The Path of the King Part 11

The place had grown hateful to Philip and he made ready to go. For him in his recalcitrancy there was only a younger son's portion, the little seigneury of Eaucourt, which had been his mother's. The good Aimery would have increased the inheritance, but Philip would have none of it.

He had made his choice, and to ease his conscience must abide strictly by the consequences. Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn happily to the trifling of his Italian friends. There was a tragic greatness about such as his grandmother, a salt of n.o.bility which was lacking among the mellow Florentines. Truth, it seemed to him, lay neither with the old Church nor the New Learning, and not by either way could he reach the desire of his heart.

Aimery bade him a reluctant farewell. "If you will not keep me company here, I go to the wars. At Beaumanoir I grow fat. Ugh, this business of dying chills me." And then with a very red face he held out a gold ring. "Take it, Philip. She cherished it, and you were her favourite and should wear it. G.o.d knows I have enough."

Likewise he presented him with a little vellum-bound book. "I found this yesterday, and you being the scholar among us should have it. See, the grandmother's name is written within."

It was a bright May morning when Philip, attended by only two lackeys as became a poor man, rode over the bridge of Canche with eyes turned southward. In the green singing world the pall lifted from his spirits.

The earth which G.o.d had made was a.s.suredly bigger and better than man's philosophies. "It would appear," he told himself, "that like the younger son in the tale, I am setting out to look for fortune."

At an inn in the city of Orleans he examined his brother's gift. It was a volume of careful ma.n.u.script, ent.i.tled Imago Mundi, and bearing the name of one Pierre d'Ailly, who had been Bishop of Cambray when the Countess Catherine was a child. He opened it and read of many marvels--how that the world was round, as Pythagoras held, so that if a man travelled west he would come in time to Asia where the sun rose.

Philip brooded over the queer pages, letting his fancy run free, for he had been so wrapped up in the mysteries of man's soul that he had forgotten the mysteries of the earth which is that soul's place of pilgrimage. He read of cities with silver walls and golden towers waiting on the discoverer, and of a river on whose banks "virescit sylva vitae." And at that phrase he fell to dreaming of his childhood, and a pleasant unrest stirred in his heart. "Aimery has given me a precious viatic.u.m," he said.

He travelled by slow stages into Italy, for he had no cause for haste.

At Pavia he wandered listlessly among the lecture halls. What had once seemed to him the fine gold of eloquence was now only leaden rhetoric.

In his lodging at Florence he handled once again his treasures--his books from Ficino's press; his ma.n.u.scripts, some from Byzantium yellow with age, some on clean white vellum new copied by his order; his busts and gems and intaglios. What had become of that fervour with which he had been used to gaze on them? What of that delicious world into which, with drawn curtains and a clear lamp, he could retire at will? The brightness had died in the air.

He found his friends very full of quarrels. There was a mighty feud between two of them on the respective merits of Cicero and Quintilian as lawgivers in grammar, and the air was thick with libels. Another pair wrangled in public over the pre-eminence of Scipio and Julius Caesar; others on narrow points of Latinity. There was a feud among the Platonists on a matter of interpretation, in which already stilettos had been drawn. More bitter still was the strife about mistresses--kitchen-wenches and courtesans, where one scholar stole shamelessly from the other and decked with names like Les.h.i.+a and Erinna.... Philip sickened at what he had before tolerated, for he had brought back with him from the north a quickened sense of sin. Maybe the Bishop of Beauvais had been right. What virtue was there in this new knowledge if its prophets were apes and satyrs! Not here grew the Wood of Life. Priapus did not haunt its green fringes.

His mind turned towards Venice. There the sea was, and there men dwelt with eyes turned to s.p.a.cious and honourable quests, not to monkish h.e.l.ls and heavens or inward to unclean hearts. And in Venice in a tavern off the Merceria he spoke with destiny.

