Doctor Mirabilis

by James Blish

  ‘Ahhhh.

  The wrinkled mouth failed to close. Roger knelt; and remained kneeling for a long time.

  When he was able, he closed the blind eyes with two groats, and locked the chest; and then folded the papery hands about the key. Then he signed himself; and laying the leather jerkin over his left forearm, quitted the cold room.

  The kestrels were gathered just outside, and all up and down the staircase. Roger closed the door softly, and turned upon them a stare all the more terrible for its blindness. He said: ‘It is ended.’

  There was a ragged susurrus of breath. ‘Good friar; we thank thee,’ a heavy male voice said unctuously. ‘Wilt come below, we’ll sign the book; and raise a goblet for the soul of the departed; and give thee somewhat for thine office, and thine holy Order.’

  ‘I have this for charity, and require naught else,’ Roger said harshly, showing the jerkin, all Channel-Weathered as it was. ‘Show me thy document, and I’ll leave thee straight to thy mourning,’

  Forever after, he would remember Wissant not for the rumble of its trade or the slapping of its waves, but as the dry sound of hands being rubbed together.

  Out of this revulsion and guilt he lost much, forbye he could not bring himself to pause in Wissant to sell the title of the Maudelayne, nor even to engage an agent, but waited for this until he was back in Paris; and so for the beaten ship realized but six pounds – three times what Busshe had paid for her in his unrecoverable youth, but that had been before the wars, when the pound had been the hardest coin in all of Christendom; and the journey to and from the Maudelayne’s master had itself cost Roger nearly a pound. The net was ten pounds.

  Tragic though it had been – and selling the Maudelayne had been more than a little like selling one of his sisters – the success of the trip, thus qualified, led him to thinking farther afield. Not to Rome, naturally, and certainly not to England; but since the brothers had let him go as far as Wissant, then most of the Gallic nations should be open to him. For example (though it was the only example that occurred to him): it had been Simon de Montfort who had brought Roger to the attention of Guy de Foulques, thus in a sense beginning all this; or it had begun even before, when, as Eleanor’s Confessor, Adam Marsh had arranged that marriage. And Simon’s widow was now in exile in Gascony. Why not?

  The brothers produced reasons like virtuosi; Roger demolished them. The demolition would have accomplished nothing had it not been for the precedent of the journey to Wissant, which had weakened their logic as the mandate of Clement had weakened their authority. Roger handed his mop to Joannes, who flourished it like a banner, and set forth.

  The castle in Labourd was not yet ruinous, but it had not far to go; and it was almost empty; if the man-at-arms who took Roger to Eleanor was not the same, without his mail, who later served as her footman, they were at the very least fraternal twins. The footman had first to drag off an enormous slavering mastiff which snarled and roared at Roger till the bare hall rang shatteringly; the footman would have taken the beast entirely away, but at a motion from Eleanor, he instead chained it to a ring in the near wall, where it stood straining, its snarls as steady and unsettling as the noise of an anchor-hawser running out.

  Though the clamour distracted him, Roger somewhat welcomed it too; for many years had passed since he had seen Eleanor last – never, he recalled slowly, since Beaumont, for despite their propinquity at Westminster their paths had not crossed there. And he had never noticed then that she was beautiful; he saw it now for the first time, as, But she is still beautiful.

  He could hardly, interpret what he meant by this, except that he knew vaguely that she was older, somewhat, than he was; which meant that she was more than fifty ae. How much more mattered not in the least, for to Roger’s eyes she had not changed: tall and slender she stood as before, eyes the colour of sheet lightning under the broad brow, hands white, tapered and smooth as an eidolon of Mercy, issuing from the sorrowing sleeves. Looking at her, Roger’s demon self said to him, also for – alas! – the first time: Livia too was beautiful.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said above the growls of the animal. ‘I … presume upon your mourning, and ask your pardon. I am about a business for his highness the Lord Pope, otherwise—’

  ‘Most Christian Roger, thou’rt welcome.’ Roger took a step forward; the dog leapt against the chain, shouting. Like a girl, Eleanor clapped her hands to her ears. ‘Oh, we shall never hear each other! Hanno, I’ll switch thee!’

