Doctor Mirabilis (10 page)

‘And enough!’ Henry said. ‘Conspiracies within conspiracies! Nevertheless, we will be governed once more, and only once more.
Segrave, your Grace, Montfort, Rievaux, let it be heard that we summon the barons of England thrice, to see whether they will
come or no. They are called to attend us at Westminster – we will set them July eleventh, that no man may say he has failed
to receive our letters. There we will fairly hear their suits, and fairly consult with them on their problems. What think
ye, my lords?’

‘That is kingly done,’ Peter des Roches said; but he seemed a little uneasy, and Roger, regarding him covertly, was reminded
that John Blund – the man, not the horse –had been raised this year and cast down as Archbishop of Canterbury in a single
six-month.

But that was no concern of his.

How to live to very old,
Roger wrote scratchily with the goose quill,
and enjoy it.
At this point a lump in the ink blocked the quill and he had to stop to clear it; but that done, he was able to sand his
title and regard it critically.

He did not like it. It promised too much, especially from the pen of a man in his early twenties; and never mind that that
was at Providence’s gate, whence had come the commission. Better to say: how to postpone the accidents of age, and preserve
the senses. No, still better to omit ‘how’; say,
Liber de retardation accidenttum senectutis, et de sensibus conservandis.
That needed nothing more than a dedication; he dipped the quill and added,
ad suasionem duorum sapiennon, scilicet Johannis Castellionati et Phillipi cancellarii Parisiensis.

Nobody would be likely to question that since it was perfectly true – and yet, he was as instantly stabbed by the conviction
that it was not true in the eyes of Veritie. Philip the Chancellor had invited somebody of Oxford to write a work on the postponing
of old age, and with the suggestion that, were it to prove worthy, it might be sent to the Pope; but ‘somebody’ was not the
same as ‘Roger Bacon’. The assignment of the task to Roger had been wholly the doing of Grosseteste.

The pinprick of this thought brought with it again the desolate realization of how much had changed in Roger’s world, as it
had in the world at large, since that moment of incredulous triumph five years ago when he had counted over the gold and the
trash in Wulf’s bag in this very room, laboriously allowed for the rates of exchange on every piece and found himself the
possessor of close to two thousand pounds; and the realization, too, that the decision the changes were forcing on him could
not be delayed much longer.

He had told no one of the sum he had recovered, not even Adam; word of that kind travelled too swiftly, and he had been grimly
determined to hold every coin, until the moment when circumstances absolutely forced it out of his grasp. Adam, to be sure,
knew the general outcome, but he did not press Roger for details once he had satisfied himself that Roger was no longer in
any danger and could, when Adam needed him, make himself presentable at court. What Grosseteste knew or thought about the
matter was unknown to Roger, and now doubtless would always remain so. The rest of Oxford saw only that Roger continued to
live frugally, or perhaps even a little more frugally than he had immediately after learning of the disaster at Yeo Manse,
and that he had become almost completely solitary; any rumours that might have circulated of his recovery of funds – and there
were, of course, bound to be many of these – died quietly away in the face of these obvious misleading facts.

What the situation was now at Yeo Manse he did not know and was afraid, to inquire. Will of Howlake was, of course, long gone,
withdrawn to serve the more immediate needs of his desperately besieged lord; but if Harold had returned to the manse – or
if he had, whether he knew anything of the depredation of his brother’s buried hoard – Roger had heard no word of it. A letter
from Toulouse a year ago had shown Eugene equally ignorant, as was expectable; even had Harold repossessed the property, he
was an indifferent correspondent. With this blank spot in his mind where Ilchester should be, Roger was uneasily content;
the last word he wanted to hear was some news which would force him – or even make him feel that he ought – to return any
part of the money.

He laid down the quill on the lectern and stared blindly out of the single small window, now blazoned with yellow fire from
the westering July sun. Near by was the stack of new parchment awaiting his fair copy of the book, not a sheet of it more
than close calculation had shown him he would need, but still representing an expenditure which would have startled any of
his fellow-clerks out of their
illusions about ‘poor Roger Bacon’; next to it, the heap of tattered and smudgy palimpsests which was his draft, his maiden
experience as a writer, more than fifteen thousand words put down with pain less than a thousand at a time, with every day’s
end a new problem in resisting the temptation to write ‘finis’ during the first half of the task – and then, suddenly, the
luminous moment when task transforms itself into mystical experience, whereafter the temptation is to turn the illumination
to an orgy and never stop at all.

