Читать книгу The Black Rose - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 10

Most classes were held in the churches of the town, but some of the masters had to find quarters elsewhere, in inns and even in private homes. Following the instructions he had received, Walter arrived at the Sign of the Ruffled Grouse, a tall house of stone and plaster in the east parish. The ground floor consisted of one large room and, when he entered, it was already filled almost to overflowing. Students sat on the reed-strewn floor, with knees hunched up to provide a resting place for ink and quill and parchment. There was no suggestion of fire in the reredos and, finding a place in a far corner, Walter wrapped his cloak about his legs to keep warm.

He had time to observe that the students were, almost without exception, poorly dressed. Certainly there was not a fur-lined hood in the room. All about him were close-cropped polls and serious faces. No one paid any attention to him.

Because of his position he could not see much of Roger Bacon when the latter entered the room; no more, in fact, than a single glimpse of a tonsured head above the brown cowl. He was conscious, nevertheless, of a sense of mounting excitement. The students about him had straightened up instantly like dogs on leash or horses set for a tilting. All he heard was the rustle of straw and rushes and the soft fall of the master’s bare feet, and yet he felt as though a shout had gone up, the reverberations of which still filled the room.

“Today I shall speak the common tongue,” began Friar Bacon. His voice was full and musical. “It is wise to do so because I propose to deal with the sciences and with certain wonderful things I have seen from afar much as you glimpse a star, half believing it within the reach of your hands and yet knowing full well that it lies an endless distance away across the great paths of heaven. When you speak of the sciences, even though they concern matters that can be demonstrated as truth, it is well to do so in the plainest of words lest the sense be fouled in the telling. Therefore I shall recite you my tales of wonder in the tongue we use when we tread the roads with our fellows and when we sit down to meat.

“Nevertheless, I must begin with a Latin phrase you have often heard.” His voice was beginning to take on volume. “They say to you, Credo ut intelligam—believe so ye may understand. It is said as though it came direct from the Word of God and must on that account be accepted without question. I question it, my young friends. Nay, I cast it out as being utterly false. I say to you instead, Intelligo ut credam—understand so ye may believe!”

His voice fell off for a moment. By craning his neck around the shoulders of the man in front, Walter was able to get a clearer view of this daring friar. Roger Bacon, he saw, had a long and rather solemn face, with a hooked nose and a firm jaw. He would have seemed little different from any other Franciscan if it had not been for his eyes. They were deep-set, as brown as the robe he wore and vibrant with the bold and venturesome spirit of the man himself.

“He has none of the look of a dabbler in magic,” thought Walter.

“If we are to learn,” went on the monk, “we must clear our minds of the cobwebs of old teaching and the dust of dogma. It is so simple a matter to reach the truth when that has been done. It lies all about us: in the air we breathe, in the life which pulses around us, in the natural laws which govern our simplest actions. The laws of nature are not hidden away in forgotten or forbidden books. We do not reach an understanding of them by the mumbling of spells and incantations. We can reach them only by watching and by winnowing the truth and the reason from what we see.

“Consider as simple a matter as the use of a bow,” he said, after a pause. “You release the arrow, and it soars into the air. The power that sends the arrow to its mark is in the arm of the bowman. Do any of you doubt that? But has it occurred to you that the source of that power remains in the arm while yet the arrow continues its flight? It is a power, then, that can be transferred. Is it not equally certain that the power is manifested in degrees? Yes, you may say, because some arms are stronger than others. It is conceivable that an arm might be strong enough to launch an arrow so far that it would pass out of sight. Is it not conceivable also that the power might be created in other ways than by the bend of a human arm? Ergo, some other power might be developed of such potency that by means of it a cart could be picked up from the earth—yea, even with men in it, wearing armor on their backs and pikes in their hands—and set to soaring like an arrow through the sky.”

This was sheer sorcery. Walter should have been listening with the scorn reserved for talk of the kind, but instead he found himself seething with excitement. Could it be sorcery, he asked himself, when it was so reasonable? He had heard of great machines which battered down the walls of cities with stones of enormous size. He found himself thinking: “This is not black magic. Some day we may find these sources of new power, and then indeed carts will soar through the air. If only I could live long enough to see that day, and even to be one of those who rode in them!”

He was sure that his sudden change of mind was not due to the persuasive effect of necromancy. Roger Bacon was taking him to a new world; a place of great wonders and of strange winds and of lights, unbearably strong, where the secrets of time and space were known and miracles were wrought.

The teacher was speaking now of glass and the uses to which it could be put. Curious things resulted when two surfaces, one concave and one convex, were held together. “Some day,” he declared, “it may be possible to see all the way across the water from Dover to Calais, and to see trees on the shore and men walking under the trees, and even the sands that the men walk on.” The talk was being steered carefully to the point he desired to make, the need for continuous experiment. “We must never believe a thing until we have seen it performed before our own eyes. Not once but twice, thrice, a score of times. Nor must we build one belief on another until we are sure that the first is true beyond any possible dispute.”

