Falconer and the Face of God

by Ian Morson

  With the departure of the present Chancellor from the scene, it seemed perfectly reasonable to de Cantilupe to occupy his residence. After all, it had been his own until a few years ago. And looking round, he saw that the parsimonious de Cicestre had not exactly put his hand into his purse to furnish the house. The wall hangings were those that de Cantilupe had purchased - a little shabbier now, but still serviceable. Even the furniture was the same, with the familiar stains and scratches that he had made himself. He sighed and wrapped his fur robe around his cold limbs as Halegod grovelled at his feet, blowing life into the feeble flickerings in the hearth. It all seemed like a step backwards, but then sometimes you had to retreat to go forwards again. He knew this was a critical time for him.

  In one of the more imposing stone houses in the centre of Oxford, an old man sat poring over an ancient text. His thin, cadaverous frame was hunched in the chair, and his shallow but rapid breath froze in the chill of the unheated room. Despite the cold, though, he felt feverish and sweat ran down his domed forehead from the line of straggly hair that clung to his balding pate. More sweat from his palms stained the already much thumbed volume. That morning he had woken up to recall fragments of a dream in which he had tried to run away from a cloud of bees that had inexplicably entered his house. In the dream his legs were like the trunks of a tree - rooted to the spot - and he could not escape the buzzing swarm. As they descended on him and began to sting, he woke with a start to realize the day was already well advanced, and the sun was streaming through the window arch of his bedchamber. His bedclothes were twisted around his limbs and damp with sweat.

  He had risen, dressing hurriedly, and scurried to the stack of texts he kept in the main room on the ground floor of his house. Little sunlight penetrated here in the winter owing to both the low sun and the close press of houses, and it did not help that the shutters were closed tight. He struggled across the darkened room and at first in his haste he could not find what he wanted. Then he saw part of the title written in his own hand on the vellum cover jutting out from the bottom of a pile of books: ... Abecedarii Danielis Prophete.

  In his haste he tipped the stack of texts on to the floor, and retrieved the one he wanted from the heap scattered on the rushes - the Book of Dreams according to the ABC of Daniel the Prophet. Thumbing through the pages he had confirmed what he feared. Both the swarm of bees and being unable to run were portents of evil in themselves. To have them both together was a cause for grave concern, and on the very day he had decided to try out the next stage of his experiment to create the quintessence. Perhaps his experiment would blow up in his face, perhaps the warning was about something else he could not foresee. The spectre of death loomed large in his mind, but whether his own, or a death caused by him, was not clear. Still, he always trusted the warnings from his dream world, and decided he would consult Hermes before he began. He hurried down to the cellar to set up the altar.

  The wagon ground its ponderous way along the icy road between Abingdon and Oxford. The breath of the two horses that pulled it steamed out of their nostrils and mingled with the whitish trails of mist that obscured any view the occupants of the wagon might have had of the passing countryside. They were locked in a frozen landscape, silently huddled down against the bleak weather. John Peper sat up front, guiding the horses' steady plod through the crackling mud. Next to him sat the two women - Margaret, and Agnes Cheke, feeling awkward at the strained atmosphere between husband and wife. Margaret's raven hair was tucked under the woollen scarf that was wound tightly round her head and neck. Her slender figure was muffled in layers of clothing topped by the crimson, fur-lined cloak that Stefano sometimes wore as God in the pageants.

