The List Of Seven (12 page)

"Refreshing isn't it?"

"I was expecting, you know, a pledge of fealty to Queen and country, something along chivalric or Arthurian lines. That was pantheistic and positively nondenominational."

"Glad it meets with your approval."

"And what does the eye represent?"

"I've told you as much as I'm able for the moment, Doyle," Sparks replied wearily. "Anything more would not be in your self-interest."

They walked on. The fields ran uninterrupted in every direction. From the arc of the rising sun, Doyle figured they were traveling due east.

Hunger presently raised its insistent voice, darkening Doyle's mood. Yes, Sparks had pulled his fat out of the fire on more than one occasion. Nothing in his actions suggested he was anything other than what he represented himself to be, but he remained impenetrable, and the cloaking of royal secrecy around his true purpose rang discordantly. Doyle was in no position to reject the man's assistance, no more than he was of a mind to forfeit his surprisingly welcome company, but common sense prevented the full conferring of his trust. It was as if he were traveling with an exotic jungle cat, its defensive abilities beyond reproach but whose very nature demanded of its keeper a tireless, wary scrutiny.

Perhaps if he questioned Sparks more cleverly, he'd inadvertently yield up details from which the astute observer could assemble a more telling portrait of the man. A number of Doyle's speculative inferences were on the verge of congealing into conclusions. It remained for him to find the right moment to confront Sparks with them and, whether by the shock of recognition or the false vehemence of denial, determine their acuity.

Along the cart path there appeared every so often hedges and occasional embankments and at one point the crumbling remains of stone brickwork, underfoot or along the shoulder. Doyle had noticed the remains from time to time without more than passing curiosity, but as they traversed a more extensive patch of the ruins, his examination of them drew comment from Sparks.

"This is an old Roman road. A trade route running to the sea."

"Is that where we're going, the sea?" Well played, Doyle, devilishly clever the way you slipped that in.

"Of course, paths like this one were in use long before the Romans crossed the channel," Sparks continued, completely ignoring his question. "The early Celts used this path, and Neolithic man before them. Strange, isn't it? The same path used by so many different cultures, down through the ages."

"Convenience, I should imagine," Doyle said. He hadn't thought about it, in truth. "A new lot comes along, the old path is there, remnants of it anyway, why bother cutting a new one?"

"Why not, indeed? Make things easier; there's the history of mankind in a thimble, eh, Doyle?"

"In a roundabout sort of way."

"How do you suppose our prehistoric forebears chose this particular path to begin with?"

"Shortest distance between two points."

"Could be these were the same paths the animals they were hunting used before them," said Sparks.

"That has the ring of truth."

"And why do you think the animals blazed this particular path?" Sparks had slipped into the tone of a Sophist leading the ignorant step by step to the sacred land of truth.

"Something to do with the availability of water or food."

"Necessity, then."

"Their lives are ordered by it, aren't they?"

"Are you familiar with the Chinese philosophy of feng shui?"

"Never heard of it."

"The Chinese believe the earth itself is a living, breathing organism, and just as the human body has veins, nerves, and vital energies running through it, regulating maintenance and behavior, so too does the earth."

"I know their system of medicine is based on such an assumption," Doyle added, wondering what this had even remotely to do with Roman roads in Essex.

"Exactly so. Feng shui assumes the presence of these lines of force and attempts to bring human existence into harmony with them. Practitioners of feng shui are trained and initiated as rigorously as members of any priesthood, increasing their sensitivity to these powers and their ability to accurately in-

terpret them. The building of homes, roads, churches, the entire five-thousand-year-old Chinese Empire—the most enduring civilization our world has produced—was constructed in strictest alignment with these principles."

"You don't say."

"Aside from his obvious ignorance, filth, and lack of sophistication, what quality could most recommend to us prehistoric man?"

"He was quite handy with his hands," Doyle said, struggling to keep up with the man's mental vaults.

"He was in harmony with the earth," said Sparks, paying no attention to Doyle's answer. "At one with nature: part of it, not apart from it."

"The noble savage. Rousseau and all that."

"Precisely. And as a consequence, ancient man possessed an exquisite sensitivity to the ground he walked, the woods he hunted, the streams from which he drank. He didn't need to practice feng shui; he was born with it, innately, as were the animals he depended on for survival."

