Doctor Mirabilis (18 page)

‘An thou wouldst, Father,’ she said quietly.

As they turned about, Adam saw to his greater disquiet that they had somehow outstripped Eleanor’s entourage, or lost it.
He cast about distractedly, but nothing he saw reassured him; and now the forest sighed and the aisle ahead was suddenly a-twist
with falling leaves: the winds of dusk were beginning to rise.

Yet instead of pressing forward, they seemed to move very slowly, and even slowlier; and at last their horses were standing
stock still, side by side; and they two, the riders, stirrup to stirrup. Just as abruptly, the wind died, and the leaves came
rocking silently down the still air, or spinning like children’s boats in a whirlpool.

‘Then I shall say what I have in me to say,’ Eleanor said quietly, as if there had been no interval at all, ‘which is for
no other ears but thine; for soon there’ll be overhearers aplenty. And bitterly it mathinketh me to say it.… yet thou dost
not know the despair thou’st cast me in with thy today’s redes and purposals, nay not a tithe of it. And I know thou art not
cruel.’

‘My lady—’

‘Please … this our time is brief enough. And well I wis
that any holy father in the Bishop’s
familials
must be good and noble, and befitten for the cure of worthier souls than mine. Yet that’s no balm to me that am nigh without
a friend … my first lord dead; the justiciar my guardian still with charges of treason hanging o’er’s head; my brother the
King mad, as I can say, deny it who will; my lord that is may not be my lord tomorrow, maugre any pieces of silver he can
offer the Vicar of Christ. And now, now thou wilt give me over to some good and noble priest whose very face I know not! Gentle
Adam, I beg thee – if by the will of God I am to be tried again, I will have courage – yet must I go without friend either
spiritual or temporal in such an hour? Doth God intend? Adam, hear thou me, desert me not for the love thou bearest me, that
moved thee to bring me to my lord … that moved thee to offer for my soul thine own brother. I beg thee, let this cup pass
from me.’

Her voice failed, and there was silence, except for the wind; and then, an agitated feminine murmuring in the middle distance
ahead. The horses’ gait quickened a little; they knew the way now; and Adam could well imagine with what relief the ladies
would welcome back their princess. He took a breath and brushed the leaves off his thighs.

There was now no time left for him to give Eleanor any reply, except cryptically; but no more was needed to convey his refusal,
the only reply he could utter. The word had been spoken, that very word which he had prevented himself even from thinking
for these many years, and it was a word of power.

No matter that on Eleanor’s lips it might intend no more – as he would pray, if he could – than its Biblical meaning; for
there it is also written that love suffereth long and is kind; and the species of love is not qualified.

And still he dared to hope for a respite, if not for a pardon. Simon returned in October. By his mien of cheerful cynicism,
his ordinary humour in prosperous times, it was widely read that the papal Rota had not found his arguments unattractive;
nor had Richard of Cornwall, which seemed to satisfy
the King, at least outwardly. Perhaps, against all normal expectation, the matter of the marriage was now settled.

But Adam was not sanguine. And in fact on November first, All Saints Day, there was a new star born
in caudam Draconis;
and by the feast of St. Edmund it stood forth blazoned, baleful and anarchic across half the night sky, the greatest comet
since Hastings.

Adam had no superstitious horror of comets; unlike the mob, he knew what they were, and their place in the scheme of things.
They were simply bodies of earthly fire which, because of an affinity for one of the fixed stars, had been sublimated and
drawn into the sublunar heavens, there to share the motion of the star that had called them up. But it followed from this
that on the earth there would be an infirmity or corruption in the men, plants and animals over which that star principally
ruled.

And the stars in the tail of the Dragon ruled those who ordered their lives by princes.

Without any warning, there came swimming into Roger’s head a memory of the green comet of 1238 so vivid that the low stone
building above him almost dissolved, and with it all his new friends. Streaming with pale cold colours for which there were
no names, the comet rode before his eyes in the darkness of Peter the Peregrine’s most secret workshop, breathing its fumes
and adding to them.

