Doctor Mirabilis (5 page)

The horse was as cautious an idiot as John Blund, but in two or three days, it got him from inn to inn on to the marches of
Salisbury Plain, stopping at every roadside ditch to crop the watercress. It had seemed the strongest and healthiest animal
the courser had had for the money – six whole pounds – but it had never entered Roger’s mind to suspect that it might have
been
overfed; yet,
it put its nose into the sweet herbs like serfs putting their elbows on table, full and waxing lazy as freemen, and as disputatious.
At the last inn before Salisbury, he saved the price of the beast’s hay; the next morning it suddenly discovered that it knew
how to trot.

This far from satisfied Roger’s passionate urgency, for he had been unable to get away from the Great Hall for nearly a month,
what with duties, observances and arrangements; but he had a three days’ journey ahead of him, and he knew better than to
force the animal. He had had a fair dawn to start in, warm for November, so that the snow was going, and the road was soon
to be a motionless river of mud; but this early in the day the earth was still frozen, and the high sky was an intense, almost
Venetian blue without a finger of cloud. Before him stretched the reddish, chalky-loamed downs in a broad undulating sweep,
littered by the thousands with those huge blocks called sarsen stones or grey wethers (and to be sure they did look a little
like a motionless flock of sheep from a distance) which had been used by the unknown builders of the enigmatic and faintly
sinister structures at Stonehenge and Avebury. Had Merlin truly been their architect, as one of the
romans
would have it – and by
what magic had he moved such enormous stones, some of them as long as twenty feet and as big around as forty feet? There was
another
roman
which called the great circle at Avebury a monument to the last of the twelve Arthurian battles, in which case Merlin could
hardly have been involved, having been by that time himself ensorcelled by Vivien – had there ever been any such magician,
a question which, like that about the’ stones, did not strike Roger as very profitable. Still, the stones
had
been moved, some of them over long distances, so it was plain to see that there must be at least
a
method – whether it had been Merlin’s or not – and that was discoverable.

The horse tired and began to amble again, so that before noon by Roger’s stomach – which reminded his brain that today was
the eleventh of November, and the eleventh of November was Martinmas, and Martinmas was the time to hang up salt meat for
the winter, and there was salt meat in his saddlebag, and he was hungry – he was beginning to fear that he would have to spend
the night out alone on the Plain. There was a good deal of danger in that, for the Plain was bloody ground, a favourite spot
for pitched battles and for thieves alike.

Nevertheless, Roger had to face the prospect. From this point in the road – little more than a track, meandering around the
hills, following the contours of the land – there was no inn or habitation in sight, and none, very likely, this far out.
It was, of course, perfectly possible that he had got lost.

Abruptly, his eye was distracted by a flurry of movement ahead: straight out from behind the next wave of low hills something
small, dark and compact went hurtling into the blue sky like an arrow. It was a hawk. Roger watched it soar with astonishment
and increased disquiet, for he could not but regard it as ominous. No such bird would be hunting in the middle of the Plain
at this time of year – it would be an unusual sight at any season – and why would a human hunter be hawking in such cheerless,
unfruitful country?

But hunter it was, human or devil; he topped the rise now
on his horse, a tall burly figure, bearded and cloaked, and pulled to a stop while he was joined by two more riders. The hawk
wheeled high above them, screaming disconsolately. The three, plainly regarding Roger where he had halted on the ancient,
pre-Roman trackway, talked among themselves, leaning in their gear. After a while, the tallest of them raised his left hand
as if in salute; cautiously – it could not but pay to offer friendship, or at least neutrality, especially as he was outnumbered
– Roger saluted back, and immediately felt like a fool, for beyond him the hawk screamed again, stooped and came down, sculling
to a perch on the gauntleted wrist with a noble display of wingspread.

Roger lowered his arm and loosened his sword. Though, as a clerk, he was under the protection of the Church, he was not naive
enough to expect this to be respected by a pack of highwaymen. Furthermore, as a clerk he had a right to the blade, and as
a scholar, he was as expert with it as the next; the students were a squalling, brawling lot, very likely to summarize disputations
with blood, and when one was not defending one’s self against some such ‘argument’, there were the burghers of Oxford to be
on guard against – there had been four outright riots between the scholars and the townsmen in Roger’s time, in two of which
he had had to slash his way out without wasting an instant on ethical or moral niceties.