It was a warm evening, and, having dined early, he sought the balcony which overlooked the ca.n.a.l. It was empty but for one man who sat at a table with a spread of papers before him on which he was intently engaged. Philip bade him good evening, and a face was raised which promptly took his fancy. The stranger wore a shabby grey doublet, but he had no air of poverty, for round his neck hung a ma.s.sive chain of gold, and his broad belt held a richly chased dagger. He had unbuckled his sword, and it lay on the table holding down certain vagrant papers which fluttered in the evening wind. His face was hard and red like sandstone, and around his eyes were a mult.i.tude of fine wrinkles. It was these eyes that arrested Philip. They were of a pale brown as if bleached by weather and gazing over vast s.p.a.ces; cool and quiet and friendly, but with a fire burning at the back of them. The man a.s.sessed Philip at a glance, and then, as if liking what he found in him, smiled so that white furrows appeared in his tanned cheeks. With a motion of his hand he swept aside his papers and beckoned the other to sit with him. He called on the drawer to bring a flask of Cyprus.

"I was about to have my evening draught," he said. "Will you honour me with your company, sir?"

The voice was so pleasant that Philip, who was in a mood to shun talk, could not refuse. He sat down by the board, and moved aside a paper to make room for the wine. He noticed that it was a map.

The Bishop of Cambray had made him curious about such things. He drew it to him, and saw that it was a copy of Andrea Bianco's chart, drawn nearly half a century before, showing the Atlantic Sea with a maze of islands stretching westwards.

The other shook his head. "A poor thing and out of date. Here," and he plucked a sheet from below the rest, "here is a better, which Fra Mauro of this city drew for the great prince, Henry of Portugal."

Philip looked at the map, which showed a misshapen sprawling Africa, but with a clear ocean way round the south of it. His interest quickened. He peered at the queer shapes in the dimming light.

"Then there is a way to the Indies by sea?"

"Beyond doubt. I myself have turned the b.u.t.t of Africa.... If these matters interest you? But the thought of that dry land has given me an African thirst. He, drawer!"

He filled his gla.s.s from a fresh bottle. "'Twas in June four years back.

I was in command of a caravel in the expedition of Diaz. The court of Lisbon had a fit of cold ague and we sailed with little goodwill; therefore it was our business to confound the doubters or perish.

Already our seamen had reached the mouth of that mighty river they called the Congo, and clearly the b.u.t.t of Africa could not be distant.

We had the course of Cam and Behaim to guide us thus far, but after that was the darkness."

The man's face had the intent look of one who remembers with pa.s.sion.

He told of the struggle to cross the Guinea Deep instead of hugging the sh.o.r.e; of blue idle days of calm when magic fish flew aboard and Leviathan wallowed so near that the caravels were all but overwhelmed by the wave of him; of a storm which swept the decks and washed away the Virgin on the bows of the Admiral's s.h.i.+p; of landfall at last in a place where the forests were knee deep in a muddy sea, strange forests where the branches twined like snakes; of a going ash.o.r.e at a river mouth full of toothed serpents and giant apes, and of a fight with Behemoth among the reeds. Then a second storm blowing from the east had flung them seaward, and for weeks they were out of sight of land, steering by strange stars. They had their magnets and astrolabes, but it was a new world they had entered, and they trusted G.o.d rather than their wits. At last they turned eastward.

"What distance before the turn?" Philip asked.

"I know not. We were far from land and no man can measure a course on water."

"Nay, but the ancients could," Philip cried, and he explained how the Romans had wheels of a certain diameter fixed to their s.h.i.+ps' sides which the water turned in its pa.s.sing, and which flung for each revolution a pebble into a tally-box.

The other's eyes widened. "A master device! I would hear more of it.

What a thing it is to have learning. We had only the hour-gla.s.s and guesswork."