Surely it had a meaning; but what? That comet was three years gone and all its panics with it, yet there it was, flowing motionlessly
through the black sky of Roger’s bemused mind, like a reminder of worlds transmundane not vouched for nor even allowed in
experience, in history, or in the Scriptures: an arch of light as demanding as a word from the mouth of a demon.

In the furnace-cluttered cellar the great smear of starlight, like an infernal rainbow, soaked gradually into the nitred vaulting.
After a while it had vanished, merging into its own phantom in the light-generating eye, and thence back into the ghosts of
memory. For a moment he was inclined to ascribe it to the caprices of whatever mephitic vapour Raimundo del Rey was elaborating,
but a closer look showed that the young Spaniard was not yet through with his third distillation; the elaborate still, with
its many-beaked ‘pelican’ alembic, water bath and furnace (it was the athanor that he was using, despite Peter’s protest that
it was too hot for the work, because it also heated the damp cellar better) required constant tending. There was to be sure
an alchemical smell in the air, but Roger, who had had a little prior experience with Raymond’s concoctions, thought he recognized
it; which meant that it could not be the totally new principle Raymond had promised.

‘Now,’ Raymond said regretfully, ‘we’ll need to put out the furnace. The distillate burns readily, and what I’m about to show
you is even more inflammable. I’m drained; will anyone volunteer?’

After a moment’s hesitation, young Julian de Randa arose from the opposite side of the circle and solemnly doused the coals
by the usual method of urinating on to them. There was still some fire when he was finished, but shutting off the draught
would smother that quickly enough. Up to this point Peter had simply watched and listened gravely, as was his custom, but
now he interrupted.

‘Raymond, we have one new
socium
tonight; it would be better were you to explain
ab
initio.’

‘Certainly,’ Raymond said, with a wide gesture. ‘What I began with was ordinary aqua fortis; the kind brewed from corn is
better than brandy for this purpose – the smell doesn’t let the outside world know what you’re doing so quickly, and it leaves
less gummy residue in the alembic. This, one distills three times with quicklime, as I’ve just completed doing here.’ He lifted
a shallow dish a third full of clear, colourless liquid, cautiously, using a rag to protect his hand from the residual heat,
and showed it around. The distillate is completely pure potable spirits, fire without water – or almost, for of course without
a little water it would be flame. It burns on a surface without burning what’s under it. Two or three swallows of this and
Bacchus will envy you; four or five, and it will knock you down.’

He grinned cheerfully at Roger. Their relationship was a peculiar one, very unlike the usual commerce of master and student.
In fact, these roles were reversed, for in all things that mattered, Raymond was now the master.

This had happened most suddenly, and over a single word in the
De plantis
over which Roger had stumbled in class:
belenum.
The stumble had been followed by a roar of laughter from his Spanish students which had first baffled and then infuriated
him; for it had turned out that the, man who had put the Arabic version of the
De plantis
into Latin had simply left standing any Arabic word he did not know. Translations were full of strange words from the same
source: alkali, zircon, sherbet, camphor, borax, elixir, talc, nadir, zenith, azure, zero, cipher, algebra, lute, artichoke,
rebeck, jasmine, saffron.

This was no trouble to the Spaniards, who through long forced intimacy with the Moors knew from infancy that
belenum
was only
jusquiamus,
the common henbane; but their laughter had cut Roger to the liver. He had lost no time seeking among them for one to tutor
him in Arabic, and Raymond had expressed the most quickly of all his interest in the small fees involved. Even more important,
it had been Raymond Who had introduced Roger into the clandestine circle of Peter the Peregrine.

‘This much I have demonstrated before,’ Raymond was saying. ‘But this is not the end. Here in this flask I have vitriol. Now
if one takes up the vitriol in a glass straw as you see me doing here, and adds it to the spirits drop by drop … you must
be very careful, it may plash or sputter, not good for the eyes.… Now perhaps you will begin to smell it. This I call sweet
vitriol and I warn you … it dizzies the mind as no wine could ever do. Also, it is highly volatile … in a little while it
will be gone into the air.…’

‘A very fearful apothecary you’re likely to prove, Raimundo,’ de Randa said. ‘Each new principle’s more potent than the last;
and far more likely to bowl the patient over than to cure him.’

