Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (2 page)

A craft came along the river, silently, the helmsman apparently happy for the most part to let it follow the current. The cargo was sheltered from the sun by a palmleaf-thatched cabin, which covered the deck with an arch-shaped tunnel. The sail was down, unnecessary, even a hindrance in the fast flow.

As the boat went by, Niccolò was able to peer inside, through a window-hole in the thatch. A giant of a man sat in the dimness within: a clumsy-looking fellow, appearing too big for his craft, but a man with peace, contentment, captured in his huge form. He was knitting. His great hands working the wooden needles while his elbow occasionally twitched the tiller, as if he could steer sightlessly.

It seemed he knew the river so well—the meanders, the currents, the sandbars and rapids—had travelled this long watery snake for half a century—he needed no eyes. Maybe he could feel the flow and know to a nautical inch, a fraction of a fathom, where he was in time and space? Perhaps he navigated as he knitted woollen garments, both by feel, on his way to the sea.

Niccolò signalled to the man, and received a reply.

Afterwards he made camp by the river that wound beneath the star patterns visible in the clear sky. The campfire sent up showers of sparks, like wandering stars
themselves
, and though Niccolò did not know it they gave someone hope. A lost soul was out there, in the desert, and saw the glow in the heavens.

The following morning, Niccolò woke to the sound of camels grumbling, kicking their hobbled legs,
shaking
their traces. The horse took no part in this minor rebellion. A nobler creature (in its own mind), it held itself aloof from dissident camels. Niccolò fed the camels,
then
he and the horse ate together, apart from the other beasts.

Three days out into the desert, Niccolò came across the woman. Her lips were blistered and he had trouble forcing water past
them
. When she opened her eyes she said, ‘I knew you would come. I saw your fire,’ then she passed out again.

In the evening he revived her with some warm jasmine tea, and soon she was able to sit up, talk. She was not a particularly pretty woman. At a guess she was about the same age as he was, in her very early thirties. Her skin had been dried by the sun, was the colour of old paper, and though it was soft had a myriad of tiny wrinkles, especially around the eyes and mouth. Her stature was slight: she could have been made of dry reeds. She wore only a thin cotton dress.

‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked her.

‘Looking for water,’ she said, sipping the tea, staring at him over the rim of the mug.

He gestured irritably.

‘I can see that, but how did you get lost? Were you part of a caravan?’

She shook her head, slowly.

‘I was searching for my mother’s house.’

‘Here, in the desert?’

Her brown eyes were soft in the firelight.

‘It wasn’t always a desert,’ she said. ‘I thought there might be something left—a few bricks, stones, something.’

Niccolò nodded. He guessed she was one of those who went out searching for their roots. Lost now, but lost before she even came into the desert. One of those who had been separated as a child from her family during the exodus, and had found out her father’s name, where her parents had lived, and had gone looking to see if there was anything left.

He stared around him, his eyes sweeping over the low and level plain. Only a short three decades ago there had been a thriving community here, the suburbs of a city. On the very place where they were sitting buildings had stood, streets had run. The city had been so vast it took many days to travel by coach-and-six from its centre to the outskirts.

Now there was nothing but dust.

‘I can’t take you with me,’ he said. ‘I’m heading for the Tower...’ He nodded towards the marvellous structure that dominated the eastern sky, taller than any mountain in the
region,
so tall its heights were often lost in the clouds. Since it was evening, lights had begun to encrust the Tower, like a sprinkling of early stars.

She said timidly, ‘I can come with you.’

‘No. I don’t have the food or the water to carry a passenger. I have just enough for my own needs, and no more. I’ll point you in the right direction. You can make the river in five, maybe six days, on foot. The first refugee camp is two days on from there.’

She looked at him with a shocked expression on her face.

‘I’ll die of thirst.’

‘That’s not my fault. I came across you by chance. I didn’t have anything to do with your being here. You might make it. I’ll give you a little water, as much as I can spare.’

‘No,’ she said firmly, hugging her legs and staring into the fire, ‘you’ll take me with you.’

He did not answer her, having nothing more to say. Niccolò of course did not want to send her out there, and he knew she was
right
, she probably
would
die, but he had no choice. His mission depended on him making the journey safely. To ensure success, he needed to do that alone, without any encumbrances. She would hold him back, drink his water, eat his food, spy on him,
probe
for his secrets. He would probably have to kill more than one camel to get to the Tower, if he took her along too. It was not in his plans.

Finally, he spoke.

‘We must get some rest, we both need it.’

Niccolò gave her the sleeping bag and used a horse blanket himself. Once the sun was down, it was bitterly cold, the ground failing to retain the heat. She moved closer to him for warmth, and the fire blocked his retreat. He had not been with a woman for so long, he had almost forgotten how pyrotechnical the experience could be. Just before dawn she crawled under the blanket with him and said, ‘Take me—please,’ and though he knew that the words had a
double-meaning
, that he was committing himself to something he wished to avoid, he made love with her.

