Doctor Mirabilis (11 page)

‘Master Grosseteste, well I ween all knowledge to be theology’s handmaiden,’ Roger said haltingly. ‘Nor do I run after knowledge
for greed or pomposity, but out of the lust to know, which I count holy. Even in the Proverbs be we commanded to love wisdom
for its own sake; for whatever is natural to man, whatever becoming, whatever useful, whatever magnificent, including the
knowledge of God, is altogether worthy to be known,
integritas eorum quae ad sapientiam completam requiruntur.
No more can I answer thee’

For a moment, Grosseteste seemed taken aback; then he smiled gently. ‘Which will suffice for the present,’ he said. ‘We’ll
not compel thee to Paris, Roger, an it be not thy will and desire. Only be not hasty-firm in thy choice, which thou mayst
repent no matter how it goeth. Enough for now that
thou’lt give us a book for Philip de Greve—’

‘How long a book?’ Roger said with new, sudden misgiving.

‘How long is a book?’ Adam asked reasonably. ‘No longer than the subject; that’s all that’s proper. Put down what’s known
of the postponement of old age – which is next to nothing, surely – and such conjectures as thou thinkest worthy so to dignify.
A fair summary of Aristotle on thilke subject will be thy meat, and all else be subject to thy discretion.’

‘There be books of Scripture a copyist with a fine hand might encompass with a single sheet,’ Grosseteste said. ‘Should what
thou’lt add to Aristotle be no more than that, none could think ill of thee on that account; though I hope that thine ambition
will let itself be bolder.’

And deep in Roger’s heart came again the voiceless whisper of the self:
Thou kennst me over-well, Seynt Robert.

And there it was, awaiting the copyist whiling his day’s pittance of working time on a letter to himself: Greece, Rome, Chaldea,
Arabia, Zion; fire, air, earth, water; Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Rhazes, Haly Regalis, Isaac, Ahmed, Haly super Tegni, Damascenius;
cold, heat, moisture, dryness; aloes, balsam of Gilead and Engedi, basil, wild cabbage, calamint, camomile, wild carrot, cassia,
the greater celandine, cinnamon, saffron, dittany, elder, fennel, fumitory, hellebore, hound’s tongue, mace, marjoram, myrobalan,
olea, penny-royal, pomegranate, radish, rhubarb; blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile; the seven
occulta,
ambergris of the whale, the pearls of Paracelsus, the skin of vipers, the long-lived anthros or rosemary, Galen’s body heat
of the healthy animal (whether child or fat puppy), the bone which forms in the stag’s heart, the fat underflesh of dragons;
and the precious incorruptible underground sunlight of gold, that
aurum potabile
which being itself perfect induceth perfection in the living frame ….

The copyist looked away; the quill scratched; the letters flowed slowly and formed in small clots:

ii: Marlsco will have us alle politick’g, scilicet the Capito & that Roher card Bachon, inside a xii-month.

This was not a new thought, for he had scarcely escaped from within the breastwork and bastion of Westminster Hall that furious
April of 1235, more than a year ago, before the self was whispering it; yet, he was no more comfortable with it now than he
had ever been.

At first he had thought he had been reprieved. He had expected to be hailed by Adam
ex studio
to the King’s proclaimed parliament with his surly barons; and though he had never before been to London, the prospect did
not gratify him – one exchange with Henry had been more than enough for Roger. But for reasons unknown, Adam went alone to
the 1234 meeting, which apparently had proven as unproductive of earls and barons as had the Oxford conclave.

Not long after that began the rebellion of Richard earl-Marshal. There was hardly a sign of it in Oxford, where nothing of
moment was going on but the establishment by the King of a hospital for pilgrims and the sick, near the bridge; but the roads
became less safe than ever, and in the north and in Ireland the whole countryside was said to be smoking with pillage and
slaughter. At the beginning of November the whole of England was assaulted by thunderstorms more clamorous and violent than
any man could remember, so that the serfs began again to mutter that old saw, ‘Weep not for death of husband or childer, but
rather for the thunder’; and on
St.
Catherine’s Day, November twenty-fifth, the King’s forces met Richard’s before Monmouth in a battle that left the earth deep
in slaughtered foreigners, yet gained the earl-Marshal nothing except to preserve him a while. There was another such blood-letting
on Christmas Day, equally indecisive; and the word from elsewhere in the kingdom was that the holdings and estates of the
rebels were being vengefully put to the torch and their people cut down, freemen and serfs alike, by French-speaking bands
with letters from Henry, It was not a good season for pilgrimages.

