The Bone House

by Stephen R. Lawhead

The road before them was a broad curve around a long bend in the river, city walls on one side and riverbank on the other; there was no one on the road, and no place they might hide from the pursuit gathering pace behind them. According to Mina, the ley was a mile distant. “He’s got a horse,” called Kit. “We’ll never make it.”

  “Keep running!” shouted Giles. “If we can reach the bend, we might elude them yet.”

  Gritting his teeth, Kit raced on. The bend was farther than they estimated, and though they succeeded in gaining some distance on the mob, by the time they rounded the curve Burleigh was closer still and coming fast. Kit pulled up, lungs heaving, heart pounding. “It’s no good,” he gasped between breaths. “We’ll have to try to take him.”

  Giles looked back, gauging the distance between themselves and the oncoming rider. “We must remove him from that horse.”

  “Right,” agreed Kit. “How do we do that?”

  “I know horses.” The sound of the hooves pounding towards them grew louder. “There are ways to throw a rider.”

  The shouts of the chase echoed over the water, coursing along the riverbanks. Kit suddenly understood what it was like to be the fox desperate to avoid the jaws of the baying hounds. “What about the mob?”

  “Once we have taken the horse, we can use it to escape.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” decided Kit. “What do we do?”

  “There.” Giles pointed to a clump of elder bushes. “Hide yourself there, but make yourself ready to jump out as soon as I have the rider on the ground.”

  “You sure you can handle it alone?”

  Giles nodded.

  With a last backwards glance, Kit darted into the brush as Giles snatched off a long leafy branch from the elder bush and took up a stance at the side of the road. Holding the branch down and slightly behind him, he stood easily, waiting as the horse thundered nearer.

  Burleigh saw him and shouted something. Kit, watching from his hiding place, imagined he could feel the earth tremble as the pounding hooves swiftly narrowed the distance.

  Giles, steady as a stone, remained firmly planted.

  Heavy hooves churning, the horse thundered closer and closer still.

  Kit’s breath caught in his throat as Burleigh swerved to ride down the unresisting Giles. But just as the hurtling beast closed on him, Giles stepped lightly sideways, swinging up the branch and throwing the leafy end into the animal’s face. Its vision obscured by a tree that seemed to appear from nowhere, the horse shied and tossed its head high to avoid the obstruction. Giles drove forward, keeping the branch in the frightened animal’s eyes.

  The horse reared, and reared again.

  Burleigh, unprepared for the attack, was thrown over the rear of his mount. He landed hard on his back in the middle of the road. Giles was on him in an instant.

  Kit leapt from his hiding place and ran to help Giles subdue the struggling Burleigh. He saw Giles’ fist rise and fall—once . . . twice . . . and the writhing man lay still.

  “Get the horse!” shouted Giles.

  Kit hurried after the riderless animal that was now cantering away. It took a moment, but he finally managed to snag the dangling reins and pull the horse’s head around. “Gotcha!” Holding tight to the reins, he turned to see Giles running to join him.

  Then, even as he watched, Giles seemed to levitate in the air, his feet lifting off the ground. In the same instant, the report of a distant explosion reached Kit like a slap in the face. Giles was carried headlong and thrown to the dirt by the force of the blow. The horse reared at the sound, jerking the reins free from his grasp.

  Kit saw a flash behind the struggling Giles as the slap of another report reached him. The glint of steel in Burleigh’s hand warned Kit that another blast was coming. “Stay down!” he cried. “He’s got a gun!”

  A third shot ripped the dirt at his feet, and Kit skidded to a halt.

  “Run!” cried Giles, waving Kit away.

  Burleigh was on his feet now and moving forward, arm raised, hand extended.

  Kit, caught between helping Giles and fleeing, hesitated.

  “Mina will see to me,” shouted Giles. “Go!”

  A fourth shot decided the issue. As the bullet whizzed past Kit’s head and the report split the air, Kit spun and ducked, instinctively heading back into the brush at the side of the road. He ran blindly, his only thought to lose himself in the lightly wooded roadside margin. Behind him he heard Burleigh calling, but ran on, heedless of all but the need to escape.