But he was unable to go back to his fair copy now, inviting though all that virgin parchment was, and imperative though it
was to have the work ready to be sent to Paris before this month was over. Instead, he moved suddenly to sponge off the face
of the sheet which had carried his outline for the work; and on this, while Oxford slept the midday sleep outside his hot,
still cell, he began slowly to write down a letter to himself, beginning.

i:
Robt Grosseteste has left Oxenford.

He had only slowly become aware of what it was Grosseteste had been about during his long meditative convalescence, and had
been even slower to connect it with those few words of mysterious promise spoken to him by the lector during the winter of
the death. Doubtless Adam had known all about it, but he had said nothing; in the meantime, Roger had been left tacitly to
understand that his new privilege as a teacher of Aristotle – now much threatened by the arrival of Richard Fishacre, a frighteningly
learned master who had brought with him a new translation by Michael Scot, with commentaries by Averroes – was the whole sense
to be read in that sickbed adumbration. It had certainly seemed sufficient at the time; to Roger’s elation, he had become
the first man ever to teach at Oxford before entering upon his secular mastership in the Faculty of Arts; and he had made
much of the opportunity, so that after the passage of less than two years the students crowded into his classes (some of them,
no doubt, there simply to hear him say something outrageous, as under the prompting of the
self he occasionally, helplessly did, but most to hear the new knowledge discoursed by the only regent master in Oxford who
had it at his fingertips.)

All of which had been so enormously satisfying that he had neglected to think, until last year, of where he might hope to
go next, even putting off as of no special urgency the question of whether or not to read for the Faculty of Theology. Certainly
it had never entered his head that the now inaccessible Grosseteste might have been engaged in politicking, even of a peculiar
and limited kind; Adam Marsh, yes – though Adam appeared to hate any involvement with the powerful, there was something in
his nature which drew the powerful to him with almost the force of love – but certainly never the lector. Besides, Roger had
been too busy; preparing his lectures, gratifying though it was, multiplied the difficulty of becoming Master of Arts, which,
in these last two years, involved the explication of exceedingly difficult texts and rigorous practical training in disputation;
and his unwelcome, unavoidable involvement in Adam’s outside affairs had further deprived him of contemplation when – as he
now saw, but perhaps too late –he had stood most in need of it.

And then, after a lapse of years, Grosseteste again called Roger and Adam Marsh to his study and unleashed his levin.

‘Roger, I’ve seen too little of thee,’ he said without preamble, ‘but thou wilt understand when I tell thee that I mean now
to assume the bishopric of Lincoln which Adam and the King alike have been urging on me. Hence, I must leave Oxford; the next
lector to the Franciscans will be magister Hugo, as Adam knows; thou wilt approve, Roger, I ne mislike.’

‘Yes,’ Roger said faintly, stunned.

‘Good. Now I must tell thee what work I’ve been about since Adam first brought thee to me as a stripling. I’ve said naught
of it before, it being mischancy and far too far in the balance; but the finger of God hath been on me since mine illness,
o happy accident! and now it must all be broached,
and brought into flower. I’ve been conspiring all these years with Philip the Chancellor to bring about the restoration of
the University of Paris, and in particular, to see that blind prohibition of Aristotle rescinded there. In large, we’ve succeeded;
but who’ll teach Aristotle in Paris now? There they’ve no students grown in him, let alone a master. Yet we have such a master
to send them, Roger. Wilt thou go?’

Roger could say nothing at all; he felt as taken up out of his waters as a little fish in a net; yet, at the same time, the
brand was alight again in his breast as burningly
as
ever in his and more, more.

‘That’s early asked, Capito,’ Adam said, eyeing Roger with what seemed to be amusement. ‘Let be a while; I ken our Roger better
thilke days, and the dose is heavy.’

I wis it well,’ Grosseteste said, nodding gravely.
’Say
on, then; wilt have it so, Roger?’

