The Spirit Well be-3 Read online

  Outside they found a dry place to hunker down until a more convivial hour. Later, when the town began to stir, they crawled from hiding and joined the early-rising folk. Douglas bought two savoury pies from a baker and two jars of beer from a brew mistress with a cask in a barrow; they ate their pies and drank their ale, and watched the square slowly trundle to life.

  As they sat eating, there arose a tremendous squawking and honking. From the street to the east there appeared three figures-a man and two young girls-herding a flock of long-necked geese. The man held a slender staff, and the girls each wielded a bendy willow switch, expertly keeping the flock together. They moved into the square and began setting up a flimsy pen made of wicker hurdles pulled from a stack against a wall. While they were about this chore, another poulterer likewise set up his pen a little distance away.

  The next arrivals were a farmer and his wife who carried a long pole between them on which a dozen or more live chickens were hung by the feet. The two placed the pole on a simple wooden frame that appeared to be set up for this purpose. The farmwife then produced a basket of eggs and settled herself on a stool to wait for customers. Other farmers appeared-some with chickens, others with ducks or pigeons-and several folk bearing great billowing sacks of feathers.

  “The poultry market,” Douglas mused, finishing the last of his beer. “Come, Snipe-let’s go before I start sneezing.”

  Douglas rose and returned the wooden jars, then went back to the lodging house where Master Bacon was incarcerated. As before, no one was around, so Douglas simply knocked on the door; it was opened a few moments later, and the long, unshaven face of the great scientist peered blearily out.

  Douglas was taken aback at the change in the master’s appearance: stoop-shouldered in a filthy robe, his flesh slack and pasty, the eyes usually so keen with the bright light of an unquenchable intellect were now dull and watery; indeed, the scholar’s whole demeanour seemed bowed with a grinding fatigue of care.

  “Yes?” he said, his voice a creaking rasp. “Was there something?”

  “Master Bacon,” began Douglas, somewhat uncertainly.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Indeed, sir. It is Brother Douglas-from the abbey at Tyndyrn.” There was no immediate response, so he added, “We have spoken in the past about your work with a particular manuscript in which we share an interest.”

  This last produced a result, as a glimmer of recognition lit the face briefly, then flickered out once more. “Ah, yes. I remember you,” the master replied vaguely. “God be good to you, brother. I hope this day finds you well.”

  “And you, brother.” Douglas hesitated, then asked, “Are you permitted to receive visitors?”

  A faint smile touched the scholar’s lips. “Strictly speaking, no. But”-he peered beyond his guest into the narrow corridor and landing-“ as you see, visitors are not exactly clamouring for my attention. It will do no harm to allow an exception.”

  “I would not like to make trouble for you, master. Or make your present difficulties worse.”

  “The worst, I fear, has already happened.” The most intelligent man in Oxford shook his head lightly. “A brief visit cannot further aggravate my present difficulties, I assure you. And a visitor is cheer itself to me just now. Pray, speak-and let me feast on the sound of a voice not my own.”

  “As you will, master,” replied Douglas. Turning to Snipe, he gave a whispered command, and the feral boy turned and started away.

  “A moment, if you will,” called Friar Bacon after him. He moved aside, leaving the door ajar, only to reappear a moment later bearing a large crock with a wooden lid. “If you would do me this kindness,” he said apologetically. “My night pot-it must be emptied, and I so loathe tossing it out the window into the street. I find the practise barbaric.”

  He offered the crock through the lattice of boards blocking his door. “I do most humbly beg your pardon, but-”

  “Of course.” Douglas took the crock and passed it to Snipe. “Empty this outside,” he said, “and stay at the bottom of the stairs. Give me a whistle if anyone comes in.”

  Snipe uttered a low, throaty growl of displeasure, but took the crock and retreated into the shadows of the staircase. They heard the door slam, and all grew quiet once more.

  “I am indebted to you,” said Roger Bacon.

