Doctor Mirabilis (29 page)

On the doctrinal question, Richard’s trimming of it to fit into the Procrustean bed of his understanding had led him straight
into the theological position that Christ had become a man during the three days between His death and the resurrection. This
view was no novelty – nothing new interested Cornwall – and hence failed to cause any real stir at the University, but it
was ideal for Roger’s purposes because it was logically absurd. In fact, it was incipiently
heretical; a sound logician would need only a motive to transform it from a blunder into a scandal. Albert would never have
fallen into such a trap – and Roger, having debated the plurality of forms with Albert to a standstill, did not anticipate
that so weak a logician as Cornwall would be a serious adversary.

He was, in short, readying himself to demonstrate to Cornwall, on Cornwall’s person, that this Roger Bacon was indeed and
in fact a dangerous casuist.

Then Grosseteste died between the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels and the
Translatio Edwardi’ Confessoris
; and for three days the bells boomed forth their grief from every tower in Oxford, aye, and in England. He was interred in
an altar tomb of blue marble, with a border of foliage around the table, which was supported at the corners by four pillars,
in the south aisle of the church of Lincoln; and with him his ring and staff. There were reports of miracles and nocturnal
wonders, doubly marvellous in a man once but a word away from imprisonment by papal order; and yet one manifested to no less
a person than the King, to whom in a vision a voice whispered,
Dilexit Dominus Edmundum in odorem benignitatis, et dilexit Dominus Robertum in odorem fidelitatis.

In the solemnity of this event, which drew together Church and Court, Order and University in a common pageant of mourning,
and in the intensity – as always unrealized until now – of his own loss, Roger almost forgot that mannequin figure Richard
Rufus of Cornwall; and when he saw the man in the procession at Lincoln, again through an air shivering with the mortuary
words of the bells, it was only with shame for the meanness of his own scheming. This was the second death high in University
councils within a year, for the regent master, John of Garland, had preceded the Bishop of Lincoln into the shadow. There
was time to think, too, of what consequences the removal of Grosseteste’s counsels might have on the King; a matter necessarily
of the most significance to Adam Marsh, but Roger had seen quite enough of Henry to bring him to
speculating uneasily. The Bishop had been almost the only strong palisade between the English Church and the Crown – as well
as between the English Church and the Apostolic Camera; and, moreover, one of the principal buttresses of Simon de Montfort’s
party.

But much though the death of Grosseteste signified to Roger, it was apparently not enough to distract Cornwall for long. The
return of the faculty from Lincoln had not been a week old when the campaign was resumed. Bungay did not have to warn Roger
a second time, for now he was indeed M a white fury, less in his own behalf than for what he took to be, for reasons obscure
even to himself, a disrespect to the dead.

He promptly set his arrow and let fly. It was ridiculously easy, like shooting a popinjay from three feet away. It was also
wondrous noisy: Roger’s very appearance at Cornwall’s lecture set the students to chattering so that the lecturer could scarce
be heard. The argument with the master himself went so exactly as Roger had imagined it would that the older man might well
have been reading lines from a written-out miracle-play. Some of the students, of course, took his part, and the result was
something as much like a small riot as may be.

Bungay was appalled. ‘The University will send thee down,’ he said shakily. ‘If they do so, I will go too; I provoked thee.’

‘There’s naught to fear, Thomas. A few cuffs given and taken in a lecture hall are commonplace. The University never pays
the slightest attention.’

‘Oh, so r Bungay said doubtfully. ‘Well, thou know’st them far better than I. But whatever they may do, I question that thou
hast accomplished anything of value. At the very least, Cornwall will surely retaliate.’

‘Certes,’ Roger said. ‘Nothing is surer. Therefore the problem is, how to tempt him to retaliate in some way further disadvantageous
to him. There too, meseemeth I have the answer.’

‘Roger, it seemeth
me
that thou shouldst give over. It
mathinketh me that I ever tempted thee in the matter. This time it is certain to be still worse – thy methods are so drastic,
Roger.’

Roger smiled, a little grimly. ‘This will simply be the same allegory, played backwards, as it were. Dear friend, I will tell
thee, I am going to announce a lecture on magic.’

