Navigator

by Baxter, Stephen

He was grateful when Moraima’s hand slipped into his, for he felt he would soon be lost.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Moraima asked softly.

  ‘That it’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘And that I don’t understand it. Of course I could say the same about you.’

  She ignored the clumsy compliment. ‘It isn’t so hard. There is a central axis leading to the Mihrab. That points the way to Mecca; there the imam calls the faithful to Friday prayer. But you may pray wherever you like. The priests don’t get in the way here. My father says it’s a “different geometry of worship” from the Christian.’

  ‘This is nothing like a Christian church.’

  ‘Well, no. Christians build their churches as Romans once built their basilicas. That’s what my father says. The first emirs of al-Andalus started with nothing. They borrowed ideas - the round arches of the Romans, for instance. They even reused what the Romans and the Goths had left behind.’ And she showed him how many of the columns, of jasper and marble, were subtly different, in their proportions, their capitals; they were Roman and Gothic relics.

  ‘The arches are meant to look like the branches of palms,’ Moraima said. ‘It is an oasis in stone.’

  ‘Yet it’s centuries since your people came from the desert.’

  ‘Yes. We were thrown down here and changed. Isn’t it funny? Now we are not African any more, but not European - just us, something different in the world ...’

  They walked further, and Robert learned to read the history of al-Andalus in the slim columns of stone.

  At first the Muslim conquerors had been in a minority, a few hundred thousand in a Christian population of millions. But that proportion grew quickly, thanks to massive immigration across the straits from Africa. And though tolerance of religion was practised, Islam was the religion of the state, and conversion was a useful step on the road to power. Ibn Hafsun’s family had been one Gothic dynasty who had abandoned the cross for the crescent. And as the numbers of Muslim worshippers in Cordoba grew, so the great mosque was extended several times to accommodate them - most recently by al-Mansur, the overreaching vizier who had brought the calamity of the fitnah upon al-Andalus.

  They walked still deeper into the mosque. In places there were multiple arches, arches built on top of others like children standing on each others’ shoulders, all exquisitely carved. And the Mihrab, another arch adorned with gold leaf, was like a gateway to paradise. Its materials were a gift to al-Andalus from Constantinople, said Moraima.

  Lost in the mosque’s cool spaces, Robert realised he hadn’t been aware of the two boys, Ghalib and Hisham, for some time.

  ‘Oh, they got bored long ago,’ said Moraima when he mentioned them. ‘Come. Let’s get some air.’

  X

  When Sihtric was done with the vizier, he had suggested to Orm that the two of them should take a ride, further out into the country.

  Orm mounted his horse suspiciously. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see. Go ahead, boy ... So, what of Robert? He seems drawn by the Moorish world.’

  ‘He’s his mother’s son, may God help him. He’s a confused young man - more confused than he knows. But it’s the fact that he’s drawn to your daughter that concerns me more. No good will come of it,’ muttered Orm.

  ‘He’s his father’s son too. You were just as young and foolish once, Orm.’

  ‘Yes,’ Orm snapped. ‘And it led to tragedy.’

  Sihtric said testily, ‘But if we ban them from seeing each other they will just ignore us. We’ll have to find a way of coping with things as they unfold.’

  ‘So what do we do in the meantime?’

  ‘I suggest we pursue the business for which you came all this way.’ He grinned. ‘I think you are going to enjoy this.’

  They topped a small rise, and Sihtric reined in his horse. He pointed. ‘There. What do you see, among those olive trees?’

  Orm stared. There was much activity going on in the olive grove. The centre of it seemed to be a kind of machine that nestled among the trees, a long cart that rested on three sets of widely spaced wheels. A large wooden crescent-shape dominated one end, and its upper surface was meshed by ropes and gleaming metal. The whole was obscured by a kind of scaffolding, through which a boy clambered, fixing ropes.

  The machine was the product of a kind of open-air workshop, Orm saw now. Men and boys moved between furnaces, lathes, piles of timber, and tables heaped with gleaming metal components, and scholars came and went between rows of tents among the olive trees.

  ‘Quite a sight,’ he said, non-committal.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? What are we building, do you think?’

