by Ian Morson
‘Come, eat, Edward. You look somewhat pale.’
Charles’s loud and stentorian voice dragged him back to the present. But not soon enough to prevent a shudder of horror racking his body as he recalled the attack and the subsequent butchery perpetrated on his body. Eleanor, his wife who sat at his side, knew what was troubling him. She gently squeezed his arm – the one that still bore the scars of his surgeon’s work – and slid a bread trencher in front of him.
‘The crane is a delicious and delicate meat, darling. I will eat some too.’
She slid her hand from his arm and touched her belly. He wondered if she was pregnant again. God knows, she was often enough. Edward counted up the score in his head. In the last eighteen years, Eleanor had given him eight children. And five were already dead, including his eldest son and one-time heir, John. Little Joan had been born in Acre and was not yet a year old. Could she be with child again? The trouble was, she was irresistible. He touched her golden hair, neatly arranged under her fashionable snood. Soon enough he would see it loosened and spread across their pillow. His loins stirred, and he squirmed in his seat. Eleanor’s big blue eyes, at once all innocence and knowingness, stared at him. She could always read his mind, and pursed her full, red lips in mock disapproval of his errant thoughts. She pushed a serving of white meat at him.
‘Crane, my dear. And try one of these coffins.’
Edward blanched a little at being offered the hard, crusty pastry. He had only just heard of the death of his father, Henry, and the thought of coffins did not sit well with his stomach. He was not yet used to the idea of being the King of England himself. For all his life, his father had been the king. It was a given, an immovable star in his firmament. Now his father lay in a coffin, and Edward was king. The thought, and that of Eleanor naked on their bed later, made him feel a lot better. He smiled and took a piece of crane in his mouth from Eleanor’s slender fingers, kissing the tips as he did so.
TWO
Oxford
That winter was a harsh one, with blizzards often cutting Oxford off from its surroundings. Many people, fearful of starving, moved from the frozen countryside into the shanty-town outskirts just below the walls. Some, like the recently widowed Sir Humphrey Segrim, stuck it out in their manor houses. Burning precious stocks of wood, Segrim brooded over the murder of his wife, Ann, and huddled deeper under his fur robes. He had never really got along with his wife. She had ideas that she was better than him – ideas put in her head by that master at the university. But now she was gone, he missed her company. He could not fault her dutiful nature as mistress of the house. Nor could he quite put out of his mind the suspicion that she had had an affair with William Falconer. When her body had been found with the man kneeling beside it, he had been sure that he had killed her. Falconer’s trial had been a farce, however, and the regent master had been exonerated. But Segrim still harboured doubts about the real killer. And they grew in his isolation at Botley Manor all through the winter and into the cold New Year.
The object of Sir Humphrey Segrim’s misgivings was having a cold, miserable winter of it too. The Christmas celebrations at the university had failed to cheer him up due to the continued absence of Saphira. Even the antics of the King of Misrule – the youngest clerk at the university elected for a brief few days of sovereignty – seemed cheerless. The new chancellor, William de Bosco, stoically bore his time in the stocks at Carfax, and carols mingled in the darkening streets each evening with love songs, and tales of Nebuchadnezzar, and Pyramus and Thisbe. But for William, holed up in his attic solar in Aristotle’s Hall, his acrimonious parting with Saphira rankled. More so, because he could not work out what he had said that was wrong. Whatever she thought, he could not give up his post as regent master, which he would have to do if he was to share his life openly with her. A master who married forfeited his degree. Yet all he had suggested was that she owed him some obligations. What was wrong in that? His fevered brain was cut in on by a sudden burst of singing from the main hall of the lodgings. Those students who had not gone home for Christmas, or who had been trapped by the snow in Oxford, were enjoying themselves around the communal fire below. Falconer listened to the words, sung off-key by Peter Mithian:
‘Make we merry in hall and bower
This time was born our Saviour.’
Irritated by the happiness inherent in the singing, he called out down the stairs to those below.
‘It is a week since Christmas, and the New Year is upon us. I want some peace, and you should be studying.’
The sudden silence was palpable, and Falconer immediately regretted his outburst. He was becoming just like one of those pompous and solemn masters he ridiculed in his schools every day. Glumly, he wrapped his blanket around him and stared at Balthazar in the corner of the room. The snowy-white barn owl stared back at him unblinkingly, then, with a silent flap of his wings, flew out of the window and into the darkness. Falconer hunched even lower into his blanket and muttered an imprecation.
‘Even you desert me, bird, and leave me to my misery.’
The Feast Day of St Peter of Canterbury, the Sixth Day of January 1273
It was the week following Falconer’s uncharacteristic outburst that he received a cryptic message from France. He was teaching his students in a chilly hall in Schools Lane that a small fire was failing to heat adequately. Falconer was pacing around the room, in part to keep warm, and throwing questions at the young men who sat on benches before him. Recently, the faces before him had become a uniform blur that had nothing to do with his short-sightedness. He was finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish one young clerk from another, and one year from another. He tried to rally his enthusiasm. The text being studied was Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the boys were struggling. Falconer returned to basics and picked out one boy he did know.