  “On the contrary, master. It is I who am in debt to you, and I mean to repay you as best I can.”

  “You are too kind, brother, too kind.” He offered his wan smile once more. “It is months since I had a visitor. I have almost forgotten how to behave. I could wish I had some refreshment to offer you, but I have only what they bring me one day to the next, and that is little enough. What was it that you wanted to see me about?”

  “It is about a manuscript,” replied Douglas. Putting his hand into his sleeve pouch, he withdrew a small scroll of parchment and passed it through the wooden bars.

  Friar Bacon slipped off the binding ribbon and unrolled the scroll, holding it before his face. “My eyes have been giving me difficulty of late,” he explained as he read. “These rooms are so dim, and I never can get enough candles.” He scanned the scroll more closely. “Yes!” he said, his voice quickening. “I remember this. You are the scholar from Tyndyrn. Did you write this?” He shook the parchment in his hand. “I once made a simulacrum of this, I believe.”

  “Yes, master, that is so,” confirmed Douglas.

  “I cannot think what happened to it.”

  “We discussed the origin of the text, and you most generously provided a translation,” Douglass offered, quickly skating over the fact that he had ordered Snipe to steal the professor’s notes to aid his deciphering work. “I came to ask you to ascertain if I have rendered the text correctly.”

  “Ah!” Bacon returned to his scrutiny of the manuscript. He read, his lips moving slightly now and then, nodding to himself. “Well, well,” he said, looking up at last. “I think we shall have to begin calling you professor.”

  “But is it accurate? What I have written-is it correct?”

  “Oh, indeed. Correct in the main, and in most particulars.”

  “Most?”

  “There are a few small errors,” allowed the master, falling naturally into the role of a teacher. “But considering the difficulty you faced, it is a most worthy achievement. You are to be congratulated, brother.”

  “Thank you,” replied Douglas. Relief, unexpected as it was pleasurable, swept through him. It was better news than he had hoped to hear. “But would you mind showing me where I have gone astray?”

  “Not at all.” He held the scroll up to the makeshift bars of his cell. “You see this symbol-how it curves to the left? What does a left-curling spiral indicate?”

  “A retrograde interval,” answered Douglas.

  Bacon nodded. “And the four small points along its length?”

  “Those represent physical way markers to be used for calibrating time.”

  “Just so,” said Bacon. He raised a cautionary finger. “ When such marks as these are above the line, or on the outer side of a curve, they represent way markers, as you say.”

  “Yes?”

  “But the meaning changes when such marks are to be found below the line or on the inner side of the curve.” The priest smiled. “What have we here?” He tapped the symbol in question with a long finger.

  “Three dots on the inner curve,” replied Douglas.

  “And what does this configuration represent?”

  Douglas stared at the tiny symbol and wracked his brain to remember. “Intersections?”

  “Portals would be more precise, I believe-conjunctions of several pathways-a nexus, if you will.”

  “Portals,” sighed Douglas in agreement. “Of course.”

  “As for the rest, the orientation and location alignments-these are all rendered correctly.” He re-rolled the scroll and passed it back through the barrier. “Of course, I would need access to my papers in my tower study bef
ore I could offer a definitive judgement on your work. But for purposes of discussion, I think we can conclude that you have translated the cypher with admirable success. It is a most subtle and demanding art, but you have plumbed the depths of the mystery set before you. I salute you, brother. My congratulations.”

  “Your praise means more to me than I can say, master.”

  “I hope I do not have to remind you that the knowledge you have gained is to remain the province of your own keeping. It is not to be shared by a wider public.” He regarded Douglas with solemn urgency. “As you can see”-he indicated his own predicament with a wave of his hand-“the authorities do not treat kindly truths that confound their own more limited understandings. The stake awaits anyone who ventures too far into realms deemed unacceptable for investigation.” He paused, nodding for emphasis. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Completely,” Douglas assured him. “I hasten to assure you that no one shall hear of our inquiry from me. I intend to guard the secret most jealously. Indeed, I have already destroyed all my notes and jottings regarding the phenomenon and its delineation in theory.”

