Doctor Mirabilis

by James Blish

  Adam Marsh, murmuring something indistinguishable, was kneeling beside the bed, holding an enamelled Syran wine glass to Grosseteste’s lips. The lector drank with difficulty, made a fearful face and then lay back among the blankets with a shuddering sigh. The quiet seeped back into the room, which was becoming hotter and stuffier with every instant; nevertheless, the lector’s breathing was becoming a little easier, and he seemed now to be relaxed without either trembling from weakness or looking flaccid with morbidity. The honey vehicle of the Jew’s electuary obviously had not much sweetened the dose, but the active principle of the slow-flowing mass was quick to take effect. Mandragora? No, that would have put the lector back to sleep, whereas he was obviously not under any narcotic, but simply more composed, less desperately distracted by the failure of his flesh. He lay staring at the dark flickering ceiling for a long time.

  ‘Adam,’ he said at last. I have been charged.’

  ‘Rest thee and let it wait,’ Adam Marsh said softly.

  ‘Nay, the time is too short. I have been given a charge and will keep it, an I live. It came to me while I slept, and from God as I no doubt. And it concerneth thee, Adam.’

  The Franciscan gathered his cassock up and sat down cross-legged amidst the rushes and alder leaves lay on,’ he said resignedly. Roger was startled at the overtone of sadness in his voice.

  Grosseteste heard it too. Still looking up into the shadows, he said quietly: ‘Thou may’st not refuse preferment all thy life, Adam. Offices are repugnant to thee, as I know well. But should God take me, thou shouldst become first in the Order in the realm; dost think Hubert de Burgh’s countess ward hath sought thy counsel to no holy purpose?’

  Roger looked up sharply, but at once he realized that Grosseteste had intended no reference to his own cloudy troubles in Ilchester. There was as yet no indication that the lector even recognized his presence. Hubert de Burgh was the King’s justiciar, a public figure – it were folly to suppose that any reference to him was ipso facto a reference to a student at Oxford only two years come of age, even were that student Roger Bacon his unique and universe-pivot self.

  ‘God will leave thee with us,’ Adam Marsh said. ‘Thou’lt not die. This I know.’

  ‘But there’s no escape there for thee,’ Grosseteste said, with the faintest of ironies in his voice. ‘I have been charged, as I rede thee. And I live, I must resign my benefices and preferments, and devote myself to piety and contemplation, as befitteth one brought to the very verge of judgment. I shall keep only the prebend in Lincoln; that, will suffice. Therefore, live or die Robert Grosseteste, thou must take responsibilities, Adam, and offices eke if it thee requireth. There can be no more exits for thee from these matters.’

  ‘As God willeth,’ Adam said.

  ‘As God would have me bequeath it thee, Adam,’ Grosseteste said in an iron voice. ‘Shirk not, nor say me nay what I have charged thee.’ His head turned on the bolster and Roger flinched from those driving grey eyes, though they were not bent on him at all. In his heart a certainty that he should be present at this recondite death-bed quarrel not at all fought breast to breast with a self-urged demand to speak and settle it, and with the simple alarm of the vegetative soul at being in the presence of death at all, and with the immortal soul’s urgency to bear witness in the presence of God, and with the intellectual soul’s pride of proof of what the anima was well content to believe and demand that all else be taken on faith as well – faith being at the heart of things.

  It seemed unjust that all the natures of man should already be at war within him, but it was not a surprise to him any more to find himself the ground of such a battle – nor to find the hailing arrows of the self penetrating every link and joint of the other armies to slaughters, routs and senseless strewn bleeding heaps of mail which had once been proud-mounted and pennon-bearing arguments. The self was Frankish; the last arrow always was his, and like the shaft which had ended Harold at Hastings, it went to the brain. Roger said:

  ‘Master Grosseteste …’

  The lector did not reply, but after a while, he shifted his glance. Instantly, Roger was ashamed to have spoken at all; but the self was not abashed.

  ‘Thou shouldst redeem thy chancellorship here in Oxford,’ Roger heard himself saying ‘Piety without contemplation is but an exercise, and contemplation without learning is an empty jug. Thou art the only master who ever lectured on perspective here; yet, surely there is more to know in that subject alone. And we are much in need of masters in Aristotle here, the more so that his books of nature and the Metaphysics are banned in Paris.’

  ‘Banned in Paris?’ Adam said. ‘That’s but a farthing of the whole. The University itself is closed entire these two years past. Perhaps half our scholars are come from there, on the King’s direct promise of their safety.’

  ‘I wis, I wis,’ Grosseteste said. ‘’Tis common knowledge.’