  She smote her hands together, once. ‘Bring him his bed – else will I never hear the friar’s holy rede I’

  The footman silently brought a circular rag carpet of no particular colour and far gone in dog hairs, and threw’ it cautiously against the wall under the ring. Hanno stepped on to it one vast pad at a time, and then turned on it as if making up his nest, until he had created a grey lump of cloth far too small to sleep a puppy upon. On this he sat, regarding his mistress with patient reproach, and growled thereafter only faintly, deep in his chest, when Roger raised a hand, or breathed.

  With one eye nevertheless upon Hanno, Roger tumbled forth his errand. As Eleanor listened, her eyes closed slowly, until at the end her spare strange beauty was not that of a woman, nor even of a statue, but that of the Platonic absolute of which all beauty is but a shadow in a cave, cast by the Fire beyond fire. Hanno grumbled and lay down; Roger faltered; beyond the embrasures, the sweet birds of Gascony faltered too.

  Then her lids flew open. ‘Oh,’ she said, putting her hands to her throat; ‘oh. Sweet Roger Bacon, I am old. Oh, an I could give thee what thou need’st! But I am not what I was – and though so praydeth Ito the Virgin, nay never could I give, but only take. I think I must be damned.’

  ‘Good my lady! … None can know that to be true. Thou art noble surely, and wise; why dost despair of God? Hut not courage? I know thou hest.’

  ‘But have not love?’ Eleanor said. ‘Not that? I prayed for it when I was married to Pembroke, as a little girl; prayed to give it, that I might be worthy of receiving. And oh in what perfect measure my lords gave it me, and so also my sons – and they are gone, all gone from me who failed them. I loved them. I loved them, oh Mother and Bride; but it was not enough. They were all taken away.’

  ‘My lady.… We shall all be taken away.’

  But she was already kneeling, her tears coursing over the backs of her hands. The monster coughed, but made no objection when he knelt with her, though its eyes were smoky as obsidian.

  After a while, she stood, and it was almost as though they had only just met.

  ‘Forgive me, Friar Bacon. I am not myself today. Now let us see what I can do for mine enemy the Pope.’

  With a subdued shock, Roger realized what she meant, and raised a hand to halt her, but she would not be halted.

  ‘Once had I hope of those high designs of my lord of Leicester, those Mad Parliaments and new charters, those forays of peoples against princes,’ she said somnolently. ‘I little thought the King my brother capable of withstanding Simon, strange though the Earl’s purposes oft struck me. But the King’s course was also the Pope’s, and mayhap God’s – I took that too little into mine accountings, and so am bereft, as now you see me; that course prospers, while my lord’s is dead with him; as you here and now remind me in heaven’s own good time.’

  ‘Not I!’ Roger cried. ‘I am on no business of King Henry, good my lady.’ But the words sounded thin in his own ears. The Pope had been, and was still, Henry the King’s ally … and for her, the civil war had been, literally, husband against brother.

  ‘Nay, nor did I mean my words to be taken so. In thee, I see only the prospering of God’s business in Rome, through its best English instrument; we French are near outworn. So taught me my lord to think of thee, Friar Bacon, when I knew thee not; my lord, and eke one other.’

  ‘One other? Forgive me, my lady – I ask it not in vanity, but for the judgment of mine own soul in hope of heaven: who was that one?’

  Her eyes
closed again for a moment. ‘I cannot speak for him.’

  ‘Well wis I. Yet was it – was that one Friar Marsh?’

  There was no answer. After a while, she clasped her hands and walked slowly to a near window.

  ‘Let us speak no more of all those that are dead … no more of these, but only on thine errand. How may I help? The way is far from clear. I am in perpetual exile, a widow, and without arms. Were this fief threatened, I could not protect it; were the castle besieged, I could not hold it; nor have I men to collect my taxes, so that I cannot even keep my fortifications in repair. Of late, some worthy franklins have remembered who was my lord, and his strange doctrines; and thus emboldened, have banded together, against some future war, to buy the castle from me, with myself as … caretaker. Though I have refused, I shall not be able to refuse a second time, and will instead betake myself to Montargis; but I have not these monies yet.’

