Here gunpowder was manufactured, according to Bacon’s carefully researched recipes. It was kept separate for safety, and for the foul air; the brothers assigned to this work didn’t last long.
James said, ‘We mix the ingredients with mortars and pestles, or with these wooden stamps.’ He showed Ferron a clunky device, all levers of iron and mallets of wood. ‘We need to combine the powder into granules of varying sizes, depending on the application. Granule size determines burning rate; you don’t want your powder to burn so rapidly it shatters your bombard’s casing. So we mix up the powder with a binding agent. Sometimes it’s water and wine, but in fact urine is best.’
‘As I can smell,’ Ferron said drily. ‘And the ingredients?’
‘The best charcoal is free of knots, and made of coppiced wood - hazel or ash, gathered in the spring and so full of sap. We import our sulphur from the volcanoes of Iceland, the purest in the world. The saltpetre is more difficult, and needs manufacture.’ He showed Ferron a series of vats, from which a murky water was poured one to the next. ‘Saltpetre is made from dung.’
The monks filled a pit with layers of quicklime, cow manure, wood ash and vegetable waste. They turned this regularly, moistening its surface. It was important that the matter was not allowed to get too wet, or too dry. After some months of this a whitish efflorescence would appear on the surface of the heap, which the monks scraped off and collected. The powder was dissolved in water, which was then passed through the series of vats.
‘This is saltpetre,’ James said. ‘The Arabs call it “Chinese snow”. The saltpetre stays dissolved where other salts precipitate out. It’s an intricate technique, worked out over centuries by the Chinese among others—’
‘The Arabs have such processes now. They’ve been firing cannon at Christians for a hundred years - more, I think.’
‘Yes,’ James said patiently, ‘but thanks to the Codex, Bacon had saltpetre, and the recipe for black powder, decades earlier than otherwise. The scholars believe that as a result we have a lead of a
century or
more over the Arabs in the exploitation of these secrets. And
that
is how these engines will win the holy war.’
‘It’s quite an industry then,’ Ferron said.
’
All this material flowing into this dungeon, sulphur from the mountains of Iceland and manure from the farms of Derbyshire, and then the ingenuity of the burrowing monks here. I suppose it would be inappropriate if it did not take intelligence and effort to make this devilish dust, this gunpowder, that can slay so many men. But I wonder how its victims would feel if they knew the shot that killed them was propelled by an alchemy of dung? ...
’
They walked back to the main manufactory. A winged form flapped noisily beneath the vaulting roof.
Ferron looked up nervously. ‘If that was a bat it was a big one.’
James grinned. ‘Not a bat. A man.’
XVI
Abdul leaned over his tankard of English beer, and spoke softly to Harry and Geoffrey.
‘As you know I have tracked this man, this Cristobal Colon, since he first came to the attention of the Inquisition. His career since then has done nothing to dissuade me that he is indeed the man of whom your Testament speaks.’
Posing as a mudejar Muslim, Abdul continued to work with Diego Ferron. He had come to England once more, this time as part of Ferron’s retinue. Now he had met Harry Wooler and Geoffrey Cotesford in this small tavern in the town of Buxton - which he said he had heard of; it was a spa town the Romans had called Aquae Arnemetiae. They all spoke quietly, as if one of the gawping locals might be a spy for the Spanish Inquisition.
They were all growing older, Harry thought, the three of them, filling out, their necks thickening and hair greying. He was in his thirties himself. And yet here they were furtively huddled once again, still pursuing the obscure project that had obsessed them for years.
Abdul went on, ‘You know that Colon has been refused several times already. I was there when Colon gave a grand presentation of his case in the ancient Moorish university of Salamanca. But in January of last year they turned him down again.’
Geoffrey said, ‘And still he doesn’t give up?’
‘Not at all. He hangs around the court, begging for audiences, assembling more evidence from legend, sea-farers’ tales, Arab geographies and the works of the ancients. To the rest of the court he has become a comical figure, I think. A bore and a charlatan. Yet he still seems to appeal to Isabel. She has even been paying him living expenses.