  ‘But not the whole,’ Roger said with helpless boldness. ‘I’ve myself seen a letter from Toulouse – I’ve a brother there – ’ticing scholars to lectures on the libri naturales because of the ban on them in Paris. Doubt not that we have many such scholars here to hear such lectures, on the same account. And we be poor in them lately.’

  This, as Roger knew well enough, was inarguable, though that alone was a poor reason for his breaching the decorum of a sick-room with disputation. It had been Edmund Rich of Abingdon who had been the first to lecture at Oxford on the Elenchi, but he had said his last word on the subject of Aristotelian logic when Roger had been six years old; today, the saintly old man lectured only in courses of theology far too advanced for Roger to attend. Master Hugo still continued to drone on about the Posteriores, his own pioneer subject from Aristotle, but nobody would learn much logic from him any more– he had gone frozen in his brain, as often seemed to happen even to doctors when very old (It need never happen, the self whispered with sudden, distracting irrelevance). As for John Blund, who taught the books of nature, he appeared to think of nature only as a source of examples for sermons, bestiaries and cautionary tales. Beyond these three, the only Aristotelians at Oxford today were Robert Grosseteste, Adam Marsh … and Roger Bacon, at least in one pair of eyes.

  Whether or not that seed had been planted in Grosseteste’s mind could not yet be riddled. The sick man continued to look at Roger with that upsettingly penetrating speculative gaze.

  ‘Paris will be opened again ere long,’ he said at last ‘His Eminence hath been bending many efforts to that issue, and indeed, can hardly fail, unless the struggle with the Emperor bath sapped his ancient strength entire. Yet, meseemeth that we still have here some advantage. Aristotle on dreams is galling hard for a schoolman with’s eyes closed to experience and nature; should see dogs dream of rabbits and think thrice, but dogs are naught to bishops; would only ban nuns from keeping them, which is impossible; women are women, quod Brat demonstrandum est.’

  He sighed and looked back at the vault. For a moment, Roger was sure that he was asleep. Then he sighed again and said:

  ‘I am astray. Nay, I see the road again. There’ll be no lectures from Aristotle at Paris, not in my lifetime. Dogs are ne to the purpose; I was wandering. But on th’ eternalie of the world, there shalt crack their brains for years to come. And eke on motion – there’s a potent farrower of heresies undreamed. And light – there’s heresy upon heresy in the Perspectiva, given a sciolast to seek them instead of using his eyes, and the Arabs to confound dogma at every stand. Boy, how old art thou?’

  Roger came back to consciousness with a terrible start. The vitiated air and the lector’s wandering had conspired to throw him into a standing slumber full of weary portents, all charged with dread, all fled of meaning now. He said:

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Thou hest two years before thee to become a Bachelor in thy faculty, and then two more years to thy Master’s degree. Thou’rt to undertake explication of the texts thou invokest, and in disputation thou’rt a child, as is plain to hear. A
nd yet, wouldst teach Aristotle at Oxford?’

  To begin with, the self said. No response could have been further from Roger’s desire; he was in full confusion and retreat; the lector had found out not only his ambition, but the mean and inept method he had come here to use, the practice of trickery at the deathbed of a holy man. Yet, somehow he must have said it aloud, word for word at the prompting of the self, without even hearing it. He did not know he had said anything until he heard Adam Marsh laugh.

  ‘To begin with?’ the Franciscan said. ‘Thou’rt frantic, Roger. Seek ye the doctorate in the sacred college? Dost know that will take thee sixteen full years after thou hast thy secular mastership? Canst thou do all that from the Frideswyde chest? And from such poor beginnings in humility?’

  ‘What’s this?’ Grosseteste said. He pushed himself painfully back on to his elbow and stared at Adam. ‘Hath the boy need of the chest? An ‘tis so, thou dost ill to mock it. Tell me the truth of this matter, Adam. If ‘tis true, wast ill concealed; much rides on this, as thou shouldst know all too well.’

  Adam looked down at the floor in his turn. Roger was as much astonished at his abasement and at the unforgiving condemnation in Grosseteste’s tone as he was at the revelation that Adam knew about the letter.

  ‘His family is suddenly afflicted,’ Adam said in a low voice. ‘He hath had a patrimony, but witteth not whether he hath it still. Whether or ne he needeth the chest I cannot say; ne no more can he.’

  And to be sure he could not. The chest in the priory church at St. Frideswyde, in whose dissolved nunnery and in that of Oseney Abbey Oxford had been founded more than a century ago, was a benefaction long established to help poor students; but was he that poor already? It was hardly likely; in extremis, he could always sell part of his library; but no, in the ensuing eighteen years with which Adam had mocked him, he would have to add to his manuscripts, and most expensively; he could not take from Peter to pay Paul. But did that bring him to the Frideswyde chest? It was impossible to know. It depended, he realized suddenly, on the peasant Wulf – and on the astuteness of the justiciar’s raiders. And to go all that long distance home to find out – seventy-five miles as the crow flies, and not by crow either, but on the back of the best horse he could hire, and that probably no courser’s prancing jack – he would need now to know just how much pocket money he had left, a thing he had never counted before in his life.

