The Pendragon Legend (22 page)

After much pleading from me, Monsieur Ch—the Great Inquisitor of our Lodge, finally promised that as soon as the next stage of the work was completed he would begin the necessary preparations for my initiation to the higher level.

When I next presented myself at the door of the Hotel V—and gave the secret sign, my heart was beating wildly. ‘So, today is the day,’ I told myself. ‘Today you will, at long, long last, place your first foot on the royal path you have yearned for since your youth.’ In the same moment I made an
undertaking
that whatever treasures I might glean through the noble art would be devoted to the wellbeing of mankind as a whole.

That night the work of the brotherhood was even more solemn and
inspiring
than before. Once the introductory ceremony was over, the curtains, which
enclosed the raised section of the hall to make it like a theatre, were parted. In the centre of the stage, under a canopy of garlands and Japanese lanterns, a woman sat in mourning beside a broken column. She represented Mankind. A lame warrior entered. He gazed in sorrow at the woman and she, seeing him, burst into violent sobbing.

The man sitting next to me explained that the limping veteran was a certain Thibaud, who had been wounded at Rossbach, was now on the verge of starvation, and had turned to the Lodge for help. We were all deeply moved by the terrible plight of this well-deserving hero.

Then a dragon entered, followed by a Knight Templar in full armour. To the distant strains of heavenly music the Knight transfixed the dragon with his spear and drew out a purse from his side. It was filled with donations previously collected from the brotherhood. He gave it to the old warrior, who shed tears of pure gratitude. The woman representing Mankind wept likewise, and embraced the Knight Templar as representative of the Great Lodge. Little angels appeared and performed a charming ballet to yet more music. Next, the Grand Master spoke movingly about the penury the old man had suffered and urged us to continue our work for humanity. With tears in their eyes the brothers saluted one another, and went in to dinner.

I did not go with them myself, but instead approached the Grand Inquisitor and gently reminded him of his promise. He questioned me closely about my own preparations, and I assured him that for three whole weeks I had partaken of neither meat nor liquor, and had withheld myself, to the great distress of poor Thérèse, from the joys of Venus.

‘Then come with me,’ the Grand Inquisitor pronounced.

We made our way to a hall where three or four masked gentlemen stood round a mystic pentagram. The Grand Inquisitor donned his own mask, depicting the symbols of the Sun and the Moon. I was made to stand in the centre, whereupon they drew their swords and pointed them at me. I
commended
my soul to God and betrayed no sign of fear, especially as I knew this ritual was routine: no one had ever actually been cut down in the process.

The Grand Inquisitor commended my courage, murmured some magical formula in an oriental tongue and presented me with my mask. Then he and another masked gentleman took me by the hand and led me through several
corridors, all draped with funereal hangings, to a room at the centre of which stood an enormous coffin. There was a door cut in its side, through which we entered.

We stood there for some time, in the pitch darkness. I became aware, from the sounds of breathing all round me, that there were a number of others with us. Then suddenly the space was filled with light. I found myself before a low table on which a garter and a crystal ball had been placed between two pistols.

Behind it stood a man. He was a remarkable figure, with a face of
profound
solemnity. From his insignia he could only have been the Great Chosen One, the highest rank in our lodge. A second man stood at his side, bearing the insignia of the Knight of the Orient.

‘Do you know the Estuary of the East and West?’ the Great Chosen One demanded.

In my confusion I was on the point of explaining that I had never actually been there, but he nudged me in the ribs to indicate I should answer in the affirmative, which I did.

‘Do you know the Six-sided Columns, the Spheres of the Universe, and the little animals with basalt heads in the foyer?’

Again I affirmed, and the Knight of the Orient smiled his satisfaction with my reply. I suddenly recognised him from his enormous girth. He was none other than the Englishman, Lord Bonaventura Pendragon.

‘Can you rotate an axis from left to right, and sharpen a vine-stem from right to left?’

I said I could, and the Great Chosen One discharged one of the pistols. The coffin around us rose slowly into the air and came to rest against the ceiling. We were left standing on the floor of the room. The Grand Inquisitor was present, as were the others, but no longer masked.

‘I find that Brother Malakius (this was my esoteric name) knows the Mysteries of the Lower Orders,’ the Great Chosen One proclaimed. ‘I shall now question the Archangel Uriel, manifest in the crystal ball, to determine whether our Brother is worthy of admittance to the Higher Orders. Bring forth the innocent maid.’