"So the paths they traveled fell along the lines of some vibratory pattern in the earth."

"Crisscrossing the countryside seemingly at random, these paths many constitute nothing less than the electromagnetic nervous system of the planetary being itself."

"On the other hand, they might just be roads," Doyle countered.

"Might be. But what if I were to tell you that at the intersections of these lines of force, where the—whatever you might wish to call it; the Chinese call it the 'breath of the dragon'—where this pulsating energy is at its zenith, early man erected his temples and holy places, on many of which now stand the Christian churches we make use of today?"

"I'd say the whole thing bears further examination—"

"Stonehenge is such a place. Likewise the ancient abbey at Glastonbury. And Westminster Abbey, which was built on the site of the Romans' Temple of Diana, sits squarely atop the most vigorous nexus of these lines of force in all of England. What does that suggest to you?"

"There's a good deal more in heaven and earth and so on."

"Yes, Horatio. Even more intriguing when you consider that the Greek deity Hermes—the ancient Greeks were aware

of these forces, don't you doubt it—was the god not only of fertility, as was Diana, but also of roads. And what did our Celtic ancestors do to honor Hermes? They erected columns of stone at significant crossroads. Mere signposts? Or primitive conductors of this earthbound energy?"

"But the Celts didn't worship a Greek god," Doyle contended, growing more confused.

"No, the Celts called him Theutates. But when the Romans completed their conquest of Britain, Caesar himself remarked on how easily the natives had been persuaded to worship Mercury, the Roman version of Hermes. Theutates is depicted as carrying a large staff entwined with a serpent, as are both Hermes and Mercury with the caduceus—"

"Two snakes on the caduceus, actually."

"And what does the caduceus symbolize, Doyle?"

"Healing. The power of healing."

"Precisely. Suggesting that if one taps into the power of the serpent, i.e., 'the dragon'—the lines of force in the earth: the natural force—they gain the power to heal. What if all this talk about 'dragons' in Celtic legend wasn't about literal monsters at all? Do you recall what old Saint George was suddenly able to do after 'slaying the dragon'?"

"Uh—"

"Heal the sick! Brave knight ventures out, sticks his lance into—not an actual dragon, in our revised scenario, but the 'coiled serpent' of natural power. Like dropping a conducting wire into a vast reservoir of energy, thereby taming the 'beast.' George then goes straight on to become patron saint of England, it's graven in our English schoolboy minds! Power, Doyle, the elemental power of the planet, running under, around, and through us even now, and we're too blinded and distracted by life's pettifogging natterings to see it!"

Each new idea made Doyle's brain ache. Perhaps there was a vitality-affecting undercurrent beneath these bricks, and it was draining him dry.

"And what was the first use civilizations tried to make of this force once they'd acquired it? What did we use those ancient temples for? Come on, Doyle, think!"

Doyle hazarded a guess. "Animal sacrifice?"

"Healing! Heal the sick; raise the dead. We appealed to the

gods to make us whole; the medical and theological professions were one and the same then. Not unlike two serpents entwined around a straight line of force, come to think of it," said Sparks, surprising himself with the discovery. "Do you remember who the eldest son of Hermes was?"

"Forgive me, it's slipped my mind," said Doyle, feeling slightly dizzy.

"The great god Pan, father of paganism and earth worship, the one the Christians decided to eradicate by calling him the Devil, because poor old, fun-loving Pan also represented that most unchristian of human attributes: unbridled male sexuality."

"Pity."

"Granted Pan has his mischievous side; he particularly liked to lie in wait for travelers in desolate areas, jump out of the weeds, and spook the living wits out of them, inducing a feeling in the victim called Pan-ic."

"I really need something to eat," Doyle said. The surrounding countryside, in spite of its bucolic, sun-drenched beauty, was beginning to look increasingly threatening.

"Isn't the mind extraordinary? One loose brick on the road leads us from feng shui all the way to Pan. By God, maybe there is something to the energy of this old road: I feel mar-velously invigorated!"

Doyle wiped his brow with a handkerchief as Sparks looked out over the fields, reviewing the crop of his recent thinking like a proud farmer.

