Aegypt

by John Crowley

  —A thousand years after that Flood, said Doctor Dee, and twenty or thirty after Troy’s fall, came that Albanian Brutus here to this septentrional isle.

  —Was that Brute of Troy? asked Mr. Talbot.

  —It was. And this Brute who had saved Troy from the Greeks (though later they conquered it), he found our forefathers in their ignorance, and yet pretty ready to learn, and of a good wit. And he, Brutus, became their King, the first that ever there was over the whole of this isle.

  —And Arthur was of his line, said Arthur Dee, who knew this story, and his own share in it.

  —He was. So you can see by his arms: three gold crowns in a field of azure, that were the arms of Arthur’s first kingdom of Logres; these quartered with the arms of Troy, which you may read of in Virgil. And so.

  —And the Saxons? asked Mr. Talbot.

  —No. They were out of Germany. Arthur was a thorn in the Saxon’s eye. He was a Briton, heir of Brutus. And this land, his land, could not be right ruled, not by Saxon or Dane or Frenchman, till Arthur come again: till a Welshman, of our blood, mount the throne again.

  —And so he did, said Arthur.

  —And so he did, when Harry Tudor took the crown. And his granddaughter now upon the throne, if Arthur could be woman, she were he.

  They rode in silence for a while.

  —Some there are, said Doctor Dee, who would deny there was any Arthur.

  —Let them try that, said Arthur, his cheek pressed against his father’s back, sheltering under his father’s hat.

  —Let them look into Saint Jerome, said his father. Who praised Ethicus his assertion, that the isles of Albion, this one and Ireland, should be called the isles Brutannicæ and not Brittanicæ. And old Trithemius says that Arthur’s empire covered twenty kingdoms.

  —But kingdoms were not so large then, said Mr. Talbot.

  —So they were not. Yet by the force of arms did this Arthur conquer the isles of Iceland and Greenland and Estotiland. Which by right should be under our Queen now, all of them in the mari Brittanico between Britain and Atlantis up even to the North Pole.

  Arthur Dee laughed aloud.

  —And so I have told Mr. Hakluyt. And so I have urged Her Majesty.

  Arthur Dee laughed again, a triumphant laugh, and hugged his father tighter, which made the doctor laugh too, and the three of them rode on laughing in the sun’s face who just then peeped out, only to withdraw again.

  Toward evening they passed a house by the side of the road, and an old woman in the doorway, under its dripping eaves, hands beneath her apron. There were daffodils and primroses in her garden; there was woodbine on the wall, and flowers bursting even in the moldy thatch of the roof, as from a meadow. She smiled at the travelers.

  —Good day to you, Gammer, said Doctor Dee, leaning a bow from his saddle. How goes it with you.

  —The better that your worship choose to ask.

  —I see a new bush tied to your stake there.

  —Your worship has eyes in his head.

  —Can you put up three travelers, and give them supper? One of them a lad.

  —I can do that, she said. I can give them white bread and brown, and cheese and new ale; and a bed all to themselves.

  —There is a straight line, Mr. Talbot said, from Upton-on-Severn to Glastonbury.

  —Yes, said Doctor Dee.

  A single rushlight guttered at the bedside. Arthur slept. Doctor Dee and his skryer sat together on the bed’s edge, their voices low not to wake the boy.

  —This straight line, Mr. Talbot said, cannot be seen but from high in the air. For a time a road will mark it, and then a hedge; a church will sit astride it, or a market cross; and then a road will run its way again. But only from on high can it be seen to run along, true, straight as though scribed across the earth.

  —Yes.

  —It seemed, Mr. Talbot said, that he bore me up. I thought to swoon. I saw this line from on high.

  —A dream, Doctor Dee said.

  —It seemed no dream. He bore me on his back. In form he was . . . in form he was like a dog, or a wolf; he had a hairy head, and hairy paws with brown nails on them. But for his shape I could not well see it, for he seemed dressed in a robe like a monk’s robe, of heavy stuff. Which I clung to when he flew.