Two gentlemen led in by the hand a winsome maiden, perhaps thirteen years of age. The Great Chosen One fixed her with a penetrating gaze.

‘Are you truly immaculate?’ he intoned.

She hotly protested her innocence.

He raised his arms over her head and murmured a prayer in an unknown
language. Then he conducted her to the table and invited her to gaze into the crystal ball. She obeyed.

‘Do you see the Archangel Uriel, bearing in his right hand the Spheres, and the Double-headed Whale?’

‘I do not.’

‘Then you cannot be truly innocent,’ the Great Chosen One retorted, with an air of exasperation.

‘Oh, I really am. There it is!’

‘Do you see the Archangel Uriel?’

‘I do.’

‘What is he doing?’

For a while she was silent. Then:

‘He is giving a present to a tiny little man, who is jumping up and down.’

‘Good,’ said the Great Chosen One. ‘The diminutive figure is Brother Malakius, upon whom the Archangel Uriel is to bestow
Mercur Philosophicus
, the Philosopher’s Stone, the possession of which is our collective aim.’

Then he embraced me to his bosom, and the gentlemen all congratulated me warmly, with the exception of Lord Bonaventura, who was deep in conversation with the Innocent Maiden.

With this, the night’s work was over. Lord Bonaventura took my arm and invited me to dinner.

No sooner were we seated in his coach than he asked me whether I had taken a fancy to the Innocent Maiden. The question was so out of keeping with the solemn occasion I was extremely surprised by it. But Bonaventura was a true Epicurean. His sole purpose in pursuing the Philosopher’s Stone was to acquire limitless amounts of gold in order to ensure an endless flow of pleasures. It was the very reason he had failed to discover it.

And as I sat there, waiting in vain for the Knight of the Orient to expound uplifting and edifying secrets, he chatted away unceasingly about the Maiden, weaving plans to insinuate his way into her presence and that of her mother, and demanding to know how much gold I thought should be offered to secure her. I was cruelly disappointed. However, to keep on good terms with him, I promised to call on the Maiden’s mother and attempt to suborn her.

Bonaventura had rented a little palace on the Île St Louis for the duration of his stay in Paris, and it was here that we dined.

When we had eaten, and he seemed in thoroughly good humour, I skilfully
worked the conversation round to the ceremonies that had taken place that evening. I spoke admiringly about The Great Chosen One, and his solemn and dignified manner.

My host laughed, and told me the man was called, or rather gave his name as, the Comte de St Germain. He was altogether rather mysterious; nothing was known of his origins. Some claimed he was the son, by a Jewish banker, of the widowed Queen of Spain. But one thing was sure: he was held in high regard at the court of Louis XIV. He would be closeted for hours with the King, deep in alchemical studies. Bonaventura had little faith in their efficacy, or the French public finances would not have been in their current dire straits.

But what was certain, was that he was in possession of some secret whereby he could make diamonds soft. In that state they grew very much larger before he hardened them again, and they retained their enlarged size. The fact was beyond question. Bonaventura had personally seen such
diamonds
.

It was also clear that he commanded great wealth, because he readily showed his friends caskets of jewels which he always took about with him.

So, even if he was something of a fraud, my host went on, it was merely for his own amusement. There was no financial motive.

Astonished, I asked how he could possibly suggest that the Great Chosen One of the August Mother Lodge of Scotland might be a fraud. I was
terrified
that at any moment the walls would part and the gentlemanly
swordsmen
burst in and cut us to shreds.

But, smiling his habitual broad smile, Bonaventura explained that he was a man of advancing years who had sought the
Mercur Philosophus
since his tender youth, and had met so many infamous cheats who had trimmed his purse that if the Archangel Uriel himself were now to appear, with the written testimony of God himself, he would have difficulty crediting him. I listened to these blasphemous words in a state of shock.

Then, turning again to the subject of the Comte de St Germain, he told me the man never ate but survived on some beverage he had concocted. On the other hand, he was extremely fond of women. The strangest assertion of all was that he was over a thousand years old. A number of people had stated—most notably an elderly countess whose name escapes me at the moment—that they had known St Germain some fifty years earlier and that he still looked exactly the same. It seemed he really did possess an elixir that could restore and prolong youth.

