'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.
But huge machines crawled relentlessly towards the village, spitting fire. James made out the gun carriage nicknamed the 'organ-pipes'. Between two massive wheels was suspended an axle with a triangular cross-section. On each of the axle's three faces had been fixed a dozen cannon, in a row like the pipes of a church organ. These fired together, lit simultaneously by spring-loaded flints. Then, dragged by unhappy mules, the engine trundled forward until the axle turned and another bank of cannon was brought into play.