Coffee was a product of Africa but soon crossed the Red Sea into Arabia. Ibn-Tuwais, with whom I often talked the hours away, had been a friend of a learned man who told him of an ancient time when a ship a day had sailed from the Red Sea ports of Egypt such as Myos Hormus and Berenice, sailing to the faraway cities of India, Ceylon, and China. These vessels often brought cargoes of tea, and this, too, had become a favorite beverage. Unknown in Christian Europe, it had first been used for medicinal purposes, but was now drunk for pleasure.
Neither drink was known in Frankish lands, but seated in the coffeehouses, I drank of each at various times, twirling my mustache and listening with attention to that headier draught, the wine of the intellect, that sweet and bitter juice distilled from the vine of thought and the tree of man’s experience.
Averroës, one of the great intellects of Islam, was qadi of Córdoba at the time. Maimonides, a Jew and a great scholar, had lived there and visited from time to time, or so it was said.
The tea and coffee houses were alive with argument, and there were Persians from Jundi Shapur, Greeks from Alexandria, Syrians from Aleppo mingling with Arabs from Damascus and Baghdad.
In one of the coffeehouses I frequented, Abul Kasim Khalaf, known to the Franks as Albucasis, was an occasional visitor. Famous as a surgeon, he was even better known as a poet and wit. The botanist ibn-Beytar was his friend, and many an hour I sat, my back to them, but hungrily gathering every word. In this way my education progressed, but also I was learning more of the Arabic language. From time to time they mentioned books, and these I hastened to find for myself that I might learn from them. Into every aspect of learning I threw myself with all the hunger of the starved.
Each day I lingered in the bazaars, moving from place to place to talk to merchants from foreign lands, and each I asked for news of Kerbouchard.
Many knew nothing; others assured me he was dead, but still I could not accept it.
Of Redwan and Aziza I heard nothing, although there was much talk of politics.
Well-supplied with money from the selling of the galley, I purchased fine garments, becoming very much the elegant young man of fashion. I sat many an hour, usually engrossed in some manuscript or book purchased in the street of the booksellers.
And then one day I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
She had come to the coffeehouse with Averroës himself, he whose correct name was ibn-Rushd. They seated themselves opposite me one day when sunshine fell across the door, leaving all within shadowed and still. It was an hour when few were about, the place empty but for them and myself. There were low tables before us, and we sat cross-legged behind them on leather cushions.
A slave brought them tea and sweetmeats, a sweetmeat called natif. She sat so she faced me, and from time to time she lifted her long dark lashes and looked directly at me, as she could not avoid doing. When she turned to speak to Averroës I glimpsed her beautiful profile and the length of her lashes. She was divinely beautiful, but are there not many divinely beautiful women when one is young and the sap of life flows swiftly in the veins? Yet this one…she was superb!
“It is good to see you, Valaba,” Averroës said.
Valaba? Like her namesake of one hundred years earlier, Valaba had made her home a rendezvous for the brilliant, for the poets, philosophers, and students of science. It was a period of enormous achievement, one of the great eras in the history of science. Not since the Athens of Pericles had there been such intellectual excitement, and the home of Valaba, as well as those of several other such women, had become a focal point for the exchange of ideas.
“When I was in Sicily,” she was saying, “Prince William told me of Viking ships that had sailed to an island in the northern seas, and this must be Ultima Thule.”
“Ah, yes,” Averroës acknowledged, “a Greek named Phytheas is said to have sailed there.”
She was very beautiful, and he who would be her lover must not be laggard. Glancing across my cup, I said, “If you will permit? I have visited the place.”
Her dark eyes were cool. No doubt many young men had aspired to know her, and to know her better. Well, let them have aspirations. Where they aspired, I would achieve.
Averroës looked up with interest. “Ah? You are a man of the sea?”
“Briefly, and perhaps again. The land of which you speak is not the furthest land. There are lands beyond, and still others beyond those.”