‘O, suicide! Roger, Richard fancieth himself a student of that art, as am I a little, and I credit him. Thou wilt gain nothing
of it – and Holy Church forbids it. Well it feared me thou wert setting thyself something foolish.’

‘All this is to the good,’ Roger said. ‘Each of these aspects will appear unto Richard – and he will appear unto me. The day
will be Wednesday next. Bruit it about, Thomas; bruit it about.’

The hall was of course more than packed, and there were many there who looked with curiosity at the apparatus on Roger’s table
– devices without which, by now, he would have looked near naked to his usual students. These last looked with indifference
even at the caprice of a candle burning in the middle of the afternoon, knowing well that something would be done with it
in due course.

Cornwall was there, with his faction of loyal students. Thus far, however, he had said almost nothing, for Roger had carefully
left him few opportunities to object. Though Roger had published abroad the title,
On the nullity of magic and the usefulness of nature
, a paradox designed to start many an amateur metaphysician from his chair, in the main body of his exposition he had steered
a middle course: explaining the major assumptions of magic briefly, and without details that a real student of the subject
could find in fault; and showing that these were contrary to the teachings of the Church, a proposition to which no one would
dare to dissent regardless of what he believed. The Cornwallians were having rather a dull time of it, and so, for that matter,
were the students.

Never mind, affairs would become livelier in a moment; for Roger was about to expound the substance of his dream.

He said:

‘Thus we dismiss speculative alchemy, since we see that metals cannot be transmuted
per speciem.
Aristotle in the
Meteors means
that only nature can transmute species. Art cannot
secundum speciem, et non negat quod non possit per naturam. In essentia et diferentia specifica non potest transmutare
, as Aristotle says in the
De metallic.

‘But there is another alchemy, operative and practical, which teaches how to make the noble metals and colours and many other
things better and more abundantly by art than they are made in nature. And science of this kind is greater than all those
preceding because it produces greater utilities – not only wealth and many other things for the public welfare, but the discovery
of methods for prolonging human life.’

Cornwall coughed and subsided. Roger challenged him with a look, and the man bristled. He said:

‘Certes a preachment of magic.’

‘Not so!’ This was the beginning.
‘Narrabo igitur nunc primo opera artis et naturae miranda, ut postea causas et modum assignem
– in which there is nothing magical,
ut videatur quod omnis magica potestas sit inferior his operibus et indigna.’

There was a stir as he paused again, and his students grinned at each other: Roger was about to be outrageous again. Cornwall
was smiling too, now crouched smugly beside his mousehole.

‘Item,’ Roger said,
‘nam instrumenta navigandi possunt fieri ut naves maximae ferantur uno solo homine regente, majori velocitate quam si plenae
essent hominibus.’

He paused yet again, but expected no objection, and got none; there were seafarers in the room who had talked of such things
themselves, or dreamed of them; and surely there was nobody present who did not already know something of the lodestone.

‘Item:
Currus possunt fieri ut sine animale moveantur cum impetu inestimabili.’

‘A wise man,’ Cornwall broke in with a snort, ‘would can
such
auto-mobile
nothing but dreams.

‘Except, perhaps, for the scythe-bearing chariots with which the men of old fought? But perhaps you are right, magister Cornwall.
I proceed: Item,
possunt fieri instrumenta volandi ut homo sedeat in medio
– revolving some engine, necessarily, magister Cornwall –
aloe artificialiter factae aera verberent modo avis volantis.’

Cornwall seemed stunned. It was one of Roger’s own students who said incredulously,
‘Flying
machines, magister Bacon?’

‘Flying machines,’ Roger said. ‘Item,
possunt fieri instrumentum, parva magnitudine, ad elevanda et deprimenda pondera paene infinita—’

‘O, certes,’ Cornwall said. ‘You could move the world with such a lever.’

‘No, it would not be long enough, magister Cornwall, as is plainly written in Archimedes. But nothing could be more useful
in emergencies. By a machine three fingers high and wide, and of less size, a man could free himself of all dangers of prison,
for instance. And his friends, if he had any.’

There was some laughter, but it was uneasy. Even Roger’s own students, it seemed, did not entirely welcome the admixture of
flyting with true disputation; perhaps they thought he did not need it. He went on:
Potest etiam facile fieri instrumentum quo unus traheret ad se mille homines contra eorum voluntatem—’

‘I find it’, Cornwall said, ‘rather crowded in this hall already.’

