King and Emperor

positions. Who was to succeed the Caliph? It was known that he had many children, but none designated, and none old and strong enough to survive the civil war that threatened. He had had many brothers, or half-brothers. Most dead, gone to the leather carpet or the bowstring. Many unacceptable, children of the mustaribs. Or were they, now, so unacceptable? Those who had been considered so, governors of the north for the most part, began to reflect on their own strength and on their alliances. Horsemen rode, troops were gathered, governors wondered how many of the levies they had sent north would return. As they trickled in, surprisingly many of them for a battle that according to the first runaways had been fought with great valor, governors reckoned their strength again. Almost all of them came to the same conclusion. Too soon to strike, or to give up hope. Do what is obviously right and you cannot come to harm. Protest loyalty to the Faith. Surround one's own person with every armed man that can be raised. And meanwhile, since the men are there and must be paid, there are private squabbles that may as well be taken care of. Old enmities between Alcala and Alicante, the coast and the mountains, disputes over water and land, flared into conflict.

In Cordova itself, as the news arrived, there was shock and horror. No alarm, since clearly the unbelievers could offer no threat to the established civilization of the south and of Andalusia, but fear at the judgment of Allah. The question of succession struck every listener at once. Within days the carts of market stuff and poultry, the herds of sheep and beef cattle, had ceased to stream through the gates, the peasants of the Guadalquivir valley fearing to enter what might be bloody civil war. The few half-Berber half-brothers of the Caliph vanished into their own strongholds, were known to be calling for men, for help from the kinsfolk of North Africa. At any moment a fleet might arrive from Algiers or Morocco, to sail up the river. Or, said the pessimists, the Tulunids of Egypt may take a hand: mere Turks from the steppe.

At that thought, the Christians of the city, and the Jews of the Juderia, the ghetto established for them, also began to reckon their strength. The rule of the previous Caliph had been cruel to those who renounced the shahada or who sought for martyrdom. It would be like a caress compared with the random and profitless cruelties of the Turks or the Berbers, anxious to show their loyalty to the faith because of their recent and doubtful conversion to it.

Better any Caliph than no Caliph, said the wiser heads of the city to each other. Best of all, a Caliph acceptable to all. But who? The young man, Mu'atiyah, pupil of bin-Firnas, had appeared from the wreck and ruin, ridden without ceasing all the way from the moment the Caliph fell back in his arms—or so he said. He called for Ghaniya, the Caliph's oldest half-brother and trusted emissary to the North, to succeed to the cushion. Ghaniya, he shouted in a score of marketplaces, Ghaniya could be trusted to take up the war. And not only the war against the Christians. Against the majus also, the heathen fire-worshipers who had deluded the Caliph into war and disaster. But most of all, the war against the faithless, the secret traitors. Had he not with his own eyes (and the invention of his master) seen men of the Caliph's army arrayed against him, eating roast pig between the battle-lines? How many more secret devourers of swine hid in the streets of Cordova? To be rooted out! Along with the Christians who sheltered them, under the mistaken kindness of the former Caliph. Enslave them, send them into exile, impale those who renounced their faith…

“Too much impaling already,” remarked bin-Maymun, once commander of the cavalry in the army of the Prophet, to his cousin bin-Firnas, as they ate grapes in the cool of the latter's riverbank mansion. “You can't expect men to fight if some of them are dragged off every day and heard screaming to their comrades every night. He is your pupil of course, son of my mother's brother…”

“But not a ready learner,” his cousin replied. “It seems to me—eager though I am for shari'a—that a little relaxation may be in order? Other learned men are with me on this, Ishaq, Keeper of the Caliph's Scrolls for one. Without wishing to go as far as the sect of the Sufi, he remembers that a House of Wisdom was once established in Baghdad, and flourished under the rule of Mu'tazilites. Why should Baghdad have had what Cordova cannot?”

“There are other reports, too, of what happened after the battle, after I and my men had been driven from the field,” his cousin replied. “Some of the Caliph's women escaped from the Christians who seized them and found their way by ship and horse to Cordova. One a Christian by birth, so her loyalty cannot be doubted if she turned her back on her fathers' faith. I have taken another into my own harem, a delightful woman from Circassia. They too say that the Caliph's rigor was too great—a compensation, they say, for certain… inadequacies. They say also that he put too much faith in your pupil.” Bin-Maymun cast a glance sideways to see how his hint was taken.

