by Ross King
It was late in the afternoon by this point, and I had been four days on the road. The other passengers had disembarked long before. I stood under the dripping awning of a tobacconist-cum-post-office, staring in disbelief at the image, wondering if I was hallucinating, if the fevers had not yet left my body. Was there no escaping the radius of signs and vectors, not even here, in this anonymous hamlet, miles from anywhere?
'Mercury,' explained the driver, a huckle-backed old fellow named Jessop, when he caught me staring at the door. He was hitching the horses to the harness and the harness to the poles. 'Letter-carrier to the gods. The coach was part of the old De Quester fleet,' he added with some pride, thumping the spattered door with a finger-shy hand. 'More than forty years old but still going strong. The Mercury symbol was part of De Quester's coat of arms.'
'De Quester?' Where had I heard the name before? From Biddulph?
'Matthew De Quester,' he replied. 'I purchased the coach from the company when it lost its charter. This was a good many years ago. Well before your time, I shouldn't wonder, sir.'
With an effort he clambered into the coach-box and signalled for me to follow. I climbed aboard, filled with dread and dismay. For the next few hours, as the exhausted horses stumbled hock-deep through the mire, I wondered if I was ever to get to the bottom of these strange matters, if whatever mysterious truth that Alethea harboured was destined always to escape me. All of my investigations seemed to have added up to so much dross. I felt like the alchemist who, after hours of labours, after endless alembications, decoctions and distillations, is left not with the dazzling lump of gold of which he dreams, but rather the caput mortuum, a worthless crust, the residue of burnt chemicals. In the past few days I had begun to doubt my powers of reason. I who considered myself so rational and wise suddenly found that I knew nothing and doubted everything. All comforting certainties seemed to have disintegrated.
'Here at last, sir.'
Jessop's voice startled me from my gloomy reverie. I glanced up to see a church tower looming over a huddle of bleak cottages. Lanterns and voices were approaching.
'Crampton Magna.' He had twisted to the ground with a splash. 'The end of the line.'
***
It was to be another twelve hours before I reached my destination. At the village inn, the Ploughman's Arms, none of the five taciturn patrons could be persuaded to undertake the journey to Pontifex Hall. I had just resigned myself to a long walk in the rain when I was approached by a newcomer, a young man with a freckled face who pledged to take me in the morning, if I pleased to wait. His father, he explained, was the gardener at Pontifex Hall.
The bartender seemed taken aback by the request for a room, but at closing-time I was ushered up a creaking flight of stairs and into a tiny chamber whose walls were festooned with cobwebs and whose linen had yellowed with age. It looked as if no one had opened the door, let alone slept in the bed, for a good many years. But I toppled gratefully on to the lumpy bolster all the same, then into a series of restless and interconnected dreams from which I awoke hours later, heartburned and unrefreshed. Through a lone window that showed an expanse of dirty thatch and a corner of the church I could see that it was raining still, as hard as ever. I doubted my young driver would appear in such weather. But after I trudged downstairs to eat a substantial breakfast, then took my easement in a foul-smelling jakes, a small two-wheeled chariot forded the flooded stream and approached the inn at a brisk trot. The final leg of my long journey could at last begin.
What would I say to Alethea when I saw her again? For the past few days I had rehearsed in my head any number of accusing speeches, but now as Pontifex Hall drew steadily closer I realised that I had no idea what to say or do. Indeed, I had no idea what I hoped to achieve other than perhaps to cause some dramatic scene that would bring the whole affair to its conclusion. I also realised with a flutter of panic that, in grasping the nettle in so bold a manner, I could well bring myself into danger. I thought of the corpse of Nat Crump in the river and of the men who ransacked my shop and then pursued me to Cambridge. Once again the doubts took hold. Were these really the same men who had murdered Lord Marchamont? Or were they instead, like all else, the inventions of Alethea? Perhaps she, and not Cardinal Mazarin, was their mysterious paymaster, the one who set them on my trail. After all, she had traduced the entire situation, had she not? And she had betrayed me.