  ‘How knewest thou this, Adam?’ Grosseteste said. Roger looked gratefully toward him. It had been the very question he had wanted to ask, but could not.

  ‘’Tis common fame in the Faculty of Arts,’ Adam said. ‘The word was brought by a beggar who knew a little his alphabetum – enough, certes, to riddle out the pith of it. I have told thee before that Roger’s not held high among his peers; bath a high opinion of himself, and no will to conceal it. There are those who have hoped him some such misprision, and be not slow to spread the tidings.’

  ‘For which act their souls will suffer grievously, an they bring it not to their next confessions,’ Grosseteste said heavily. He was interrupted by a seizure of hacking, raw-edged coughs. Adam bent over him but was waved off. After a while, the lector seemed to have recovered, though his breathing was still alarmingly dry and rapid. Again, looking at the ceiling, he said:

  ‘The common rout customarily hateth and distrusteth the superior soul; ‘tis a sign to watch for. Boy, thou shalt have thy wish, an thou performst all thy tasks as faithfully as thou shouldst; and eke much more that thou dreamest not of now – though I see that no man may hazard a tithe of thy dreaming. First, thou must go home and find all the truth of this beggar’s message, and succour thy family an thou cant. The Frideswyde chest shall be opened for thee, I shall see on’t. Leave thy books in Oxford and all else but very necessaries; and when thy business in the south is done, return here incontinently and take thy degree. I shall promise thee no more but this: make Oxford and Aristotle thy washing-pot, and thou shalt cast thy shoe over many a farther league ere this night’s intelligence bath its full issue, an it be the will of God.’

  His voice died away in a whisper, and his eyes closed. For a long passage of sand in the glass, neither Adam nor Roger moved or spoke; but at last it became evident that the lector was asleep. Adam took Roger by the elbow and led him, tiptoeing, to the door.

  ‘Thou’rt fortunate,’ Adam murmured in his ear. ‘Visit me tomorrow after sext, when we’ll conspire how to see’t brought about. Now thou must go.’

  ‘I am most deeply—’

  ‘Hush, no more. It is he, not I, who hath done it – and more than thou wittest, as he said. Bear in mind that he may yet die; I would not have had thee here so early, but that he would have it so. Go, thou, speedily.’

  Bowing his head, Roger went out. The door closed behind him with that same magical soundlessness. The coldness in the black corridor cut like knives, but he hardly marked it for the brand that was burning within his breast.

  II: NORTHOVER

  It was more than hard for Roger to leave behind him, over Folly Bridge, those grammars of Priscian and Donatus, together with the Barbarismus of Donatus and Boethius’ Topics, which were his texts in rhetoric; and the Isagoge of Porphyry, that great hymn and harmony of logic – all the beloved books of his trivium years, all so essential, all so expensive of copyists and of virgin parchment. It was even a worse wrench to have to leave in Adam Marsh’s care his precious works of Aristotle: the Logica antiqua in the eloquent translation of Boethius, the Logica nova in the new, zigzag, fantastical translations from Avicenna with the Arab’s heretical commentaries, the libri naturales from the hand of Oxford’s own John Blund, who taught them (as befitted such an idiot as Blund) as a dialectical adjunct to the trivium, rather than as a part of metaphysics in the quadrivium where they plainly belonged. (But that was hardly unusual, Roger reflected on the back of his placid horse. Had he his own way, the whole subject of rhetoric would be subsumed under logic.) But there was no help for it: the books had to be left behind, and that was that.

  Nevertheless, he had his copy of the Metaphysics in his saddlebag as he left Oxford. Nothing in the world could persuade him to leave it behind. It had been the key which had let him into his still unfinished quadrivium years with an understanding of the four subjects – arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music – so much in advance of his masters as to excite his vocal and injudicious contempt (injudicious only because vocal, for Roger knew not a single student who was being taught as much Aristotle as he wanted; the masters were far behind the scholars there, and getting farther every day). Of course Aristotle was of no special value on music – Boethius was still the best authority there, once he left off reprising his descants on the consolations of philosophy, a subject upon which he apparently had taken pains to become the dullest man in the world – but as a systematic summary of the world of experience in every other category, the Metaphysics was unique. Roger had copied it himself to be sure of having every word right; it was worth more than diamonds, which would have taken up far less space in the saddlebag, but which dissolve in goat’s blood. Nothing would ever dissolve the Metaphysics but a human mind, and that not soon.

  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.