Act of Faith (10 page)

‘Oh, no, it’s much worse than that.’ He turned to face me and his smile widened. ‘He’s a Saracen. Al-Qasim is his name. One of the finest map-makers the world has ever known, and there he is, hiding in my attic for fear of being branded a heretic.’

‘Hasn’t he got anywhere to go? Why are you hiding him?’

‘He’s making me a map, of course,’ he said. ‘Why else? It will be the greatest map the world has known, a map of the skies and the
earth, in the greatest book. Kings and emperors have maps such as these, but not we mortals. Who amongst us knows truly the shape of Europe or the islands of Greece? How many of us understand where the rivers of Egypt flow? Now that knowledge will be given to all, and any man —’

‘Or woman.’

‘Any man or woman may ask questions about the world and its contents. They can trade and travel and — this is the most important thing — know!’

My gaze dropped to the table where the book lay open, vulnerable. ‘Has anybody ever created such a book before?’

‘Not like this,’ he said. ‘In this book, you can read the story of the Persian wars or the Roman conquest of Britain. You can learn about how archways are made, or ships built. I commissioned essays from learned men on everything from music to botany to poetry. I paid artists to draw flowers and pyramids and the weapons of the ancients. It has taken years.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I have distilled all the great philosophers and theologians, all the great ideas of my faith, your faith; the three faiths of the Holy Land.’

‘But how can the religions live together in one book?’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’ he asked. ‘We live together in one world.’

‘Is it not filled with contradiction?’

‘But of course!’ he shouted. ‘And what’s wrong with that? A rabbi will argue as often as he breathes; every day a new debate, a new idea. You know the old saying? Wherever there are two Jews, there will be three opinions. The Arabs are the same, although, of course, neither they nor the Jews would ever admit such a similarity. The Catholic Church disapproves of debate — so do
your Puritans, for that matter — but only through argument do we strengthen our understanding.’

‘Perhaps people are afraid of argument,’ I said.

‘You’re not,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘We are left in no doubt on that score. And nor was your father. He believed in ideas, in words.’

‘That’s why we had to leave England.’

‘Perhaps so. But your father was a great thinker and a man of principle.’

‘I know,’ I said, but somewhere deep inside a voice whispered:
If he’d just kept his mouth shut, if he’d never written that
Discourse on Liberty,
we might have lived in peace forever.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Isabella.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘You feel you might have been better off if your father had believed passionately in something less controversial.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, and then, more defiantly, ‘Yes. He might still be alive.’

‘He would not have wished to live without passion, without ideas, without being, as some would say, a rabble-rouser.’

‘Not everyone can live that way,’ I said. ‘After all, somebody has to be the rabble.’

‘Not you, my dear.’

‘Why not? I don’t feel that strongly about anything.’

‘You have, and you will again, one day,’ said my master. ‘I’m sure of it. And then, woe betide anyone who stands in your way.’

He flicked back through the pages of the book to the Foreword. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘“To understand the universe; to express our innate creativity; to ponder the momentous questions of our time; to reflect upon the past and cast a light into the dim future;
to wholly engage our hearts and minds supplied by God in His wisdom: these must be the objects of every man and woman on Earth.”’

He paused. ‘Do you know who wrote that?’

How could I not remember those words?

‘My father,’ I said weakly.

‘You see, Isabella? It is not the first time, nor the last, that men will struggle for independent thought. Two hundred years ago, when printing began in Europe, the world overflowed with books and pamphlets debating the future of the Church and the nature of God.’

‘Yes, and look what happened,’ I retorted. ‘The Church split into a thousand pieces, people went to war over it and there was no end of upheaval.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘It is true, but it needn’t have happened that way. Now your Pope tells us that we cannot read any books that he doesn’t like; we cannot hear of any ideas that do not accord with his. He will burn any books that question him or his Church. What gives him that right?’

‘The law of God?’ I suggested.

‘The Pope is a man, not a god.’ He slammed one fist into his other hand. ‘How can one man deny knowledge to another?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘He’s not my Pope.’

‘How can people learn if they are starved of the wisdom of the ages; if they cannot ask questions?’

