Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (3 page)

Or people made their way to the sea and settled on a coastal strip that could barely support the fishermen who had lived there before the multitudes arrived. Many of them died on the march, some travelled by river and drowned when the overcrowded rafts were thrown by the rapids; others perished of starvation when they arrived at the camps; thousands went down with the plague and never raised their heads above the dust again.

And still the Tower grew.

What do you think of da Vinci?’ asked Romola on the third night they were together.

‘He’s a genius,’ said Niccolò without hesitation. ‘He is the greatest architect and builder the world has ever known.’

‘Does his genius come from God?’

She peered at him through the firelight.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I mean does God give him instruction?’

‘That sounds close to blasphemy,’ he said, staring hard. ‘You’re suggesting that God, not the High Priest, should take credit for the Tower. It is da Vinci’s work, not the Lord’s.’

He drew away from her then, away from the fire, despite his fear of the night snakes amongst the darkness of the rocks.

She continued to talk.

‘I used to be one of the Holy Guardians—until I was thrown out on my ear...’

He looked at her
,
then behind him at the Tower, then back to her again.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you didn’t come from the refugee camp? You came from the Tower itself?’

‘I...I didn’t know what else to do, when we were told to leave, I thought about looking for my parents’ former home, thinking it was a long way from the Tower and something of it might have survived.’

‘Why were you asked to leave?’

‘New guards were recruited, from distant places. The old Holy Guardians have been disbanded. We are no longer permitted to remain near the tower. Most of my friends have gone down to the sea, to try to get work on the ships, guarding against pirates. Fighting is all we know. I intend to ask the High Priest if some of his—his closer Companions at Arms can return to our former posts. We were his Chosen, after all.’

Niccolò smiled.

‘You mean he doesn’t call you to his bed any more?’

She lifted her head and shook it.

‘No, that’s a privilege reserved for the Holy Guardians.’

‘I see. So the fact that you, and most of your companions, had reached the age of thirty or thereabouts, had nothing to do with you being asked to leave? The new men and women, they’re not young, handsome or pretty of course?’

She stared at Niccolò.

‘He recruited a new army for very logical reasons. They now consist of many small groups of men and women from different regions, different tribes.’

‘Now why did da Vinci do that?’ asked Niccolò, softly.

‘It’s said that he’s afraid of plots being formed against him, even amongst his trusted Holy Guardians.
The separate new groups do not speak each other’s language
,
they use many different tongues
. If they can’t communicate, they can’t conspire against the High Priest, can they?’ she said. ‘Since he has control over a small group of interpreters, he has complete control over the whole army.’

Despite himself, Niccolò was impressed. It certainly was clever strategy on da Vinci’s part. There was much to admire about da Vinci, no matter how much he was hated. The Tower was a product of a brilliant mind. The architecture, the engineering, was decades ahead of its time. Where an old support might have proved too weak, da Vinci had designed a new one. He was responsible for inventing the transverse arch, the buttress, the blind arcade, and many other architectural wonders. The absolute beauty of the work— the colonnades, the windows,
the
ceilings—was indeed worthy of a god.

Such a pity a million people had been sacrificed to feed his egoism.

On the third Sunday Niccolò confronted her, waking her from a deep sleep. ‘You’ve been meddling,’ he said, angrily. ‘You’ve been sticking your nose in amongst my goods.’ She shook the sleep from her head, staring up at him. Comprehension came to her gradually. He could see it appearing in her eyes. ‘I was just curious,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean any harm.’

Niccolò pointed to one of the packs that had fallen from a camel. Its contents had spilled out, over the desert floor: marble statuettes of angels, of cherubim, of seraphim.

She stared where he was pointing.

He said, ‘When you retied the knot, you used a knot that slipped— there’s the result.’

‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to...’

‘To spy,’ said Niccolò.

He could see he was right by the expression on her face and he grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. She immediately struck him a sharp blow with the heel of her hand behind his ear,
then
as his head snapped to the side, she kicked him in the groin. He went down in the dust, excruciating pains shooting through his neck,
a numbness
in his genitals which quickly turned to an unbearable aching.

She had been, after all, a soldier.

‘Don’t you dare try that again,’ she cried. ‘My mother was an assassin. She taught me the martial arts. I could kill you now...’

In his agony he didn’t need to be told.

By the time he had recovered, she had gathered his statuettes, carefully wrapped them in their protective rags, and tied them inside the pack. He hobbled over to it and inspected the knots, satisfying himself that this time they were correct and tight. Then he swung himself into his saddle, winced to himself, and gestured for her to follow on with the camels.

Those figurines,’ she said, obviously trying to make friends with him again, ‘they’re very beautiful. Where do they come from?’