‘But you must understand that all this time the monarchs have been prosecuting their war against the Moors. It’s been a bloody summer,’ Abdul said, remembering. ‘I saw too much of it. Malaga’s resistance was strong. When the fortress fell at last, the population was divided up among the Spanish nobles for slavery, like so many cattle. The emirate at Granada, divided against itself, could do nothing ... I think it’s clear to everyone that if Fernando and Isabel ever do support Colon’s venture overseas, it will only be after the conclusion of the war with the Moors.
‘But Colon’s time may be running out. Just this month he has been in Portugal to hear the testament of Bartolomeo Dias, who has sailed down the coast of Africa past the equator, proving by the way there is no Torrid Zone, and discovering a cape where he was able to turn east.’
Geoffrey frowned. ‘I’m no geographer. I’m not sure I see the significance.’
Harry said, ‘Dias believes he has discovered a sea route to the spice islands by sailing
east
around the southern tip of Africa, rather than west across the Ocean Sea.’
‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey. ‘So Colon’s voyage west would have no purpose.’
‘Worse,’ Abdul said with a smile. ‘Dias is a hero. He is getting the attention and fame Colon craves! I told you Colon is a shallow man.’
‘And that’s why he has sent his brother to sound out the King of England,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Yes. Even the dogged Colon is despairing of the Spanish monarchs.’
‘But he mustn’t be allowed to give up,’ Geoffrey said. ‘Let’s hope our “man from Cathay” works his magic.’
Harry frowned. ‘A man from Cathay?’
Abdul grinned. ‘Actually it was my idea.’
Geoffrey said, ‘We have been trying to support Colon’s case by feeding his camp selected bits of scholarship on the size of the earth, what might lie beyond the sea, and so on. Colon’s ally Friar Antonio de Marchena of Palos is a fellow Franciscan, and I was able to use him as a conduit to reach Colon. But we thought we needed something more dramatic to impress the monarchs.’
Abdul said, ‘One of Colon’s sea stories is that when he voyaged to Iceland, he was told of corpses, washed up on a western shore of Ireland, strange men with yellow skin and dark hair, in a boat that was a hollowed-out log. Colon never saw these corpses. Yet he believed they must have come from China, washed across the ocean by a current.’
‘So,’ Geoffrey said,
’
Abdul suggested repeating the trick.’
‘I arranged for a corpse to be dumped on the shore near Palos. As it happens,’ Abdul said grimly, ‘the south of Spain has not been short of corpses these last few years. I ensured the man, a Christian, had drowned. I dyed his skin yellow-brown with tea, and added some tattoos for good measure. And I cut him around his eyes, for everybody knows that the Chinese have odd narrow eyes with folds of skin across the corners. Such a corpse at Palos was bound to come to Colon’s attention, and so it did. Now he parades around the court with diagrams of the wretched man, and even dried bits of flayed skin to show off my fake tattoos.’
Geoffrey laughed. ‘Gruesome but ingenious.’
‘But will it be enough?’ Harry said gloomily. ‘All we have to turn Colon’s head is a bit of scholarship and a dubious corpse, against Grace Bigod’s engines ...’
‘It will have to be enough,’ Geoffrey said.
Abdul said with a trace of bitterness, ‘Of course Grace and Ferron do not admit to their clients how much Bacon’s work was helped by the studies performed for my ancestress Subh by
Moorish
scholars and artisans. After all, Sihtric took his designs to al-Andalus because he knew the best scholarship in Europe was available there. When Joan of the Outremer took possession of the Codex, she plundered what had been achieved there as well, though all Subh’s Moorish workers had fled from the approach of the Christians. It is part of a wider story, as Christendom plunders al-Andalus of learning as well as gold—’
‘And thereby rediscovers its own lost past,’ Geoffrey said gently. ‘Can that be such a bad thing, Abdul?’
‘Yes, if Moorish scholarship is now to be turned against the Moors!’
Geoffrey pulled his lip. ‘Well, we must have patience. We will watch Grace Bigod’s display of fire, and see what we can learn. Now. Who can spare a penny for more of this filthy beer?’
XVII
The December day dawned bright and clear. Even in mid-morning the sun was still low over the abandoned village, so that the hummocks and green-clad shells of the ruined houses cast long shadows over the dewy ground.
