Navigator

Grace said, 'Perhaps we can use that to persuade Colon and his brother to accept these, the fruits of Bacon's genius.'

'It's possible.'

They moved through a low passage into another, smaller chamber. Here only enclosed oil lamps burned, and the murky air stank of dung and piss. Ferron recoiled, and with an impatient snap Grace summoned forward a novice, who presented each of them with a scented napkin to hold over their noses.

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.'