  ‘Good my Lady. I should have anticipated of this some substantial part. Give me but a shilling for mine Order, and I shall not trouble thee more.’

  She swung quickly upon him. ‘This to me, Roger Bacon? I am Eleanor of Pembroke and Leicester, and sister to a king! Shall it be said that she gave the Vicar of God a shilling? Wait.’

  She left the hall, supple as an elm, and seemingly as tall. Roger was left alone with Hanno, who had risen, and blinked at him with slow implacability. A sweet smell of apple-blossoms drifted in through the window she had quitted. Suddenly, as though he had come to some dim conclusion, the huge dog lay down once more and put his head on his paws.

  When Eleanor returned, she bore in her hands a small casket of boxwood, with iron clasps: a mean thing, and crudely carved, yet she held it before her as though it were more costly and more fragile than a crystal egg.

  ‘When I was but a princess five years old,’ she said quietly, ‘Hubert de Burgh that was my guardian gave this to me. I wore it round my wimple, and feigned to be a queen; and, as so feigned I, so was I. I kept ’t for mine own daughter; but now I shall have none. See.’

  She lifted the lid and held out the rude jewel-box. Within, upon a fold of worn damask, lay a child-size coronet of gold filigree, set with pearls and fronted by a cool amethyst about the size of a millet. The woven gold was much dulled by time, but glowed slowly with a reddish light, as if in the sleep of Charlemagne. Roger lifted his eyes and tried to see her as a child with this above her brows, and for an instant did so; then the pain in the present eyes, womanly beyond all compare since the orange gardens of Tivoli, sponged away the vision and left him empty.

  ‘My Lady … it may be that I do not understand. Is this—? I dare not think it.’

  Her eyes shuttered. ‘Were you to refuse me, I would take it ill. Here, please, Friar Bacon. Take it. I have held it far too long; that child is dead.’

  Numbly, Roger took the boxwood chest. How had he come to this? Surely he had never been formed to be a beggar; for the wounds were dreadful.

  The coronet did not prove to be as valuable as he had hoped, but nevertheless it brought him by far the largest fruit of his beggary yet: thirty-five pounds, bringing his total to forty-four. And unexpectedly, while he was in Gascony, there had arrived for him a letter from Rome.

  It was very brief:

  My daughter Olivia whom you address is gone into a convent. I send you herewith ten ducats. Had you written to me I would have sent more.

  MODENA

  And so, another friendship spoiled by his gracelessness; it was easy to see, now that it was too late, wherein the affront had lain. And the price of his friendship was ten ducats, or approximately three pounds.

  His time was virtually run out. The new year was upon him, and the brothers were demanding that he return to his duties. There was nothing left to do but go to the usurers; a step that was anathema to him, but all other possibilities were exhausted. He was forced to visit three of them, for no one would give him any substantial sum, because of his visible lack of good security; it was only upon his promise to send an expense account to the Pope that they would give him anything at all.

  Even this petty scrabbling was brought to an abrupt end upon the arrival of four more pounds from Peter Peregrine – not by the sum itself, but by Roger’s discovery that Peter, having gotten wind of Roger’s dealings with the usurers, had mortgaged his house for the money. This was truly the final humiliation; the firm sign to stand fast with what he had.

  As early as Epiphany it became clear to him that the Communia naturalium would have to be abandoned. It could no doubt be finished at a later date, when he had had more time for study and for consultation with other experimenters and philosophers, but he could not encompass all of the natural sciences for the Pope in his present state of ignorance and confinement. There could be no scriptum principale; the best he could hope to achieve would be a persuasio of some length, an attempt to convince the Pontiff of the value of natural knowledge, and the importance of supporting its investigation.