After a time the horses slowed and I looked up to see the archway opening its wide piers and the house behind it swivelling slowly to face us. Above the piers loomed the familiar inscription. The ivy had been cut back and the words chiselled afresh on the keystone. I could see that a number of improvements had already been made. The dead lime trees had been hewn down and replaced with saplings, the ivy was cut back, the road freshly gravelled. The hedge-maze also looked more defined: a great swirl of green hedges, seven feet tall, that stretched away in a hieratic geometry. I had the sense of a gradual peeling away or exfoliation, of old things renewed. Pontifex Hall seemed to have changed as much as I had. On the north side of the house a small garden had been planted with eyebright and mouse-ear, along with dozens of other herbs and flowers. All had burst into bloom, their leaves and petals shivering in the wind. I recalled none of them from my previous visit.
'The physic garden, sir,' explained the boy, catching my gaze. 'It hasn't bloomed, say the villagers, in more than a hundred years, not since the monks left. The seeds were buried too deep; at least, that's what my father reckons. Nothing grew until he ploughed the soil in the spring.' For a second he regarded me shyly from under the brim of his hat. 'It's like a miracle, isn't it, sir? As if the monks had returned.'
No, I thought, strangely moved by the sight: it was as if the monks had never truly vanished, as if through the years of exile something of them had persisted and endured, lost but redeemable, like the words of a book that awaits the reader who, by blowing at the dust and opening the cover, will revive the author.
'Shall I wait for you here, sir?'
The chariot had reached the house, whose broken dripstones were slobbering torrents of water. I could hear the eaves gulping overhead. The house, despite the improvements, looked as morose and forbidding as ever. What would become of the underground watercourse, I wondered, with so much rain? I hoped that the engineer from London had arrived to perform his crucial task.
'One moment, please.'
I twisted down from the chariot and looked more carefully about the grounds. There were no signs of occupation or industry. The windows with their broken panes-those, at least, had not been replaced-looked dark. Perhaps the house was deserted? Perhaps I was too late?
But then I smelled it: a wraith of scent on the damp morning air, sweet and pungent, as slight and swift as a hallucination. I looked up again and saw in one of the opened windows-that of the strange little laboratory-the silhouette of a telescope. My stomach gave a languid heave of fear.
'No,' I told the boy, feeling a pulse begin to beat in my throat. 'I shall have no need of you. Not yet.'
I stepped under the pediment. The smell of the pipe smoke-of fire-cured Nicotiana trigonophylla-had already vanished. I raised my stick to strike the door.
Chapter Seven
'Inchbold!'
The voice was accusing. The door, which had opened to expose the dour mask of Phineas Greenleaf, now began to shut as the dull eyes flickered after the departing chariot. I stepped hastily forward and fumbled for the brass knob.
'Wait…'
'What is it?' he demanded in the same stern tone. 'What brings you here?'
This was not the reception I expected, even from Phineas. I thrust my club foot into the shrinking aperture. 'Urgent business,' I replied. 'Allow me inside, if you please. I come to pay my respects to your mistress.'
'In that case, Mr. Inchbold, you come too late,' he hissed through his gapped teeth. 'I regret to say that Lady Marchamont is not at home.'
'Oh? And is her ladyship at Wembish Park, then, may I ask?' I
gave the knob an impatient twiddle. 'Shall I find her there, perhaps?'
'Wembish Park?'
His expression had turned innocent, even confused. Was it that he played his part so well, or did Alethea not make him privy to her secrets?
'Allow me inside,' I repeated as my thorn-stick insinuated its way against the stone jamb. 'Or shall I knock down the door?'
This was an idle threat for someone of my stature, but one I found myself obliged to make good when the door suddenly swung shut in my face. I applied a shoulder to the solid oak, bellowing curses, before trying a boot to no better effect. I would probably have broken my toe or collarbone had I not thought to try the brass doorknob. As the catch clicked I heard a muffled curse from within, then the door flew wide and again I found myself confronted by Phineas. This time he was even less cordial. He came at me with his teeth bared, threatening to cast me out of the door like the insolent cur I was. I advanced across the threshold and struck him on the haunch with my stick, then after several more physical discourtesies the two of us found ourselves grappling together on the tiled floor.
