Rémy ached for sleep and silence as he approached the abandoned rail tunnel near South Kensington Station. The tunnel with its shantytown of boxes, tarps and crates had been his home for the past three weeks. He’d always had music playing in his head, telling him stories, riffing with the sounds in the world around him, but he’d never wished for silence before. It was different now.
Please God, just for one night, peace and quiet.
The Professor’s tent stood under the tallest curve of the tunnel: a series of old blue construction tarps duct-taped together and held aloft with broom handles. It was furnished with an overstuffed armchair, an old-style primary-school desk, a cooler filled with whatever food and drink the Professor had managed to scavenge that day, a box of books and a bust of the philosopher Paracelsus. There was also a bicycle with a flat tyre and the Professor’s camp bed, neatly made up with army surplus blankets and a thin pillow. Rémy’s sleeping bag and backpack lay on the opposite side of the tent.
The Professor sat behind the primary-school desk, writing. In the short time Rémy had known him, the Professor was always writing; and yet when Rémy stole a look it wasn’t writing like any he had ever seen, just lines and lines of repetitive numbers, patterns and glyphs. Rémy figured that, whatever the Professor was doing, it made perfect sense in his world.
‘Success?’ inquired the Professor without looking up.
‘No,’ said Rémy, setting his guitar case on the floor and flopping down in the armchair. He ran his hands across his shaved head, the growth prickling his palms.
‘I’ll need to go back and look more carefully some other time. I wish I knew what exactly I was looking for. I wish I’d known enough to help my mom with this search when she was alive. I wish—’
‘My boy, don’t punish yourself for what you could not have known. Those kinds of wishes are simply vanity disguised as regret. Now, tell me again what your mother told you.’
‘“Find the Moor and find the painting”,’ Rémy repeated wearily. ‘I’ve struck out with the painting and I’ve no idea what a Moor is, never mind where to find one.’
‘Well, I may be able to help with the Moor.’
The Professor unfolded his large body from behind the tiny desk and pulled out a map, the kind that hung in libraries and classrooms. He picked up a broken umbrella and used it as a pointer.
Despite the exhaustion in his bones, Rémy knew better than to doze off. If he insulted his eccentric host, he was pretty sure he’d be asked to leave – and then where would he go? He unlaced his boots for comfort, but kept them on. Footwear was as precious as gold among the homeless. It could never leave your feet.
‘In the Middle Ages through to the early fifteen hundreds,’ the Professor began, ‘many wealthy North African aristocrats migrated with their armies across the straits of Gibraltar, here and here.’ He pointed to southern Spain with the handle. ‘They established themselves in Granada and Cordoba in particular, building castles and palaces and many of the trade routes that eventually fuelled the economy in this part of the world.’
Rémy shifted his chair. ‘So Moors are from North Africa?’
‘Yes, by and large.’
‘Were these Moors Muslim?’
‘Many were. But Spain was a Catholic country. You have no doubt heard of the Spanish Inquisition?’
Rémy couldn’t help himself. ‘No one expects them, I can tell you that much.’
The Professor looked blank.
‘I would question that position,’ he said. ‘The Inquisitors were well known and feared at the time. Various royal decrees issued between 1492 and 1501 ordered many of the Moors to convert or leave Spain forever. The Inquisition ensured that those who claimed to have converted, did so in the proper fashion.’
Rémy stifled a yawn. He was so damn tired.
‘The Moors were known to be great philanthropists and supporters of the arts, especially music,’ the Professor continued. ‘One story in particular may be of interest to you. The story of a Moor and the most famous castrato of Renaissance Europe, Don Grigori de Cordoba.’
Rémy’s drooping eyes flew open. Castrato?
‘In the early part of the sixteenth century,’ said the Professor. ‘This castrato was celebrated in every theatre and court in Europe. For a long time, one of his main benefactors was a Moor known as the Caliph of Cadiz.’
The excitement that had flared in Rémy’s heart died. This wasn’t the Moor his mother had told him to find. He needed someone in the twenty-first century.
‘Now,’ the Professor continued, oblivious to Rémy’s disappointment, ‘it’s a popular misconception that castrati have no testicles—’
‘I wouldn’t say popular,’ muttered Rémy.
‘—but it’s not entirely true. To keep their pristine voices at a high-octave range, young boys had the endocrine ducts to their testicles sliced, so that their testicles would shrivel up. A eunuch had his testicles removed entirely, usually for quite different reasons.’
Rémy’s empty stomach churned.
‘It is widely believed that the Moor and the castrato duelled over money and went their separate ways. The castrato withdrew from the opera at the peak of his career and the height of his fame to accept a position as composer and personal musician at the court of Cardinal Rafael Oscuro, one of the most infamous Inquisitors of the period.’
Rémy loved listening to the Professor’s stories, especially late at night when homesickness gripped his heart in a vice. But this lecture was pushing it after the day he’d had.
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ he said, ‘but what has any of this got to do with finding the Moor my mom told me to find? That guy must have died 500 years ago!’
The Professor’s eyes were strangely dark. ‘Time is much more wibbly wobbly than you think.’
‘If it is, I’d like to wobble back at least a few months before any of this shit hit my fan.’
Rémy suddenly felt as if he had been plunged into a warm bath. His muscles, taut with fear and exhaustion, relaxed. His frustration fizzled. His headache faded, the sound from the pendant at his neck a distant thready hum. He looked at the Professor.
‘How do you do that?’
‘Do what?’ asked the Professor, opening a carton of partially eaten KFC he had retrieved from a nearby dumpster.
Rémy stood in front of the Professor.
‘My mom would calm me with her singing when I was little. I’d feel her lullabies in my head like a blanket wrapping my brain. You do the same thing, somehow.’
Rémy eyed his guitar and his backpack, in case he had to make a run for it.
‘You made me trust you the moment I met you. I’ve seen you do it to others. You can calm a rowdy crowd and persuade them to fill your hat with cash. And not just because your stories are good.’
‘What a curious thing to say,’ murmured the Professor. ‘Would you like a wing from this chicken in a box?’
Rémy ignored the offer. ‘I’ve spent my entire life around magical secrets,’ he said. ‘There’s something odd about you. If I should be worried, I’d like to know sooner rather than later.’
The Professor put the carton of chicken down and stared at the blue tarped wall of the tent.
‘I am… different,’ he said at last.
‘No kidding,’ said Rémy. It had been a hell of a journey from losing his mother in Chicago to a tent in London with a man who could control people with his mind. ‘Are you even a real professor?’
‘Perhaps not in the way you know. The one thing I have time for is reading. And libraries are the most hospitable environments for a person like me to pass my time. I have taken advantage of the best of the world’s libraries over the years, trying to understand who I am and what my destiny may be.’
‘And what have you discovered?’
The Professor switched his gaze back to Rémy. ‘That I am meant to use my special talents to help you,’ he said. ‘It was kismet that you and I ran into each other that day.’
Rémy weighed the situation up. He was so far removed from his old life and any semblance of a normal future he’d once imagined for himself. What did he have to lose?
‘OK. I’m happy to have your help,’ Rémy said.
The Professor nodded briskly. ‘We will make a start tomorrow.’
‘Will you tell me more about the Moor I have to find?’
‘I can do better than that. Tomorrow I will take you to see him.’