As an example he began to tell of a startling experiment on which he was engaged. Dealing with certain substances, he had stumbled on a result he could hardly yet accept. It had been reached only after much elimination of materials and a continuous substitution of method. When he came to this point, Roger Bacon paused and looked about him, the light in his eyes kindling until they seemed like sparks of fire. “Seven parts of salt-petre,” he announced. “It must be pure and not the crude nitrum which is so often used instead. Add to it three parts of sulphur and five of charred young hazel-wood. Then set the mass alight.”

Walter stirred uneasily. What strange secret was to be revealed to them through the medium of these everyday words?

“It blazes up,” cried Roger Bacon, “like the rending of the world on the Day of Wrath. It shakes everything close at hand like an earthquake. And when the smoke has blown away, and the last echo has died down, there is nothing left, not even enough powder to fill the eye of a needle!”

A silence had fallen on the room. Walter could tell by the quick breathing of those around him that they had been carried away by the announcement, even as he had himself.

“To what uses can this strange law of nature be put? I wish most devoutly that I knew! I wish the scales could be lifted from my eyes so I could see far into the future, when this powder I have discovered will be put to many uses. By that time wiser men than I am will have found means of controlling and utilizing its great force. I think it will be employed to break down walls and to tear out the sides of hills for the makers of roads. Of one thing I am certain: it will be used in the waging of war.” He paused, as though reluctant to go on. “I fear that means will be found to confine the shock of it and to direct it in one course so that all who stand in the path of it will be rent like the wicked at the last reckoning. I think sometimes I should destroy my notes and force from my mind all memory of the means by which it is unleashed. Perhaps I would do mankind a service if I did so; for I fear the uses to which it will be put, and I foresee much misery for mankind because of it.”

Walter was so bemused with what he had heard that he missed much of what followed. He was indulging in dreams of great instruments of war which lifted black muzzles as sinister as the heads of dragons over rims of bastioned stone and belched forth the death-dealing mixture which Roger Bacon had discovered. Not for a single moment did he doubt the truth of what he had heard. When he was able to concentrate again on what was being said, the teacher had gone on to quite different matters.

He was speaking now of that faraway country known as Cathay. It lay far to the east, Walter knew, even beyond the kingdom of Prester John, and it was of a fabulous wealth. He pricked up his ears at once.

“I wish that my legs were young enough to carry me over the sands of the desert and across the tall mountains which lie between, and that my spirit were equal to the venture,” Bacon was saying. “It is an old land and steeped in the knowledge of many ages. I think it may very well be that all the new things of which I have spoken are already in use there. It may be they have carriages that fly and mirrors that bring the mountains to the sea and the islands to the shore. Perhaps they discovered long ago the powder that explodes. And, if they know these things, they know much more that we have never yet dreamt. And, of course, it is a fabulously rich land. They drive their elephants with goads of gold, and they hang out loops of pearls in front of their shops.” He sighed deeply and shook his head. “How maddening it is to live in darkness and yet to know that on the other side of the wall is the light ye seek!”

A class was pouring out from the Priory of St. Frideswide’s when Walter passed on his way home. They gave him a friendly hail; one of them shouted across to him, “You played up well last night, Bastard!” It was the first time since coming to Oxford that he had received such friendly notice, and a grateful glow took possession of him.

One of them ran over and spoke to Walter in urgent tones. “It’s said the chancellor is wroth over what happened, and that you are one chosen for punishment. You and the chamber-deacon. It might be well if both of you left Oxford for a time.”

This should have been disturbing news. At the end of the year he was going up for his determination, which would elevate him to the ranks of the sophisters, the immediate goal of his ambitions. Ordinarily he would have felt much cast down. But even the possibility of losing this chance could make no impression on his exalted mood.

“I think you are right,” he said. “We must go away. But it won’t matter. Perhaps there are better things to do than to mumble over dry books.” A purpose which clearly had been in his mind as he listened to Roger Bacon, although he had not suspected it until now, suddenly blazed out into words. “We can go to Cathay!”

He hurried on his way to Butterbump Hall. “I don’t want to live in darkness either,” he was saying to himself. “I want to see what is on the other side of the wall!”

Giles the manciple met him at the entrance to the Hall with a most solemn face. “It is bad news,” he said, shaking his head. “It is very sad indeed. I hope it doesn’t mean ye’ll be leaving us, good Master Wat. But he says to me——”

“Who has been speaking to you?”

Giles motioned over his shoulder with a thumb in the direction of the refectory. “I put him in there. Master Hornpepper would be sore angry if he knew ’cause he wur mud to his knees. I made him scrub it off. He said he had been on the way all night.”

A countryman was waiting in the refectory with the patience of his class. Turning as Walter came in, he displayed to view an iron collar around his neck, marked with the name of his master. On his arm was the gules crosslet of Bulaire.

“Are ye Walter of Gurnie?” he asked, in a mumbling tone.

“Yes.” A premonition of some great loss had taken possession of Walter. He waited impatiently for the man to go on.

“I wur sent by Simeon Bautrie. Ye’re to come with me at once. The good Earl of Lessford, your father and my master, is dead at Bulaire.”