‘Such a book, such ideas, are forbidden in Europe,’ I said. ‘Printing a few Bibles is one thing.
Discourse on Liberty
is risky enough. But this is really dangerous — for you, for all of us.’

He jumped to his feet. ‘I don’t care.’ Tears pooled in his eyes. I had never seen him like this before. He was brilliant and alive,
brimming with ideas and dreams and words. ‘It is nearly finished. I am taking it to Venice to be printed by the finest printers in the world.’

‘Is that why we’re making this journey?’

‘Of course! In this one book, Isabella, you can read the most important debates of all time. Not answers — just questions, arguments, ideas. Cicero did not agree with everything Aristotle wrote — does that mean we should not read one or the other? And if so, which one? Who are we to say? Erasmus translated both, and now his own work is forbidden — the greatest mind of his age, banned.’

‘Master, that is a battle you cannot win.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He stomped towards the fireplace and poured another goblet of wine from the flask on the mantelpiece. ‘But let me tell you something that my own father once told me. Ideas are like butterflies. Once they are hatched, you can never force them back into the cocoon.’

I smiled. ‘That’s all very well, Master, but your father —’

‘My father …’ He gulped at his wine. ‘My father was a heretic and so am I.’

I gasped out loud. ‘Don’t say that.’ I couldn’t help but glance at the door, as if someone might be listening. ‘Keep your voice down, at least.’

‘He burned for it, and so will I.’

‘Master, what are you saying? Be quiet.’

‘You think I am joking? I am not, Isabella, I swear. My father died at the stake for the crime of being a Jew — and for asking terrible questions about the shape of the world.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said.

‘It was many years ago,’ he said. ‘We won’t speak of it now. But the world is transformed all around us. Now it is my turn to
ask questions, no matter how revolutionary. This is my life’s work. From this book, I will release these ideas to float into the world. They will fly about Europe and nobody — no pope or rabbi or imam or even the Holy Inquisition — will ever be able to force them back into darkness.’

He plumped himself down at the table, his hands on the book. ‘Now you can help me work on this Greek chapter.’

So I sat beside him, reading and translating, editing and checking, until late that evening, and every evening after that, wherever we were: in hostels and lodging houses along the road to Baden; in a dingy castle overlooking a lake; in a monastery guesthouse in the Alps; in a swept-out stable outside Zurich.

It was a long journey, longer than I’d imagined — longer than it needed to be, because Master de Aquila insisted that we could not cross into Italy near Milan, where the Spanish Emperors ruled. Instead, we rode all the way across the Middle Lands, where villages dotted the valleys and plains, and on through high mountain passes so icy that the horses slipped and shied on the trail. Willem and Master de Aquila argued every mile of the way.

‘This adds days — weeks — to the journey,’ said Willem.

‘No matter,’ said Master de Aquila.

‘All these mountains.’

‘They are nothing.’

‘We could be in Milan by now.’

‘I hear Milan is very dull.’

‘I will be an old man before I reach Venice.’

‘That might not be a bad thing.’

‘But, Master, why?’

‘Enough! I cannot enter Spanish territory and that is all you need to know.’

We finally entered the Republic of Venice from the north, near Verona. Each day, we drew closer to our destination. Each evening, Master de Aquila and I worked together on
The Sum of All Knowledge
, then packed it away carefully in its wrappings and locked chest, safeguarded for the night and the journey ahead.

I learned things about the world I had never even imagined. My father had owned a map of Europe, but I had never before seen maps of the whole earth: the New Found Land, the islands of the East Indies, the colonies in the Americas and even the mythical
Terra Australis Incognita
were traced in part on these pages. The world had trebled in size, it seemed to me. Who knew what other continents or treasures or monsters lay beyond the edges of these charts?

‘Why,’ I wondered aloud one morning, as we left the shadow of the Alps at last and set off along the road to Bergamo, ‘doesn’t someone draw maps of the roads as well as the rivers and oceans?’

‘Impossible,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘There are too many.’

‘Anyway, nobody needs such a map,’ said Willem. ‘You just ask for directions from an honest villager at the start of the day.’

I wondered the same thing later that afternoon, when Willem’s impeccable directions from an innkeeper proved either unreliable or lost in translation.

