Navigator

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.'

Geoffrey asked, 'What do you think?'

Harry shrugged. 'I'm no navigator. The journey I made from London to Malaga was my longest sea voyage. I only know what I've heard.'

'Which is?'

'That the world is a dangerous place. The Romans called the Ocean Sea the Mare Ignotum, the unknown, and not for nothing. They say that to the west is a Sea of Doom, a place of vast whirlpools that can crush a ship like a fly in a child's fist. If you go south towards the equator you sail into the Torrid Zone, where the sun's heat turns you black before the flesh boils off your bones. And the world is not a sphere, as the ancients believed, but a sort of pear-shape, with a great extension to the extreme east where the earthly paradise resides.' He felt uncomfortable, as Abdul listened to this in cold silence. 'This is what has been said by mariners to me.'

'All right,' Abdul said. 'But what mariners? Europeans, that's who, who have barely ventured out of the puddle that is the Mediterranean. But the Chinese have gone much further, and learned much more…'

And he spoke of his time on the treasure ships.

'You should have seen them, cousin. They were not like our little ships at all. Like floating cities, they were, with a great square bow at the front, topped by serpents' eyes. Nine masts bore huge red silk sails. The ships were built in compartments, so they could not be sunk. They had holds full of preserved food, and immense tanks of fresh water, and they grew soya beans on board, and they kept otters in their holds to catch fish – they could stay at sea for months! And the officers enjoyed banquets and dances, and the company of courtesans.

'It's all gone now. There was upheaval at court, a fire in the Forbidden City, a lot of bad omens – the eunuch admirals were retired, the ships broken up. The mandarins at court adhere to the principles of tao – order, stability, harmony of all things. That sort of thinking doesn't sit well with the exploration of the unknown. I suppose in the end the Chinese decided China is world enough for them.

'But in the heyday of these tremendous ships, only a few decades ago, the Chinese ventured far over the oceans – around India, as far as the coast of Africa, and to the south-east, where they discovered huge masses of land and strange peoples unknown to Europeans.

'Listen to me. I once met a man who had worked in the Forbidden City. In a zoo there, he said, the eunuch explorers had brought back specimens from a dry southern land. There were strange skinny people with black skin and flat noses and curly hair. There were trees that kept their leaves and shed their bark. There were huge creatures with faces like a deer's and back legs like huge levers, that carried their young around in a flap of skin on their belly…'

Harry smiled. 'I too have heard such tavern tales.'

'All right, all right. I'll tell you this. The Chinese learned far more about the shape of the world than any European, thanks to us Moors, and thanks to their own expertise.

'Do you know any navigation, cousin? To fix your position on the round earth you need to know two numbers, your latitude and longitude. Latitude tells you how far north you are of the equator. That's easy. You just look for how high the Pole Star is; the higher in the sky, the further north you must have sailed, until it would be over your head if you sailed all the way to the north pole itself.

'Longitude, the angular distance travelled east or west, is trickier, for the sky itself spins about the earth. The Chinese developed a method using eclipses of the moon. Such events are visible all across the world. A legion of astronomers scattered across the world, all studying the elevation of the stars at that precise moment, would be able to map the earth's curve-'

Harry held up his hands. 'Enough. I'm better at figuring accounts than the geometry of the stars.'

'My point is that the Chinese know how big the world is. And they would tell you that it would be a long journey if you were to try to sail west from Lisbon, say, to China. But on the other hand,' Abdul said thoughtfully, 'that big Ocean Sea has plenty of room for an unknown continent or two. The Chinese never sailed far enough to find out.'

Geoffrey thought this through. 'Then you're saying,' he said carefully, 'that the prophecy of the Dove, the invasion of Europe by people from the west, could have a basis in truth.'

'I'm saying it's not impossible.' Abdul looked at the two of them. 'All this will take years to come to fruition, one way or another. The monarchs have other matters to deal with before they fund Ocean crossings. And the Engines of God need development before they kill anyone save by accident. We have time yet to deflect history's course.'

Harry's heart sank at that thought. 'So we can't be rid of this any time soon.'

'Not yet,' said Geoffrey grimly. 'Be patient.'