"Are there any great collections of books in Trebizond?" Fra Tomasso
leaned forward intently, and his belly, swathed in the white linen robe
of his order, pushed the small black writing desk toward Daoud.
Fra Tomasso's dialect was easy for Daoud to understand. It was the same
as Lorenzo's, since the friar came from southern Italy. It was the
dialect Daoud had learned in Egypt.
But in another sense, conversing with d'Aquino was not at all easy. His
body tense, Daoud sat on the edge of his chair, alert for any question
that might be meant to trap him. And at the same time, he burned for a
chance to persuade the stout Dominican to oppose the Tartar alliance. He
was both hunted and hunter today.
"Yes, Father. The basileus of Trebizond--the emperor--has the biggest
library, with the monks of Mount Gelesias not far behind. Several of the
great families have large collections of very old manuscripts. I am
afraid I cannot tell you what is in any of those libraries. I know more
about spices and silks than I do about books. Is there a particular book
you are interested in?"
Daoud, relieved, watched the round face glow as the Dominican seemed to
relish the possibilities. It would never have done to admit it to
Ugolini, but Daoud was not without fear. He realized that a slip might
lead to his arrest and torture, the end of his mission, and, finally,
death. His head had begun to ache from the effort of posing and
answering all questions with care.
But now he sensed a way of reaching d'Aquino. More than anything else,
the man would want books--books that would help him write more books of
his own. Perhaps his huge physical appetite was but a reflection of his
hunger for knowledge.
"Ah, Messer David." He smiled, and Daoud realized that his mouth was not
small--it only looked small because of the round cheeks on either side
of it. "There is one book I have heard of that I would give everything I
possess--if I possessed anything--to own. You are familiar with _the_
philosopher, Aristotle?"
Daoud nodded. How wise it had been of Baibars, he thought, to command
him to spend months with a mullah from Andalus who was versed in the
philosophies of the Christians and of their Greek and Roman
predecessors. Daoud had even read works by Aristotle in Arabic.
"Much of my work, like that of my colleagues, is based on the writings
of Aristotle," d'Aquino went on. "He has been called the Master of Those
Who Know. I call him _the_ philosopher. His thought encompassed every
subject under the sun--and the sun itself, I believe. The ancient
writers refer to a book by Aristotle called in Latin _De Caelestiis, Of
the Heavens_. In it _the_ philosopher writes about the movement of
heavenly bodies, the sun, the stars, and the planets, and their
relations with one another. That book disappeared during the long wars
that led to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Every time I meet a
traveler from some distant part of the world, I ask him about _De
Caelestiis_."
"Does it tell how the planets rule men's fates?" Daoud asked.
"That is a ridiculous, irrational, and superstitious notion." Fra
Tomasso waved the suggestion away with a stubby-fingered hand. Daoud
felt a cold wave of terror. Had he said something that gave him away?
But Fra Tomasso, leaning back in his squeaking chair, seemed
unperturbed. And Daoud remembered that Ugolini studied the influence of
the stars on human lives. So it could not be such an un-Christian
belief.
The Dominican pointed over his shoulder to the window of his cell, a
large rectangle cut in the curving whitewashed wall. This was one of the
few rooms Daoud had entered in Italy that was not covered with
idolatrous or obscene paintings, and he liked its austerity. Except, of
course, for the ubiquitous figure of Jesus the Messiah, crucified,
hanging opposite the window. Daoud tried to avoid looking at the
crucifixes because they reminded him of his childhood, but they were
everywhere in Orvieto.
"Aristotle reasoned about the relations of the heavenly bodies to one
another," Fra Tomasso said. "One account of the _De Caelestiis_ declares
that he believed that the sun does not move."
"But we see it move," Daoud said, surprised.
"We think we see it move." D'Aquino smiled. "But have you ever stood on
the deck of a galley as it was pulling away from the quay and had the
feeling that the quay was moving while the ship was standing still? Well
then, what if the earth is moving, just like a ship on whose deck we
stand, while the sun remains fixed?"
Daoud thought about the vast and solid earth and the daily journey of
the sun like a bright lamp across the sky. It was self-evident which one
of them moved. But he sensed that Fra Tomasso was in love with this
idea. He had best not argue too strenuously against it.
"Ingenious," he said.
_Ridiculous_, he thought to himself. _This man dismisses astrology and
approves greater absurdities._
"I myself suspected that the sun might be stationary while the earth
moves long before I learned that Aristotle might also believe so." Fra
Tomasso waved a hand toward the window again. His cell was the top floor
of one of the towers fortifying the Dominican chapter house, an anthill
of constant, mysterious activity. D'Aquino's window overlooked the north
side of Orvieto's wall. There was no covering on the window, and the
shutters were open to let in the cool mountain air. Daoud gazed upon the
rolling hills, bright green in the sunlight, beyond Orvieto's
battlements. This was a lovely country, he thought. Back in Egypt the
hills would be brown this time of year.
"Look how much light and heat we get from the sun," Fra Tomasso went on.
"Yet, the sun appears small--I can hide it with my thumb."
_Your thumb could hide four or five suns._
"Perhaps it _is_ small," Daoud said.
"If it is as big as it must be to produce such light and heat, it must
be very far away--thousands of leagues--to appear so small. But if it is
that far away, it must be bigger still, for its heat and light to travel
such a distance. The bigger it is, the farther away it must be--the
farther away it is, the bigger it must be. Do you follow? There must be
a strict rule of proportion."
Daoud told himself to ignore this nonsense and concentrate on the
important thing--that Fra Tomasso badly wanted a book by this pagan
philosopher Aristotle. That book might be the means of winning Fra
Tomasso. Not that he could be crudely bribed, but certainly such a
present would favorably dispose him to what Daoud had to say.
And he saw another way to make the point he had come to make.
"It may be, Your Reverence, that the book you want has been lost
forever. When I spoke of the destruction of Baghdad the other day, I
should have mentioned that the Tartars burned there a library rivaled
only by the great library of Alexandria in its prime."
His flesh turned cold. That was a mistake. In his zeal he had
momentarily forgotten that it was Christians who had destroyed the
library of Alexandria. As the story was often told in Egypt, when the
Muslim warriors took Alexandria from the Christians, they found that
most of what had once been the world's greatest collection of books had
been used to fuel the fires that warmed the public baths.
But, to Daoud's relief, Fra Tomasso only shut his eyes and shook his
head, his cheeks quivering gently like a bowl of frumenty. "God forgive
the Tartars."
"God will certainly not forgive _us_, Fra Tomasso, if we help the
Tartars to destroy Damascus and Cairo. Or Trebizond and Constantinople."