Yet, by March, Adam had brought Roger warning to prepare to attend at Westminster, where the King on the ninth of April would
at long last have the assemblage of his full court, saving only those who still cleaved to the earl-Marshal and to de Burgh.
The meeting had evidently been arranged by Edmund Rich, perhaps the only man in England still fully trusted by both sides.
Roger was not overjoyed, nor did the possibility of seeing his London brother after the meeting was over tempt him even slightly;
but Grosseteste would be there, since he was soon to be elevated to the bishopric, vacated by Edmund a year before; and Adam
would have no other familiar with him but Roger, which ended any argument Roger was empowered to offer to the contrary.

The trip to London was long, and Adam had seemed both elated and secretive about some matter which, since he could not penetrate
it, soon had Roger miserable with mixed curiosity and boredom; attempts to produce conversation on any other subject ran up
against the blank wall of Adam’s preoccupation:

‘Adam, what thinkest thou of the
intelketus agens?
Of the nature of it?’

‘Hmmm? Why, ‘tis the raven of Elias.’

‘But the raven was not
of
Elias himself. What is the signification? That the active intellect is more of God than of man?’

‘No, not exactly.’ And that was all. Or:

‘Whom shall we see at Westminster? Hath thy friend de Montfort been confirmed in the earldom of Leicester?’

‘Yes, two years ago. Nay, not properly confirmed, but the land and appurtenances of his father were conveyed to him.’

‘Then we shall see him?

‘Nay, an God willeth. He’s abroad, I trust, or else will need to be.’

Obviously nothing was to be learned from such scraps of enigmas, and Roger had retreated, at first sullenly, then with an
increasing preoccupation of his own, into the
interior composition of the
Liber de retardation,
about the possibility of which he was then only beginning to become aroused; and so they jogged the rest of the way in a
mutual silence, broken only by the commonplaces of journeying, of which Adam seemed wholly unaware and to which Roger eventually
became quite accustomed.

London itself had proven to be overwhelmingly like a gigantic Ilchester in the midst of a perpetual market day, a seemingly
endless labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys choked with stinking ordure and with stinking people. The rain, which fell
every day and night that Roger was in London, did not the slightest good, for it was accompanied by no slightest breath of
April breeze; the stench simply rose a little distance and then hung in the fog, refusing to disperse, while below on the
cobbles, the sludge thrown down from the second-storey windows was spattered impartially upon walls and pedestrians alike
by every passing horseman. Like sin, such filth was the common situation of humanity, but Roger had never before encountered
either in so sensible a concentration.

It was better as they approached the Hall, which stood directly along the Thames; for though the river itself sublimed into
the air the miasma of the grandest Cloaca Maxima of them all, here at least the air could distinctly be felt to be in motion.
Nevertheless, by the time he and Adam were left alone in their separate cells in the palace, Roger was more than ready for
the spring bath with which he had already planned to conclude the long trip.

What he had expected to follow upon their arrival he could not have said, but in fact, there was nothing of any moment. They
had reached the. Hall early in the afternoon, and Roger spent the rest of daylight prowling his cell. Occasionally, a distant
sennet announced the arrival of one of the barons and his suite; on each such occasion, Roger halted his pacing and looked
out his one window, but for the most part there was nothing to see but fog; when, once or twice, the fog lifted slightly,
nothing but the river. The day, a dim and depressing one even at high noon, died early,
obviously of suffocation. A man came with a lit rush and touched it to two tapers beside Roger’s low wooden bed –even inside
the cell the air was so moist that both flames showed haloes only five paces away – and then there was another long wait.
Part of this he was able to fill as a matter of course with the prayers appropriate for the hours; but he was able to go no
further with the book on old age without writing materials, and perhaps could have accomplished as little with them, for he
discovered that away from his references he could not call a single quotation to mind with surety – either something had abruptly
gone wrong with his memory or (the self suggested with its usual exacerbating abruptness) his memory had never had the true
scholar’s infinite retentiveness for the letter of the text. The simple attempt to choose the least unattractive of these
two new appearances made him feel slightly motion-sick, like a child taken trotting for the
first time;
and as the hours lengthened, the giddiness seeped down into his knees and began to transform itself implacably into panic.