It certainly would not do to get killed now, with such great prospects a-dangle in the near future like the grapes of Tantalus,
though rather more indefinite. Miraculously, Robert Grosseteste had cleaved to his life – or had been so cleaving still when
Roger had left the Great Hall. He was still gravely ill, to be sure, and unable to see anyone except his physicians, and Adam
Marsh his confessor, but the crisis seemed to be over, and Adam had estimated cautiously that three months of pottages, gruels
and broths would restore him to something like his old strength. The death seemed to be generally on the wane; lectures had
been resumed at the University, and trade in town was almost back to normal. The burghers buried their dead and agreed solemnly
that it
had not been a pestilence after all, but only a narrow escape from one.

The party to the south was moving down the hill toward Roger now, and with every moment seemed to be growing larger; following
the three leading horses came a train of pack-animals, heavily laden, two by two over the brow of the hill. Suddenly Roger
realized what it was that he was seeing, and with a sigh of relief allowed his sword to settle again.

The big man was obviously a wool merchant, his two companions prentices, chivvying a purchase of fells and hides over the
downs. And in fact Roger knew the man; had he not been now close enough to recognize, the hawk should have given him the clue,
for there was only one such merchant customarily buying in Dorset and Somersetshire who went about with a peregrine falcon
on his wrist: William Busshe. The falcon’s name was Madge, and Roger even knew that the horse was called Bucephalus after
the legendary animal of Alexander the Great, but was always addressed as ‘Bayard’; for he had watched this same man bargaining
for the spring clip and the fall hides for ten years before leaving Oxford, haggling solemnly with his father until Christopher’s
death, and thereafter, first with Robert and then with Harold.

Busshe recognized Roger simultaneously and pulled to a second time, his shaggy eyebrows rising almost into his Flemish-style
beaver hat. Wearing that expression, he looked almost like a sheep himself, despite his forked brown beard and the fact that
his face was, of course, not black. His vaircollared cloak spread like Madge’s wings as he put his hands on his hips. Feeling
the reins on his neck, the big bay promptly began to graze, and Roger had to hold John Blund’s head up sharply to keep him
from following Bayard’s example.

‘How now, young Roger,’ Busshe said in his heavy, deliberate voice. ‘Little I expected to encounter thee on this dreary moor,
and in sooth, I wis not whether’t be well met or ill with us.’

‘No more wis I,’ Roger said, with some return of his
uneasiness. ‘Meseemeth ‘tis early for thee to be faring north with sealed bales, this being but Martinmas. Someone hath slaughtered
early, and I greatly fear that ‘tis Yeo Manse hath done it.’

‘Thou Wert ever a gimlet-eyed youngster,’ Busshe said. ‘Thou hast seen to the heart of the matter. There’s a knight of the
justiciar sitteth as lord in thy cot, hath ordered the slaughter a week ere we had arrived, would sell me the fells at half
the prices I’d contracted for with Franklin Harold these eighteen months gone. And so much and no more did I pay him, seeing
that the slaughtering had been hastily done to fill’s purse quickly, and the wool thus not of the first quality.’

Roger felt a brief flash of anger, but after a moment, he realized that it should not be Busshe at whom it was directed. He
was doubtless telling the exact truth – after all, he had no part in this quarrel – nor could it matter in the least which
price he had paid, since none of it could go to the family under the circumstances. If Busshe had cheated the justiciar’s
equerry out of his very shirt (though nothing could be more unlike Busshe), Roger ought indeed to be pleased. But it was hard
to think of a year’s flock spoiled and knocked down for the enrichment of some marauding noble in de Burgh’s service without
feeling a general anger at everyone concerned, even the silent prentices who were watching him with evident sympathy.

‘Then are we much despoiled?’ Roger said after a while.

‘Nay, this knight, a highteth Will of Howlake, hath far too stern a hand; a bath kept the serfs hard at it and much increased
the rents and the boon work. All thy kin are gone, but for thy sisters, no man knoweth where. How farest thou?’

‘To the manse, to retrieve what I may,’ Roger said, preoccupied. ‘And my sisters?’

‘In the women’s houses, where, by order of Franklin Harold’s steward, they be so craftily clothed, this Will of Howlake knoweth
them not from villeins’ women.’