Then he told how on a certain day the crews would go no farther, being worn out by storms, for in those seas the tides were like cataracts and the waves were mountains. The admiral, Bartholomew Diaz, was forced to put about with a heavy heart, for he believed that a little way to the east he should find the southern cape of Africa. He steered west by north, looking for no land till Guinea was sighted. "But on the second morning we saw land to the northward, and following it westward came to a mighty cape so high that the top was in the clouds. There was such a gale from the east that we could do no more than gaze on it as we scudded past. Presently, still keeping land in sight, we were able to bend north again, and when we came into calm waters we captains went aboard the admiral's s.h.i.+p and knelt and gave thanks to G.o.d for His mercies. For we, the first of mortals, had rounded the b.u.t.t of Africa and prepared the sea-road to the Indies."

"A vision maybe."

"Nay, it was no vision. I returned there under mild skies, when it was no longer a misty rock, but a green mountain. We landed, and set up a cross and ate the fruits and drank the water of the land. Likewise we changed its name from the Cape of Storms, as Diaz had dubbed it, to the Bona Esperanza, for indeed it seemed to us the hope of the world."

"And beyond it?"

"Beyond it we found a pleasant country, and would doubtless have made the Indies, if our s.h.i.+ps had not grown foul and our crews mutinous from fear of the unknown. It is clear to me that we must establish a port of victualling in that southern Africa before we can sail the last stage to Cathay."

The man spoke modestly and simply as if he were talking of a little journey from one village to another. Something in his serious calm powerfully caught Philip's fancy. In all his days he had never met such a one.

"I have not your name, Signor," he said.

"They call me Battista de Cosca, a citizen of Genoa, but these many years a wanderer. And yours?"

Philip gave it and the stranger bowed. The de Lavals were known as a great house far beyond the confines of France.

"You contemplate another voyage?"

The brown man nodded. "I am here on the quest of maps, for these Venetians are the princes of mapmaking. Then I sail again."

"To Cathay?"

A sudden longing had taken Philip. It was as if a bright strange world had been spread before him compared with which the old was tarnished and dingy.

Battista shook his head. "Not Cathay. To go there would be only to make a.s.surance of that which we already know. I have shown the road: let others plan its details and build hostelries. For myself I am for a bolder venture."

The balcony was filling up. A noisy group of young men were chattering at one table, and at others some of the merchants from the Merceria were at wine. But where the two sat it was quiet and dusky, though without on the ca.n.a.l the sky made a golden mirror. Philip could see his companion's face in the reflected light, and it reminded him of the friars who had filled the chamber of his dying grandmother. It was strained with a steadfast ardour.

Battista leaned his elbows on the board and his eyes searched the other's.

"I am minded to open my heart to you," he said. "You are young and of a n.o.ble stock. Likewise you are a scholar. I am on a mission, Sir Philip--the loftiest, I think, since Moses led Israel over the deserts.

I am seeking a promised land. Not Cathay, but a greater. I sail presently, not the African seas, but the Sea of Darkness, the Mare Atlantic.u.m." He nodded towards Bianco's map. "I am going beyond the Ultimate Islands."

"Listen," he went on, and his voice fell very low and deep. "I take it we live in these latter days of which the prophets spoke. I remember a monk in Genoa who said that the Blessed Trinity ruled in turn, and that the reign of the Father was accomplished and that of the Son nearing its close; and that now the reign of the Spirit was at hand. It may have been heresy--I am no scholar--but he pointed a good moral. For, said he, the old things pa.s.s away and the boundaries of the world are s.h.i.+fting.

Here in Europe we have come to knowledge of salvation, and brought the soul and mind of man to an edge and brightness like a sword. Having perfected the weapon, it is now G.o.d's will that we enter into possession of the new earth which He has kept hidden against this day, and He has sent His Spirit like a wind to blow us into those happy s.p.a.ces....

Now, mark you, sir, this earth is not a flat plain surrounded by outer darkness, but a sphere hung in the heavens and sustained by G.o.d's hand.

Therefore if a man travel east or west he will, if G.o.d prosper him, return in time to his starting-point."

The speaker looked at Philip as if to invite contradiction, but the other nodded.