‘I carved them myself,’ he said, ‘from the finest block of marble the eastern quarries have ever disgorged.’

She seemed impressed, though she was obviously no judge of art, nor could she know the work that went into just one of the three hundred and thirty-three statuettes. There was admiration in her tone.

‘They’re very beautiful,’ she repeated.

‘They’re flawless,’ he remarked as casually as he could. ‘It took many years to carve them all, and I have only just completed them. They are a gift, for da Vinci. He can no longer carve minutely, the way one needs to be able to carve if one is to produce a piece just six inches tall—objects that need a younger steadier hand—especially since he developed arthritis.’

She was silent after this.

The Tower grew in size and height, as they drew nearer to its base, until it filled the horizon. Its immensity and resplendence overawed Niccolò so much that he almost turned around, forgot his mission, and went back to the mountains. It would now take him a day to ride, not to the end, but to the edge of the Tower’s shadow. The Tower was like a carved mountain, a white pinnacle of rock that soared upwards to pierce the light blues of the upper skies. Its peak was rarely visible, being wrapped about with clouds for much of the time. The high night winds blew through its holes and hollows, so that it was like a giant flute playing eerie melodies to the moon.

By this time they had begun to eat one of the camels, and two others had been set free, their fodder having been consumed and their usefulness over. The water was almost gone.

Romola showed him how to produce water, by using the stretched membrane of the dead camel’s stomach. She dug a conical pit in the sand, placed a tin cup at its bottom, and shaped the membrane so that it sagged in the centre. Water condensed on its underside and dripped into the cup.

‘I’m an artist,’ he stated, piqued by her superior survival knowledge, ‘I don’t know about these things.’

‘So, an artist, but not a survivor?’

‘I make out.’

They reached the Tower, footsore, weary, but alive. The Holy Guardians immediately took them into custody. Romola protested, saying she was a former soldier, but she could not get them to understand what she was saying. All around the tower was a babble of voices, men and women talking to each other in a dozen different tongues. Romola’s pleas were ignored and she was thrown into the dungeons.

Niccolò found a Holy Guardian who spoke one of the three languages he knew and explained to him that he had brought some gifts for the High Priest and that da Vinci would be greatly angered if Niccolò were not permitted an audience with the one on high.

‘I am the High Priest’s son,’ said Niccolò, ‘and I wish to pay homage to my father.’

Messages were sent, answers received, and eventually Niccolò found himself being hoisted in silver cages up the various stages of the Tower: pulled rapidly aloft by winches through which ran golden chains with counterweights.
An invention of his father.

With him went his bundles of statuettes.

He reached the summit of the tower and was ushered into a huge room on his knees, before the powerful presence of the High Priest, da Vinci. The room was decorated to the quintessence of perfection, its ceilings painted by great artists, its walls carved with wonderful bas-relief friezes, and on the cloud-patterned marble floor stood statues sculpted by the genius da Vinci himself.

A thin middle-aged man stared at Niccolò with hard eyes, from a safe distance. He rubbed his arthritic hands together, massaging the pain, while the guards stood poised with heavy swords, ready to decapitate Niccolò if their master so gestured.

‘You claim to be my son,’ he said, ‘but I have many sons, many daughters—bastards all of them.’

Niccolò replied, ‘It’s true, I’m illegitimate, but how could it be otherwise? You’ve never married.’

The old man laughed softly.

‘That’s true. I loved only one woman—and she failed me.’

Niccolò assumed a puzzled expression.

‘How did she fail you, my lord?’

‘She scarred herself, making her loveliness ugly to my sight. She was a vision of beauty, that became horrible to my eyes...’ The memory was obviously painful to da Vinci, for he paused for a moment in deep thought, a frown upon his face, then his mood changed, and he said, ‘What? What is it? Why did you request, no
demand
, to see me?’

‘I bring you a gift, my lord,’ said Niccolò.
‘A present for my father.
Three hundred and thirty-three statuettes, all carved with great skill by a talented artist—a genius—every one of them a masterpiece.’

‘Who is this artist? Raphael? Michelangelo?’

Niccolò raised his head and smiled.

‘I am the artist, my lord.’

This time da Vinci roared with laughter.

‘Let me see the gift.’

The guards unwrapped the rags and the statuettes began to appear, were placed carefully upon the marble floor, until they covered a huge area of the great room. Eventually, they were all on view, and the High Priest motioned for the guard to bring one to where he stood. He studied it, first while it rested in the guard’s hands, then taking it in his own and turning it over and over, cautiously, but also admiringly.

‘This is indeed a beautiful work of art,’ said da Vinci, holding up the figurine so that the soft light caught the patterns on its buffed and polished surface. ‘How many of them did you say are in the set?’

‘Three hundred and thirty-three.’

Da Vinci smiled.