  When the first fury of desperation had passed, he paused to catch his breath and collect his wits. The river was to his back; before him lay a field of grain. He considered diving into it, but the prospect of escaping on hands and knees through the barley held little appeal. He held his breath to listen. Above the sound of his own rapid heartbeat he could hear voices on the road and assumed that the townsfolk had met up with Burleigh and the pursuit would now resume.

  A hasty estimate determined that he was still a little less than halfway to the lane that marked the ley line described by Wilhelmina, which he reckoned was now his best chance of escape. Keeping the road and river to his right, he proceeded through the wood in the direction of the lane. Behind him, he could hear voices and sounds of men thrashing through the undergrowth, searching for his trail. Others remained on the road; he could hear them, too, soon overtaking him and moving on ahead.

  Kit, grim and determined as death, worked steadily along, dodging the boles and branches of trees and shrubs, trying to remain silent and invisible in the dying light. All at once, a clear, loud voice sang out—urgent, confident, assured—it rang loud in the silence and was quickly joined by others. Kit knew his trail had been found.

  Fighting down the urge to bolt blindly into the darkening wood, he doubled his pace. But despite his best efforts, the voices behind him grew louder by degrees. When next he paused to catch his breath, he glanced back to see pale globes of glimmering light wavering through the trees: someone had brought torches.

  Realising he only had scant minutes before he was seen and captured, he snaked a hand into his pocket and brought out the brass homing device that Wilhelmina had given him. The little curved row of holes on the top were dark. Still running towards the line, he held the thing before him, urging it mentally. Work, you blasted thing! Work!

  To his amazement, the small oval object began to glow—a faint fitful flicker through the tiny holes. But as he waved the curious instrument before him, the gently wavering lights strengthened and took hold with an increasingly bright blue glow. Clutching the ley lamp, Kit drove on, flying through the brush, dodging branches as he went.

  The chase was getting closer. His movement through the brush alerted the pursuit, and soon the surrounding wood was echoing with cries of the townsfolk. Amongst the shouts and sounds of crashing feet he thought he heard Burleigh’s voice raised above the tumult, urging his search party to greater speed.

  Every now and then, Kit glanced down at the homing device, and saw the little row of lights still lit and shining ever more brightly. It’s got to be here somewhere, Kit told himself. It’s close.

  There came a loud crash behind him, and he looked back to see Burleigh, back in the saddle, burst through an opening in the trees a hundred paces or so away. The earl saw him in the same instant and with a swift, assured motion drew the pistol from his belt. Holding the reins in one hand, he extended his arm to fire. Kit did not wait for him to pull the trigger, but ducked low and dived into the brake. A second later a shot shivered the branches and ripped through the leaves above Kit’s head.

  He scrambled fast on hands and knees. Wilhelmina’s ley lamp grew warm in his palm—enough to let him know that he was not imagining it. He looked around and saw that he had plunged into a narrow game trail: a single rutted line that stretched away on either hand, straight as an arrow’s flight.

  Another small explosion sent a bullet tearing through the screening brush, shattering a nearby branch, and Kit,
clutching the device, started running down the track. As a third gunshot sliced the air a mere step ahead of him, he stopped, turned, and started back the opposite way. But the surrounding wood had already faded into the shadowy deeps of an all-pervading darkness.

  Kit managed another step and yet one more before he tumbled headlong out of one world and into another.

  CHAPTER 27

  In Which a Little Light Is Shed

  The language of the angels allows no earthly utterance,” Friar Bacon explained. “Therefore, it cannot be spoken by mortal tongues.” He emphasised this point with a solemn shake of his tonsured head. “That is not to say that it cannot be understood. With the proper application of intelligence and logic the meaning can be deduced. It can be made to speak to us.”

  “What does the book tell you?” asked Douglas. After waiting almost three days while Roger examined it, his endurance was at an end.