  Mr. Talbot watching Doctor Dee’s face saw a thought in it. He said:

  —Whether he is a good spirit or not I know not. He has long been near me, not always in that form. I did not summon him. I know him to be the same in different forms because his face is always kind.

  Doctor Dee said nothing.

  —That line bore us its way, Mr. Talbot went on. As though it were a gutter down which a stone would roll, or a chase into which a hart is run. That straight line. So fast he went along it that the long brown robe he wore snapped behind him like a flag. And then methought I smelled the sea.

  The green sea-moors of Somerset, changeful and full of noon light, moved below him (Had it been a dream? Had it been? He touched the stone jar he had, hidden within his coat), and then, coming closer as they dropped toward earth together – he felt his heart sickeningly mount to his throat – a low bare hill and a tower, an abbey and a ruined church. The one he clung to stretched out his hairy hand, and as he pointed here and there, south, east, west, there came to be visible, rising up out of the earth, figures. Figures that lay upon the earth, made of the earth, made of the rise and fold of hills, the creases of sunken roads, the lines of ancient walls, of rivers and streams: a circle of great beings, man, animal, thing, with forests for their hair and glittering outcrops of rock their eyes or teeth; a circle linked, touching, every figure facing west. For a moment one of them would not be there, would turn itself back into farms and fields, and then it would be there again: lamb, lion, sheaf of wheat.

  —Yes, said Doctor Dee. Lamb. Lion. Sheaf of wheat. What others?

  —I know not. Fishes. A king. I could not see.

  Turning in a slow spiral downward like a hunting hawk, the one who bore him fell toward the abbey church. One by one the vast personages retreated into the earth as into sleep, and could no longer be discerned.

  —Then he showed me. In the old abbey. The place where I should dig.

  —And did you dig then?

  Mr. Talbot rubbed his brow, as though to bring up the memory.

  —I think I did not. He . . . I swooned. I remember nothing. He bore me away, and I awoke home again.

  —Or woke never having left, said Doctor Dee.

  Mr. Talbot glanced toward Arthur, and then leaned close to the doctor’s ear, to speak urgently.

  —If it was a dream, it was a true dream. For I went later on foot that same way. And there was the church, as I had been shown it. There was the place I was to dig, there where two pyramids were. But for the stonecutters at work there, it was the same, all the same. I waited for night to fall. By the moon I dug. I found the chamber, and in it the book.

  Doctor Dee said nothing, nor looked at Mr. Talbot. He studied his own hands on his knees. Then he rose, and pinched out the light.

  —We will know more tomorrow, he said. We will reach the abbey before noon.

  Long after midnight Mr. Talbot awoke, forgetful of where he was, still walking Thames-side with his book under his arm, feeling pursued on a windy night and seeing a dark boat and a boatman skimming toward him over the water’s surface. He lay open-eyed, remembering. Arthur’s face lay close to his, his long-lashed eyes seeming half open but his spirit far elsewhere, Mr. Talbot could tell it by his breath, so regular it seemed not the boy’s own. On his other side, wrapped in his big coat, Doctor Dee slept, deep-rumbling.

  A little light came in through the horn of the low small window. The eaves dripped. Mr. Talbot thought of Wales, where once he had run away to hide when he was a boy. He thought how he had hidden in the mountains, and lived alone for many long months; how he had built himself a hut of skins and branches, like brutish men of olden time, and sat within it listening to the rain drip from the
leaves. After long thought he had dug a mine into the earth; he had shaped a vessel of clay, and fired it in a fire of wood and coal. He knew what to do next.

  He awoke again then, and lay awake till dawn, feeling clear and pure inside more intensely than he had ever before, as though his heart were turning to gold. Had he ever gone to Wales really? He thought about what he had seen and done there, the rain blown across the stone faces of the hills, the mine, the fire. He felt within himself two clear pools, one dark, one light, that he could dip from: this, and that; the one, the other; and there was not anything that could not be made from the mixture.