"If this lines-of-force business is true, if this road truly is sacred, how do you account for the fact that it's fallen into such utter disrepair?" asked Doyle, self-satisfied with the sharpness of his rebuttal.

"In that single observation, Doyle, you express with epigrammatic precision the fundamental tragedy of modern man. We have fallen from grace, our ancient, instinctual link to the natural world forgotten. We're guests who no longer respect the house they inhabit, but rather treat it as a rough clay to be molded to our basest use. Think of the charnel-house factories of London, the befouled air, the mines, child labor; the countless devalued lives broken and discarded by the infernal machinery of the age. The eloquent ruins of this simple coun-

try path inscribe the eventual downfall of our vaunted civilization."

Doyle felt a tingling rush through his body, whether moved by the surprisingly tender outrage of his companion or some combination of starvation and sunstroke, he was quite unsure. It was near midday by now and unseasonably warm. Undulations of heat massaged the horizon line.

"What's that?" Doyle asked, and he pointed to the road behind them.

They had climbed and descended a sequence of gentle hills as the path moved down through the valley. A dark mirage-like heat devil was fluttering toward them along the line of the road. Its rhythmic, fluid movements suggested the beating wings of a gigantic crow.

"Perhaps we'd better clear off the road," Doyle said.

"No."

"Do you think that's, urn, wise, Jack?"

"We're in no danger," said Sparks, standing his ground.

Before too long, they could hear beating hooves: a single horse, at a sustained gallop. The shape metamorphosed through the distortion of the heat and revealed itself to be a solitary rider, a long black cloak flowing in its wake. Slowing as it approached, the rider appeared to a startled Doyle as a welcomely familiar face.

"Why, it's Barry. It's Barry, isn't it?" said Doyle, unexpectedly cheered by the prospect.

"No. It's not Barry," Sparks said.

He moved away to greet whoever it was as the horse covered the last few paces, and the man, who by every test of scrutiny Doyle could apply appeared to be none other than Barry, their erstwhile driver, dismounted and shook hands with Sparks.

"Good man, Larry, no trouble then," said Sparks.

"Kept a sharp butchers. N'trouble a'tall, sir," said Larry, who Doyle still insisted was Barry, not Larry.

"Larry is referring to the scattering of berries and wheat I've left along the way," Sparks explained to Doyle, as they moved to him. "There's not another tracker in all of England who could follow so scant a trail."

"None that is save y'self, sir," Larry added modestly. He was an East Ender, wiry and compact, as Barry had been.

with the same curly brown hair and lively blue eyes that Barry had; that Barry has, Doyle meant to say, still convinced this could be none other than the man himself.

"Larry and Barry are brothers," Sparks said, seeing Doyle's evident confusion. "Identical twins."

"We were, anyway; Barry's a one's wot got the scar, sir, which you'll notice is distinctly lacking on my physiognomy," said Larry, helpfully offering up his right, decidedly unscarred cheek to Doyle as testimony.

"Right," said Doyle. "No scar at all." As if he'd noticed from the start.

"Larry and Barry are something of a legend in certain London circles," Sparks said. "The sharpest pair of crack men you'd ever hope to meet."

"Crack men?"

"Burglars, sir," said Larry, smiling politely as if discussing tea-party etiquette with a maiden aunt. "Bit a' the old slash and grab, practitioners of the wedge, jemmy, and center bit, if you get my meanin'."

"I understand your meaning quite distinctly," Doyle said, affronted by the man's casual criminality.

"A perfect partnership," explained Sparks. "No one knew they were twins. On sheer technique alone they were ten leagues ahead of anyone else in the field."

"We ain't educated, but we 'ad an education, if you get my meaning," elaborated Larry.

"You'll appreciate the elegance of their methodology, Doyle. One of them goes out on the town and holds forth in a pub, cadging drinks, carousing, generally making a spectacle of himself."

"And that part's not the lark you might assume it to be, sir," said Larry, gravely. "A form of entertainment, that's how we seen it—emphasis on performance. Barry, now 'e's a singer, see, wit' a vast repertoire to draw from, whilst I favored epic recitation of the ribald lim'rick."