  “Patience, my friend. All in God’s good time.” The renowned scholar returned to his perusal of the parchments on his worktable. “First we must prepare the soil so that our understanding can be correctly seeded.”

  “Of course,” muttered Douglas. “Forgive me, brother, if I seem overanxious.”

  The priest brushed away the apology with a sweep of his hand. “As I believe I have indicated on a previous occasion,” he continued, “the script in question is derived from an alphabet of symbols—as are all languages, to be sure. For what is a written text but a collection of symbols that substitute for the elementary sounds of human speech? However, unlike the symbols strung together to form the sounds used in speech, the symbols in this book are abstracted and thus removed from the realm of vocal representation.”

  Roger Bacon glanced at his pupil and seemed to require some sign that he had been understood.

  “Intriguing,” commented Douglas. “Pray, continue.”

  “See here,” Bacon said, picking up one of the scraps he had prepared for Douglas’s edification. “Notice how the symbols curve—this one to the right, this one to the left, some up, some down—each particular curve contains meaning, as do the small lines which branch away from the main, as well as those that cross the main. Where the lines branch and cross aids in determining meaning.” He tapped the parchment with a fingertip. “It is a most cunning and ingenious cypher.”

  “Indeed,” replied Douglas, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of decoding what amounted to another whole language in order to decipher the book he had stolen from the British Library. “How many symbols are there in total?”

  “Hundreds,” replied Roger Bacon simply. “As there must be.”

  “To be sure,” Douglas agreed philosophically, thinking the greater part of his work lay before him. Then he remembered something the scholar had told him. “When I first gave you the book, you said you were the one who devised the script. By that, do you mean you invented the symbols in which it is written?”

  “Only in part,” Bacon conceded. “For my purposes, I chose a script based on a symbolism that is far, far older than any other. I adapted it for my use, but did not create it.”

  Douglas puzzled over the precisely parsed meaning of the priest’s words. “Am I to take it that you wrote this book?”

  “You flatter me undeservedly, brother.” He laid a reverent hand on the small volume Douglas had brought him.

  “Again, forgive my ignorance, but your name is most prominently displayed in the text.”

  “A mere formality of acknowledgement,” replied the learned priest with a curious half smile. “Brother Luciferus, whatever his true identity, is merely declaring his debt to the originator of the script in which his book finds its voice. Nothing more.”

  “How fortunate for me,” observed Douglas, “to have found the one man in England who can read it.”

  “Yes, and in order that we might gain the benefit of it, I have applied myself to the task of rendering a transliteration of the text for future reference.” He nodded with satisfaction. “I am happy to say that work is now complete.”

  “Three days,” mused Douglas. “My abbot will certainly wish to reward your service. You must allow us to show our appreciation.”

  “Learning is its own reward,” replied Friar Bacon.

  “But you made a copy?”

  “Of the more interesting portions, yes. The rest is fragmentary. Perhaps, when time allows, I shall finish.”

  “May I see it?”

  “I would be delighted to show you,” replied Bacon thoughtfully. “However, I must first receive certain assurances.” Before Douglas could ask what these might be, the scholar rose and went to a large ironclad box in the corner of the room. “Naturally, it would not do to allow what I am about to show you to be heralded through the streets of the city. In these difficult times, men of learning must resort to a stringent secrecy while we await a more enlightened age to dawn.” He cast an expectant glance behind him.

  Suddenly the scholar’s meaning became clear.

  “I am happy to provide you with whatever assurances you deem appropriate—material or otherwise,” offered Douglas. “I know how easily particular aspects of our work can be misconstrued by an uneducated and unappreciative public.”

  “Alas,” mused Roger Bacon, “it is not only the public which so often fails to appreciate the nature of our more delicate investigations—many of our leading churchmen are particularly lacking in the finer faculties of discernment. Led by the twin banes of intolerance and ignorance, they too often condemn where they rightly should revere. They traduce what should be championed. They denounce what should be praised.”

