by James Blish
As Roger passed by, however, the Two Swords fell unwontedly quiet. After a moment he could hear a single counter-tenor voice, as pure as any he had ever heard in this life:
‘Ich sih die liehte heide
in gruner varwe stan.
Dar suln wir alle gehen,
die sumerzit enphahen.…’
and to his own astonishment felt the tears start into his eyes, little though he knew the language. Alarmed, he walked faster.
Elsewhere the street was in its more usual state of evening irreverence. Overheard in one of the hostels, a poor thing which could have held no more than ten fellows and a master as poor as they, the dice were already rattling, for there were three baskets of waffles or rissoles hanging out the window, and some lucky socium of the college had also thrown himself a sausage: there it dangled, with two cats hopelessly a-siege of it in the street, their spines stretched like mandolins, their fretted noses bumping speculatively against the empty burdened air. Roger’s belly twinged in sympathy, and he bought from the next pâtissier he saw in the street an eel pie which filled all the rest of his walk with a marvellous vapour of garlic and pepper; and then, belatedly remembering patient John his companion in the room on the rue de Fouarre, from another pastryman a tart filled with cheese and eggs. Since he was already carrying another heavy bundle, he had to juggle them all before he could resume walking; and then, the two cats who had before been observing the Constellation of the Sausage (or two exactly like them) were following him instead. Behind him the sounds of the English Nation died away, but there was no less music for that; it was everywhere in the transparent Paris evening, now and forevermore, world without end.
It had been a cold rancid meat indeed to devour that he had been forced, that first spring in 1237, to matriculate at Paris as no more than a mere yellowbeak, despite Grosseteste’s cachet and the existing invitation; but the charter of 1231 was explicit about the matter: there were three years of additional studies which Roger must undertake before he could be allowed to lecture on Aristotle or even any lesser subject. And worse: by the time he arrived in Paris, Philip the Chancellor had died, breaking the link which might have brought Roger’s book on old age to the attention of the Pope. Three years the book had rested in Roger’s box, and three years had he ground away at the corn of knowledge as it was milled in Paris, until the hull of his ambition was almost worn away into dust. But it had not been all chaff: as a non-regent master he was neither expected to join a Nation nor maintain rooms for teaching; the former had spared him the ritual dehorning, confession and degrading penitence the Germans invariably imposed upon new English Nationals, while the latter had spared him his purse. In nights as white as Virgil ever knew, he had ground his teeth to be no more than another master of arts in young and strenuous Paris, a valley seething with the ferments of Franciscans versus Dominicans, Alexander of Hales versus Thomas Aquinas, Nominalists versus Realists, while Roger Bacon swinked away unknown, his lectureship still to come. But his examination before the new chancellor was fixed, at last, for the day after tomorrow; and he was prepared, aye, prepared with a thoroughness he had earlier never even imagined that he would need – prepared to take examination in full university if the chancellor so ruled, and the hot cheeks thereafter would not be Roger Bacon’s!
It was a long climb to his room – four flights of black and ancient stairs. They invariably left him a puffing and helpless target for the sallies of his room-mate, unable to give back in kind for minutes at a time. The tow-headed Livonian youngster – unlike Roger, a true yellowbeaked freshman without a degree to scribble after his name – seemed to be in an unusually pensive mood tonight, however, for all he said was:
‘How was the walk?’
‘Well enough,’ Roger said, putting his bundles down on his bed.
‘Is the Seine full of philosophy tonight?’
‘Alas, no. Only water.’
‘A pity.’ Then they were both silent. They had spoken as always in Latin – not only because it was the rule, with informers or ‘wolves’ everywhere to turn one in to the university if one didn’t, for a portion of the fine; but because Roger did not understand a word of John’s language, nor did John any other that Roger knew. John, who was standing at the desk, had already looked back down at his book, as if his mind had never really been drawn away from it. In the light of the single candle his face seemed oddly old; but after a moment his nostrils began to twitch.
