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XXII

They sat around the low table, heaped with Bacon's papers and covered with chalk scribbles.

'Explodes,' Joan said.

'Somebody,' Bacon said, 'your Weaver of the tapestry of time, Thomas, wants you to make explosions. Incendium Dei indeed. I wonder why.'

Joan glanced at Thomas. 'Have you told him of the engines?'

Thomas closed his eyes. 'No. Because I did not have your permission. And because, frankly, I was frightened where it might lead, if he knew.'

Bacon's eyes were wide. 'What engines? You must tell me.'

Thomas glanced at Joan. 'You see what I mean?'

Joan said, 'Well, we are committed. And perhaps this strange monk of yours can help us.' She described succinctly the legend of Sihtric and his machines of war, the plans now believed lost beneath the floor of the great mosque of Seville, in faraway al-Andalus.

'But you must retrieve this Codex,' Bacon said. 'You must!'

'Why?'

'Can't you see? Combine these engines of war, engines that roll and swim and even fly, with the black powder, with the Fire of God, and no man could stand before you. Think of it – a miniature Vesuvius loaded on each arrow!…'

Saladin's experience of explosions was limited. But once he had seen a forge blow itself apart. He tried to imagine such energies harnessed, launched, and used against the flesh of enemies.

'He's right,' he said reluctantly. 'You told us, Thomas, that Sihtric was dissatisfied with the engines he made. Perhaps this black powder will provide the potency they always lacked.'

Thomas looked pale. 'If it can be made to work – but what a horrible vision of destruction! What man is this Weaver to scatter the seeds of such carnage in our age?'

Roger Bacon seemed to care nothing for that. Saladin saw he was fired only by his curiosity, by the scent of fresh knowledge in his nostrils. 'You must retrieve these designs,' he said rapidly. 'And you must bring them to me. What you need to make all this work is a dominus experimentorum. Such as myself, or an assistant. I can see it now. A scheme of work designed around two elevating principles. First, the verification of the designs, and the physical principles on which they have been based, perhaps principles hitherto unknown to mankind and therefore an everlasting gift to scholarship. Second, the use to which the new understanding may be put, which is the protection of Christendom, and thereby the spiritual welfare of all mankind and the greater glory of God.'

Thomas said, 'You would think, brother, from what you say, that you were being asked to make cathedrals, not weapons.'

'There is no sin in using the power of the mind to build weapons to fight a just war. Why, your Weaver must be a Christian, or he would not have put these engines into the hands of Christians. How can this not be God's work?'

'I know very little about the Weaver, and you know less,' Thomas said sternly. 'You must ensure you discuss this work with your confessor, brother. Fully and regularly.'

'Yes, yes.' Bacon leaned towards Joan, eyes bright, like the cat's into which he had spent long hours staring, Saladin thought. 'Bring me your plans, lady. By God's bones, there is no other way – indeed it must be divine providence that brought you to me.

'Give me your plans,' said Roger Bacon, 'and I will build the Engines of God for you.'