Pastwatch_ The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Part 4

"I'm going to be nasty my whole life," said Diko defiantly.

"I have no doubt of it," said Mother.

"I'm going to stop Cristoforo," she said.

Mother looked at her oddly. "That's my job, if it can be done at all."

"You'll be too old," said Diko. "I'm going to grow up and stop him for you."

Mother didn't argue.

By the time Diko was ten, she spent all her afternoons in the lab, learning to use the old Tempoview. Technically she wasn't supposed to use it, but the whole installation at Ileret was now devoted to Mother's project, and so it was Mother's att.i.tudes toward the rules that prevailed. This meant that everyone followed scientific procedures rigorously, but the boundary line between work and home wasn't very carefully observed. Children and relatives were often about, and as long as they were quiet, no one worried. It wasn't as if anything secret were going on. Besides, n.o.body was using the outdated Tempoviews except to replay old recordings, so Diko wasn't interfering with anybody's work. Everyone knew that Diko was careful. So no one even commented on the fact that an unauthorized, half-educated child was browsing through the past unsupervised.

At first, Father rigged the Tempoview that Diko used so that it would only replay previously recorded views. Diko soon became annoyed with this, however, because the Tempoview had such a restricted perspective. She always longed to see things from another angle.

Just before her twelfth birthday, she figured out how to bypa.s.s Father's cursory attempt at blocking her from fall access. She wasn't particularly deft about it; Father's computer must have told him what she had done, and he came to see her almost within the hour.

"So you want to go looking into the past," he said.

"I don't like the views that other people recorded," she said. "They're never interested in what I'm interested in."

"What we're deciding right now," said Father, "is whether to banish you from the past entirely, or to give you the freedom that you want."

Diko felt suddenly ill. "Don't banish me," she said. "I'll stay with the old views but don't make me leave."

"I know that all the people you look at are dead," said Father. "But that doesn't mean that it's right for you to spy on them just out of curiosity."

"Isn't that what Past.w.a.tch is all about?" asked Diko.

"No," said Father. "Curiosity yes, but not personal curiosity. We're scientists."

"I'll be a scientist too," said Diko.

"We look at people's lives to find out why people do what they do."

"Me too," said Diko.

"You'll see terrible things," said Father. "Ugly things. Very private things. Disturbing things."

"I already have."

"That's what I mean," said Father. "If you thought the things we've allowed you to see up to now were ugly, private, or disturbing, what will you do when you see things that are really ugly, private, and disturbing?"

"Ugly, Private, and Disturbing. Sounds like a firm of solicitors," said Diko.

"If you're going to have the privileges of a scientist, then you have to act like a scientist," said Father.

"Meaning?"

"I want daily reports of what places and times you've watched. I want weekly reports of what you've been examining and what you've learned. You must maintain a log just like everybody else. And if you see something disturbing, talk to me or your mother."

Diko grinned. "Got it. Ugly and Private I deal with myself, but Disturbing I discuss with the Ancient Ones."

"You are the light of my life," said Father. "But I think I didn't yell at you enough when you were young enough for it to do any good."

"I'll turn in all the reports you asked for," she said. "But you have to promise to read them."

"On exactly the same basis as anybody else's reports," said Father. "So you'd better not show me any second-rate work."

Diko explored, reported, and began to look forward to her weekly interviews with Father concerning the work she did. Only gradually did she realize how childish and elementary those early reports were, how she skimmed over the surface of issues resolved long before by adult watchers; she marveled that Father never gave her a clue that she wasn't on the cutting edge of science. He always listened with respect, and within a few years Diko was doing things that merited it.

It was old Cristoforo Colombo, of all people, who got her away from the Tempoview and onto the far more sensitive TruSite. She had never forgotten him, because Mother and Father never forgot him, but her early explorations with the Tempoview never involved him. Why should they? She had seen practically every moment of Colombo's life in the old recordings that Mother and Father had been looking at more or less continuously all her life. What brought her back to Colombo was the question she had set for herself: When do the great figures of history make the decisions that set them on the path of greatness? She eliminated from her study all the people who simply drifted into fame; it was the ones who struggled against great obstacles and never gave up who intrigued her. Some of them were monsters and some were n.o.ble; some were self-serving opportunists and some were altruists; some of their achievements crumbled almost at once, and some changed the world in ways that had reverberations down to the present. To Diko, that hardly mattered. She was searching for the moment of decision, and, after she had written reports on several dozen great figures, it occurred to her that in all her watching of Cristoforo, she had never actually sat down and studied him in a linear way, seeing what caused this son of an ambitious Genovese weaver to take to the sea and tear up all the old maps of the world.