‘He swore this was the right road,’ Willem said mournfully, as we stood on the bank of an impassable river. ‘We took the left fork at the big birch tree, just like he said, and then the path up the steep hill.’

‘There are a great many hills,’ I said. ‘They all look alike to me.’

‘And forests of birch trees,’ said Master de Aquila.

‘If only there were a map,’ I said.

‘There isn’t, and there never will be such a thing!’ Willem snapped.

We reached Verona at last, just before the city gates closed at dark.

Master de Aquila drew his horse to a halt below the city walls. ‘Here in the Italian States,’ he told us quietly, ‘things are a little different. I cannot stay at an inn, as I can in other places. We must find lodgings in a particular area — more to the point, I must do so, as must all Jews. Since you travel with me, you must, for a few weeks, consider yourselves to be honorary Jews.’

‘What?’ Willem almost shouted it.

Master de Aquila glared at him. ‘You do not like the idea?’

Willem blushed. ‘I — I don’t understand, that’s all.’

‘Hmm.’ Our master raised his eyebrows; just a fraction, but enough to prepare me for a burst of anger. ‘The rulers of Venice have decreed that all Jews must live in one area — they call it the Ghetto, apparently, after an old foundry that was originally built there. It has walls around it, and good Catholic men as gatekeepers, although I cannot say whether they are there to keep the Jews in or the Christians out.’

‘Ghetto?’ asked Willem.

‘An innovative idea. Jews were banned from living in the city altogether until a few decades ago. They — or, I should say, we — were readmitted only on condition we live all together in one quarter, well away from the Catholic citizens. It is the same here in Verona, and in Padua, which is a little further along our road, and indeed elsewhere.’

‘Isabella and I won’t be allowed in, then.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Master de Aquila slowly. ‘Should you choose to make it known that you are not Jewish.’

Willem fell silent.

Master de Aquila rode up to the guardhouse to offer his passport and our papers. We sat on our horses, just waiting, not speaking, until he waved us towards the gates.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘My children.’

We could see little of the city in the fading light, but we rode through narrow lanes with houses close on each side until we came to a second set of gates. The guards ushered us through into the Ghetto, then closed the gates behind us.

‘You may find it strange,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘I feel oddly comforted.’

A man in a red cap came out of the nearest building to greet us. He and Master de Aquila spoke — in Hebrew, I assumed; I had never heard it aloud before — and within minutes we were inside by a raging fire, with women bustling around us, handing out plates of food and goblets of wine, all talking at once and in a mixture of languages and dialects that I couldn’t follow. Master de Aquila laughed delightedly and shook hands with everyone in the room.

It had been so long since I had been in the company of women that I couldn’t hide my grin. I thanked them in as many languages as I could muster, in case they could understand me, and sat gratefully at the table, in a chair nearest the fireplace. A plate of meats and roasted vegetables appeared before me.

Willem stood just inside the door, still wearing his riding cloak.

‘Come in,’ I said. ‘You’ll offend them.’

He didn’t move. Master de Aquila paused and watched him.

‘The food smells wonderful,’ I said.

Slowly, Willem drew off his cloak and stepped further into the room. An old woman took his arm and led him to the table.

‘What’s she saying?’ he asked me.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘But I think they are words of welcome.’

He nodded politely to the woman, who thrust a goblet into his hand.

‘That, I imagine, is the best we can hope for,’ said Master de Aquila, and he eased himself into the most comfortable-looking chair.

As the night wore on and the women settled into talking to one another as if we weren’t there, I let their words wash over me like warm bath water. I picked up a few phrases here and there, and every so often a familiar expression made me smile. It was their own Veronese dialect mixed in with some Hebrew and a little Latin, so I felt like I was listening to a familiar but fractured conversation. Master de Aquila couldn’t keep up, either, but it didn’t matter. We all nodded and smiled and the women laughed aloud. They fed us until we thought we might burst, until even Willem couldn’t manage another mouthful and was smiling so wide I thought his face might crack. Someone took our bags upstairs, and an old man arrived with a lantern to escort us to our rooms. I slept as if I were at home.