  Margaret Peper was deep in thought, keeping boredom and the cold, depressing weather at bay by reviewing her life. She could not remember a time when she had not been dependent on someone, usually a man, for sustenance. She had never known her mother, who it was said had died giving birth to her. And her father had sold her to an acrobat when she was barely seven years old. The acrobat had taught her his skills and then she had toured the country in his company. He had convinced her that she should be grateful to him for the very bread she ate, and she didn't question it in later years when she did all the work and he simply collected their earnings from the crowds she drew. By then he had grown stiff-jointed, his once muscled limbs becoming knobbly at the knee and elbow. But his manner was such that she did not challenge his taking the lion's share of the money. After all, he kept reminding her, he had taught her and fed her when she was of no immediate value to him. She paid for that training by succumbing to his advances when she was barely old enough to understand what he was doing to her, as well as by entertaining the crowds with acrobatic feats. Then one morning she had woken to the sound of the birds singing in the trees - as usual they were sleeping under the stars - and he had not responded to her voice. She tried to shake him awake, but he was stiff and cold. The old acrobat had died in the night. She might have then found her independence, but as fate would have it she met up with John Peper two days later. He had seen her perform and realized she was exceptional at her art as well as being beautiful. But she was struggling to work on her own, as she had no one to collect money from the crowd as she carried out her saltatorial contortions. When she stopped to collect, the crowd drifted away. Quickly John had taken off his hat, and made the collection for her. They decided to work together though John had no particular skills, and they had eventually married almost for convenience's sake. They had still struggled to make enough money to live until she had been spotted by de Askeles. Now, having joined de Askeles's troupe, Margaret was dependent on another man for her continued survival. And the conflict between pleasing her husband and satisfying de Askeles was proving troublesome. If only she was rid of one of them. She was brought back to the real world by Agnes's head nodding on to her shoulder, and she sighed.

  Robert Kemp, the juggler, and Simon Godrich, goliard, trudged gloomily beside the horses, trying to benefit from the heat that radiated from their flanks. Their idle thoughts were turned to Gyles, a good and long-time friend, now dead thanks to de Askeles's carelessness: Both in their own ways contemplated what they might do. The simpleton, Will Plome, hung from the side of the wagon, mirroring the posture of the monkey that sat huddled in the cage that swayed between the wagon wheels. His thoughts were no more focused than those of the huddled beasts in the fields they passed.

  Inside the wagon was a magical world of stars and moons, shiny swords and parti-coloured caps with bells, piled on top of rolled- up sheets that hinted at exotic forests and bubbling clouds. Viols bumped against tabors, and suspended from the canvas walls empty-eyed masks rocked from side to side. They resembled some hellish assembly of brainless beasts mournfully shaking their heads at human pleading. Snug and warm in the centre of this cornucopia was tucked Stefano de Askeles, befuddled with wine, ensconced on the throne he used in his role as God. He was snoring and the sound carried out to the ears of John Peper on his perch behind the horses' rumps. Each rasping snore grated in John's head, and he ground his teeth in anguish.

  His gaze was fixed on the backs of the scrawny nags that pulled the overloaded wagon, but he didn't really see them. In his mind's eye he had Abraham's sword in his hand, the blade razor sharp and sparkling in the sun. He swung it high above Isaac, but instead of his friend Gyles de Multon the sacrifice was Stefano de Askeles. The master of the troupe tried to move, but John had bound him with real knots, rather than the fake ones he had always used on Gyles. Stefano's eyes widened in panic and he tried to plead with John, but no sound escaped his trembling lips. John tightened his grasp on the horses' reins, and in his imagination swung the sword down in a deadly arc on to de Askeles's exposed neck. His head was abruptly severed, and rolled across the stage as his life's blood spurted from the twitching body.

  Chapter Two

  ANGELS: We thank thee, Lord in sovereignty

  That us hath made so clean and clear,
<
br />   Ever in this bliss to abide with Thee.

  Grant us thy grace to live ever here.

  The Fall of Lucifer

  ‘Consider this statement - whatever runs has legs Agreed?’

  The students, whose ages ranged from a spotty fifteen to an awkward eighteen, all nodded in agreement. Their clothes were as various as their ages. Some were dressed in long fashionable robes of many colours, made from silks and other rich materials. Some were clad in simple, short tunics of drab brown fustian. It would be foolish to say that all were equals in the eyes of the university - some were destined for high office, and some would struggle to obtain a country living. But at the moment all that mattered was the quickness of their brains, and in that, a farmer's son could outstrip the offspring of the King's Chancellor.