That Cristoforo was one of the great ones could not be doubted, whether Mother and Father approved of him or not. So ... when was the decision made? When did he first set foot on the course that made him one of the most famous men in history?

She thought she found the answer in 1459, when the rivalry between the two great houses of Genova, the Fieschi and the Adorno, was coming to a head. In that year a man named Domenico Colombo was a weaver, a supporter of the Fieschi party, the former keeper of the Olivella Gate, and the father of a little redheaded boy who had within him the power to change the world.

Cristoforo was eight years old the last time Pietro Fregoso came to visit his father. Cristoforo knew the man's name, but he also knew that in Domenico Colombo's house, Pietro Fregoso was always called by the t.i.tle that had been wrested from him by the Adorno party: the Doge. Pietro Fregoso had decided to make a serious play for power again, and since Cristoforo's father was one of the most fiery partisans in the Fieschi cause, it was not too surprising that Pietro chose to honor the Colombo house by holding a secret meeting there.

Pietro arrived in the morning, accompanied by only a couple of men - he had to move inconspicuously through the city, or the Adornos would know he was plotting something. Cristoforo saw his father kneel and kiss Pietro's ring. Mother, who was standing in the doorway between the weaving shop and the front room, muttered something about the Pope under her breath. But Pietro was the Doge of Genova, or rather the former Doge. No one called him the Pope. "What did you say, Mama?"

"Nothing," she said. "Come in here."

Cristoforo found himself being dragged into the weaving shop, where the journeymen's looms rocked and banged as the apprentices carried thread back and forth or crawled under the loom to fold the cloth that the journeymen were weaving. Cristoforo had a vague awareness that someday soon his father would expect him to take his place as an apprentice in the shop of some other member of the weavers' guild. He did not look forward to it. The life of the apprentice was one of drudgery and meaningless labor, and the journeymen's teasing turned into serious torment when Father and Mother were not in the room. In another weavers' shop, Cristoforo knew, he would not have the protected status he had here, where his father was master.

Soon Mother lost interest in Cristoforo and he was able to drift back to the doorway and watch the goings-on in the front room, where the bolts of cloth had been cleared from the display table and the great spools of thread pulled up like chairs. Several other men had drifted in during the past few minutes. It was to be a meeting, Cristoforo saw. Pietro Fregoso was holding a council of war, and in Father's house.

At first it was the great men that Cristoforo watched. They were dressed in the most dazzling, extravagant clothing he had ever seen. None of Father's customers came into the shop dressed like this, but some of their clothing was made from Father's finest cloth. Cristoforo recognized the rich brocade one gentleman was wearing as a cloth made not a month ago by Carlo, the best of the journeymen. It had been picked up by t.i.to, who always wore a green uniform. Only now did Cristoforo realize that when t.i.to came to buy, he was not buying for himself, but rather for his master. t.i.to was not a customer, then. He merely did what he was sent to do. Yet Father treated him like a friend, even though he was a servant.

This got Cristoforo thinking about the way Father treated his friends. The joking, the easy affection, the shared wine, the stories. Eye to eye they spoke, Father and his friends.

Father always said that his greatest friend was the Doge - was Pietro Fregoso. Yet now Cristoforo saw that this was not the truth, for Father did not joke, showed no easiness in his manner, told no stories, and the wine he poured was for the gentlemen at the table, and not for himself at all. Father hovered at the edges of the room, watching to see if any man needed more wine, pouring it immediately if he did. And Pietro did not include Father in his glance when he met the eyes of the men around the table. No, Pietro was not Father's friend; by all appearances, Father was Pietro's servant.

It made Cristoforo feel a little sick inside, for he knew that Father took great pride in having Pietro for a friend. Cristoforo watched the meeting, seeing the graceful movements of the rich men, listening to the elegance of their language. Some of the words Cristoforo didn't even understand, and yet he knew the words were Genovese and not Latin or Greek. Of course Father has nothing to say to these men, Cristoforo thought. They speak another language. They were foreigners as surely as the strange men Cristoforo saw down at the docks one day, the ones from Provence.

How did these gentlemen learn to speak this way? Cristoforo wondered. How did they learn to say words that are never spoken in our house or on the street? How can such words belong to the language of Genova, and yet none of the common Genovese know them? Is this not one city? Are these men not of the Fieschi as Father is? The Adorno braggarts who pushed over Fieschi carts in the market, Father spoke more like them than like these gentlemen who were supposedly of his own party.

There is more difference between gentlemen and tradesmen like Father than there is between Adorno and Fieschi. Yet the Fieschi and the Adorno often come to blows, and there are stories of killings. Why are there no quarrels between tradesmen and gentlemen?

Only once did Pietro Fregoso include Father in the conversation.