‘Peter, tell us about Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle when it comes to natural law.’
The older Mithian brother grinned. He was on safe ground here.
‘Aquinas says that natural law is based on first principles and that the first precept of the law is that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided.’
He turned to his fellow students in triumph. His teacher, however, was not so impressed. He knew the boy was reciting something he had learned by rote. So much teaching was done this way at the university, and it frustrated him. He threw out a challenge with more of Aquinas’s thinking.
‘He also says that the desires to live and to procreate are among the most basic human values.’
The young men giggled at the thought of procreation, a concept that was often on their minds. Especially after a night spent in a local tavern drinking ale. Then a steady voice spoke up from the shadows near the street door.
‘Aquinas also says that the goal of human existence is union and eternal fellowship with God.’
Under his breath, Falconer groaned. He knew that voice.
‘Brother John Pecham, come close to the fire and tell us about your work on optics.’
The Franciscan who stepped into the yellow candlelight of the schoolroom was a small and wiry man with a strict tonsure and an even stricter-looking face. Everything about him suggested cleanliness, and even the hem of his grey habit seemed untouched by the dirty slush outside the door. He shook his head at Falconer’s invitation, knowing he was being diverted from his religious teaching deliberately. Pecham was a deeply pious man, but he also subscribed to a belief in the value of experimental science. His field was that of optics and astronomy.
‘No, Master Falconer. Let us not stray from your main thesis. Your students are misled if they believe Aquinas advocated sexual activity for its own sake. He went on to say that…’
Falconer broke in on the Franciscan friar.
‘Alexander Aspall, tell Brother Pecham what Aquinas says about non-procreative sex.’
Aspall, a small and scrawny youth who looked more like a child than his true age of seventeen, blushe
d. But he stood up and spoke out clearly, as Falconer had drummed into him.
‘Thomas Aquinas was vehemently opposed to non-procreative sexual activity, and this led him to view—’ here he took a deep breath before he continued ‘—masturbation and oral sex as being worse than incest and rape.’
With the words out of his mouth he sat down blushing, but to howls of laughter from his contemporaries. Falconer smiled innocently at Pecham, who to give him his due grinned back at the triumphant regent master and nodded in acceptance of his defeat.
‘You have obviously schooled your students well in the more solitary pursuits and their dangers. But I am not here for a lesson in procreation, nor in optics. May I speak to you… alone?’
Falconer’s curiosity was piqued. Though Pecham was a fellow scientist, his religious orthodoxy had not made him one of Falconer’s intimates. If he wished to speak to him without any other ears present, the matter was perhaps important. He nodded briefly.
‘We were about to conclude anyway.’
He turned to his students and dismissed them for the day. This cheered the frozen students up no end, and they made a dash for the door before their teacher changed his mind. Once the noise of their departure had subsided, he brought Pecham over to the fire to derive what small crumb of heat it offered.
‘We are alone. What is it you want to say?’
Pecham stared into the glowing coals for a moment, and when he spoke it was not without a little embarrassment.
‘I have a message for you.’
‘Then give it to me.’
Falconer held out his hand, puzzled by the secrecy that delivering this missive had entailed. Pecham stared long and hard at the outstretched hand before explaining.
‘It is a verbal message that I can only divulge if you can tell two things. First, who is the man who masters the secret of flight in the air?’
Falconer shook his head in bewilderment. What was this game of puzzles? Looking at the Franciscan, he saw nothing but earnestness in his large brown eyes.
‘That man is me. Come, tell me the message.’
‘Not until you answer the second question. Who is it has unravelled the secret of sailing under the sea?’
Falconer was beginning to see where this was leading.
‘He who is known as Doctor Mirabilis. Friar Roger Bacon. Is this message from him? He alone knows of my little… obsession with the secrets of flight, and I his concerning undersea ships.’
Pecham nodded, the glow from the fire turning his face a ruddy colour as he gazed into the greyish-red ash.
‘I am sorry to play these games, but my brother insisted I ask the questions of you before I delivered his message. He is somewhat… worried just now by the absurd notion he is persecuted by his own order.’
Falconer could see how painful this all was for John Pecham. He was a Franciscan, and deeply religious, and yet he was also a disciple of Roger Bacon’s obsession with experimental science. It was a calling that conflicted with the demands of the Church hierarchy, and of the religious order of which they were both members. Bacon had once had the support of Pope Clement and had written copiously concerning knowledge and the world. But Clement had died some years ago, and Roger had disappeared into the depths of the Franciscan order somewhere in France. Pecham, however, must have made contact with him recently. Indeed, as the Franciscan had just returned from the University of Paris, Falconer wondered if that was where Roger was now. He grasped Pecham’s arm excitedly.
‘You have seen him? Is he well?’
The Franciscan grimaced and extricated his arm from Falconer’s vice-like grasp.