  This was the last day of their first term at the university, and they all already thought themselves masters of logic. The regent master nodded his grizzled head of grey hair in response to their agreement, and rubbed his raw, mitten-clad hands together to drive away the cold. He paced up and down the aisle in the midst of the eager faces.

  'then consider this statement - the River Thames runs. Therefore ...’

  The final part of his fallacious syllogism was drowned out by twenty piping voices.

  'the River Thames has legs.’

  The joke was old but the young men still fell about laughing at the proposition. This was the last dies legibilis, formal day of lectures, before Christmastide and there was an expectant mood of enjoyment and of future pleasures. The regent master ruefully shook his head, and grinned, exhaling a misty cloud of breath into the chilly schoolroom. He calmed the noisy rabble with a wave of his hands, and concluded the lecture.

  ‘Go away now and read Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. You will see that all syllogisms require a process of experience by the senses, intellectus, as well as scientia, knowledge. Only by personal experience can you resolve the puzzle of a syllogism. Therefore the whole process is classed as deduction.’

  Deduction. The entire class, though new to Oxford, was aware this was the regent master's obsession. They had already heard from older students that he frequently tested his deductive abilities in the most practical of syllogistic puzzles. It was said that no murder in Oxford had remained unresolved since he came to the town. This fact filled them with awe for the big, ungainly- looking man of unconventional habits, and they sat silently under his piercing blue gaze until one nervous youth broke the spell.

  ‘Master Falconer, may we leave now?’

  As though jerked back to reality from a dream world, William Falconer grunted his dismissal, and waved the students away with his bony hands.

  ‘Go and enjoy your Christmas wherever you are bound. But don't forget to read your texts also.’

  As he gathered his own books from the raised desk he rarely sat at, preferring to be on a level with his students, the youths scrambled for the door. Some were bound for their family homes for Christmas, but most would stay in Oxford. Either their homes were too far to travel to and from in the short break, or they were simply too poor to make the journey. Those staying behind had already been forewarned that Christmas in Oxford was a lively time, when songs were sung and stories told. The students' halls could be unruly, boisterous places when election of a Lord of Misrule turned the accepted order of the world upside down for a day. The master in charge of the hall might even allow in strolling players to perform their mummery, or get the students to enact scenes themselves. And there was always plenty to drink. Some of the youths leaving Falconer's lecture were already testing their singing voices, mingling lovers' songs with carols.

  ‘Oh, my heart is true, for Mary she said so;’ sang one pimply lad, who seemed barely capable of arousing anything other than mother love in a woman. Two others were rendering a harmonious anthem of rejoicing as they disappeared down the muddy alley.

  ‘Make we merry in hall and bower,

  This time was born our Saviour.’

  For Falconer the break presented an opportunity to work some more on the scientific texts he fancied incorporating into one document. He had even thought of a title - Summa Philosophise - though he was concerned it might be a little pretentious. To date he had written treatises on the nature of light, celestial spheres, and stones and minerals, in which he had incorporated much of the fragmentary material smuggled out of France from his close friend Friar Roger Bacon. He had not seen the man for more than ten years, since the Franciscan general, John of Fidenza, had virtually imprisoned the friar in 1257. His outspoken views on the nature of the world had not endeared him to his order. Some condemned him as a magician. To Falconer he was a towering thinker, and he was afraid his ideas might be lost to the world. This fear had spurred him on to writing his own Summa, borrowing freely from the incarcerated friar.

  He sighed and closed the door on the tiny lecture room he rented in the ramshackle two-storey building in Schools Street. He was beginning to wonder why he was still teaching at Oxford. He was much older than most of the other regent masters, who lectured, as each must after being incepted as a master, only for a few years before finding a lucrative benefice somewhere, or service in the King's household as a clerk. He had wasted years pursuing other, ephemeral goals before he came to formal learning late in life. Had those years been truly wasted, though? Did he not know more about the world than any of his colleagues closeted in this cosy world of study? He had asked himself those questions many times and come up with many answers - none entirely satisfactory. But here he was approaching his fifth decade, and still barely surviving on the meagre benefice the Abbot of Oseney supplied, plus the few pennies per student per year the lectures provided. Was it all worth it?