  Roger Bacon offered a sad smile. “That is for the best-though one could well wish otherwise. One day, perhaps, the world will be a place where knowledge such as this can be lauded-not hidden.”

  There was a noise in the stairwell below, and a moment later Snipe’s pale moon face rose in the shadows. He placed the chamber pot on the landing and made a hurry-up gesture before disappearing again.

  “Someone is coming,” said Douglas. He picked up the crock and passed it to the master. “I will leave you now.”

  “Yes, you should go,” urged Bacon. “My keepers are bringing me bread and water. It would be best for both of us if they did not find you here.”

  “Unfortunately, I must return to the abbey tonight. But is there anything I can get you before I depart-anything at all?”

  The master shook his head. “My needs are simple, and as such are supplied. Still,” he added as the thought occurred to him, “one could wish for a little more parchment.”

  “Say no more,” replied Douglas, moving away from the barred door. “I will see that it is in your hands before I leave.”

  “And a horn of ink?”

  “You shall have it-and candles too.”

  “Thank you, dear friend. You are a very saint.”

  “Not at all,” Douglas answered from the staircase. “It is I who should be thanking you. Farewell, Doctor Bacon-until we meet again.”

  “Go with God, my friend,” called Bacon, closing the door once more.

  On the landing below, Douglas met a robed church official ascending the stairs and, behind him, a squat fellow carrying a pail in one hand and a pike in the other. He could not avoid being seen, so he smiled, bowed, and wished them both a good day-all the while moving towards the door. He collected Snipe, who was hovering about the entrance like a sullen cloud, and hurried off across the market square. He lingered in town long enough to visit the chandlers and purchase a dozen large candles, then went on to procure some parchment and a flask of ink, some uncut quills, and a new pen knife. He arranged for all these things to be taken to Master Bacon’s lodgings when the church bells tolled prime.

  “Come, Snipe,” he said. “We had best make ourselves scarce for a while.” He struck off down the street in search of an inn where they could wait for the Oxford Ley to become active and the assault on the Skin Map to begin in earnest.

  CHAPTER 30

  In Which Priorities Are Realigned

  Incredible as Kit’s unprecedented appearance seemed to everyone concerned, the tale he unfolded for them was more incredible still. Sitting in the tiny kitchen of the mountaintop observatory, Kit held his listeners rapt. Over big bowls of Brother Lazarus’ spaghetti puttanesca, Wilhelmina’s floury bread, and numerous glasses of the abbey’s hefty red wine, he described life in the Stone Age as he knew it: River City Clan and its organisation; the order and rhythm of daily existence; the flora and fauna; the various individuals and their orientation to the clan and to their world; their unstinting care, support, and respect for one another; and their extraordinary means of communication.

  Wilhelmina, leaning on her elbows with chin in hand, her dark eyes wide, kept up a steady, murmuring stream of translation for the priest, who shook his head in continual amazement. Shorn of his matted, shaggy locks and shaved clean, Kit no longer looked like the Wild Man in a circus sideshow. In his clean black cassock he might have passed for one of the abbey’s resident monastics-except the things he was describing were things no monk had ever put into words. Story after story, each more astounding than the last, poured out in a flood of verbal astonishments. Every now and then Brother Lazarus would jot down a note for later reference, or a question. But neither he nor Mina wanted to interrupt for fear of missing something amazing.

  They talked long into the night and the next morning. After broaching the subject of mounting a return expedition to explore the cave and retrieve the painted symbols from the walls, Brother Lazarus beetled off to consult his superiors. Meanwhile, Kit and Wilhelmina sat outside the observatory tower on a wooden bench, taking in the bright morning sun.

