without apparent bitterness.

  Ferron said, 'Actually he is attached to the staff of the emir in Granada. The emir has sent a delegation to Ronda to witness the enactment of the treaty of capitulation. We do try to be civilised about these things. And so I am shadowed by this mudejar. Well, he is useful; his Latin is quite good.'

  James introduced himself. 'And this is the lady Grace Bigod, of Buxton – we are from England.'

  The Moor's eyes glinted. 'I know who you are.'

  It was a remark that puzzled James. But Abdul said no more.

  Ferron said, 'Ah, the Queen is nearing us…'

  They applauded as Isabel with her retinue continued her progress down the road.

  Ferron watched admiringly. 'I've met her several times. A remarkable mix of courage, piety, and sheer glamour! In her way, you know, she is as valuable to the cause of Christendom as ten thousand knights, for the men love her in a way they will never love Fernando, though they admire his cunning and leadership. And she is competent too. Since the fall of Ronda she has already rededicated the main mosque, and ordered cart-loads of sacred books and crosses to be shipped in from Cordoba and Seville, along with good Christian settlers to occupy the abandoned properties. Thus she has completed the city's conquest by her cleansing.'

  James asked pointedly, 'And the Jews and conversos? Are they to be cleansed too?'

  Ferron smiled thinly at him. 'Torquemada is here himself.' Torquemada was now the Grand Inquisitor for all of Spain. 'Even with Brother Torquemada's famed efficiency, the courts have yet to process more than a handful of cases. But we are making progress.'

  James's soul turned at this brusque summary. Since he had last visited Spain he had found out more about Ferron, who, as it turned out, was from a converso family himself – and Grace, of course, likely had her veins polluted by Saracen blood. Was this why they were so enthusiastic about the Inquisition's dreadful cleansing? For no matter how hard they scrubbed, they could not remove the impurities from their own bodies.

  Ferron went on, 'In the meantime, lady, we have business to discuss. I told you the Inquisition has ears and eyes everywhere. We are almost as ubiquitous as God Himself, our admirers say – and our enemies. I believe we may have found your Dove. Come, we must talk.' He offered his arm, and they walked off, without looking back to see if James and Abdul followed.

  XIII

  Friar Ferron escorted them to the palace of the Moorish governor of Ronda, called the Mondragon, which had been given over to officers of the Inquisition. The palace was only a short walk along the road that followed the cliff top. They walked through light-filled rooms to a colonnaded courtyard, and then passed on through a horseshoe arch into a small garden that overlooked the cliff itself, with a remarkable view of the flood plain below.

  The mudejar Abdul brought out a tray of tea.

  Grace glanced at Abdul
. 'Are you sure it's safe to talk of these matters in front of him?'

  'The mudejar? Of course. He is an ambassador to one defeated Moorish city from another which soon will be defeated. What harm can he do? We will speak freely, and forget he even exists.'

  Grace leaned forward eagerly. 'Tell me of this Dove, then.'

  Ferron said, 'I cast a net for men of his sort, and have caught what looks like a promising fish. He came to our attention – I mean the Inquisition's – because he intends to travel to Cordoba, to the monarchs' court, where he hopes to present his case.'

  'A case to do what?'

  Ferron smiled. 'To sail the Ocean Sea. To go west, if he can.'

  'Then such a man exists,' Grace breathed.

  'Oh, yes. He was born in Genoa, this man, the son of a clothier. He is now thirty-four years old. It seems he was educated in a school run by the clothiers' guild. But his learning is poor,' he said dismissively. 'He was restless, as many of that Italian breed are. He ran off to sea; he served on ships from his youth. He has sailed to Chios in the Aegean, and as far as Iceland in the Ocean Sea; he has visited Ireland, England, Flanders, and sailed down the African coast. He became a competent navigator, mapmaker and ship's master, it seems. He made his money from his petty bits of commerce, as men of his kind do.