‘I did not see him as such. He is… cloistered away in a cell. I had this message from one who had seen him, however. I am just the bearer of a second-hand missive.’
‘And what is this message that must be conveyed by word of mouth only?’
Pecham formed the words in his brain carefully, reciting them just as he had been told them.
‘That he who designs submarine ships would speak with he who flies in the air with the purpose of perpetuating knowledge.’ He grimaced. ‘There. I promised I would pass on the message just as it was delivered to me. But I have to say, it only serves to confirm my fears that Friar Roger has gone mad. He is set on writing an encyclopedia of all knowledge but fears that anything he writes will be destroyed unless he also passes it on to others. It seems you are to be one of those selected to be his memory.’
‘But how am I to get to Paris in the first place? There are my teaching duties, my students and the cost to consider.’
Pecham smiled conspiratorially.
‘The chancellor awaits your petition to be allowed to study the effect of Bishop Tempier’s Condemnations on the teaching of Aristotle at the University of Paris.’
The Franciscan was referring to the results of a meeting of conservative clergy under the guidance of the Bishop of Paris in December of 1270. The tract that emanated from the good bishop’s office sought to ban certain Aristotelian teachings in Paris. Thirteen propositions had been listed as false and heretical, but that had had little influence on William Falconer in Oxford. Pecham patted him on the shoulder.
‘Who is more suitable to gauge the reaction now than Oxford’s most splendid proponent of Aristotle’s thought Regent Master William Falconer?’
Falconer’s face creased into a wry smile.
‘It seems that my path has been laid out for me.’
The truth was that he did not mind at all being manipulated in this way. Hadn’t he only just been thinking that his life of teaching had become routine and dull? Here was a chance to travel to Paris and to seek out a meeting with his old friend Roger Bacon. It was dawning on him how much he missed the incisive and argumentative mind of the man. He nodded his agreement.
‘In which case, I have no choice but to go.’
His interview with the chancellor was as swift and painless as that with Pecham. William de Bosco was a new appointment to the post, which controlled the administration of the university. He was a safe and secure appointment, made to redress the balance of the previous incumbent, Thomas Bek, who had been deposed due to his overweening ambition. True to the meaning of his name, de Bosco was a short, stocky man who seemed to be firmly planted in the good earth. His demeanour was similarly stolid, indeed almost wooden. He ushered Falconer into his presence and bade him take a seat. In similar circumstances, Bek would have kept his visitor standing. Especially William Falconer, whom he had detested as a disruptive element in the good running of the university. De Bosco looked almost pleased to see the troublesome regent master, and he got straight to the point.
‘William, Brother Pecham has recommended you as our envoy to Paris. You understand what you are to do there?’
Falconer smiled and nodded.
‘Yes, Chancellor.’
Indeed he did know, but it was not to be the errand that de Bosco was sending him on. The chancellor seemed reassured, however, and not a little relieved that he did not have to enter into a taxing discussion of heretical teachings.
‘Good, good. And you are not to worry about your teaching duties, nor the good running of Aristotle’s Hall. That can all be managed in your absence.’
‘But that is my only source of income. If I am not earning it, how am I to fund my journey and sojourn at the university, sir?’
De Bosco waved a dismissive hand and leaned forward with the air of a conspirator. He gleefully whispered in Falconer’s ear, obviously loving his new-found powers.
‘I have plundered the university chest to pay for you and another master to carry out your task.’
Falconer frowned. Another master? Pecham had not told him that he was to have a companion. Was he then to be spied on?
‘Why do I have to have someone travelling with me?’
De Bosco waved his hand again in a gesture that he obviously found quite satisfying.
‘It’s nothing. I just need someone to… erm… ensure that no error
s are made in the collection of facts concerning the Condemnations. Someone who can act as your scribe.’
And your spy, thought Falconer. Maybe de Bosco was not as dull as he appeared.
‘And who is this secretary to be?’
De Bosco grinned broadly.
‘I have already spoken to a young man, newly qualified as master of the university, who would benefit from such a post. He has no living at the moment, so he is more than eager to assist you. He is fresh, and with a sound if rather conventional brain that will suit the purpose perfectly.’
Falconer was beginning to get worried about who this companion might be. It sounded as though he would be saddled with a conservative drudge who would dog his every step and prevent him seeking out Roger Bacon.
‘Who is this paragon of virtue, may I ask?’
‘Pecham recommended him. He is one of your former students, Master Thomas Symon.’
THREE
Falconer had a spring in his step despite the icy conditions as he returned to Aristotle’s Hall after his interview with the chancellor. Pecham had manipulated the entire project. He had ensured that Falconer would have no impediment to his meeting with Roger Bacon by suggesting Thomas Symon to de Bosco. The chancellor, new to Oxford, was completely unaware that the young man was more than a student of Falconer’s. He was learning to assist Falconer with the more medical aspects of the murder cases that came the regent master’s way. His cool brain could handle the dissection of bodies to try to understand what caused the person’s death, where Falconer shied away from this gruesome task of cutting up flesh.