  After the Dissolution of King Harry’s time, Glastonbury Abbey and its messuages, its woods, streams, and fields, had been deeded to various lords and gentlemen, sold by them, resold. Whatever of value could be stripped from the church and the buildings was stripped, lead roofs and gutters, ornament, glass; the books and manuscripts were thrown away or burned or sold to booksellers or paper-makers by the cartload. Now dock and dandelion grew in the roofless aisles, violets in the tumbled stone; the campfires of homeless men sheltering within the ruins of chapel and chapter-house blackened the walls. The immense cathedral served the present owners as a kind of quarry; dressed stone could be taken away by whoever paid a fee to the landlord.

  —They know not what they do who sell these stones, said Doctor Dee when the little party stood within the abbey precincts. They know not what they do.

  He put out his hand to touch a stone eagle, fallen there, a stone book within its talons, bright grass grown up around it.

  —Here stood the ancientest church of this isle, he said. Here that holy man of Arimathea came, with that Cup never seen again since those times. Here, only the place is lost, Patrick is buried, and what other great carcasses? Dunstan of Canterbury, in a tomb known only to the monks of this place, and now since they are driven away, known to no one. And Edgar, peaceable, provident king.

  —And Arthur, said Arthur.

  —In a great sarcophagus, not of lead or of stone but of oak, an oak tree hollowed out, they found him; his shin bone larger than your shin and thigh together. There were giants in the land in those days. His wife with him; a lock of golden hair was in the tomb when it was opened, but a monk touched it, and it turned all to dust.

  —Guinevere, said Arthur. He was shivering in the thin rain that had been falling all morning.

  —Is it there? Doctor Dee asked Mr. Talbot. There where you dug?

  Two obelisks stood by the old track through the abbey, Dod Lane. Mr. Talbot, hugging himself, turned in the huge churchyard.

  —I don’t know, he said. It seems not the same now. I cannot tell.

  —We’ll look, said the doctor.

  And so all of that afternoon they climbed over grass-grown monuments and poked between fallen stones and climbed down into vaults filled up with rubble and started a badger from his den, while Mr. Talbot, finger to his lips and eyes uncertain, tried to remake the journey or redream the dream that had once brought him here; until, wet and tired, they took shelter in the Mary chapel, under an unfallen piece of roof. They made a camp there, and lit a fire on the stones of the floor, and ate bread and cheese they had brought from the inn.

  —I have a journey to go, Doctor Dee told them then. A short journey. If I do not return before nightfall or soon after, I will not come till morning. Then we will look again.

  He rose, and took up his staff and plaited hat; he saw to it that his son’s coat was dry inside, and that there was a dry place for him to sleep by the fire, and a cloak to wrap him in; he blessed the boy’s head.

  —Watch well, he said to Mr. Talbot. Think hard where we shall look.

  When he had walked away, picking his way carefully amid the wet stones, Mr. Talbot sat with Arthur by the fire. The boy had grown silent, a little uncertain with his father gone.

  —Shall we look? Mr. Talbot said.

  —No.

  They sat, hands in their sleeves, looking into the feeble fire.

  —I’ll tell you a secret, Mr. Talbot said.

  Arthur’s eyes opened wider.

  —My name, said Mr. Talbot, is not Talbot.

  —What is it then?

  Mr. Talbot said nothing more. He put a stick into the fire; the wetness of it sizzled and smoked.

  —I know what that book tells, he said then. It tells how the work of making gold is to be done. I know that’s what it tells, though I can’t read it.

  —How is gold made? Arthur asked.

  —Gold grows, said Mr. Talbot. Deep deep in mountains, where the earth is oldest, gold is. So you make deep mines to find it. But you must never take away all the gold; you must not, for you will take away the seed of gold, by which it grows. Like fruit, take away that which is ripe; leave the rest to ripen. And it will. Slowly, slowly, the stones of the mountain, the clays of it, grow up to be gold; they become gold.

  —Do they?

  —In Wales, Mr. Talbot said. In Wales, when I went into the mountains, I knew the gold was growing, all around me, in the earth; deep within. It seemed I could hear it grow.