‘I thank God for’t.’ Indeed, the whole situation as Busshe
outlined it seemed far from the worst that Roger had imagined. Though he had had no experience of such an occupation as Yeo
Manse was undergoing now, the pattern had been familiar for centuries, and Will of Howlake’s behaviour did not sound like
that of a man who expected to remain lord of the property for long. He was wringing the good out of it with the stringency
of a man who expects recall, and so was adding to his personal store, as well as to that, of Hubert de Burgh, by as many marks
a day as the manse could possibly be made to yield. A brief cruel plundering of that kind had proven the ruination of many
a holding – lords who expected to be awarded the property were kinder to it – but the orchards and fields and gardens of Yeo
Manse were extensive, and Roger did not doubt that they would survive such treatment, were it only not much prolonged. It
meant that the serfs and even the stewards would be despitefully used while it lasted – but their days were miserable enough
even in normal times – their reward only in heaven, never in this world.

‘Thou’rt ill advised to go hither,’ Busshe said in a troubled voice. ‘Howlake is wroth at having missed taking every man in
the family; an thou becomest known to him, wilt go ill with thee. And thy fat gelding there wheezeth like a monk with the
asthmaticks –’tis plain to see a’s all out of the habit of work.’

Madge stirred her wings under the cloak, and Busshe lifted his left arm to the sky again. Reluctantly the red peregrine climbed
on the air; being recently fed from Busshe’s own hand, she wanted only to sleep, or at least to perch quietly and pursue some
single savage thought, but hawks had to be exercised or they would not hunt – indeed, would forget even how to come home.
Busshe put his hand back on his hip again, and Madge began to circle at her pitch, crying Kyaa! Kyaa!

‘Come thou with us till yon Howlake’s outworn his commission,’ Busshe said. ‘We’re to Northleach to cast a sort of fell and
fifty tods of Cotswold wool, dear though it be at eleven shillings; thence to our offices in London forth’ assizes
at the Leadenhall, and to pack sarplers for shipboard. Our quarters be in the Mart Lane, not over-far from where thy brother
Robert doth deal in Egypt’s cotton and I wis not what else. An ‘tis money thou seekest, belike a will succour thee. Mene-whyles
we’ll put thee on a proper horse, and give yon hay-bottle bales to carry; and thou’lt add thy blade to ours ‘gainst thieves
or Lombards, as is equitable.’

It was a generous offer, and for a moment Roger was tempted to accept it; he did not underestimate the risks he was taking.
But it was not, after all, money that he was primarily hoping to recover, and he knew besides how little likely he was to
be given any money to go back to Oxford from Robert Bacon’s hands; then he would be stranded in London, with no possible course
but to ship with Busshe’s wool to Flanders and try his luck in Paris at the dormant University. That was out of the question;
he was not ready for that by years.

Nay, I cannot,’ he said. ‘God’s blessing on thee, William Busshe, but I’m bidden to Ilchester, and thence to Oxford, and will
abide the course. I’ll recall thy kindness in my prayers.’

‘As it pleaseth thee,’ Busshe said. ‘Fare thee well, then.’ He called Madge home and hooded and jessed her; and in a while,
the last of the procession had vanished to the north.

Gloomily, Roger got John Blund into motion, more than half convinced that his refusal had been the worst kind of folly. He
was not even much cheered by the sight of a distant inn from the top of the next rise, nor finding, as he drew closer, that
the ‘bush’ or sign was up on the ale-stake, meaning ‘open for business’. Good wine needs no bush, but he was in no position
to pay for good wine, nor bad, either. And there could hardly be any money for him at Yeo Manse; he was making this wittold’s
pilgrimage for the sake of nothing but a few childish trinkets ….

A few toys, and an
ignis fatuus, a
will-o’-the-wisp drifting far in the future, conjured into being by a Greek dead fourteen weary centuries already.

*

Yeo Manse was not, properly speaking, in Ilchester; legally, it was in the parish of Northover, on the other side of the river,
connected with Ilchester by a low stone bridge. Northover was, however, nothing notable as a town, while Ilchester stood athwart
Fosse Way, a major road through the district ever since the Romans had built it, and the Bacons had seen the advantages which
would accrue from identifying with Ilchester quite early on – long before most of the other local franklins had, in fact.
The parish church of St. Mary had been established by Christopher Bacon’s grandfather as a chantry where masses were to be
sung for his soul by a single priest; later, Christopher’s father and two other freeman landholders had contributed the silver
and the boon work which had raised the squat octagonal tower, so oddly pagan and brooding for a Christian temple, and since
that time, all the Bacons who had died at home had been buried there.