‘It is a horrible picture he paints, Holiness,’ said Fra Murta. The two men had met at the door between the cathedral and the cloister and were standing in the cloister walk. ‘Of a country where the truth has no defenders. Where the poor and ignorant are at the mercy of every charlatan, for each man makes up his own mind about the truth. Where there are many religions, and all can set up and preach and enlist followers, like so many vulgar peasants bringing produce to a market and each setting up his own stall. Where one town can have three or four bishops, each of a different stamp, and people change churches as men change horses, several times in a journey. If this priest will not marry you, another will, he says. Neither hope of heaven nor fear of hell is called into the balance to support the rulers of this place, for any citizen may entertain neither! He says I overstate the force of both; most people he says, keep the law in this world for reasons of this world, and his country has a civil force of law-keepers. I asked him if there were not often riots and disputes, wars almost, between the followers of one religion and another, and he answered that this sometimes happened. There is quite often disorder, he says, and uproar in the streets, but this is usually about the fortunes in a game of some kind played between teams of citizens, about which feelings run higher than over the truths of religion. He speaks most proudly and obdurately of the freedom with which each man forms his own conscience there, which I find is like the freedom of the blind to fall into the pit.’
‘Is this all?’ said Severo wearily. ‘We have heard him talk of his country many times before. Certainly it has strange and perhaps outrageous customs; that does not make him a heretic.’
‘I think it might be enough,’ said Fra Murta. ‘We burned a woman on the mainland once for describing the world after the Second Coming and filling it with a foul debauchery of every woman with every man, saying that “no marriage nor giving in marriage” meant a disgusting free-for-all, a universal orgy, and trying to start it at once, to bring about the end of the world.’
‘Your poor crazed woman was however, advocating wicked conduct. The atheist has advocated nothing; he has kept silence on his views and on the customs of his country except in answer to questions.’
‘I think he might have disseminated his vile views to his servants.’
‘What do they say?’
‘They will tell me nothing. Their loyalty smells. After all they have not been with him long.’
‘Their loyalty smells, do you say?’ said Severo, appalled.
‘It smells of witchcraft. He has bewitched them!’
‘It is not a proof of heresy that a man has loyal servants,’ said Severo coldly.
‘We should put him to the torture. That will have him confessing fast enough.’
‘I thought that torture was a matter of last resort in the most contumacious cases,’ said Severo.
‘In theory, yes. In practice, its undoubted, reliable efficacy leads to its use very frequently . . .’
‘Fra Murta, let us understand one another. You come to me with a special commission from Rome. I know how precious to the Holy Father the Sacred Inquisition is, as I know that you will return to Rome when your mission is complete and that you have the ears of powerful people there. I am sure that you would fearlessly carry out your duty to report any obstruction you had encountered in the course of your inquisition. But I too have friends in Rome. Should any abuse of process occur, any regrettable error in the conduct of investigation, anything which vitiated the soundness of the verdict against a heretic, although this is a remote island, a report of such a thing might nevertheless be made in Rome. If one were ever to encounter an inquisitor who used his great powers with anything less than the most perfect circumspection, one might think it one’s duty to report the circumstances in the most high places.’
Fra Murta bowed slightly. ‘We will both do our duty under God, Holiness,’ he said. ‘I will take matters no further without consulting you further. But this is a most obdurate case. Did I tell you that he has threatened me?’
‘He threatened you? Whatever could he threaten you with?’
‘He said if ever his countrymen should discover what had become of him in this island, their revenge would be terrible beyond comprehension . . .’
‘Not a very immediate threat, then.’
‘He said, if his country were nearby, then his people would fight to keep him from falling into my hands, but as it was, his country was far off.’
‘Where does he come from?’ wondered Severo, sotto voce. ‘Fra Murta, have you ever heard of Aclar?’
‘I have heard of hell,’ said the friar.
Severo stood at a table in the library. A great bookcase lined the wall on his right, and the volumes of patristic teaching were ranged in it. The keeper of books had brought him maps – all the maps they had. The scrolls of vellum lay spread out in front of him, kept flat by the keeper’s dusty hands.