There was also a story that he once gave a lady a vial whose contents would make her twenty-five years younger. But it was drunk instead by her greedy maid, a woman of thirty. When her mistress summoned her, a little girl of five appeared, in an adult-sized dress that dragged on the floor, sobbing bitterly. The poor creature was now a pupil of the Sisters of St Ursula.

The following day I paid a visit to the noble lady whose address Bonaventura had given me. I explained, very politely, what a profound conquest her daughter had made of his Lordship’s heart. At first she would hear none of it: she had the royal blood of Valois in her veins, and anyway the girl was too young.

However when I added that His Lordship was prepared to offer two
thousand
livres in gold, and moreover, that after a possible cessation of their friendship he would make a further present to the same value in precious stones, the warm heart of the mother could stand no longer in the way of the daughter’s happiness. We agreed that she and the girl would walk the
following
day in the courtyard of the Palais Royal, where the gentleman would begin his courtship with all the forms and graces of true decorum.

His Lordship thanked me for my trouble and presented me with an extremely valuable snuff-box bearing the enamelled representation of the Temple of Friendship. It was later stolen from me, along with a great many other jewels, by highwaymen near Lichfield.

But who could find words to express our astonishment the following day when we arrived at the courtyard of the Palais Royal to see the young lady offering her arm to the Comte de St Germain, stepping into his carriage and setting off with her mother, without even deigning to greet us?

Bonaventura cursed like an Englishman, and spoke scornfully of the inability of the French to keep their word. He determined to drive to the ladies’ residence to convey his opinion.

Outside the house we found St Germain’s carriage. His notorious
manservant
was standing guard, grave and motionless.

‘Now listen here,’ His Lordship began. ‘Your master is a fraud and a cheat. For a start, he claims he is several thousand years old.’

‘Don’t take his word for that, my good sir,’ replied the man. ‘My master is full of wiles. I’ve been in his service for a hundred years, and he was no more than three hundred when I joined him.’

Bonaventura began to hammer furiously on the door. It did not open. Instead, the mother appeared at the window above our heads and emptied the contents of a chamber pot over us, abusing us in the coarsest terms all the while. With more than justified indignation, His Lordship departed.

I was dining with him the following day when the butler announced the arrival of St Germain. He had come to apologise. He had not known, he said, that the young person had kindled the flames of passion in His Lordship, and he offered to vacate the field; he did this all the more readily as his attachment to the fair sex was purely Platonic, having had his fill of carnal pleasures in the first five hundred years of his life.

Bonaventura thanked him for his courtesy, but declared that after the insult he had endured he had no further wish to enter into an alliance with the said lady. Besides, his three current mistresses were making excessive demands on his rapidly failing masculinity. But he would ask St Germain to oblige him with one of his secret panaceas, lest he be put to shame before one of them in particular. The promise of assistance was given, and so began their friendship, which resulted in such remarkable adventures.

The Count presented His Lordship with an elixir which increased his manly potency to such a miraculous extent that when he left his mistress the next morning his amorous propensities were still unquenched, and he gathered up three drowsy ladies of the night, whisked them away and paid a generous tribute of love to each in turn.

From that point onwards, Bonaventura’s faith in St Germain was
absolute
. He confided to both him and me—I had by now become his permanent guest and companion—that, his huge estates across the Channel
notwithstanding
, his financial affairs were in such a dire state that his only hope lay in the alchemists’ secret, and he implored St Germain to tell him whether he actually knew it.

In the course of a lengthy evening’s discussion St Germain admitted that, while he knew a great many things that were hidden from ordinary mortals, the
Magnum Mysterium,
the secret of turning base metals into gold, was not among them. His view was that no one presently alive knew it; nor did the great artisans of earlier times; but the Rosicrucians of the
previous
century must have been very close to it. The finest scholars of that era, notably the renowned Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus of Hohenheim
and his pupil Robert Fludd, were simply waiting for a moment, a moment of mystical revelation, which they described as the coming of Elias Artista, the great Artist-Prophet, for the mystery to be fully revealed. But the Prophet Elias had not come.

Hearing this, Bonaventura observed that St Germain might possess a great many secrets, but he too had one that was unknown to anyone else, one that was passed down through his family with the title, and that, if they put their information together, they might perhaps be able to solve the central mystery. It would involve travelling to Britain, as the secret was closely bound up with a specific location.

After some thought, St Germain expressed his willingness to visit a country where he had many dear friends. I too was happy to accept His Lordship’s invitation, as I had no particular business to detain me in France.