And so began my final visit to Pontifex Hall. What a scene it must have made, shameful and comic, two grotesques feebly wrestling in the deep chasm of the atrium, elbows and curses flying. I am by no means a brawler. I abhor violence and have always taken pains to avoid it. But put a coward to his mettle (as the saying goes) and he will fight like the devil. So as I engaged my geriatric opponent I found that the bites and punches-the whole brutal dockside repertoire-came all too readily. The toe of my club foot found its mark in the middle of his belly and my teeth in his thumb when he tried to throttle me. The ignominious proceedings concluded when I put him 'in chancery', choking him in a headlock and pummelling his nose with my fist. Not until I saw the bright spurt of blood did I allow him to slither away, moaning like a bull calf and dabbing at his horror-struck face with the back of his hand. Yes, yes, it was a shameful scene, but I regretted it not a whit. Or not, at least, until I heard a voice call my name from somewhere high above. I rolled over with a groan-Phineas had landed a few solid blows of his own-and peered upwards up to see Alethea leaning over a banister at the top of the staircase.
'Mr. Inchbold! Phineas! Stop this at once!' Her voice came echoing down the stairwell. 'Please-gentlemen!'
I staggered to my feet, panting and scuffling, flinging droplets of rain like an ill-mannered hound clambering from a duck pond. A gust of wind through the yawning doorway swung the glass chandelier, which belatedly announced my arrival with a series of dissonant chimes. My stockings made a squishing noise as I awkwardly shifted my stance, and so fogged were my spectacles that I could barely see through them. I was aware of having lost a certain advantage. Wiping at my beard, I felt a righteous fury at my predicament. I must have looked both a ruffian and a fool.
But Alethea seemed not at all surprised either by my appearance or my conduct, or even by the fact of my sudden arrival. Nor did she seem angry as she descended, merely puzzled or distracted, as if awaiting something further, the true climax that had yet to happen. For a second I wondered if she had somehow been expecting my arrival on her doorstep. Was even this wild gambit, my flight into Dorsetshire, part of her mysterious design?
'Please,' she said as her eyes returned to me, 'can we not be civil?'
I gaped at her, a spasm of laughter rising in my gut, bitter as wormwood. I could hardly believe my ears. Civil? All at once my anger, along with my well-rehearsed speeches, returned in a flash. I lunged a step forward and, waving the stick like a pike, demanded to know what she called 'civil'. All of the lies and games, were they civil? Or having my every step dogged? Or my shop ransacked? Or Nat Crump murdered? Was all of that, I demanded with furious hauteur, was all of that what she dared call civil?
I believe I continued for some time in this vein, venting spleen like a wronged lover, accusing Alethea of everything I could think of, my voice rising to a shriek as I punctuated each misdeed with another rap of my stick. How I bellowed and roared! My bravura delivery impressed me; I had not thought myself capable of mustering so fiery and commanding a tone. Through the corner of my eye I could glimpse Phineas crawling across the tiles, leaving asterisks of blood in his wake. Halfway down the stairs Alethea had frozen in mid-step, clutching the banister, her eyes wide with alarm.
Slowly my tirade petered out. Ira furor brevis est, as Horace writes. I was panting with exhaustion, fighting back sobs and tears. I had caught my reflection in an oval looking-glass propped against the wall: a tottering Cavalier, starved and tattered, his chops hollow and his eyes feverish. I had quite forgotten the transformation, the work of the ague in tandem with Foskett's concoctions. I looked like the frantic spectre of someone returned from the dead to wreak unholy vengeance-a likeness that was not, perhaps, so far from the truth.
Alethea allowed a moment to pass, as if gathering her thoughts. Then to my surprise she denied none of the charges-none except for the murder of Nat Crump. She even seemed disturbed by the news of the coachman's death. It was true, she said, that she engaged him to pick me up outside the Postman's Horn and drive me past the Golden Horn. But of his murder in Cambridge she knew nothing.
'You must believe me.' Her features worked themselves into an agitated smile of reassurance. 'No one was to be killed. Quite the contrary.'