‘Please,’ Roger said. ‘I’m lost as lost may be.’

‘Spoken like a Platonist,’ Adam said, still with that slight gleam of amusement. ‘Knowest thou then, Roger: Philip the Chancellor
would have us provide him a book from Aristotle, new-written, which he might send the Pope as evidence of the uses of learning;
the subject to be the postponement of old age. We’ve promised him just such a work, but are in some straits as to who shall
have the writing of it. We are too busy both to compose any such book in a useful period of time, nor are we as perfect Aristotelians
as we’d like. John Blund is gone from us, poor wight, and our saintly Edmund Rich is Archbishop of Canterbury in his stead.
There’s to come to us next year a great master named Richard Fishacre, but alack, that’s next year and not now. Whom have
we but thee?’

Whom indeed? – Roger’s own silent argument at the sickbed now turned upon him.

‘Which should be naught but to thy liking, Roger, an I read thee right,’ Grosseteste added. ‘There’s scholarship in thy blood,
as is plain to see, not only in thee, but eke in our Dominican frater Robert.’

‘The eminent Robert’s no kin of mine,’ Roger said, for
sheer want of knowing what else to say; he a little welcomed the diversion. ‘The name is very common, Master. I’ve a brother
Robert, ‘tis true, but he’s no scholar; my younger brother Eugene may become a scholar in time, by God’s will.’

‘Well enough; but not to the point,’ Adam said. ‘Wilt thou undertake the book? Thou canst make free of my library, and Master
Grosseteste’s, where there’s sure to be much thou might simply copy for better speed; yet, harm there’d be none were it to
be a work of some substance in the art of medicine, for Gregory’s much enfeebled as thou knowst, and the next Pope may be
hardly so great a friend of universities.’

‘That being so,’ Roger said, ‘why not thy Dominican physician, Master Grosseteste? I know naught of medicine—’

‘And John de St. Giles knows naught of Aristotle,’ Grosseteste said, ‘and being rusty in disputation, writes but slowly and
that with a club foot. Nay, Roger, Adam is right; thou canst consult with John to thy profit, I ne doubt, but thou art the
man an thou’lt grasp the nettle. The burden’s great, I grant thee, but why else did the lord God give shoulders to His children?’

‘I know not,’ Roger said. ‘But thus I’ll answer you, my Masters: certes, I’ll write you your book, but Paris is a second question
which I must abide. In all this time I’ve thought myself to be reading, when the time came, for a doctorate in theology, as
is small secret anywhere in Oxford. Moreover, I’ve much in mind to study in the natural sciences, and where in Paris would
I find …

Here he faltered and found himself unable to continue. Grosseteste would soon leave Oxford to be charged with the largest
diocese in England, reaching from the Humber to the Thames. Where in the world would Roger find another master in those sciences,
even at Oxford? It was not a subject that interested Adam greatly, despite the younger man’s mathematical bent.

‘But to what purpose, Roger?’ Grosseteste said. ‘’Tis
always and only the end in view which doth condemn or purify. True that the arts help purge us of error and guide to perfection
mends aspectus et qffectus; yet
belle are they that well of water dug by Isaac called
Esdon,
signifying contention. But the
scientiae lucrativae,
as medicine, the two laws, alchemy – they signify enmity,
puteus, qui vocatur Satan, quod est nomen diaboli.’

‘From thee this is a hard saying’ Roger said, ‘that art first in all the world hi the
librinaturake

‘But the purpose, Roger! Dost thou wish to preach, then the sciences be well enough, after thou art become a theologian; but
thou knowest well that many learned men wis not how to preach ne wish to; they whore after such sciences as will add to their
riches or repute; one studying medicine to cure the sick and be made wealthy, or raise the dead and be called a magician;
another alchemy, to make heavenly what’s naturally impure, yet without a dram of piety; another music, to cast out demons;
another wonders, such as stars, winds, lightning, beasts, stones, trees, and all else that appeareth wonderful to men’s gaze.
Yet, theology is first among all studies, through which a man might know all such marvels better and more notably – not for
vain glory and worldly wealth, but for the salvation of souls.’