Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [55]
“The sons of Krona will rule after him,” the chief said. “Let them be adorned like chiefs.”
But while the chief and his sons made their bargains with the merchants, Dluc had asked the sailors other questions.
“Where have you come from?”
“From a great sea, far to the south, that extends from east to west several months’ sailing,” they told him.
He nodded. He knew of this sea’s existence from other merchants. But usually at this time, the sporadic trade between Britain and the Mediterranean was conducted through intermediaries who controlled trade on the great rivers of south-west Europe, and others on the northern coast of France. It was rare indeed for merchants, even in search of new goods to barter, to undertake such a long voyage round the Atlantic coast of Europe to the distant island in the north.
These mariners were of particular interest to the astronomer priest, because he knew that they steered their long course by the stars and he was anxious to elicit all the information from them that he could. He was not disappointed.
The leader of the mariners told him many things. A fat man with a round head that was entirely bald, and small, intelligent eyes surrounded by deep creases, he soon became so voluble that the interpreter could hardly keep up with him.
“Not only is it hotter in our lands,” he said, “but the sun rises higher in the sky – so high that it is nearly overhead. And once,” he went on, “I made a long journey – many months – far to the south of our lands. And there I saw things stranger still; for there were other constellations of stars over the horizon: stars that I had never seen before.” He shook his round head. “How do you explain that?”
Dluc had heard such tales before and he had decided that they must be true. For there must surely be stars, he thought, which are so far away to the south that their angle above the horizon would be too low to allow him to see them clearly. After all, did one not lose sight of distant lands, even across the sea, for the same reason? And similarly, since the sun at its greatest height was still to the south of Sarum, it must be that at some point in that direction, it would indeed pass directly overhead in its daily course over the land.
When he discovered that the merchant had actually come near such a place he became eager.
“How far – how far to the south before the sun is overhead?”
The mariner thought.
“Hard to tell. Perhaps a four months sailing – maybe six months.”
Dluc was thoughtful.
“And the sun was overhead?”
“Nearly.”
Six months sailing. The distance was very inexact, but it was at least a rough indication of the magnitude of the distance. And as he considered the matter, the normally severe face of the priest relaxed into a smile. For if he knew the distance along the ground from the island to the point where the sun was overhead, and since he knew, with minute accuracy, the angle of the sun at its highest point, it seemed to the priest that he could with his sticks and lines, by the simple method of triangulation, make an estimate of the sun’s distance from the earth – an important piece of information that was nowhere recorded in the sacred sayings of the priests.
Many similar speculations entered the mind of this intelligent priest. If the angle of the sun changed – as he saw that it must – then was there a region far to the north, where the sun itself would be so low on the horizon as to be almost invisible? Or was such a point already off the end of the world?
And where was the end of the world? Had the mariner ever seen it?
“No. But I have met a man who has.”
“Where was it?”
“He would not tell me.”
“He was probably lying,” Dluc replied sadly.
Nonetheless, it had seemed to him that day that the gods were smiling on Sarum. Both the powerful chief, his fine sons, and he himself had been satisfied with their day’s work; and that night, by the harbour’s edge, they feasted with the merchants.
On the morning after the feast, the mariners