  Douglas knew that the eminent scholar was speaking from painful personal experience, having endured ecclesiastical persecution for some of his more daring ideas. “Pray, receive my most solemn and sacred vow that the secrets shared in this room will remain secret hereafter.”

  The scientist smiled. “I knew you to be a fellow pilgrim.” He bent his angular form to the iron box and, withdrawing a key from a fold in his robe, unlocked the hinge, raised the lid, and withdrew a sheaf of cut parchment tied with a red band. “Come, let us sit by the fire where the light is better. We will read it out together.”

  He led his guest to the wide hearth where a coal fire glowed.

  “The most valuable piece of scientific equipment yet invented,” declared Bacon, indicating his chair beside the fire. There were two of them, one on either side of the bright-burning hearth. “They are of my own design. Please,” he said, directing Douglas to sit. “You will find it supremely conducive to mental activity of every kind.”

  Douglas settled himself into what amounted to a low, straight-backed throne with wide armrests and deep cushions covered with sheep skin; the chair was tilted at a slight angle and was, he was pleased to find, eminently comfortable—a definite necessity, as it turned out, for they would spend the better part of the next three hours steeped in erudite discursion of the contents of what Roger Bacon called the Book of Forbidden Secrets.

  “The identity of the author is hidden beneath a veil of wilful obscurity—I think we can agree that the name Brother Luciferus, or Light Bearer, is an all-too-obvious pseudonym. Nevertheless, the brilliance of the man’s intellect shines out with unmistakeable clarity. The vision which produced this singular document is as unique as it is revolutionary.”

  “And therefore readily mistaken and censured by those of, shall we say, more prejudicial opinion,” commented Douglas.

  Bacon offered a sage nod. “Hence the coarse appellation, The Forbidden Secrets, which, I suspect, is a flirting reference to another highly influential work, The Secret of Secrets. At all events, the author wished his work to remain uncensored and chose the script devised by myself to preserve his work.” He laid a long-fingered hand on the bundled parchments. “Moving on, the breadth of topics addressed in this tome is somewhat narrow in consideration of a yet greater work of which this is seen as a mere distillation—hence the title Opus Minus Alchemaie.”


  The title put Douglas in mind of one of Bacon’s own works: the Opus Majus. Was Brother Luciferus really Bacon himself, hiding behind an alias?

  “In the main, the subject matter concerns the author’s explorations in the science of alchemy,” continued the professor, “but he indulges in brief excursions into topics of more esoteric interest.”

  “Such as?” wondered Douglas.

  “Immortality,” replied Bacon, “spirit travel, the uses of earth energy, the power of human will—queries and speculations of this nature. Digressions, as I say.”

  “And yet not without interest to a mind hungry for knowledge of every variety.”

  The scholar offered an indulgent smile.

  “I myself feel drawn to the very things you describe. This spirit travel of which you speak—is there anything of use for practical application contained in the book?”

  “Oh, indeed. Brother Luciferus was keenly interested in this mode of conveyance and its implications for discerning what he calls”—the philosopher paused to consult the pages in his hand, scanning them for the place he had marked—“yes, here it is, ‘a most salubrious mechanism which reveals the impossible breadth of creation and the deeper expression of the Mind of God.’ In this, he is not wrong—as I myself can attest.”

  “Indeed?” Douglas affected surprise. He knew from his researches the legend that Roger Bacon had been credited with the ability to appear and disappear at will, and even to be in two places at once—both of which would be easily accomplished through ley travel.

  “Oh, yes. I have indulged in experiments which have proved beyond all doubt that it is a repeatable phenomenon which, however poor our understanding of it, nevertheless affords ready application of its properties to those who know how to manipulate the more subtle energies.”

  “The book tells how to do it?”

  Bacon nodded. “And more. Brother Luciferus expounds practical principles as well as concomitant philosophical considerations—such as deriving the dynamism by which spirit travel operates, the mechanism, if you will, and its salutary effects on the physical body.”