Another ripple of laughter. Flushing helplessly, Roger ploughed ahead: – and attract other things in like matter; for instance,
thunderbolts.’

Now the laughter was at full roar, and plainly at Roger’s expense. Even his own partisans could see that he had lost his temper.

‘I will go on.
Possunt etiam instrumenta fieri ambulandi in mari vel fluminibus sine periculo
– even to the bottom without danger, even as Alexander the Great explored the secrets of the sea.’

‘According to what authority?’

‘Ethicus the astronomer, as is well known,’ Roger said with concentrated scorn.
Haec autem facto sun! antiquitus et nostris temporibus facta sunt, ut certum est;
the same is true of the flying machine, though I have not seen one and know of no man who has—’

‘Nor has anyone else.’

‘—but I know an expert who has thought out the way to make one.’

‘Ah, excellent,’ Cornwall said. ‘Let him then bring home the bacon.’

The hall skirled with a glee of catcalls. Roger said, through his teeth:
‘Et infinita quasi talia fieri possunt … ut pontes super lumina sine column … et machinations et ingenia inaudita
—’

‘Belike,’ Cornwall said. ‘I hear nothing myself.’

‘Then I need a louder voice, magister Cornwall,’ Roger said harshly. ‘Let me introduce you to a childhood friend of mine,
Sir Salis Petre. He has a small voice by usual; but
per igneam coruscationem et combustionem ac per sonorem horrorem possunt mira fieri, et in distantia qua volumus ut homo mortalis
sibi cavere non posset nec se sustinere.’

Cornwall laughed,
Quomodo?
’ he demanded.

Roger picked up the tight roll of parchment and touched it to the flame of the candle. As soon as it was smouldering well,
he threw it to the floor before the table. The nearest students drew back uneasily, but Cornwall only shrugged his shoulders.

‘Quomodo? Ecce

The scroll exploded like two dozen thunderclaps, blowing out the candle and filling the hall with pungent grey smoke. With
howls of panic, the students broke blindly for the door, striking out first with fists, and then with knives, to be first
out. Cornwall, however, was closest and was first out by several rods – most fortunately for him, or they would have trampled
him. Down the corridors they poured, cloaks flying, their cries echoing:

‘Beware of the magician! Beware! Beware! Beware of the
magician! Beware! … Beware …

Then Roger was alone, except for a few groaning wounded. Blind with triumph in the black powder-reeking air, he clung to the
lectern with both hands, and shouted after them all at the top of his voice,

‘
TRIPSARECOPSEM
!’

No plot in history, it seemed, had ever succeeded so well. From that day forward Oxford was unbearable for Cornwall; in his
humiliation, he appealed to Adam Marsh to reverse himself on the matter of the Parisian post. With a sigh – for though he
would still have preferred Cornwall to remain at Oxford, he was in truth becoming a little weary of the man – Adam again wrote
the provincial minister, and shortly thereafter, Richard Rufus of Cornwall was no more to be seen. Roger and Bungay drank
a toast to his departure, and went back to their more serious matters.

That would be, however, the last favour Adam would be able to do for anyone at Oxford, master or student, for his influence
had evaporated. Earlier on, he had appointed Thomas of York as regent master, to fill the vacancy left by the death of John
of Garland; and Thomas, wholly against the customs, was a man without a degree from the Faculty of Arts. It was recalled that
Adam had done something like this before, in the case of Thomas Docking, but this instance was far more serious. The outcome
was a disastrous quarrel with the University.

Effectively, however, he had left Oxford three years before; to Roger the whole dispute, though it was common gossip, seemed
remote and unreal. He was now embarked upon the composition of a
Metaphysica
, a heavy task to which he had cheerfully allotted himself five years, allowing for other work to go on at the same time.
There was God’s plenty of that, for about the University he was now famous – or, he thought, perhaps infamous would be a better
word. Though cries of ‘Beware of the magician!’ still sounded in the halls, they became more and more feeble with the exile
of Cornwall, and even while they were at their loudest he had
more students than he could comfortably handle. He was required by the Order, however, to try.