'I don't believe you,' I murmured peevishly, as my fury lapsed into a sulk. 'I no longer believe a word you say. Not about Nat Crump or anything else.'
She was silent for a moment, twisting a strand of hair and thinking. 'He must have been murdered,' she said at last, more to herself than anyone else, 'by the same men who killed Lord Marchamont. By the men who followed you to Cambridge.'
'The agents of Henry Monboddo,' I snorted.
'No.' She was shaking her head. 'Nor were they the agents of Cardinal Mazarin. Those were also lies, I regret to say. You are right-so much of what I told you was a lie. But not everything. The men who killed Lord Marchamont are real enough. But they are agents of someone else.'
'Oh?' I was hoping to sound scornful. 'And who might that be?'
She had reached the bottom of the stairs by now, and I caught another whiff of Virginia tobacco. And of something else as well. At first I took the pungent scent wafting from her clothes for bonemeal and thought she had been tending the knot garden. But a second later I knew it for what it was: chemicals. Not the garden, then, but the laboratory.
'Mr. Inchbold,' she said at last, as though delivering a prepared speech, 'you have learned much. I am most impressed. You have done your job well, as I knew you would. Almost too well. But there is much left to learn.' As she extended a hand, I blinked in alarm at the fingertips, which looked strangely discoloured. 'Please-won't you come upstairs?'
I refused to budge. 'Upstairs?'
'Yes. To the laboratory. You see, Mr. Inchbold, that is where you will find it. In the laboratory.'
'Find what?'
'Lock the doors, Phineas.' She had turned round and begun climbing, lifting her skirts and swaying up the steps. 'Allow no one inside. Mr. Inchbold and I have matters to discuss.'
'Find what?' I was bellowing again, feeling the anger rise inside me. Somehow I had been wrong-footed. Yet again I had lost my advantage. 'What are you talking about?'
'The object of your search, Mr. Inchbold. The parchment.' She was climbing still, ascending the great marble helix. Once more her voice echoed in the vast well. 'Come,' she repeated, turning to beckon me. 'After so many troubles do you not wish to see The Labyrinth of the World?'
***
Borax, sulphur, green vitriol, potash… My eyes roved over the legends inscribed on the vials and bottles littered among the bubble-shaped still-heads with their coiled glass tubes. Yellowish chemicals, green ones, white, rust, sky-blue. The stink was even stronger and more tart than I remembered. My membranes prickled and my eyes began to water. Oil of vitriol, aqua fortis, plumbago, sal ammoniac…
Reaching for my handkerchief I paused i
n mid-gesture. Sal ammoniac? I glanced again at the vial, at the colourless crystals, remembering the recipes for sympathetic ink, for inks that, like those made with sal ammoniac, could only be read if the page was heated by a flame. I felt a soft thrill of excitement briefly rouse itself; I also felt dizzy, as if my fever were returning.
'Ammonium chloride,' explained Alethea, catching my gaze. She was standing beside me, breathing audibly on account of our climb. 'Essential to alchemical transformations. The Arabs made it from a mixture of urine, sea salt and chimney soot. The first mention of it is found in the Book of the Secret of Creation, a work that the Muhammadans in Baghdad attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.'
I nodded dumbly, remembering my researches of a week or two earlier. But by now I had spotted something else in the room, the vial marked 'potassium cyanide', which was sitting three-quarters empty on the table before the open casement. Beside it stood the telescope, still on its tripod, pointed at the heavens. The copies of Galileo and Ortelius had been removed and replaced by another volume, a slimmer one half-buried in the detritus of the laboratory, a score of pages bound in a cover of tooled leather.
'The laboratory belonged to my father,' Alethea explained as she crossed to the table. 'He built it in the undercroft, where he conducted many of his experiments. But I've moved what little equipment remains into this room.' She paused briefly to lean across the table and pick up the vial of potassium cyanide. 'I required better ventilation for my purposes.'
I watched nervously as she unstoppered the poison. I was still trembling from my outburst in the atrium. I was also embarrassed. It had all been so unlike me. I wondered briefly if I ought to apologise-and then had to bank down yet another wave of anger and self-pity.