‘This one is thought to be the best, Holiness,’ the keeper said. The map showed Jerusalem in the middle, haloed and marked in red ink on the dark brown, stained parchment. An extensive faded blotch of black ink represented the Mediterranean, hatching showed mountains, and little cities were drawn all over it like tiny coronets, shown bunched within their battlemented walls. Rivers wandered over the surface, webbing it as with spider work. The map was annotated with blocks of writing in a meticulous tiny hand. The world was a great disc, surrounded by a river running round its rim; the corners of the vellum were filled up with angels. Within the ring, in every country depicted, swarmed beasts and birds of fabulous appearance, every one labelled and named.
Severo leaned eagerly, closely, over the map. He found the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel and the little burning bush from which God spoke to Moses; he found Constantinople, and the lands of the Great Khan, and the Pillars of Hercules, and Ultima Thule. Red letters denoted the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the tomb of Mausolus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the temple of Diana of the Ephesians, the statue of Jupiter at Athens, the lighthouse at Alexandria. Gold letters pointed up the cave of St John’s revelation on the island of Patmos, the mountain of the Ascension, the Sea of Galilee, St Peter’s at Rome, St James at Compostella. Porphyry and silver marked the whereabouts of every fragment of the true cross. An arrow marked the line set out by a lodestone. He could not find Aclar. Neither, when consulted, could the keeper of books. They both scanned for some time, reading every word on the surface of the great map, in vain.
At last Severo straightened and sighed. Then something struck him. ‘Where is Grandinsula?’ he asked.
‘Not shown, Holiness,’ the keeper said.
‘Well, we are a small island, Holiness, and nothing of great importance has happened here.’
‘Where was this map made, then?’
‘Here. In this very library, I believe.’
‘Ah,’ said Severo, baffled. ‘And when was it made?’
‘Long ago, Holiness. In a time of wisdom, but before my time.’
That night Severo was visited in his cell by Rafal, who knocked quietly and entered. ‘You found something?’ Severo asked him.
‘Not much, Holiness. I asked on every ship in the harbour as you told me to, without any success. But then I thought of the taverns where the seamen drink. I wrapped my cloak over my soutane, Holiness, and sat in a corner with a wine bottle in front of me and several wine cups, and I soon had talkative company. You do not think this was wrong of me, Holiness?’
‘No, no, Rafal, it shows enterprise. Go on.’
‘Still nobody had heard of Aclar, Holiness. But at last there was a drunken captain – very drunk, I’m afraid, Holiness, and I dread to think how he will spend the dineros I had to give him for his news – who told me something.’
‘He knew of Aclar?’
‘Not really, Holiness. But he remembered something. He remembered long, long ago – he was a young man at the time – he was serving on a ship which was tied up at Genoa, or at Livorno, he really could not recall whether it was Genoa or Livorno, and they were tied alongside a ship with curious rigging. He said he and his fellow seamen were very struck by something about this rigging. He told me all about it, Holiness, and at great length, but I’m afraid I didn’t understand a word of it – something about keeping ropes from slackening. Anyway, as well as this business about the rigging, the ship was curious in another way – it didn’t have galley slaves. It just had crew. They all worked, he understood, and would all get paid. So his captain took fright and moved his berth across the harbour. He didn’t want the wretches in his own ship to get mutinous ideas, I gathered. The point is, Holiness, that my drunken friend thought he could remember asking one of the sailors on the other ship where he hailed from and being told he was an Aclaridian. That’s all. Just that one word, “Aclaridian”. And from some twenty years ago, as far as I could reckon.’
Severo sat for some moments in silence. Then he said, ‘Thank you, Rafal. You serve me well.’
‘Holiness, there is just one other thing. It probably doesn’t matter, but . . .’
‘Tell me.’
‘I quickly found out that being asked about Aclar was no novelty. Someone has been at the harbourside repeatedly, coming repeatedly for many months, asking the question before me. From the description of him, I think it must be Joffre, the atheist’s servant.’
‘Hmm,’ said Severo. ‘That’s a relief, I rather think. I feared for a moment it might have been some agent of Fra Murta’s.’