Goose of Hermogenes (9 page)

Back at the mansion, I determined to explore more fully the interior of my Uncle’s domain; and accordingly I approached the door of the study through which, on my first evening, I had been vouchsafed the spectacle of the illuminated hands. To my surprise, the door was now slightly ajar; I pushed it open and found myself in what was no more than an ante-room giving, to the left, upon a series of chambers which housed the exhibits of a museum, and to the right, upon the immense dusky cavern of my Uncle’s library. I say ‘dusky’, and this indeed was the impression it made upon me; yet it was by no means ill-lighted, and the areas at window-level were furnished with books well-bound in, seemingly, the latest editions. It was further up, on the shelves above the windows, that shadow and festooning cobweb combined to hide a tattered array of volumes; while higher still, the rafters of the soaring roof were draped in utter darkness, and the forbidding antiquity of the treatises here stored formed but a screen for the flitter-mouse’s crannies. These upper shelves were reached by an occasional rickety ladder leaned against the wall; and temerity bade me climb, but only about half-way, up one of these.

I began to examine the titles now ranged level with my eyes, such as
El Arte de los Metales
of Barba,
Anima Magica Abscondita, Coelum Terrae
and several other of the mystical essays of Thomas Vaughan including – ironically enough, considering the place in which I found it
– Aula Lucis.
Not far away were
The Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King
of Eirenaeus Philalethes, with
A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby
and
The Fount of Chemical Light
by the same author; while further on I discovered
The Golden Age Restored
of Henry Madathanas,
A New Pearl of Great Price
and
The Sophic Hydrolith.
But most of all it was the enigmatic
Book of Lambspring
by Nicholas Barnaud Delphinas that held my attention; and as I turned over its emblem-engraved leaves, a few pages of manuscript fell out, written in a crabbed hand I could only suppose my Uncle’s. I had set myself to lay open all I might of his secret researches, and accordingly had no hesitation in scrutinising the papers before me. This is what I read:

‘Everything found on land is found in the sea.’

‘Is it not time to break through that dismal convention of the scientific periodicals which orders, however suavely, that only the driest language be used? One would hardly know that these people were making discoveries from the way they have to write them up. Their particular kind of good form decrees that every experiment, no matter how dramatically successful, should be tabulated with less symptom of personal zest than the pages of a ledger can show.

‘I have been able to observe some remarkable facts about plant-life, hitherto unnoticed, particularly with regard to habitat; and I expect other biologists to give these investigations their due, despite their unusual guise and staging. Indeed I hope the more orthodox savants may even recognise here a certain justice, since the things I am going to describe seem like sports of nature; though who knows? further research may prove them to be instances of some law previously unknown.

Experiment I.

‘As I was climbing over the rocky ridges of a valley I came upon a wide fissure slanting down towards the centre of the earth. I looked in and found that its distant floor was water. I began to climb down inside, taking hold of a natural bannister here, stepping on an unhewn stair-tread there, which the uneven surfaces provided. This descent was not easy, as the rock was green with damp and patched with a viscous wine-coloured growth.

‘I had now penetrated to a vertiginous depth; if I looked upward, the walls rose above me in a cool shaft; turning downward, I could see a cave filled with water the colour of crysolite, illumined from some hidden source and darkened where a turn of wall or jutting rock threw a shadow. One such submerged projection hid the mouth of the cave, making it invisible from the surface of the ground.

‘I noticed that the water was not tideless, for it began to sink with gurgling sounds, and in its retreat left the cave without light. The rhythm of this tide was very rapid, for scarcely had the cavern been emptied, when the water came lapping back, bringing the light with it. I tasted the water and found it salt; and being unable to explore the cave further because of its swift return, I began to climb back towards the earth’s surface. The going was still more difficult than before, as I now discovered fish like flowers growing directly from the stone without leaves. I could hardly get foot-hold or hand-hold without crushing or gripping these cold petals, which spread their cherry and blue-grey all about the ascent, a salty deposit covering them with a dusty grape-like bloom.

Experiment II.

‘It is not generally known, and certainly I never before this realised, that scattered about even the most cancerously-urban districts of great cities, there exist patches and stretches of wild marshy land or heath. I do not mean the parks – they are as urban as the buildings. These spaces are different because you cannot find them by looking for them – at least it seems to be so, as far as our present knowledge takes us.

‘The other day when I was with a companion I found such a patch – a rough tussocky piece of land, quite extensive, where flowers of a unique and curious species were growing. The petals were large and looked as if they were made of paper – more like sepals, rather stiff and pointed; the colour was pale orange-pink at the edges, deepening further in and finally becoming a dusky reddish-brown at the centre.

‘They grew in swampy places and we had to get wet in order to come close to them; we had to climb over rocks, too, and I was annoyed by my companion’s lack of adventure in these matters – the way he jumped over the rock-pools you would think a drop of water would kill him. But I did not care; I made my way over the stones and streams to one of the biggest flowers.

‘I found that inside and below the petals was a kind of bowl made of the same stuff; but it must have been stronger, because when I lifted the petals I saw that it was full to the brim with dark water. In this water were strange living creatures, like sea-anemones but larger and harder and without tentacles – more like scarabs perhaps. They were of various jewel-colours, ruby, sapphire, emerald, some of them spotted with white. They crawled and clung to the sides of the pool; I put my hand in and touched them, but my companion seemed afraid to. Then we turned northwards across the moor.