“You have been to Thule?”
“Long ago, from the shores of Armorica. Our boats fish in seas beyond the ice land where the seas are thick with fog, and sometimes with floating ice, but teem with fish. When the fog is gone and the skies are clear, one can often see, further to the westward, another land.”
“And you were there, too?” In the tone of Valaba was a touch of sarcasm.
“I was there also. It is a land of rocky shores, great forests, and a shore that stretches away to both south and north.”
“The Vikings spoke of a green land,” Averroës said doubtfully.
“This is another, but of which my people have long known. The Norsemen went there from GreenLand and IceLand to get timbers to build their ships, or for masts. Sometimes they landed to dry their fish or to hunt.”
“This land has been explored?”
“Who would wish to? It is a land of dense forests and savage men who have nothing to trade but furs or skins. The men who sail there look only for fish.”
“You are not an Arab?”
“I am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a traveler and a student.”
Averroës smiled. “Are not we all? Travelers and students?” He sipped his tea. “What do you do in Córdoba?”
“I have come to learn, and having found no school, I learn from books.”
“You are a poet?” Valaba asked.
“I have not the gift.”
Averroës chuckled. “Need that stop you? How many have the gift? There may be a million people in Córdoba, and all of them write poetry, yet not more than three dozen have even a modest gift.”
They returned to their conversation, and I, to my reading, for I was beginning the great Canon of Avicenna, which was in many volumes and more than a million words on the practice of medicine.
When they left my eyes followed them, watching the slim and graceful Valaba. Had she guessed what was in my mind, she would have laughed at me. Which disturbed me none at all.
Who was I, a barbarian from the northern lands, to even know such a woman? I, a landless man, a wanderer, a casual student?
She was cool, aloof, beautiful, and wealthy. She was a young lady with the brains and judgment of men. Yet my time would come.
Ambition was strong within me. I wanted to see, to become, but, most of all, to understand. Much that here was taken for granted was new to me, and I found it best to tread lightly in all conversation unless I wished to make a fool of myself. Yet I was learning, and the ways of the city were becoming my ways.
The wider my knowledge became the more I realized my ignorance. It is only the ignorant who can be positive, only the ignorant who can become fanatics, for the more I learned the more I became aware that there are shadings and relationships in all things.
My Druid discipline had not only trained my memory but conditioned my mind to the quick grasp of ideas, of essential points. Most of what I read, I retained.
In knowledge lay not only power but freedom from fear, for generally speaking one only fears what one does not understand.
It was a time when all knowledge lay open to him who would seek it, and a physician was often an astronomer, a geographer, a philosopher, and a mathematician. There were several hundred volumes in the library of ibn-Tuwais. These books I read from and studied.
Here and there I began to make acquaintances. Mahmoud was such a one. A tall young man of twenty-four, vain of his pointed
beard and mustaches. He was much of a dandy, but keen of wit and a ready hand with a blade. We met by chance in the Garden of Abdallah near the Guadalquivir.
It was shadowed and cool. Great trees created islands of shadow on the stone flags, and there I often sat with a glass of golden Jerez at hand and a book before me.
A shadow fell upon my page, and glancing up, I saw Mahmoud for the first time. “Ah? A student and a drinker of wine? Have you no respect for the Koran?”
It was a time for caution, for under the reign of Yusuf there were fanatics in Córdoba. Yet the stranger’s eyes seemed friendly.
“If the Prophet had read Avicenna upon a hot day, he might have accepted a glass. Anyway,” I added slyly, “he had never tasted the wine of Jerez.”
He sat down. “I am Mahmoud, a student of the law, occasionally a drinker of wine.”
“And I am Kerbouchard.”
There in the shadow of a great tree we talked of what young men talk about when their world is filled with ideas and the excitement of learning. We talked of war and women, of ships, camels, weapons, and Avicenna, of religion and philosophy, of politics and buried treasure, but most of all we talked of Córdoba.