  Nevertheless even this would have to be most carefully planned. After a week, he had an outline which seemed satisfactory as a start. The letter would be divided into seven parts: The first would expose and analyse the four causes of human error, and here he could use a great part of the De erroribus verbatim; next would come the relationship between natural philosophy and theology, with special attention to the problem posed by the knowledge of the pagan philosophers and poets, and its solution as revealed in the Secret of Secrets; third, the beauty and utility of the study of tongues, with brief discussions of Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek, and a commentary on the evils of faulty translation; fourth, a demonstration that mathematics is’ the key to all other sciences, beginning with De laudibus mathematicae, and drawing examples from astrology, astronomy, calendar reform, chronology, geography and optics; fifth would follow the Perspectiva, covering the general principles of vision, direct vision, reflection and refraction, with an analysis of the anatomy of the animal eye, and in addition enough of De multiplicatione specierum as was needful to show that the propagation of light was only a special case of a universal property of space and time; sixth, an exposition of the virtues and methods of experimental science, with a demonstration of its powers provided by the treatise on the rainbow; and finally, moral philosophy, the crown and seal of the whole, the science of the salvation of man. It would be no small task in itself; but unlike the Communia, at least it looked practicable.

  And thus it began:

  A thorough consideration of knowledge consists of two things, perception of what is necessary to obtain it, and then of the method of applying it to all matters that they may be directed by its means in the proper way. For by the light of knowledge the Church of God is governed, the commonwealth of the faithful is regulated, the conversion of unbelievers is secured, and those who persist in their malice can be held in check by the excellence of knowledge, so that they may be, driven off from the borders of the Church in a better way than by the shedding of Christian blood. Now all matters requiring the guidance of knowledge are reduced to these four heads and no more. Therefore, I shall now try to present to your Holiness the subject of the attainment of this knowledge, not only relatively but absolutely, according to the tenor of my former letter, as best I can at the present time, in the form of a plea that will win your support until my fuller and more definite statement is completed. Since, moreover, the subjects in question are weighty and unusual, they stand in need of the grace and favour accorded to human frailty.…

  Now there are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge. Every man is entangled in these difficulties, every rank is beset, for people without distinction draw the same conclusion from three arguments, than which none could be worse, namely, for this the authority of our predecess
ors is adduced, this is the custom, this is the common belief; hence correct. An opposite conclusion and a far better one should be drawn from the premises, as I shall abundantly show by authority, experience and reason. Should, however, these three errors be refuted by the convincing force of reason, the fourth is always ready and on everyone’s lips for the excuse of his own ignorance, and although he has no knowledge worthy of the name, he may yet shamelessly magnify it, so that at least to the wretched satisfaction of his own folly he suppresses and evades the truth. Moreover, from these deadly banes come all the evils of the human race; for the most useful, the greatest, and most beautiful lessons of knowledge, as well as the secrets of all science and art, are unknown. But, still worse, men blinded in the fog of these four errors do not perceive their own ignorance, but with ever precaution cloak and defend it so as not to find a remedy; and worst of all, although they are in the densest shadows of error, they think they are in the full light of truth. For these reasons they reckon that truths most firmly established are at the extreme limits of falsehood, that our greatest blessings are of no moment, and our chief interests possess neither weight nor value. On the contrary, they proclaim what is most false, praise what is worst, extol what is most vile, blind to every gleam of wisdom and scorning what they can obtain with great ease. In the excess of their folly they expend their utmost efforts, consume much time, pour out large expenditures on matters of little or no use and of no merit in the judgment of a wise mane Hence it is necessary that the violence and banefulness of these four causes of all evils should be recognized in the beginning and rebuked and banished from the consideration of science. For where these bear sway, no reason influences, no right decides, no law binds, religion has no domain, nature’s mandate fails, the complexion of things is changed, their order is confounded, vice prevails, virtue is extinguished, falsehood reigns, truth is hissed off the scene.

  And with this, he was launched upon such a fury of composition as he had never known before in his life; nor, in fact, had ever been known in the history of the phenomenal world.