Experiment III.

‘Another day I was looking for somewhere to live and went in a north-westerly direction. From some dingy agent in the vicinity I got the key of a house to let. Wandering along the streets I came to a row of peeling stucco houses with cat-walks in front, and mouldering urns, which could hold nothing, surmounting their plastered gate-posts.

‘My key fitted the front door of one of these houses; I went in and up the stairs to the first floor. I entered a large room with three windows looking out upon the road; folding doors connected it with the room behind. These I pushed open and found myself in another room exactly like the first; I went over to the central one of its three windows and looked out. Instead of the characterless gardens and hinder façade of a parallel block, I saw a sloping strip of ground overgrown with brambles, then a pebbly shore, and beyond, the crash and smother of Atlantic waves, breaking ceaselessly and without tide. This ocean stretched away to the horizon where it met a misty sky, but did not merge with it – the heaving water set up a melancholy distinction out there; and here within, a briney exultant smell penetrated the panes, cutting through the mustiness of a house long closed.

‘What extraordinary growths, I wondered, flowered in those wasteful depths? There must be a submerged garden whose silken green held curiosities far surpassing those I had come upon before. Idiots often visit such places and describe what they see; making idiots is one of the sea’s favourite games. But when it tires of this from time to time, it casts up instead a supernatural being on an unwelcoming strand, who ever afterwards, spends his nights asleep at the bottom of some vast watery gulf.’

*     *     *

These notes belonged I imagined, to an early period in my Uncle’s explorations when he was chiefly addicted to the study of plant-life, and before he had buried himself in his island retreat. Now, I had reason to believe that the direction of his interests had changed.

There followed several pages of recipes, ranging from ‘How to make a white milkie substance from the Raies of the Moon,’ to the most gruesome instructions for the fabrication of the Homunculus. I was dismayed at this fanaticism, which made such a disagreeable impression on me that I hardly knew how to continue my investigations.

I was now convinced that his ultimate aim was the conquest of death itself; and to this end he would undertake no matter what, from experiments apparently the most trivial, and certainly innocuous, to those involving the final extremes of complexity and ruthlessness. To this pursuit he must have devoted many years; and I could not but feel an unwilling pity for one who, so palpably nearing the grave, was yet driven to spend his last energies in a futile attempt to evade it.

From my delvings in the library I gathered that he had already approached the problem from numerous angles; but that at the time of his invitation to me, it was the transcendental aspect of alchemystic philosophy that principally engaged his thought and practice. No doubt he believed that my jewels, many of which were heirlooms of ancient and wonderful design, could provide some link in his quest for the hidden nature of gems and precious metals, and ultimately, perhaps, for that Medicine of Metals which is the elixir of life itself. What more he fancied I cannot say, but I would set no limit to the bizarre dreams that may have whirled through his mind in its frenetic race with time. He may have speculated as to whether part of my jewellery was not made of alchemical gold, or a particular piece even contain the very Lapis Philosophorum; or yet again, whether I myself could not somehow be made the focus of unknown power and knowledge, and act as a burning-glass through which might stream some insufferable light.

‘Un no rompido sueño –
Un dia puro – allegre – libre
Quiero –
Libre de amor – de zelo
De odio – de esperanza – de rezelo.’

– Luis Ponce de Leon.

In one of my evening conversations with the Anchorite, he suggested to me a walk in a direction I had not hitherto essayed, and described a half ruined homestead, all that remained of an ancient manor, whose architectural peculiarities he thought might interest me. At least, this was the reason he gave for the projected excursion to Troubh, but I could never be sure that his simplest remarks did not conceal a double intention. As he declared that it was impossible for him to accompany me, I had no choice but to discover for myself whatever was hidden; and accordingly set out alone the next afternoon. Something in his evasive manner as he bade me Goodbye, caused me to wonder whether it was against my Uncle’s wishes that he had given me any directions at all.

It was towards evening when, after a long and exhausting walk, I at last came within sight of the lonely barton of Troubh. Owing to the undulating nature of the country, I had not been able to catch even a glimpse of the buildings from a distance; and now, massed around as they were by immense elms, I could see only a cornice here and a gate there, half hidden by the branches.

As I hurried along the wide pathway
–
it could hardly be so formally styled as ‘avenue’ – that led deviously towards the mouldering walls, more of the edifice revealed itself by degrees. It seemed to be very ancient
–
part-manor, part-farmhouse; and something in the architecture of the house itself, and of the various barns and stables surrounding it, made me think that at one time the whole place had been fortified. Now, however, there was not even a trace of habitation, let alone of readiness to receive, whether enemy or friend. The entire farmstead seemed to be given over to rook and jackdaw, whose strident calls filled the chilly gold of the sky.

I approached the front door and knocked. As I waited, full of curiosity as to what manner of being might open it, I determined that should my reception prove unsympathetic, I would merely say that I had lost my way and demand re-direction.

What was my surprise and delight, then, a few minutes later, when the door was opened by my beloved sister Victorina!