  Orm shrugged. ‘Some kind of wagon?’

  ‘Come, Orm, stretch your limited imagination. Just look at it. Never mind the scale: tell me what you see.’

  The shaft, the bow, the ropes. ‘It looks like an arbalest,’ Orm said. ‘Which the English call a crossbow ...’ But an arbalest was a gadget small enough for a man to hold in his arms. This machine sprawled across a field, and had a boy actually walking along its back. Orm muttered prayers to the pagan gods of his childhood. ‘By all that’s holy—’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing holy about it.’

  ‘Aethelmaer?’

  ‘Aethelmaer. Come, let’s ride down.’

  Orm remembered Aethelmaer.

  In the last days of the reign of King Edward the Confessor, Sihtric had attached himself to the court of Harold, Earl of Wessex, as a priest-confessor - and as a prophet of sorts. He believed he was in the possession of a prophecy already four centuries old, a calendar-like vision called the Menologium of Isolde, whose sole purpose was to ensure an English victory over the Normans in the year of the great comet - the year of Our Lord 1066. Not that it had done much good. Harold, who had refused to take all the prophecy’s advice, had fallen to defeat by the Normans.

  But during his career as a court Sibyl, Sihtric had learned of the existence of a rival.

  ‘Aethelmaer! A fat, crippled monk from Wiltshire,’ he said with some bitterness. ‘Who had also been uttering prophecies about the comet. I’ve since found his very words, among his papers.’ He quoted from memory: “‘You’ve come, have you, O comet? You’ve come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country...”’

  ‘And you summoned him to Westminster.’

  ‘Yes. You were there, Orm, you remember.’

  His useless legs stinking of rot and unguent, the monk had wheezed his way through an account of his prophecy - which turned out not to have been his at all, but gabbled out by a young man called Aethelred, who had been abandoned as a child, taken in by the monastery at Malmesbury, and then had his short, unhappy life curtailed by debauched brothers.

  ‘But not before he had left behind a remarkable body of work, studied and preserved by Aethelmaer and others.’

  ‘I saw them. Sketches of machines. Siege engines, catapults ...’

  ‘I call the designs the Codex of Aethelmaer.’ Sihtric smiled. ‘The Engines of God.’

  Orm struggled to remember the fantastic designs he had glimpsed just once, decades ago, and had never understood even then. ‘But they were just scribbles on parchment. In a lifetime of study, Aethelmaer could build none of them.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Sihtric said. ‘He did try to build one, remember? That was how he became crippled.’

  Orm shook his head. ‘I never understood that. Why would you want to fly like a bird? Of course none of this means a thing unless you can actually build these mechanical marvels of yours.’

  ‘True enough,’ Sihtric said. ‘And I think you would be pleased to learn that I too have failed like Aethelmaer, wouldn’t you, Orm the Viking? Well, you’re about to be disappointed.’

  Orm stared at him. ‘You mean the arbalest? Sihtric, can you really be developing gadgets, weapons, from the plans you stole from that mad monk?’
/>
  ‘Interesting choice of words,’ Sihtric said. ‘Stole? I hardly think so. You met Aethelmaer. Old, crippled, he could do no more than have his arse wiped by some young novice, and probably enjoyed it too.’

  ‘Your talk is sometimes filthy for a priest,’ Orm said.

  ‘Well, I’m a filthy sort of priest. Anyhow Aethelmaer’s laborious mechanical sketching would have gone no further when he died, if not for my “stealing”. Am I not honouring his legacy, by trying to pursue the designs he left?

  ‘And, “gadgets”? You make them sound like toys. These are engines, Orm. Engines of war - and, perhaps, of peace. Come now. Let me show you.’ Sihtric spurred his horse forward.

  Orm, overwhelmed, followed.

  XI

  Robert and Moraima walked out of the mosque into dazzling daylight.

  They headed down to the river, where waterwheels turned with a creak of wooden gears - Moraima said the wheels were called norias - and boats with colourful sails steered through the arches of the Roman bridge. On the bank, amid a clinking of coins, vendors sold food and water and parasols.