And James, looking down on this scene from his ridge, could already hear the crump of explosions, the cries of men, and the clanking, hissing noises of monstrous engines. He grinned with anticipation. Let Bartolomeo Colon be unmoved by
this!
As for himself, since before dawn James had been atop this rough limestone ridge, making ready. He was wearing leather trousers and a close-fitting quilted coat that he belted tight around his body. He knew from earlier trials that the wind and grit would get in his eyes, and so he wore a special cap with a long peak and panels protruding before his cheeks. He tied its strap under his chin before donning his gloves.
Now four novices approached, each bearing an iron egg. These were slim ovals, each the size of a sleeping pigeon, with sprawling tails. The novices trod warily, nervous, trying not to tremble. They hung the eggs from James’s belt, and he tested the leather tabs he had to pull to release them.
Next his engine had to be assembled around his body.
First came the ‘muscle’, as he thought of it. This was a box of canes several feet tall. It had complicated ‘shoulder’ mechanisms, and at its heart was a powerful crossbow as thick as his arm, already wound back. It had quickly been learned that a man’s muscles were too feeble to beat the great wings; but the crossbow would suffice. This frame was lowered onto his shoulders and strapped to his torso by a cradle of leather bands.
James’s shoulder units had to be tested. These were elaborate arrangements of rods, shafts, gears, pulleys and ropes at either side of the muscle frame that would translate the crossbow’s unwinding into complex movements, up and down, twisting. The shoulders, carefully oiled, worked flawlessly. The novices added a vertical ‘tail’ of wood and feathers fixed on a strut to the back of the central frame.
And now came the wings, each borne on the backs of more sweating novices. They climbed stepladders to either side of James, and pushed the wings’ joints into their attachments in the shoulder units and strapped them into place with more leather belts. The wings, spread, were like tents made of young fir, fustian, starched taffeta and feathers, and the morning light shadowed their internal skeletons.
The supervising friar ordered one last test of the mechanism. With utmost caution the wings, still supported by the novices, were lifted and lowered, twisting as they did so, and the feathers spread and closed, each pasted by hand to its own tiny cog wheel. The flight of birds had been carefully studied by Bacon and his followers for two hundred years. It was clear that the air was a fluid through which birds swam, as fish and seals swam through water. This elaborate machinery had been designed, after generations of paper designs, model-making and trial and error, to copy exactly that flapping, swimming motion.
But at this moment the theory, the mechanics, didn’t matter at all to James, compared to the sheer beauty of the engine above him. He was thrilled that he had used his master’s seniority to become the soul of this fantastic creation.
The supervising friar, a blunt practical man with wild grey hair around his tonsure, now faced James. ‘Ready?’
James grinned and nodded.
The friar yanked at a rope. The crossbow was unlatched, and flexed, and immediately its elastic energy was poured through gears and pulleys into the shoulders. The wings flapped and twisted, James’s harness tugged at his chest, and he was dragged up into the air.
The ground fell away, and the novices’ upturned faces were like coins on a table. They were clapping and cheering. The landscape opened up beneath him, and he saw the shape of the limestone ridge from which he had launched, and the plain before it, and the ruined village where engines crawled and gunpowder flashed.
His heart raced with excitement, and a bit of fear, and he felt his loins tense up. He had admitted to nobody, not even his confessor, the extraordinary erotic thrill this hurling into the air gave him. If he could never have a woman, at least he had
this.
And as the air washed around him the face of Grace Bigod swam into his mind, elegant, cold, sneering.
Already the crossbow was running down, but it had lifted James high enough for his purpose. He had to work quickly. He pulled strings to latch the crossbow, and others to lock the wings, outstretched with the feathers closed and banked. Then, with a grunting effort, he leaned forward, and the leather cradle into which he was strapped pivoted, so that he was suspended beneath the wings, belly down.
He glided forward, wings rigid as a coasting seagull’s. He was falling, of course, falling like a dead leaf. But he should reach the battlefield, and that was enough for him to do his job.
He looked down at the ruined village. More hapless novices were defending a ‘fortress’, crudely constructed of heaped-up stone from the village. They were equipped with weapons of a conventional sort, crossbows, longbows, arquebuses and cannon, and had even had some rudimentary training in using them.