Alone in the dark, Robert measured space and time.
The floor was square, thirty by thirty of his foot-lengths paced out toe against heel. He could not see the ceiling, but he knew that many of the palace’s rooms were rough cubes, so he imagined the room was as tall as it was wide. He explored the walls with his fingers. The room had arched doorways, but they were bricked up, save one closed by the heavy wooden door that had slammed shut after he had been thrown in here by the vizier’s guards.
And he measured time. There was no passage of day or night; the bright Spanish sunlight was banished from his life. But he counted the meals that were shoved through a hatch in the door - bread, rice, a bit of water, delivered with a precious splinter of light. He counted his own pissing, his stools. He counted the times he slept, but his sleeping was poor.
In the dark he became confused in his counting, which distressed him.
It took him some of that passing time to work out that he was, in fact, imprisoned. There were few gaols in England, no cells save for a few dismal dungeons beneath the Normans’ keeps, where athelings or other valuable captives might be held. If you committed a crime you might be executed, or mutilated, or fined; if you lived you went back to work. There wasn’t the spare food to feed a population of prisoners. In al-Andalus, it seemed, things were different.
And as the days wore away and it dawned on Robert that he could see no end to this captivity, a deep horror settled on him.
He prayed every day, of course. Prayed every hour. Prayed constantly. He tried to mark Sunday, when he thought that day came. He recited the words of the holy Mass, as best he remembered them. Praying was better than thinking. Better than wondering what had become of his father, or Moraima, better than endlessly speculating why he had been thrown into this hole. Better than wondering what might become of him when he was finally released. Or, worse, how it would be if he were never released at all.
After the first few days he decided that he should treat his captivity as a trial. He thought of heroic monks like Saint Cuthbert, who deliberately sought out purposeful solitude in order better to understand their own souls, and God. If he were to become a soldier of God, fighting in the Pope’s armies, he would face far worse torments than this.
He longed to be with Moraima. And he longed for his father to come and save him. But these were the weak thoughts of a child and he put them aside. He would use these hours in the hot, foetid, alien dark to cleanse his soul of weakness.
By the time his captors came for him, he thought only of God.
The door opened, flooding the cell with light. Two burly guards dragged him out of the dark. He was dazzled by the brilliance of a low sun. But he thought the guards flinched from the new holy light that burned from his own eyes.
XXII
Robert was shoved inside a reception room. Released, he staggered, and stood upright.
He glanced around. Books, bound volumes and scrolls, were piled roughly in one corner. Four arched doorways were all blocked by the burly bodies of guards - dark, stocky, powerful men, Berbers perhaps. The room was beautiful. But he had no time for beauty now; this was just as much a prison as his own shit-filled cell.
But Moraima, sweet Moraima was here too.
Moraima came to him, her hands folded into an anxious knot. A delicate scent of jasmine hung around her. He longed to take her in his arms, to let out the warmth that surged inside him. But he knew he must not.
She stood before him, uncertain how to read him. ‘Robert. It has been so long. I thought they might have killed you. The vizier is like the weather; he comes and goes in his moods. He got angry with Sihtric, and he just locked everybody away.’ She said hastily, ‘I don’t know what’s happening here, Robert. But we must talk.’ And she placed a hand on her belly.
Now Orm and Sihtric were brought in. Robert saw that they, too, had been imprisoned. Orm’s beard was ragged, his hair untrimmed, the dirt ground deep into his pores, and there was a sewer stink of the cell about him. The priest, too, was shabby, and he scratched himself under a grimy habit.
Orm ran to his son and took his shoulders. ‘Robert. What did they do?’
‘I was stuck in a hole. They kept me in the dark.’
‘In the dark, and alone? And we thought we had it bad, priest.’
‘I am not harmed.’
Orm looked deep into his eyes, troubled. ‘Are you sure? You look different.’
‘Harder, I’d say,’ said Sihtric. ‘Not necessarily a bad thing, a bit of toughening up.’
‘Shut up,’ Orm said. ‘Come sit over here.’ They settled on floor cushions. ‘Robert, I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s my fault.’
Robert felt impatient that his father and this flawed priest were drawing the crisis about themselves like a cloak. ‘How is it your fault? You were imprisoned too.’