  'But his fortunes changed, this poor Dove's, when he made a good marriage. He wed into a noble Portuguese family called Perestrelo. And this is where the dream was born. For his father-in-law, who died before the Dove married his daughter, served as a captain during the colonisation of Madeira, led by Henry the Navigator. The Perestrelos were given some land on the island of Porto Santo, off Madeira. Here it was that our Dove settled with his wife, and he began to go through his dead father-in-law's maps and accounts of his explorations. He learned first hand how a new land may be made to turn a profit for its discoverer, and the nation that sponsors him.

  'And his eyes were drawn west. Porto Santo, I am told, is a haven for those who sail out into the fringe of the Ocean Sea in their little ships, explorers hunting down the African coast, slavers seeking a supply base. And many of them bring back tales of marvellous lands which lie to the west, always just out of sight…'

  Out of all these fragments, in the head of the clothier's son, a most remarkable dream was born.

  Ferron said, 'Perhaps if you sail west and keep on sailing, it would be more than new lands, new Madeiras, that you would find. For if the world is round, then perhaps you could sail around it. Perhaps you would end up coming around the curve of the earth and arrive in the east…'

  James was astounded. He was educated; he knew his geography, and the shape of the world. But this was a category of journey that had never occurred to him before. 'Can it be possible?'

  'Oh, yes,' Ferron said. 'Why, it was a dream of Pedro, elder brother of Henry the Navigator, half a century ago. And there are strong commercial reasons to try it. Some say that if the Muslims block the way to the east – well, then, on a round world, perhaps a route can be found to the far east, by sailing west.'

  'And that is the Dove's dream,' Grace said.

  Ferron sneered. 'You can just see this little man, the jumped-up Genoan, his poorly educated mind struggling to make sense of the tavern legends he so credulously devours. But he is devout, I'll give him that. It's not just trade he's after. He's said to have concocted a scheme to contact the Mongol Khan, if he still reigns, and to persuade him to join an attack on the Islamic states from the east. Our clothier's son dreams of liberating Jerusalem!'

  'All right,' Grace said. 'But so what? You say men have had this sort of dream before. What makes this "Dove" different?'

  Ferron said, 'For one thing, the plausibility of his case. The seed of his dream may have been travellers' tales, but he has been trying, in his dogged, uneducated way, to assemble a rational case, based on the testimony of the ancients and other arcana. Second, he has added a gloss of a divine mission, which will appeal to our monarchs. You could even see it as fitting in with the greater project of the Hidden One to rule the whole world; after all you must discover a land before you can conquer it. Third, there is his sheer determination. Anybody who has met him says this of him. He is obsessed where those who went before him were not, and he may succeed in his dream of going west merely because of that.'

  'Or perhaps,' James said, 'he just wants to get out from under the shadow of his father-in-law. That would be human.'

  'Well, if he wants to impress his wife he's sadly too late,' Ferron said. 'She died last year, leaving our Dove with a chick, a son. Perhaps that death released our dreamer from the damp prison of Porto Santo. Within months he had travelled to Lisbon and petitioned the Portuguese court to fund his westward expedition. In return he wanted a share of the profits, a hereditary nobility and to be named governor of any lands he found.'

  Grace smiled. 'This little man thinks big.'

  'You can't blame him for that. Joao turned him down. He left Portugal – although that may not be unconnected to the fact that his wife's family were implicated in a murky little plot to assassinate the King. And so, early this year, our Dove came to Spain. He's here now, in a little port called Palos. And as I say we've learned that he intends to come to Cordoba to present his case to the monarchs.'

  Grace nodded. 'And you do believe he is the figure predicted in Eadgyth's Testament?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  James said, 'His father was a clothier, you said, friar. What kind of clothier?'

  'A weaver. This man is the son of a weaver. Just as your prophecy says.'

  And James remembered the line: the spider's spawn. The weaver of a web.

  Abdul asked, 'And if I may, what is his name?'