"I'm impatient with all this biding our time, biding our time!" he said. "Look at our Domenico here." He gestured toward Cristoforo's father, who stepped forward like a tavernkeeper who had been called upon. "Seven years ago he was keeper of the Olivella Gate. Now he has a house half the size of the one he had then, and only three journeymen instead of the six from before. Why? Because the so-called Doge steers all the business to Adorno weavers. Because I am out of power and I can't protect my friends!"

"It is not all a matter of Adorno patronage, my lord," said one of the gentlemen. "The whole city is poorer, what with the Turk in Constantinople, the Muslims harrying us at Chios, and the Catalonian pirates who boldly raid our very docks and loot the houses near the water."

"My point exactly!" said the Doge. "Foreigners put this puppet into power - what do they care how Genova suffers? It is time to restore true Genovese rule. I will not hear a contradiction."

One of the gentlemen spoke quietly into the silence that followed Pietro's speech. "We are not ready," he said. "We will pay in precious blood for a foolhardy attack now."

Pietro Fregoso glowered at him. "So. I say I will not hear a contradiction, and then you contradict me? What party are you in, de Portobello?"

"Yours to the death, my lord," said the man. "But you were never one who punished a man for saying to you what he believed to be the truth."

"Nor will I punish you now," said Pietro. "As long as I can count on you standing beside me."

De Portobello rose to his feet. "In front of you, my lord, or behind you, or wherever I must stand to protect you when danger threatens."

At that, Father stepped forward, unbidden. "I too will stand beside you, my lord!" he cried. "Any man who would raise a hand against you must first strike down Domenico Colombo!"

Cristoforo saw how the others reacted. Where they had nodded when de Portobello made his promise of loyalty, they only looked silently at the table when Father spoke. Some of them turned red - in anger? Embarra.s.sment? Cristoforo wasn't sure why they would not want to hear Father's promise. Was it because only a gentleman could fight well enough to protect the rightful Doge? Or was it because Father should not have been so bold as to speak at all in such exalted company?

Whatever the reason, Cristoforo could see that their silence had struck Father like a blow. He seemed to wither as he shrank back against the wall. Only when his humiliation was complete did Pietro speak again. "Our success depends on all the Fieschi fighting with courage and loyalty." His words were gracious, but they were too late to spare Father's feelings. They came, not as an honorable acceptance of Father's offer, but rather as a consolation, the way a man might pet a loyal dog.

Father doesn't matter to them, thought Cristoforo. They meet in his house because they must keep their meeting secret, but he himself is nothing to them.

The meeting ended soon after; the decision was to go on the attack in two days. As soon as the gentlemen had left and Father closed the door, Mother sailed past Cristoforo and pushed herself into Father's face. "What do you mean, you fool? If anyone wants to harm the rightful Doge, they'll have to strike down Domenico Colombo first! - what nonsense! When did you become a soldier? Where is your fine sword? How many duels have you fought? Or are you thinking this will be a brawl in a tavern, and you have only to knock together the heads of a couple of drunks, and the battle will be won? Do you care nothing for our children, that you plan to leave them fatherless?"

"A man has honor," said Father.

Cristoforo wondered, What is Father's honor, when his greatest friend despises the offer of his life?

"Your honor will have your children on the street in rags."

"My honor made me keeper of the Olivella Gate for four years. You liked living in our fine house then, didn't you?"

"That time is over," said Mother. "Blood will flow, and it will not be Adorno blood."

"Don't be too sure of that," said Father. He stormed upstairs. Mother burst into tears of rage and frustration. The argument was over.

But Cristoforo wasn't satisfied. He waited as Mother calmed herself by pulling the extra spools away from the table and putting the cloth back on it, so customers could look at it and so it would stay clean. When he judged he could speak without being screamed at, he said, "How do gentlemen learn to be gentlemen?"

She glared at him. "They're born that way," she said. "G.o.d made them gentlemen."

"But why can't we learn to talk the way they do?" Cristoforo asked. "I don't think it would be hard." Cristoforo imitated the refined voice of de Portobello, saying, "You were never one who punished a man for saying what he believed to be the truth."

Mother came to him and slapped him hard across the face. It stung, and even though Cristoforo had long since stopped crying when he was punished, the sheer surprise of it more than the sting made tears leap from his eyes.

"Don't ever let me hear you putting on airs like that again, Cristoforo!" she shouted. "Are you too good for your father? Do you think that honking like a goose will make you grow feathers?"

In his anger, Cristoforo shouted back at her. "My father is as good a man as any of them. Why shouldn't his son learn to be a gentleman?"