‘Aha,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘The magician has waved his wand again. What have we here?’
‘An eel pie—’
‘Fie, Roger!’
‘—and a cheese omelette pastry. Judging from the pepper, they may both be a little fleshy.’
‘That’s what pepper is for; who sees fresh meat in the city? Ah, this is good, very good. The song’s right:
Bad people, good town
Where a ha’penny buys a bun.’
Non vix a triginta ha’pennies had gone into those pastries, but Roger as usual said nothing. In these years a peculiar horror of being thought generous had begun to colour his already well-set secrecy about his money; he could not afford to seem to eat or live better than John, yet he was constantly being tempted into such extravagances as this. The deceits he had worked out to justify them would have done credit to a poet.
‘There’s else for you in the other bundle,’ Roger said. ‘I found you your Ars dictaminis, though why you need it I can’t think. You write as well as any student I ever knew.’
‘Thank you,’ John said, lifting the book with gentle hands. ‘The very book, and not much scuffed, either. How did you do it?’
He had done it simply by going to the bookstalls of the Little Notre-Dame, but he said: ‘The man who had it owed me a favour. I’ll not be able to do it twice. Better not put it up to Decius again.’
‘Aha, you remind me, I have somewhat for you, too,’ John said triumphantly. ‘Look: a quart of wine.’
‘Now you are the magician. Where’d you get it?’
‘Well,’ John said, ‘you see, dice aren’t as bad as you paint them. Yesterday while you were in class four of us were playing and I lost. (This is a complicated story, Roger, I warn you.) I hated to drop out, because I was playing with those three from across the street, the Picards who live in the garret and have one gown for the three of them to go to lectures in. Then in came the cat from the same place, the one that belongs to the landlord, so I said, “Look, here’s a fellow that eats regularly and never pays a penny; let’s make him play.”’
‘Where on earth do you find these wild notions?’
‘They come to me,’ John said modestly. ‘Well, so I folded the cat around the dice, as it were – you understand, with all four paws over them. I shook him a bit – the fat thing didn’t even meow – and threw, and he lost.’
‘He Lost?’
‘He threw the dice, didn’t he? So I wrote a little note to the landlord, explaining that the cat had lost a quart of wine and hadn’t paid up, and if he didn’t pay up in due course we’d have to collect his pelt instead. (Cats make good gloves, did you know that, Roger?) I tied the note around his neck. Well, the Picards went home and I didn’t think any more about it until this afternoon when the cat came back; and he had the money around his neck.’
Roger stared.
‘He did, Roger, I swear. And there was a letter from the landlord, asking us please not to make the cat play any more, because he’s so old that his eyesight is poor, so he can’t count his throw. And here it is.’
‘The note?’ Roger said. ‘Or the cat?’
‘No.’ John said innocently, ‘the wine. I seem to have mislaid the note.’
‘You have swept the field,’ Roger said, laughing in spite of himself. ‘If there were a doctorate of lies, I’d vest you in it and then disband the faculty. Well, then, let’s have a toast to Decius.’
‘With a whole quart of wine we could have a mass to Decius – but then we’d have to have those thirsty Pica
rds in for servers,’ John said. ‘Well, then, away with it: To the dice! Ah. Roger, Albertus Magnus is your first master, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Roger said shortly. He had not been getting along well with Albert of late. Perhaps he had been winning too many arguments.
‘Are you ready for examination?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ Roger said. ‘I selected the De plantis as a text. I know it by rote.’
‘Dangerous; Albert knows his vegetables even better than Aristotle. Speaking of which, how about the dinner?’
‘What dinner?’
‘Dear God, Roger, three years in Paris and you don’t know how these things are won? You don’t consort enough with students, like me. Well, Albert will set what other masters will attend, of course. How many would that be?’
‘John, please begin again. What are we talking about?’