  'His Italian mother called him Cristoforo, his Portuguese wife Cristovao. In his workaday commercial Latin he is Christophorus. We in Spain must, I suppose, call him Cristobal.'

  'Christophorus. Christo ferens,' said Grace slowly. 'The Christ-bearer. And the surname?'

  Ferron smiled, anticipating her reaction. 'He will be called Colon here – Colombo in Genoa and Portugal – Columbus in Latin.'

  Grace clapped her hands, delighted as a child. 'Columbus-the Dove! Can it really be as simple as that? The spider-spawn, the Christ-bearer, the Dove – Christopher Columbus!'

  But James, shocked, thought there was nothing simple about a four-hundred-year-old prophecy coming true.

  Ferron said, 'Well, it seems that all hinges on this man. Spain is drained by war; the monarchs won't buy everything that is presented to them. If this man is funded to go west, they will not spend on your engines – as I am coming to believe they must, if the world's final war is to be won. What we must do, then, is recruit this Dove, this Colon, to our cause. We must make him forget the western Ocean. We must make him long for the engines, and the glorious war to come.'

  '"And the Dove will fly east",' James breathed.

  The mudejar Abdul was staring intently at Ferron, absorbing every word.

  XIV

  Abdul Ibn Ibrahim, a big, heavy-set man, his sailor's face leathery and creased, would have looked out of place in London, Harry thought, even if it hadn't been for the turban on his head. He had come to England to tell Harry and Geoffrey what he had learned of this man, this putative Dove, Cristobal Colon.

  Colon had joined the court of the Spanish monarchs at Cordoba. 'The monarchs have turned the capital of the caliphate, a city of scholarship, into an armed camp, the headquarters of their war on the Moors,' Abdul said bleakly. 'It is full of weapons shops, everywhere soldiers drink and whore, and in the shadow of the mosque drums beat, horses parade and the armies of the nobles stage mock battles…'

  When he had first landed at the small port called Palos, seeking somewhere safe for his child to stay, Colon had settled on a Franciscan priory called La Rabida, outside the town. It was a lucky stop, for he quickly found allies in the priory's father superior, Juan Perez, and in a visiting brother called Antonio de Marchena. These two had become stout supporters
. And it was a letter from de Marchena of Palos that had served as an introduction to the Queen's confessor.

  So Colon got his chance to present his petition to the monarchs' council. But this was quickly rejected.

  'He was turned down for his sheer implausibility,' said Abdul. 'This Colon is not a scholar, and when he gets into debates about the shape of the world with sea captains and geographers, it shows.'

  But Colon showed the qualities of iron determination of which the Testament hinted, 'heart stout, mind clear'. He found a way to make a direct appeal to the monarchs.

  'And he immediately snagged the attention of Queen Isabel,' Abdul said. 'After all she has Portuguese ancestry. Colon's father-in-law went exploring in the Ocean Sea with Prince Henry, the Queen's own great-uncle. I think her blood was stirred at the thought of doing some exploring of her own.' He raised an eyebrow. 'He is a handsome man too, striking. And a lusty one. I'll say no more than that!

  'The monarchs were interested, despite the implausibility of his case. I think it was Colon's wild promises of gold from Cathay that most attracted them. The monarchs need funds to fight their war against Islam.'

  Geoffrey asked, 'Then they might support his case?'

  'They have appointed a junta, a commission of geographers and navigators and sea captains, under the leadership of the Queen's confessor, to investigate his proposition.'

  To Harry, all this was the stuff of a personal nightmare. He felt this figure, Colon, was emerging from a mist of chaos, from the Testament's obscure old language, from the ramblings of his dying ale-soaked father, into the cold light of actuality.

  Geoffrey sensed his unease. 'Have courage, Harry.'

  Harry tried to focus on the practical. 'Is there any sense in this talk of crossing the Ocean Sea in the first place, and of vast unknown empires? If not, we can dismiss it all as fancy.'