  Moraima said, ‘You were affected by the mosque, weren’t you? Not everybody is. I think you’re deep, Robert son of Orm.’

  ‘Am I?’ He laughed. ‘Well, maybe compared to Ghalib and Hisham.’

  ‘Now you’re being jealous, and that’s not deep. I can’t always tell what you’re thinking, though. What you’re feeling.’

  He thought it over. ‘My time in Spain - I didn’t know what to expect. That journey down through the country, the emptiness, the heat ...’ He was shy about this, but he tried to express himself. ‘And when I walk into these marvellous places, the mosque, the palace - something inside me - it’s like a bird fluttering in my chest.’

  She astonished him by placing her hand over his. ‘My father said you would be like this. You have your father’s muscles, but the soul of your mother.’

  ‘Whose soul does he say you have?’

  ‘His sister’s. My aunt, Godgifu, who died before either of us was born. And who loved your father, Orm.’

  That was a shock. ‘I knew nothing of that.’

  She looked at him directly. ‘Do you think love can cross generations?’

  Confused, he turned away. ‘I didn’t come here for love. I came here because of my father’s business with yours.’

  ‘Yes. Our fathers are both veterans of Hastings, and I suppose something like that shapes you for ever. But the past is dead, gone, and they are old men. Who cares about our fathers’ business? We are young. We are the future.’

  He looked at her. ‘You’re talking about us.’

  ‘What about us?’

  He sighed, faintly irritated. ‘There you go again. You drop hints, and when I respond you turn away and go all coy.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like it. Would you like there to be an us?’

  He gazed at her, hot in his tunic of English wool. ‘You know I would, or you wouldn’t talk like this.’

  She said, ‘But...’

  ‘But we’re so different. Muslim and Christian!’

  ‘There are ways around that. The People of the Book are tolerated here.’

  He grunted. ‘Not in England, they’re not. And you’re becoming a scholar, as far as I can see. While I will never be anything but a soldier.’

  ‘There’s plenty of work for soldiers in Spain,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Let’s keep it simple. Do you think it would be a sin before God or Allah if I kissed you?’

  ‘We could always find out.’ She stepped towards him. Her skin was the smoothest surface he had ever seen, utterly flawless, and as her full lips parted he could smell the subtlest spice, a pepper perhaps.

  But there was a rude cry. ‘Hey, Christian! Take a look!’ It was Ghalib.

  XII

  Orm paced out the mighty weapon.

  The body of the shaft was forty paces long, perhaps two wide, and mounted on three axles. The bow itself, twenty paces from tip to tip, was made of wood layers, finely cut and polished, that ran in smooth, pleasing curves, gleaming in the intense sunlight. It was like a section of a boat, perhaps, or a monstrous piece of furniture.

  ‘You’ve used arbalests,’ Sihtric called. ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘The bow is usually made of metal.’

  ‘Not here. We couldn’t cast such an immense bow, and nor could it be bent back if we did. Look here, we use laminated wood, layers pasted and nailed together. We hired boat-builders from your Viking homelands.’

  ‘The vizier’s pockets must be deep.’

  ‘And how do you load a crossbow?’

  Orm grunted. ‘Depends. The old-fashioned sort, you bend over, put your foot on a stirrup, catch the bowstring in a hook on your belt, and straighten up until you’ve got the string in the lock. The newer sort you have a little hand-crank to draw back the string. You put your bolt in the groove, and press a lever to release it.’

  ‘The principles are just the same here. Look at this.’ Long metal screws had been built into the body of the stock. ‘These are used to draw back the string. It isn’t hard; a single man can turn that wheel, down there. Or you can use a mule. And look, see how the carriage wheels tip outward? That’s to give the base more stability. Here’s a tilting platform so you can raise the bow, and aim the flight of the bolt. And here, you see, anchors lock the crossbow to the ground and reduce recoil.’

  ‘And have you fired such a thing?’

  ‘Only in tests. We’re still refining the design. How well do your hand bows perform?’

  Orm shrugged. ‘A range of two or three hundred paces. You can pierce chain mail.’