  “I found that plaque in the church at Sant’Antimo in Italy and followed the trail,” Mina explained, “and it led me here to Brother Lazarus. His real name is Giambattista Beccaria, and he is a traveller- like us.” Her voice took on a no-nonsense tone. “That is a secret you will take to the grave-for his good as well as for ours, no one must know about any of us.” She lightened again. “You can trust him, Kit. He is one of us. Actually, he’s the one who’s responsible for finding you the first time.”

  “I’ve always wondered how you managed to pull that off.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I figured.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he stretched his feet out in front of him, leaned his head against the back of the bench, closed his eyes, and tilted his face to the sun, enjoying the warmth. “Have a go.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, turning her eyes to the valley, lost in a blue haze of morning mist. “I don’t know about you, but my life has ceased to have linear chronology. I seem to be here, there, and everywhere. Time gets a little fuzzy.”

  “You got that right,” affirmed Kit, his voice hoarse from talking more in the last twelve hours than he had in the previous twelve months combined. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been coming to Montserrat for a few years now. On one early visit I actually arrived and realised that I had returned before the last time I was here! From Brother Lazarus’ point of view, we had not yet had the previous visit.” She gave a little laugh. “That was a real mind bender. In the end, I had to go away again because it was all just too weird.”

  Kit gave a passable imitation of an En-Ul grunt of agreement.

  “Anyway, it has taught me not to make any assumptions, to keep quiet and observe what’s going on around me and try to blend in so I don’t alarm anyone. I’ve also learned how to calibrate my jumps better. I can leave right now, go back to Prague for a month or two, and then come back here and you won’t have arrived yet.”

  “Yeah,” murmured Kit. “But you would know that I was going to arrive eventually, right?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes.” She clasped her hands and unclasped them. “I don’t always know what I’m going to remember. You just said I found you in Egypt.”

  “Right. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  “Kit, I have no memory of that at all. For me-the Mina you are talking to right this moment-it hasn’t happened yet.”

  He raised his head, opened his eyes, and stared at her. “Man, that is weird,” he said after a moment. “Mina, you showed up in Egypt just in the nick of time to break Giles and me out of the tomb. You were wearing something like army fatigues, and your hair was tied up in a scarf-it was light blue. You got us out of that terrible crypt where Burleigh had locked us and left us to die. Are you telling me you don’t remember any of that?
”

  “I have the scarf. But the rest of it?” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Sorry. I don’t have any memory of that.”

  “Well, what is the last thing you recall?”

  “I remember going to Egypt to meet Thomas Young and to collect you and Giles and the map,” she said slowly. “Then we all went back to Prague and ran into Burleigh. I sent you to the gorge, took Giles home, and came here. That’s all.”

  “But before that-you don’t remember coming to Egypt the first time and breaking us out of the tomb?”

  “Sorry.”

  Kit sat up and put his head in his hands, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. Fearing she had caused an information overload, Mina put a comforting hand on his neck and massaged it gently.

  “But it happened,” he said, his voice falling softly.

  “Not to me,” she told him. “Not yet.”

  Kit nodded, trying to penetrate this new mystery.

  “Listen, when we’re together we occupy the same time frame, and the sequence of events is the same for both of us,” Mina suggested. “But when we are separated we go to different times, right? So if we meet up again in a third place, like we are right now, why assume that we’ll meet each other at the exact point where we left off? We might be catching one another before or after some arbitrary point in the sequence of events.” She offered a reassuring pat. “Does that help at all?”

  “A little,” Kit allowed. “Maybe.”

  The silence stretched between them for long moments that seemed like hours.

  “Cosimo said it wasn’t time travel,” observed Kit at last. “He was always at pains to point that out, and I never understood why. He’d say, ‘Remember, Kit-this isn’t time travel.’ I remember thinking: when it so obviously is time travel, why make such a big deal of denying it?” He looked around at Wilhelmina and gave a half smile. “I think I’m finally beginning to understand why.”

  “Well, it is time travel, and it isn’t. When we make a leap, we do travel in time, after all. But that isn’t all we do.”