  Crossing the High Street diagonally in front of the newly completed St Mary's Church, he was about to turn down Grope Lane when he heard his name called. Surreptitiously he drew his eye-lenses from the purse at his hip, and held the v-shaped device to his forehead. Looking through the glass lenses fixed at the ends of the two arms, he brought the blurred street around him into focus. His eyes had deteriorated some years ago through poring over crabbed texts in the light of a flickering candle. More recently he had been overjoyed to have his vision restored by the artifice of Samson the Jew, who had created this eye-lens device.

  The figure he saw swimming into focus was that of one of the students from his hall, Aristotle's: Hugh Pett, soon to complete his course of study and become a master himself. Unusually for Hugh, who was normally well coiffured and conscious of his own gravitas, his red hair was dishevelled and his sumptuous green robe hitched up in his fist so that he could run at full pelt down the muddy street.

  ‘Master, wait.’

  Falconer indicated that he had seen the young man, and dropped the lenses back into his purse. Pett slid to a halt in front of him, gasping for breath. The regent master smiled gently and took his arm.

  ‘Now what is the occasion of all this haste? Could it not have waited until I returned?’

  ‘A message,’ gasped Hugh.

  ‘A message that could not wait a few more hours?’

  ‘It's delivered by a friar. A Franciscan friar from Paris. He says the message is from Friar Bacon.’

  It was because John Peper was bound up in his own world of retribution that the robbers came so close to taking the jongleurs' lives and hard-earned money. As the wagon creaked its way through the gloom of Bagley Wood, John was too engrossed to see the tell-tale marks of footprints etched in the frosty grass of the clearing ahead. Normally he would have whipped up the horses at such an obvious trap, but pleasurable thoughts of Stefano's head rolling in the filth of a muddy street in Oxford distracted him. The heavy wagon even slowed further as the horses strained to haul it through a particularly muddy patch only partly frozen by the coldness of the day. Both Robert and Simon had had enough of walking. They sat wearily on the tailgate of the wagon, dangling their tired legs out of the back, and suffering the drunken declamations of de Askeles f
rom inside.

  Suddenly, a burly shape dressed in tattered clothes dropped out of a tree and landed squarely in the lap of a startled Agnes. As she squealed and fell back against an equally surprised Margaret Peper, the robber swung his club at John. Fortunately John managed to raise his left arm to protect his head, and the brutal blow slid off the fleshy part of his upper arm, tearing the cloth, but only grazing his temple. None the less, he was stunned and the horses came to a standstill as the reins were jerked and let slack. Out of the forest undergrowth appeared several more ill-dressed brigands, all wielding hefty clubs and rusty swords. One of their company, an ugly hunchback with red-rimmed goggling eyes, wrestled with the horses' traces, holding the beasts steady as his comrades-in-arms began to clamber on the wagon. Taken by surprise, the troupe of jongleurs were in disarray.

  Margaret lay curled up under the driver's seat as two other robbers clad in rags heaved themselves on to the footboard. Agnes received a ferocious blow in the face. She fell back into the wagon's interior, clutching her bloody nose, all resistance knocked out of her. At the rear of the wagon matters were equally desperate. Simon and Robert had both been thrown backwards from their perch, and Godrich sat up groggily to find Robert Kemp lying ashen-faced and out cold, blood pumping from a gash on his temple. The weather-beaten, scarred features of one of their assailants peered greedily over the rear board, his calloused fingers scrabbling to lift him into the wagon. It promised rich pickings with its store of sumptuous apparel and massive chests tightly bound with leather straps. He smiled coldly and toothlessly at the petrified Godrich, then shoved his weapon between his lips to free his hands. The musician scrabbled for something to defend himself with, his hands finding nothing better than a broken viol smashed as he had fallen on it. Against the vicious implement the robber clenched between his lips, it would be no defence at all.