  Sihtric grinned. ‘This beauty should have a range of miles. And it will pierce masonry. Thus, one of Aethelmaer’s designs, all but realised - all but ready to be deployed in war. Tell me you’re not impressed.’

  Orm pursed his lips, and walked around the machine once more. ‘Yes. I’m impressed by what you’ve built. But imagine this in war. It would take a long time to load, longer to haul it around the countryside to aim it - and it could be destroyed by a single burning arrow.’

  Sihtric sighed. ‘All right. But what if I told you that instead of just knocking down a bit of wall, my arbalest could deliver a bolt capable of laying waste an entire fort, even a city? A single bolt! What then?’

  Orm grimaced. ‘That sounds a fever dream, and an ugly one.’

  ‘But Aethelmaer had such dreams, or Aethelred did. I can show them to you, sketched in the notes. Dreams of a super-weapon - Aethelmaer called it Incendium Dei, the Conflagration of God. Perhaps it is something like Greek fire - I don’t know. But the only clues he left for it are encrypted, and it remains beyond the capabilities even of the scholars of al-Andalus to decipher. Later I’ll show you the Codex itself - much study remains to be done on it. But first, come. I’ll show you how we work here.’

  Leading their horses, they walked away from the mighty arbalest and through the open-air workshop. Orm glanced with interest at the tools of the carpenters and metal-workers. He had ordered several swords in the course of a long fighting life, and had come to appreciate the metal-workers’ art; casting the immense screws of the arbalest must have set them significant challenges.

  On some of the tables models were set out, intricate wooden toys that looked like birds or beetles or fish. They were models made from designs even more astonishing than the great arbalest, Orm saw, engines that flew and swam and crawled. Some of them were sliced open so you could see the wooden skeleton within, and the bodies of tiny men working oars or hauling on wheels. The boy trapped in Orm’s battered warrior’s body longed to hold these gadgets, to play with them.

  In one of the tents a wooden floor had been set down, a few paces across. Its surface was incised into rows, along which stones the size of fists painted black or white were lined up. Two scholars argued in rapid Arabic over a parchment. In response to their commands a boy jumped about over the board,
moving stones from one row to the next. Occasionally he apparently made a mistake, and his reward was a volley of abuse, but when he got it right the scholars forgot the boy and argued over the patterns he conjured.

  ‘So,’ Sihtric said. ‘Any idea what this is, Orm?’

  Orm shrugged. ‘Some kind of game?’

  Sihtric snorted. ‘This is deadly serious. The scholars are working out the trajectories of an arbalest bolt. We are developing an aiming system, you see. And the boy with his counters on the board is figuring the numbers for the scholars as they call out the sums.’

  Orm frowned. ‘I don’t see any numbers.’

  ‘But they are here nonetheless, represented by the beads in their columns. This is called an abacus, Orm. It’s a counting system. You can add, subtract. You can even multiply numbers together with ease.’

  Orm scoffed. ‘Everybody knows you can’t figure numbers beyond nine hundred.’

  ‘Using this, you can go as high as you like. With such gadgets a ten-year-old Moorish child can count better than the King of England. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of this, or of Arabic mathematics in general. Mark my words, one day everybody in Europe will be counting this way.’

  ‘Turning prophet again, Sihtric? Well, we won’t be around to see it, one way or another.’

  ‘True. But it’s this sort of learning I came here to discover, and to exploit. Ah, here we are. My copy of Aethelred’s original sketches.’ It was a well-thumbed compendium of parchments - a document Orm hadn’t seen for twenty years, since the day he had met Aethelmaer in Westminster. ‘The Engines of God...’

  XIII

  At Ghalib’s mocking call Robert turned away from Moraima and looked towards the river. Hisham was standing on a wall along the bank.

  And Ghalib had somehow climbed up onto a waterwheel. As it turned, he was climbing up from one spoke to the next, as if clambering over a treadmill. He was soaked to the skin, his red turban bright, and he was laughing. ‘Hey, Moraima - hey, God’s warrior! Look at me, look at me!’

  Moraima laughed, but she clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Allah preserve him. He’ll get himself killed.’