We ate figs, small cakes, and drank wine, talking the sun out of the sky and the moon into it. We talked of the faults of Caesar and the death of Alexander, and he spoke of Fez and Marrakesh and the great desert to the south of those cities.
It was the beginning of a friendship, my first in the land of the Moors.
Of course, there were John of Seville, whose name was often mentioned, and old ibn-Tuwais, whose name was not.
My gold disappeared, and I sold the sapphire. It bought leisure and time to study and roaming the streets at night with Mahmoud, and it bought much else.
Startling ideas appeared in a book newly come to Córdoba, a book written at the oasis of Merv by al-Khazini and called The Book of the Balance of Wisdom. It was an excellent account of the hydrostatics and mechanics of the time, but it also advanced the theory of gravity, and that air has weight.
We argued the subject furiously and were becoming quite angry when a girl passed by on a camel. We forgot gravity, and the weight of the air became as nothing.
Mahmoud leaped to his feet. “Did you see her? Did you see how she looked at me?”
“You?” His friend Haroun scoffed. “It was at Kerbouchard she looked! I have noticed this before. All the girls look at Kerbouchard!”
Mahmoud snorted. “That dog of an unbeliever? That stench in the nostrils of humanity? It was at me she looked!”
The camel had stopped in the hot, dusty street nearby. Four soldiers were escort for the girl on the camel, tough, surly-looking men, yet something about her drew my attention, and her eyes were meeting mine over her veil. It was not an illusion, not a vanity.
It was hot in the street, and a fresh sherbet had just been put before me. On impulse I picked up the sherbet and crossed to the camel in four quick steps.
The place where we sat in the garden adjoined the bazaar, and the attention of the guards was momentarily distracted by the confusion and the crowd.
“Light of the World”—I spoke softly—“accept this small tribute from your slave. Its coolness will speak my thoughts clearer than anything I can say.”
She took the sherbet, and our fingers touched. Over her veil her eyes smiled, and her lips said, “Thank you…Mathurin!”
And then the four soldiers closed about me.
11
“MOVE, ANIMAL!” A bearded soldier pushed me. “Get from here!”
Angered, I seized his arm with a wrestling trick and threw him over my shoulder and into the dust.
From behind came a yell of delight as Mahmoud and Haroun rushed to the fray.
The soldiers had closed in swiftly, but my months of training and the strength brought from the galley had left me ready.
Smashing a closed fist into one man’s teeth, I struck to the belly of another soldier. Unaccustomed to blows, they staggered back, startled and hurt. Instantly, I stepped back and drew my blade.
It was hot in the dusty street, the noises from the bazaar were suddenly stilled. The soldier I had thrown to the ground was getting to his feet, and his face where it was not covered with beard was pale as death. He whom I had struck in the belly was still gasping for breath, but the others drew their swords.
Out of the hot, still afternoon death had come. Sweat trickled down my cheeks as they started for me, trained fighting men, iron-muscled and tough. Even as I faced them, my friends came alongside me.
“Do you take the center one, Infidel,” Mahmoud said. “Haroun and I will have the others!”
A soldier spat blood from split lips. “Children!” He sneered. “I’ll open your bellies to the flies!”
He lunged, but I parried the blade. My own point darted, flicking a spot of blood from his upper arm.
As the soldier shifted ground, a voice spoke clearly. “At noon, in the Court of Oranges!”
It was the girl on the camel, and as she spoke she struck the camel, and it started to move.
The soldier I had struck grabbed wildly at the camel, but the girl had started the animal into the crowded bazaar, scattering people in all directions. The soldiers tried to break off the fight, but I suddenly realized the girl had been their prisoner, and was escaping. With a quick turn of the wrist, I parried the blade and thrust. The soldier, attempting to break off and pursue the girl, took the full thrust of my blade and fell, screaming his agony.
From up the street there was a rush of feet, and Mahmoud caught at me. “Quick! Away!”