‘We are talking,’ John said sternly, ‘about your pre-examination dinner, which you will pay for. A few florins go a long way in these matters. If you can afford it, buy them all a-free bath beforehand, too. Nay, look not anxiously at your box, Roger. I know you have money, you have only been pretending to be as poor as I. You’ve been buying me books and wine and food, and I am not a stupid man; I’ve known it the better part of two years. I’ve given back as good as I could, and now let me advise you, take some money out and spend it openly on a banquet. The masters expect it. And I beg you, count your money ere we part, so you’ll know I’ve touched not a coin, nay, never even looked into your chest’
Roger swallowed. ‘Are we parting? I’d hoped not. But I’m the stupid one, it appears.’
‘Who knows?’ John said. For a moment he wore the same abstracted look Roger had surprised on his face earlier in the evening. ‘In this world everything happens suddenly. But will yon take my advice?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Roger said. ‘But I’m not much moved to do it. I know my book, and can dispute. That ought to be sufficient.’
‘Ought to be is not is. Well, never mind. You’ll dispute with Albert? There’s pride for you!’
‘Nay, he surely won’t examine me. I am not his favourite student; I argue more than he likes, I think. I expect the Chancellor.’
‘Why, in heaven’s name? He never comes to examinations any more. Or do you mean Gautier de Chateau-Thierry? He never comes to examinations either – you know as well as I do that he’s hardly a year into his duties, he pays as little attention as possible to the university. Or are you the son of some great lord?’
‘No,’ Roger said, and hesitated; and at this moment the self cried soundlessly to him, Speak! so that he nearly started. ‘The university invited me. I am supposed to teach here, after my inception. I don’t think I can banquet my way into such a post. They will ask me hard questions and insist that I be letter-perfect in them. Nothing else would be fair.’
‘Aha Yes, fair. Well … perhaps so. Too bad; some of those fellows haven’t had a bath since Gerbert rode the eagle. When I study under you, Roger, I will buy you a bath and a banquet, if I have to borrow the money from my sister. By that time you may be as dirty as Thomas Aquinas himself– layers and layers of accumulated dignity.’
‘And, when did you last bathe, Daun Buranus?’
‘Students aren’t allowed to frequent public baths,’ John said, regarding his bowl of wine critically. ‘So you must not tempt me, Roger. So you’re to be a regent master. And all the time I thought you were just a harmless black magician, too backward on his grimoires to be admitted to a coven. Think how my, soul’s been in peril.’
‘The more so if you wait long enough to study under me. By then you’ll be far away, and holy.’
‘Perhaps,’ John said. ‘But perhaps not. I’ve no great stomach for a mission in pagan Livonia. I was thinking before you came in tonight, I might make a good graduate beggar. I know all the degrees of staleness that bread can go through and still be bread, and every tune that King Borborygmi sings. And the truth is, I’d rather study than preach.’
And I, the self said piercingly.
‘Well then. It’s not so difficult to become a vagus without losing one’s tonsure, bulls or no bulls, if one does it in the name of learning. I’ve near completed the trivium, and shall have my secular mastership; and thence I might go to Montpellier, if you like, and become a physician; and still my bolt’s not shot, I could spend seven whole years more at Bologna and become a doctor of law. And it might take me two or three years just to get from one school to another, if I sang well along the roads.’
‘Doctor of civil law?’
‘To be sure; canon law’s not for the roads. As is only just: if your clerk’s to claim the privileges of the altar, then he should stay close to it. But who knows? To become a doctor of both laws might keep me another seven years in studio; that would put another face on it.’
‘You have more faces than Janus, but still.… It’s not an ill way to learn. I’ve hardly decided myself what I’ll do. I’ve no gift for the road, that much I know.’
‘It’s probably more curse than gift,’ John said. ‘But both are callings – if I have the word right. In my country we have only one word for all three, and you use it on pigs. A sad condition for a language to be in. And look you, alas! The wine’s gone.’
That was just in time, for the taper was almost gone, too. The murmurous night world around them had suddenly become very fuzzy in all its categories. They shook their heads over the empty quart, frugally blew out the candle-stump, and let time swallow the dregs of the day.