Someone knocked. After his first start, Roger jerked open the door with a great surge of relief travelling through his muscles.
Anything that would serve to take him out of this prison-yard circling had to be welcome.

It was Adam. ‘Eheu,’ he said, twitching his long nose.
‘Stercor stercoraris!
I was about to ask thee if thou’d supped, but that could no man in this chamber-pot. Ho, Roger, ware the candles—’

Roger missed the candles, but he did not miss the bed, though he tried. He gasped and glared at Adam.

‘God pardon me, and do thou, too,’ Adam said, instantly repentant. ‘Here, let’s sponge thee off and get fresh linen –hold
off, thou’rt but making it more hopeless – and then we’ll have thee changed to higher quarters. Stay’st thou here and thou’lt
suffocate; look how blue yonder candles burn; ‘tis like the vault of a sewer.’

He helped Roger to strip, steadying him, and bathed him again.

‘Full many a rogue’s died from taking such a refuge,’ he
said, wrapping the still-damp surplice over the warm dry shift he had removed from his own back. ‘There’s a foulness collects
over still sewage that kills even rats. I myself have seen spectral fires burning over cesspool-heads, in the midst of nights;
demons, belike, come to breathe what’s closest on earth to their air in hell.’

‘How can a demon leave hell by first intention? Roger asked, staring with fascination at the nearest candle-flame. It was
undeniably mantled with blue, but not the blue of incipient guttering-out; the flame itself was as tall as ever.

‘Ah, Roger, as to that, no demon’s ever left hell, nor ever can; yet, they appear. Don thy shoes, Roger. Did not the prophet
Elijah appear before all during Passover to tell of the coming of our Lord? Yet left not that place where he abode? These
things lie in Nature, or in Miracle; as to the latter, the Angel of Death is everywhere, and yet always in heaven; as to the
former, the sun is in heaven, but his light is ubiquitous and all-pervasive – thus speaks one who comments on the Haggadah,
with wisdom as I ne doubt. What doest thou? Save the linens, the King’s household will wash them!’

Roger carefully finished stuffing the window with the sticky bedding and clothing, adding straw judiciously here and there.
‘Peace, Adam, I mean not to throw them to the Thames. Mayhap I’ll trap a rat, should thilke chamber be such a death-cell as
thou foresee’st.’

But to what purpose?’

‘None. To see an it will happen. Now I am ready. Whither away?

Adam shook his head. Thou’rt mad as Henry. Well then, away; I have in mind that we should while away our time with certain
persons close to the King; whereby all may gain, be we politick enough. There, close thy door and let thy miasma collect,
if that’s to be the boy’s bird’s egg, and take a breath. Now forward, for we’re already much delayed.’

The air in the corridor was to be sure so much better than anything Roger had breathed in the last few hours that it
made him dizzy all over again; he had to steady himself against the wall for a moment. While he waited, another notion came
into his floating, nearly detached head.

‘How didst thou read in this infidel text, Adam? Have you Hebrew?’

But it was too late; the preoccupied, eager, secretive Adam of the transit to London was back with Roger now. ‘But little,’
the Franciscan said. ‘Come now, for tomorrow is Henry’s day; tonight we must put his house in order, though he wis it never ….
But first to sup in my chambers, where thou’lt learn ease a while; for truly I ne’er before saw clerk nor Emperor with so
wild an eye. When thou opened to me first tonight, thy left eye was stuck shut, and thou didst know it not, nor when it opened;
as a two-eyed Polyphemus I can conduct thee nowhere.’

‘I’ll see, an there be light. Go on.’

But, in fact, he saw little; or rather, saw as much as usual, some of it doubtless of pith and moment, but without understanding.
To begin with, he remained more lightheaded from the miasma than he realized until too late. The meal with Adam gave him little
to occupy his intellect, Adam waxing more secretive and preoccupied by the moment; and the meal being accompanied through
some whim of the King’s with an excellent Spanish sack, and Roger having scarcely tasted wine of any quality since that crucial
Fall of 1231, he left Adam’s table in a mixture of befuddlements.