“He is my pupil no longer,” declared bin-Firnas firmly. “I withdraw my protection from him.” As bin-Maymun sank back, remembering threats and insults and considering which of his men to send to put a stop to Mu'atiyah's babble, bin-Firnas pressed on. “And will you join Ishaq and my learned Mends later on, for song and poetry, and perhaps, a little discussion?”

“I will,” said bin-Maymun, paying the price for the freedom just granted to deal with Mu'atiyah. “And I will bring my friend the Cadi with me,” he added, to show he was throwing his full weight into the struggle. “He is concerned about the state of the city. Your poetry will relax him. Within the walls, of course, only he has any great force of armed men.”

With perfect understanding the two men listened to the song of a slave-girl and considered, the one revenge and power, the other freedom for reason and learning from illiterates and zealots.

In Rome the news of the battle was received with joy, the ringing of bells and singing of Te Deum. The news, a little after, of the Emperor's recovery of the holy relic of the graduale and his vow to elevate his personal adviser to the throne of Saint Peter, was taken differently. If all had gone well, the current Pope, John VIII, weak child of a powerful Tuscan family, would never have heard the news at all, his own fate outrunning it. But somewhere between the Emperor's camp and the Vatican Hill, word spread to someone still loyal. The Pope was informed, hurried immediately to gather his entourage and retire from the dangerous city to the estates of his family. When Gunther, once Archbishop of Cologne and now Cardinal in Rome, heard the news and moved instantly with his one-time chaplain Arno and a dozen German swordsmen of his own guard to reassure the Pope, and hold him incommunicado till the Emperor's wish became clearer, he found himself facing more than his own number of Italian nobles, relatives and adherents of John. The two sides exchanged polite greetings and arguments, while the guard commanders weighed each other up. Stilettos and perfumed hair, thought the German: back-stair back-stabbers. But we have no mail nor shields. Great blunt chopping-swords and onion-stinking breath, thought the Italian: but ready to use them. The two sides backed off from each other, protesting friendship and concern.

Despite the pleas not to desert his flock, the Pope made his way determinedly from minster and hill, from Rome itself. Despite the assurances of joy and congratulations at the Emperor's victory, Gunther seized control of the Curia, evicted Cardinals not of his own nation or faction, prepared for a disputed election. He would have gone further, but the news that the Emperor had fixed on the English deacon Erkenbert dismayed him even in his loyalty to Emperor and Lanzenorden, his own creation. Erkenbert had been a good comrade, he knew. But Pope? Gunther had had another and a more suitable candidate in mind for that office next time it should fall vacant, one who was already a Prince of the Church and no deacon. Yet a vacancy was definitely desirable, so much at least could be agreed…

It would take an army, now, to create one. Though the army of the Emperor was at least approaching, marching across the borderlands of southern France and northern Italy, hot-foot for Rome. Or so they said.

In the cool underground cave which had once been an olive-press, Shef examined carefully the rows and rows of tiny lead blocks wedged tightly into their steel frame. He made no attempt to read them. Still a poor reader of any script, the complexity of reading mirror-image letters, in blocks facing different ways, which were in any case in a language he did not understand, would have been far beyond him. Anything like that was entrusted to Solomon. All Shef was looking for was technical perfection. Letters fixed tight, none of uneven size, all letters of the same height. Shef finally nodded with satisfaction, passed them over.

With Alfled's image of a brand in their minds, the idea of branding on to paper had been fairly clear. But all a brand needs to convey is ownership. One sign is enough. It was soon evident that something like a brand with two hundred words on it would take years to make and be invalidated by a single change. Make a stamp, or a brand, or whatever it was to be called, for each word, suggested Solomon, as the Caliph er-Rahman used to. That too was soon seen to be a false trail, as the amount of work needed to make individual words, some of them in large numbers, became apparent. It was Shef who suggested making tiny dies for each letter, and once that was seen