Now Roger could in fact begin to smell it: an odour sweet indeed, and heavy, yet which penetrated into the brain with the
directness of a driven spike. There was no odour in his experience with which he could compare it; it was closest, perhaps,
to that of a corpse which has lain in the sun several days, and yet not like that at all. After a while, Roger tentatively
decided that it was rather pleasant.

‘I believe I’ve died already,’ someone else added.

Underneath the general laughter, however, there was a thorough-bass of grudging respect, which Roger could not help but share.
Ungrounded though he was as yet in any but the very simplest elements of the arts alchemical and, medical, he felt vaguely
that any substance which affected the animal body, and indeed even the vegetative soul, as readily as did Raymond’s essences
must have some implications for physic, whatever its apparent inutility
in
the raw state; and
utility, after all, was the test of knowledge. It required little imagination, for example, to conceive that in a case of
brain fever, an electuary made with Raymond’s sweet vitriol might go to the seat of the illness like dew rising to the sun.

Raymond, however, did not respond to these sallies. He was concentrating upon his drop-by-drop transfer of the vitriol to
the spirits, his small lower lip caught between his teeth. The smell grew sweeter, and heavier.

‘Roger,’ Peter said. ‘What have you this time to add to our knowledge? Rumour has it that you prosecute certain investigations
on your own.’

‘Several such, though only the most minor,’ Roger said slowly. ‘I am only a beginner, Peter, as you well know; and began small,
as is suitable, with certain superstitions.’

‘As?’

‘As, it is generally believed that hot water freezes more quickly than cold water in vessels. The argument in support of this
is advanced that contrary is excited by contrary, like enemies meeting each other. This I have tested, and it is not so. People
attribute this to Aristotle in the second book of the Meteorologics; but in fact he says no such thing, but only something
like it that’s been read carelessly – or worse, translated carelessly: that if cold water and hot water are poured on a cold
place, as upon ice, the hot water freezes more quickly; and this is true, as experiment shows.’

‘Good; I wonder why?’ Peter said. ‘Now there’s a thing. But it’s autumn now, and winter a long time gone when that test was
made, surely. Have you aught else?’

‘Mmmm … somewhat. This belief that diamonds cannot be broken except by goat’s blood, which I believed since my childhood myself:
it’s false, whatever you may read to the contrary.’

There was a snort from the other side of the circle. ‘Whoever read that and believed it,’ a voice demanded, ‘except our Roger?’
In the gloom, Roger could not decide who was speaking.

‘Unfair,’ Peter said instantly. ‘A test is a test, whether the answer be No or Yes. What grounds of your own do you
have, goat of Picardy, for believing that they
don’t
dissolve?’

‘I knew you’d say that. Very well. But what grounds, then, do we have for believing that the test has been made? To make such
a test one must have (a), a goat, and (b), a diamond. I
see
nobody in our college who could pay the price of (a).’

And there was the money again, daily adding to an already intolerable burden of evasions, disguises, lies, betrayals. He was
beginning to hate it, and hate most of all his inability to let go of it. But here, at least, he had been no more than foolish,
in choosing unthinkingly so expensive an experiment.

‘I had a little money,’ he said. ‘I have it no more. Now I have the diamond, and I was cheated, it’s but a chip hardly big
enough to see. If anyone would care to buy it from me …? Or a goat with a rag tied around one foreleg? He has a kindly heart,
but stinks, and munches the straw from my bed directly beside my ear while I’m trying to sleep.’

There were no takers, at which he was just as well pleased; for the goat was in fact a nanny, which he was economically milking
– with an occasional squirt from the teat for John of Livonia’s friend, the dice-playing cat. He was not over-fond of goat’s
milk, but lately he had become used to the cat, which reminded him a little of that old Petronius of his Ilchester youth,
and belike also of John himself. Yet that
vagus
had left behind in the room on Straw Street a memento of power which had changed Roger’s life; he was in no danger of being
forgotten for neglect of his cat. All the same, the cat was a companion in Roger’s bosom, where John had gone away entire.