In the morning, he knew he could not send her on her way. He wanted her with him, in the cold desert nights, and afterwards, in his bleak life.

‘You’ll have to ride on one of the pack camels,’ he said. ‘Have you ever been on a camel?’

‘No, but I’ll manage.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought, as he helped her up onto her perch. He had chosen one of the less vicious camels, one that did not bite just out of pure malice, though it was inclined to snap when it got testy at the end of a long hard day’s walk.

‘Romola,’ she smiled, ‘what’s yours.’

‘Niccolò. Now listen, Romola, we ’ve got a long way to go, and
your
...you’ll get a sore rump.’

‘You can rub some cream into it, when we stop at night,’ she said, staring into his eyes.

‘We’re not carrying any cream,’ he said, practically, and swung himself into the worn leather saddle.

They moved out into the desert, towards the wonderful Tower, whose shadow would stretch out and almost reach them towards the evening. He and Arturo, eight years ago, had set out on a mission of murder, and had failed even to cross the desert. This time he was well prepared, but carrying a passenger. If anything happened, he would have to abandon her, for the mission was more
important
than either of them.

The city was still there, of course, he reminded himself. It was vertical, instead of laying like a great pool over the surface of the continent. It was as if the houses had been sucked up to the clouds, like water in a waterspout, and now stood as a giant pillar supporting heaven. The city had become the Tower, a monument to artistic beauty and achievement: a profound and glorious testament to brilliant architecture. Perfect in its symmetry, most marvellous in its form, without parallel in all the previous accomplishments of man. It was grace and elegance, tastefulness and balance, to the finest degree possible this side of heaven. The angels could not have created a more magnificent testimonial to art, nor God Himself
a splendour
more pleasing to the eye.

And at its head, the great and despised architect and builder himself, its maker and resident.

The
Tower had been started by the High Priest designate, da Vinci,
when he was in his early twenties.

‘We need to get closer to God,’ he had told his contemporaries and the people, ‘and away from the commerce and business of the streets. We have the cathedral’s steeple of course, but think what a great monument to the city a tower would be! We could use the bricks and rubble from condemned buildings, to keep the cost of the construction low. The air is cleaner up there.’

Da Vinci was now truly a ‘high priest’ living at the top of the Tower, away from the people, protected by his army of clergy. It was said that oxygen had to be pumped to his chambers, night and day, in order to breathe up there. It was also very cold, and fires were maintained constantly, the fuel coming from the stored furniture of a million inhabitants of the old city.

He had begun the work, as he had promised, by using the debris from demolished houses, factories, government buildings, but gradually, as the fever for greatness took him, so he had urged his priests to find more materials elsewhere. Gravestones were used, walls were pillaged,
wells
were shorn of bricks. The people began to complain but da Vinci told them the wrath of God would descend upon any dissenter, and since he was God’s instrument, he would see to it that the sentence was death.

By this time the Tower had become a citadel, within whose walls a private army grew. The Holy Guardians, as they were called, went forth daily to find more building materials, forcing people from their homes around the Tower, and tearing up whole streets to get at the slabs beneath.

Not all the citizens were unhappy about da Vinci’s scheme, or he never would have got as far as he did. Many were caught up in his fervour, added fuel to his excitement and determination. The guild of building workers, for example, a strong group of men, was totally behind the idea of a Tower to God. It promised them work for many years to come.

Also the water-carriers, with their mule-pulled carts; the tool makers; the waggoners carrying supplies for the builders and the Holy Guardians; the weapon makers; the brick workers; the slate and marble miners. All these people put themselves behind da Vinci with undisguised enthusiasm.

Da Vinci began recruiting more youths, and maidens, as the Tower’s demands for a larger workforce grew, and these came mainly from the city streets. When the guild could no longer find willing, strong people to join them, they sent out press gangs and got their labour that way. Eventually, they had to get workers from the farms, around the city, and the land was left to go to waste while the Tower grew, mighty and tall, above the face of the world.

Churches were among the last buildings to be stripped, but torn down they were, and their stained-glass windows and marble used
to
enhance da Vinci’s now fabled monument. The High Priest strove for perfection in his quest for beauty. Inferior materials were torn out, removed, shipped down to the ocean in barges and cast into the waves. No blemish was too small to be overlooked and allowed to remain. Every part of the tower, every aspect, deserved the utmost attention, deserved to meet perfection at its completion.

Flawlessness became da Vinci’s obsession.
Exactness, precision, excellence.
Nothing less would be accepted. There were those who died, horribly, for a tiny defect, a mark out of true that was visible only in certain lights, and viewed at certain angles, by someone with perfect vision. There was no such thing as a small error, for every scratch was a chasm.

This was the form that his obsession took.

By the time tower was half-built the population had already begun to leave the city. Long lines of refugees trekked across the wasteland, to set up camps in the hanging valleys beyond, where there was at least a shallow surface soil for growing meagre crops, though the mountains cast cold shadows over their fields, and high altitude winds brought early frosts.