Orm scratched his stubble. ‘But I fear all this came about because of my foolishness - ours.’
He told Robert about the conversation he had had with Sihtric in another corner of the palace, about the Engines of God, and the Testament of al-Hafredi, and Sihtric’s real intentions.
‘Evidently we were overheard,’ Orm said.
Sihtric said glumly, ‘I’ve used that room for years.’
‘But that part of the palace,’ Orm told Robert, ‘was an ambassador’s court. It is a warren of tunnels and spy-holes. Moraima knew all about it. And this priest never thought to inquire.’
Sihtric snapped, ‘But the vizier learned nothing damaging before you showed up in al-Andalus, Orm, with your addled prophecy, your doves and serpents, your doubts. Nobody before you ever encouraged me to express dreams I had kept safely lodged in the silence of my soul all these decades. You upset everything, Orm, all my delicate arrangements. Now he knows it all ...’
Robert looked at the two squabbling old men. They didn’t matter to him now. Their babbling of history and prophecy was irrelevant - and so, he thought for the first time in his life, was his father. All that mattered to Robert was the cold steel of the piety he had discovered in himself during his solitude.
‘What a touching scene.’ The vizier walked into the room.
They all got to their feet.
Ibn Tufayl looked magnificent in his djellaba of the finest silk and spun wool and with his skin shining with oils, yet he swayed, subtly. ‘Three shabby Christians. How low you are. How animal-like. And the stink of you.’
‘If you’re going to kill us,’ grated Orm, ‘get it over with.’
‘Oh, I fully intend to do that. But there’s no rush, Viking. After all this time we still have much to say to each other. Sit down, all of you.’
He crossed the chamber, alone save for a single servant who bore a tray of sweetmeats and drinks. He walked stiffly, his posture erect. But Robert saw the cautious pacing of a man concentrating on control.
‘The man is as drunk as a Breton,’ Orm murmured.
‘Then God help us all,’ whispered Sihtric.
XXIII
The vizier sat on a heap of cushions. The servant next to him knelt with head bowed, holding up her silver tray. Robert thought absently that she would tire very quickly in a posture like that; she must be hardened by a lifetime of servitude. Ibn Tufayl was of course aware of their hunger, and he ate his titbits slowly, with evident relish, chewing openly. But his face was flushed.
He indicated the arched doorways, where the guards waited, eyes white in desert-dark faces. ‘We are effectively alone here. The guards are all Berbers. Almoravids, a fanatical bunch, but fierce warriors. And not a one of them understands a word of Arabic, let alone Latin. Not even this little one.’ He stroked the head of the girl kneeling at his side. ‘So you see, what we say in here will stay with us alone - or rather, with me.’
Sihtric waved an uncertain hand at the heaps of books in the corner. ‘You have taken my books.’
The vizier nodded. ‘Your Codex is here, the sketches you stole from Aethelmaer.’ He held up a scroll. ‘So are all your notes and commentaries, and the designs you have developed. All your work is here.’ Ibn Tufayl smiled, malicious. ‘And if I ordered it destroyed, perhaps on a mere whim, it would be gone for ever. The meaning of your life, priest, gone in a heartbeat.’
‘You would not,’ shouted Sihtric, his face reddening.
Orm said, ‘Oh, calm down, priest. He’s only goading you. It’s obvious he won’t destroy your work. It’s far too precious to him for that.’
The vizier nodded. ‘I’m glad one of you shows some wisdom.’
‘But you have your own purpose for them, no doubt,’ Robert said.
Ibn Tufayl half rose. ‘Do not speak to me, you wolfling, or I will have you eviscerated before your father’s eyes.’
Robert was shocked by the anger in his face, the crimson glower, the twisted lip, the bulging eyes. He flinched, unable to understand why he should be the focus of such rage.
Orm’s grip tightened on his arm, hard enough to hurt. ‘Stay calm.’
Sihtric said, ‘He’s right, though, isn’t he, vizier? You have concocted your own scheme for the weapons.’