Ahnost she slapped him again, for having dared to answer her back. But then she caught herself, and actually heard what he had said. "Your father is as good as any of them," she said. "Better!"

Cristoforo gestured toward the fine fabrics spread across the table. "There is the cloth - why can't Father dress like a gentleman? Why can't he speak the way they do, and dress like them, and then the Doge would honor him!"

"The Doge would laugh at him," said Mother. "And so would everyone else. And then if he kept on trying to act the gentleman, one of them would come along and put a rapier through your father's heart, for daring to be such an upstart."

"Why would they laugh at him, if they don't laugh at these other men for dressing and talking the way they do?"

"Because they really are gentlemen, and your father is not."

"But if it isn't their clothing and their language ... Is there something in their blood? They didn't look stronger than Father. They had weak arms, and most of them were fat."

"Father is stronger than they are, of course. But they carry swords."

"Then Father should buy a sword!"

"Who would sell a sword to a weaver!" said Mother, laughing. "And what would Father do with it? He has never wielded a sword in his life. He'd cut off his own fingers!"

"Not if he practiced," said Cristoforo. "Not if he learned."

"It isn't the sword that makes a man a gentleman," said Mother. "Gentlemen are born as the children of gentlemen, that's all. Your father's father wasn't a gentleman, and so he isn't."

Cristoforo thought about this for a moment. "Aren't we all descended from Noah, after the flood? Why are the children of one family gentlemen, and the children of Father's family aren't? G.o.d made us all."

Mother laughed bitterly. "Oh, is that what the priests taught you? Well, you should see them bowing and sc.r.a.ping to the gentlemen while they p.i.s.s on the rest of us. They think that G.o.d likes gentlemen better, but Jesus Christ didn't act that way. He cared nothing for gentlemen!"

"So what gives them the right to look down at Father?" demanded Cristoforo, and against his will his eyes again filled with tears.

She regarded him for a moment, as if deciding whether to tell him the truth. "Gold and dirt," she said.

Cristoforo didn't understand.

"They have gold in their treasure boxes," said Mother, "and they own land. That's what makes them gentlemen. If we had huge swatches of land out in the country, or if we had a box filled with gold in the attic, then your father would be a gentleman and no one would laugh at you if you learned to talk the fancy way they do and wore clothing made of this." She held the trailing end of a bolt of cloth against Cristoforo's chest. "You'd make a fine gentleman, my Cristoforo." Then she dropped the fabric and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Finally Cristoforo left the room. Gold, he thought. If Father had gold, then those other men would listen to him. Well, then - I will get him gold.

One of the men at the meeting must have been a traitor, or perhaps one of them spoke carelessly, where a traitorous servant overheard, but somehow the Adornos got word of the plans of the Fieschi, and when Pietro and his two bodyguards showed up beside the cylindrical towers of the Sant'Andrea Gate where the rendezvous was supposed to take place, they were set upon by a dozen of the Adornos. Pietro was dragged from his horse and struck in the head with a mace. They left him for dead as they ran away. The shouting could be heard in the Colombo house as clearly as if it had happened next door, which it almost had - they lived scarcely a hundred yards from the Sant' Andrea Gate. They heard the first shouts of the men, and Pietro's voice as he cried out, "Fieschi! To me, Fieschi!"

At once Father took his heavy staff from its place by the fire and ran into the street. Mother got to the front of the house too late to stop him. Screaming and crying, she gathered the children and the apprentices into the back of the house while the journeymen stood guard at the front door. There in the gathering darkness they heard the tumult and shouting, and then Pietro's screaming. For he had not been killed outright, and now in his agony he howled for help in the night.

"Fool," whispered Mother. "If he keeps screeching like that, he'll tell all the Adornos that they didn't kill him and they'll come back and finish him off."

"Will they kill Father?" asked Cristoforo.

The younger children began to cry.

"No," said Mother, but Cristoforo could tell that she was not sure.

Perhaps she could sense his skepticism. "All fools," she said. "All men are fools. Fighting over who gets to rule Genova - what does that matter? The Turk is in Constantinople! The heathens have the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem! The name of Christ is no longer spoken in Egypt, and these little boys are squabbling over who gets to sit on a fancy chair and call himself the Doge of Genova? What is the honor of Pietro Fregoso compared to the honor of Jesus Christ? What is it to possess the palace of the Doge when the land where the Blessed Virgin walked in her garden, where the angel came to her, is in the hands of circ.u.mcised dogs? If they want to kill somebody, let them liberate Jerusalem! Let them free Constantinople! Let them shed blood to redeem the honor of the Son of G.o.d!"

"That's what I will fight for," said Cristoforo.

"Don't fight!" said one of his sisters. "They'd kill you."

"I'd kill them first."