  —Hear it?

  —One day, in a thousand years, a thousand thousand, all stone will have grown into gold.

  —The world will end by then, said Arthur.

  —Perhaps it will. But we can teach the gold to grow faster. If we learn how. We can help, like midwives, to bear the gold from what contains it; we can bring it to birth.

  Arthur said nothing to that. The rain had slackened, begun to cease, and the clouds once again to part and change; the sun shone. Glastonbury was not gold but silver.

  —I’ll go piss, said Mr. Talbot.

  He went out past the little fire and into the long green alley of the chapel’s nave, and thought a long time.

  He went down toward the sanctuary along the wall, stopping to look into side-chapels. When he reached the sanctuary and the place where the altar had been, he looked back; he could no longer see the campfire. He took from within his coat a small stone jar, well sealed with wax.

  He looked around for a spot. He saw a narrow flight of steps, leading downward beneath a carved arch; when he went down them, he found that the way was blocked with fallen stones, except for a narrow opening just large enough for him to get half his body in, but not to crawl inside. He thought he heard, within, a sound of water, as though there were a well inside. He closed his eyes; he saw the dog-face of a smiling being; he dropped the jar into the space within.

  Tomorrow, with Doctor Dee, he would find it there, as he had found his book; and the story could go on.

  At the top of the bald high hill called the Tor of Glastonbury there is a tower like a finger of stone, St. Michael’s tower. At the foot of the hill, in the valley that lies between the Tor and the hill west of it, Chalice Hill, there is a well, the Holy Well. The road that leads up the Tor passes this well. Doctor Dee, on his way upward, stopped by it. Chambers have been built around it, of heavy stone that shows the tool that worked it, and which Doctor Dee supposed the Romans put there, or even the Druids before them.

  They were great and wise men, the Druids, and of the doctor’s own race, though in their pride they had denied Christ and striven against His disciples. There were tales of how they had set up the stones that stood in a ring on Salisbury plain, had brought them here out of Ireland through the air, like a flock, and settled them there on the plain. Doctor Dee knew that when blessed Patrick had questioned them, and asked them who made the world, the Druids answered: the Druids made it.

  He stepped down into the mossy way which led into the chambers of the well. At the dark door he put out his hand against the stone, listening for a time to the sound of the waters; then he entered. It was somewhere up on Chalice Hill that the spring arose which fed this well; it arose, so it was said, at the spot where Joseph of Arimathea buried the Cup from which Our Lord drank at His last supper. The Cup, calix, crater, from which that hill was named. Unless the chalice the hill was named for was the hill itse
lf, a cup inverted on the earth and pouring out its liquid water-wine here. Doctor Dee looked down at the stones which the water passed over – they were streaked and soaked with red. Blood Well was this place’s other name.

  He drank there, and prayed, and went on. The road left the shelter of the greening trees, and by stages proceeded around the Tor in a spiral as it went upward. The sky began to clear, and a sharp breeze was on the doctor’s cheek. As he rose higher, farther and farther spread out the lowlands in his sight, even as far as to the sea. Above these lowlands rose Cadbury Hill, and Chalice Hill, and Weary-all Hill like a whale lifting a huge back into the air, and this hill he climbed. In ancient times, he knew, they had all been islands, these hills; the lowlands were all under sea. Glastonbury itself had been an island, Avalon, isle of apples. This Tor could be got to by boat; Weary-all was the isle where Joseph first put ashore, where he plunged his staff into the earth. There, the Thorn had sprung up, the Thorn which blossoms at Christmas. Doctor Dee had seen it, the Holy Thorn, all white flowers at Christ’s nativity: for he had climbed these hills many times, and described their antiquities, and measured the earth around. Chorography was another art of his: the measurement and description of a portion of earth and its contents and its geometries. Only there was no portion of earth that was like the one he stood on now, no other portion that he knew of.

  Breathing strongly, and pressing his own staff into the roadway, he climbed. The road turned. He was approaching the summit; and as he trod the spiral track, the lowlands and the hills around began to awake.