With a slash at the nearest soldier I fled after Mahmoud and Haroun who had darted down an alleyway into a street beyond. On the far side of that street Mahmoud leaped to a wall, rolled over, and dropped on the far side, Haroun and I following upon his heels.
There was a chorus of screams, excited more than frightened, and the shrill angry cries of an offended eunuch. We dashed across the gardens, twisting our way among a dozen or more pretty and scantily clad women. Mahmoud paused long enough under an apricot tree to seize one plump and pretty girl and squeeze her, kissing her swiftly before we threw ourselves over the far wall and into a narrow, shadowed alley.
We ducked and darted through stables and ancient buildings to emerge at last in another bazaar. Instantly, we ceased to run but walked sedately among the booths and shops, stopping finally to order natif and coffee. As we sat there several soldiers rushed through the bazaar, glaring about them.
Haroun looked across the small table at me, chuckling. He was a short, stocky man, this Haroun, one of the best fencers at the academy where we studied the art. “Do you know who those soldiers were?”
“No.”
“They were the men of ibn-Haram.”
Ibn-Haram? So then, the girl was Aziza. No wonder she had seemed familiar. Aziza…here?
They were looking at me. “You know who is ibn-Haram?”
“I have heard of him. Who has not?”
“He is a dangerous enemy, and the right hand of Yusuf.”
What had she said? “At noon, in the Court of Oranges.”
Unwittingly, my interference had given her a chance to escape, but had she any place to go?
Had the soldiers heard her speak of the Court of Oranges? My friends said nothing, so they might not have heard, and the soldiers were concentrating on me.
If they heard or remembered, the Court of Oranges could be a trap. But on what day? And at what time? No matter, Aziza would come, and I would be there to meet her.
“Take my advice and stay off the streets for a few days. You killed that man, I believe.”
There was something in his eyes I had not seen before. Was it jealousy? Calculation?
When it was dark, we went our ways, and I carefully, along dark streets and empty al
leys.
Ibn-Tuwais was seated over a bowl of fruit and a glass of tea when I entered. “You are in trouble?” he asked.
My face was flushed from hurry, and my manner must have reflected my mood. So for the first time I told him of Málaga, the fight on the shore, and the disappearance of Aziza and Count Redwan.
“She will have friends,” he said. “I have an idea where she might go.”
“And Redwan?”
“There is talk…he is a prisoner, I believe, in Zaragoza.” Ibn-Tuwais chose a piece of fruit. “You have made a powerful enemy, but a man may be judged by who his enemies are, and their power.”
“What would you advise?”
“Wait, and as your friend advised, stay off the streets and out of sight.”
Wait…that, indeed, I must do, and every day, in the Court of Oranges.
* * *
—
THE TWELFTH CENTURY was a time of restlessness in Europe. New ideas were creeping in, shaking the foundations of old beliefs. The second Crusade was history, but Crusaders had returned astonished at what they had seen and no longer content with their cold, drafty castles.
More than one hundred years had passed since William the Conqueror and his Normans invaded England, and now Henry II was consolidating his control over Ireland and Wales while putting down the last feudal revolt. At a small town named Oxford, a university with a tradition from an earlier time had been founded. Elsewhere Adelard of Bath and Robert of Chester, students of Arabic science, were offering their knowledge to a limited circle of students.
In Germany, Frederick I, so-called Barbarossa (Red-Beard), founded the Holy Roman Empire, and on his fifth expedition into Italy had been defeated by the Lombard towns at Legnano.
In China, the Northern Sung dynasty, with its great age of landscape painting, had come to an end, although landscape painting did not. Compositions of majestic breadth and exquisite detail, with a sparing use of line as well as interesting contrasts of light and shadow, had been created by Tuan Yuan, Kuo Hsi, Li Kung-lin, and Mi Fei, among others. In China the great historians, essayists, poets, and scientists were often statesmen as well.
The Walking Drum (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 9