The vizier settled back. ‘Oh, yes. Far beyond your petty notions. It takes a man of vision to see the true path. But oddly, it was you who put the vision into my head, priest. You and your muscled friend here. All your talk of al-Hafredi of Poitiers, this bizarre fantasy of men flung across time, a history averted. Nonsense! Irrelevant! No wonder you Christians fail if your heads are addled with such maundering. And yet the scheme you unfold, Sihtric, of a Muslim expansion across Gaul and Germany - now that is magnificent! The bones of a strategy - a grand one - and in your engines there is the means to carry it out.’
The vizier stood and paced around the room, energetic, vigorous, red-faced. The servant cowered every time he came close.
‘I will continue the development of your engines, the crossbows, the armoured carts, the flying machines. And I will give them to the armies of Seville. Then, reinforced by our brothers the Almoravids from Africa, we will storm across the marches and scatter the barbarian hordes of the Christian kings. Perhaps our new conquest will be as rapid as that of Musa and Tariq - why not? And in five years, or ten, Seville will be established as the capital of a reclaimed al-Andalus, and the bells of the Christian churches will fall silent again.’ He continued to pace, pace.
‘And then?’ whispered Sihtric. ‘And then?’
‘And then we will cross the Pyrenees. We will reverse the disaster of Poitiers, three hundred years ago. This time there will be no stopping our advance.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Orm said. ‘I’ve fought with the Normans, remember. Why, they conquered England, the best-organised state in Europe. They’ll put up a tough fight.’
‘But they won’t have Sihtric’s engines,’ the vizier said.
‘And if you prevail,’ Sihtric said. His voice was hoarse, his face drained of blood. ‘On you will go, I suppose. Slaughtering, burning.’
Ibn Tufayl’s voice rose, shrill. ‘At last the solemn calm of a single caliphate will settle across the whole of the world, from east to west, from pole to pole. If it can be done once, as your madman wanderer seems to have believed, Sihtric, it can be done again.’ He smiled. ‘I would like to take Rome myself, I think. I will have to decide what to do with the Pope ... You see how you have inspired me? And it will be my honour to achieve it - my honour-I, a new al-Mansur.’ He staggered, almost falling against a wall. He picked up a cup, drained it, found another empty, and cuffed his servant’s head. ‘More. Go, go!’
She scuttled out, head bowed.
Orm growled, ‘Get to the point, vizier. What do you intend to do with us?’
‘I need what you know. I don’t need
you.
You will be - drained. And then discarded. But at least you know the great cause your deaths will serve.’ The servant girl returned with a tray of fresh drinks; the vizier grabbed a cup and downed it in one gulp.
Moraima stared at him. ‘Grandfather - I barely recognise you when you speak like this.’
He looked at her blearily. ‘When you are old enough to understand, you’ll thank me. And you’ll tell your grandchildren of what you have heard today. But for now, this strange knowledge must be mine alone.’
Sihtric snapped, ‘What does that mean? You say you have my plans. What of the prototypes I have built? What of the arbalest?’
‘Destroyed.’
‘And my scholars, my clerks, my engineers?’
‘They will not speak of it,’ the vizier said. ‘My Berbers made sure of that.’
Sihtric’s mouth dropped open, and he slumped, as if fainting. Orm supported him, but Sihtric pushed him away. ‘There were fine minds among them, very fine young minds - the best in Cordoba. All sacrificed to your petty ambition. Murderer. Murderer!’
‘Don’t preach at me, you hypocritical fraud. You have ambition enough of your own. You were planning to arm Christians with your magic weapons.’
‘I planned to serve Christ’s holy purposes. I am no murderer of scholars and clerks and scribes, of carpenters and wheelwrights and metal-workers. You infidel monster, I will oppose you with every bone in my body.’
‘And I,’ the vizier roared, ‘will extract every one of those bones if you stand in my way.’
The two of them faced each other, the tottering drunk, the portly, filthy priest, screaming at each other. They were so alike, Robert saw, two foolish middle-aged men who dreamed of reshaping the world. But he knew it was a world which no longer belonged to them.
Moraima stepped between them. ‘Stop this, father, grandfather. I can’t stand to see you fight.’
Robert stepped up and took Moraima’s arm. ‘Come away, Moraima. Leave them to it. You’ll only get hurt.’
The vizier turned on him again, his flushed face a mask of ferocity. ‘Get your filthy paws off her, you Christian animal. I know what you did. I know about the tainted spawn you have planted in her belly!’