In the early morning, John was gone, his few possessions with him; nothing remained but a small book bound in black, placed on the lectern where Roger would see it. No other trace of the life they had led together, as warmly uncommunicative as cat and puppy, existed now in the room but a memory of the plans John had hinted at while the candle flickered; and these rang hollow at dawn. Had the Livonian youngster really stolen away, even before his inception, to join the Ordo Vagorum? Nothing was left to say aye: or nay.
On the morning of his examination, Roger looked down at the empty pallet for a long time, as a man looks who would part with his first friend, and cannot; while the light grew pitilessly, and the time drew nigh.
And then, as always, someone was singing, and the song came floating through the window like eiderdown:
‘Li tens s’en veit,
Et je ei riens fait;
Li tens revient,
Et je ne fais riens.…’
Enough; that was how it was. He looked at the book on the lectern, but he did not need the: self to tell him that he did not dare open it now. After the song had come cockcrow; and after cockcrow, bells. He donned his gown and left.
‘Sit thema,’ Albertus Magnus said, but he was drowned out. The hall had been filling for nearly an hour, as the word got around that Albert was examining a student, and that the student had answered eight questions out of eight on his book. But the noise and the movement in the hall failed to divert Albert’s hooded eyes. He stood before the leaves of his manuscript, as blocky and immovable as a sarsen stone in his stiff black master’s robes, and watched Roger where he stood sweating ice in the dock. It was intensely hot.
‘Sit thema,’ Albert said again with his glacial patience: ‘Queritur quomodo materia est una, an numero vel genere vel specie.’
It was a little quieter now, and Roger needed the quiet. There was something like Nemesis in Albert’s heavy-lidded regard; nothing, that look seemed to say, could come from this disputation to Roger but disgrace. Had his contentiousness really inflamed the German that far? Never mind, it was too late; the question, the question!
It was frightening enough. The doctrine with which Albert had presented him was the first of the questions which had led the teaching of Aristotle to be forbidden until now. It was the essence of the heresy of David of Dinant, unless it could be answered; matter cannot be one in number and the same throughout the Creation, else there is no need even for God. But did Albert want him
to argue it from Aristotle, per se et per accidens, and thus show himself to be too good an Aristotelian to be immune to the heresy? Or did he mean to force Roger into making a ruling of his own, independent of authority, and thus diminish his standing as a lecturer-to-come on Aristotle? It was not a question of knowing what the answer was; to any Aristotelian that was perfectly clear: matter, being imperfect, incomplete and ignoble, cannot be one; but instead, a question of knowing the dangers inherent in the problem. There was no doubt that Aristotle sometimes gave the wrong answers, but he never failed to ask the right questions, and this one was fearsome; did Albert really want to hear Roger argue it?
‘The universal forms are not one in number,’ Roger said at last, in a dead silence. ‘They are multiplied as particular forms are received. Even were primal matter one in number, it cannot remain so: sic non est una numero, tamen est numerositate essentie.’
The whole hall was holding its breath. Albert’s expression did not change; he simply turned a page; but that was enough. Someone in the corner of Roger’s eye rose and pushed excitedly out into the streets.
‘Sit thema,’ Albert said: ’Queritur diversas substantial et animam in corpore hominis esse, qui adducantes Aristoteles viditur dicere in sexto-decimo librorum suorum de animalibus.’
The eyes looked at Roger as though seeing inside his flesh to the very selfsame self; and thilke self set up such a sweet silent storm of rage that Roger shrank away from it, dazed and shocked. He had never doubted until now that the thing with the bodiless voice belonged to him in some way, even spoke for desires he was not yet ready to acknowledge, perhaps in the long run to his greater good; but this dizzying fury! – the voice might have been a demon’s. He felt himself turning pale, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he was able to open them again, a small group of medical students in the forefront of his vision was whispering together interestedly.