The fire worm, p.15
The Fire Worm, page 15
Robert came home to Raby excellently qualified to graduate to squire. Fourteen years old by now, he continued combat training even more strenuously, mastering the sword, the axe, the lance, the dagger, and the spiked ball on a chain. He drilled in jousting. He memorized all the garbs, tinctures, charges, partitions, augmentations, and crests of heraldry so that he could identify friend or foe, iron-clad in the new-fangled plate armour. He loved the decorative aspects of heraldry.
He helped the seneschal with the castle business, which he would direct one day. He kept the keys, which he would one day own. He carried the purse. He bedded kitchen maids and peasant girls, scattering his seed in soft fleecy nests. At fifteen he wedded slim, oval-faced, golden-locked Isabel, daughter of Lord Percy. This was a double ceremony; on the same day his brother Ralph, three years his junior, was married to eleven-year-old Alice, daughter of Lord Audley, though Ralph and Alice would not consummate this till she reached fourteen summers.
Robert was everything that a knight in the making ought to be. He was bold, strong, and dextrous. He was honourable — he gave purses to the local maids whom he got with child as a result of his deflowering. He was gallantly courteous, and very fashionable in his attire. He sported long pointy red leather shoes, the points of which had to be tied up around his calf so that he didn’t trip; slashed tunics-of-many-colours with hugely-hanging scalloped sleeves, belts hung with trinkets, velvet mantles with ermine trimmings, puffed tam-o’shanters and natty furry hats. Often he wore a very brief embroidered tunic, prominently displaying his tight-clad buttocks and codpiece.
And whenever he donned chainmail and breastplate, and the hooped iron skirt and the cuisses and poleyns and greaves, and the plated gauntlets and the heavy stuffy visored helmet, not forgetting the heraldic surcoat which was his badge of identification, so as to take on any band of Bruce’s Scots who came a-raiding, he fought them like a junior Hercules, cleaving and battering.
At the age of seventeen, came the onset of his mysterious enfeebling illness …
“AIDS strikes paragon?” I scribbled. “Image of?”
I crossed this out as irrelevant. “Robert” was a model of primal bodily health and potency. Potency with females, into the bargain. There was no hint of himself having been buggered by old Balliol as a page boy in the bath, an event which might have represented Tony’s sexual assault by an uncle or grandfather. No, the only reference to homosexuality was as regards King Edward, who was a long way distant and who genuinelyhad been a homosexual and pederast.
The troublesome, lamentable, tragical title of Marlowe’s play on the subject rang a very faint bell with Tony, though he swore he had never “done” the play at school and certainly couldn’t quote from it. So why did it raise any tinkle at all? Obviously the play must have been on the syllabus at his school. Some boy in an “A” stream might have sniggeringly read out the naughty passages in Tony’s hearing; or showed the text around. The subconscious mind had a photographic, and tape recorder, memory.
One of Tony’s own brighter peers might have flashed the play when they were both adolescent. An older boy could have done so when Tony was younger, making him feel threatened. Oh, a whole number of possibilities. But though I had toyed with the idea that Tony’s fatal experience might have occurred at school, he oughtn’t to have forgotten it so completely unless he was suffering selective amnesia.
Though hark … might Tony not be Gavin — butTed ? Might Gavin stand for someone else? Might that somebody-else have fastened up Tony in his psychic cave?
Really, I doubted it. My money was on the traumatic incident having occurred much earlier, pre-school. I had the highest hopes of a successful diagnosis by tracing the roots and the outcome of Robert de Neville’s emasculating ailment. In early fourteenth-century County Durham, at any rate, it seemed unlikely that yet another mesmerist would interfere, to hold up another mirror within a mirror!
“So there I lay in my sad, sickly, stupefied decline, when important news reached my father. Our enemy Bishop Bek had invited a philosopher who was famous throughout Christendom to visit and stay with him in his palace at Durham. This philosopher was already on the road from London.
“My father decided to waylay the man; to haul him to Raby and lock him up in one of our towers. Thus he would poke a thumb in the Bishop’s eye; and perhaps gain leverage in the dispute over the stag and the feast. But my father wanted this man for another reason too — a greater reason! The philosopher was known to be an alchemist. He could change base metal into gold. My father’s informant reported that the man refused to use his art to enrich himself. He would only create gold for the benefit of those who would wage war in the service of the Cross, to spread the true faith in Christ. Of course, everyone knew the making of gold was a complicated business, costing much time and equipment; so if the man would not enrich himself on a principle, because of a sacred vow, then he needed a sponsor.
“Bek’s plan was plain to my father; and our spy confirmed it. The Bishop would argue that if only Scotland could be thoroughly subdued, then this would free the northern English to join a crusade. At present we could not reasonably abandon our homes, with an enemy at our back. A pile of alchemist’s gold would finance the subjugation of the Scots.
“What’s more, once the national hopes of the Scots were thoroughly dashed, those troublesome Scottish nobles too might be glad to join the crusade! They were, after all, loyal sons of the Church — and here would be an outlet for their violent energies. Thus subjugation would benefit their souls. First crush Bruce — a costly matter — and then unite against the Saracens.
“My father, who refused to be ordered to Scotland by Bek, had no desire for Bek to fill his coffers courtesy of alchemy. On the other hand, a flood of gold could certainly benefit theNeville family — if this alchemist could be persuaded to cooperate. And indefinite imprisonment was a fine persuader.
“So therefore, my father and Ralph rode out with a small armed company and intercepted Raymond Lully before he could ever reach the protection of the Bishop. That was the philosopher’s name: Raymond Lully.”
Chapter Twenty
“So what have we found out about Raymond Lully, Jack?”
“Enough to be sure that Lully was no alchemist! — and that he couldn’t possibly have visited the north of England in 1312!”
Ramon Llull was born on the island of Mallorca around about 1233. It was paradise! Blue skies and seas, snowy peaks, olive groves of silver and steel-grey, the scent of orange blossom, snow drifts of almond blooms.
Mallorca had recently been recaptured from the Moors by James the Conqueror, a real fighter and lover, seven foot tall with a mass of ruddy golden hair and flashing eyes. Ramon duly became his squire when he was fourteen — and he took to life at that dashing court as a fish to water. He dressed himself up to the nines, he became a devotee of courtly — and carnal — love, not to mention a fine musical poet in the tradition of the troubadours, thejongleurs or jinglers.
“Jinglers? Do you mean to say that he wasJingling Raymond Lully?”
“Ah ha! That he was. There are patterns, John, patterns. The eye of Jack, like the eye of God, perceives these. We’ll see more patterns presently.”
As well as being the Conqueror’s squire, Ramon was appointed companion to his two sons, Peter and James. Ten-year-old Peter was an aggressive bully who would cause his brother James much grief when their father died and the kingdom was divided — with much of the mainland going to Peter, and the island to James. Peter would demand allegiance, and carry out ananschluss … but not yet. Four-year-old James was a sweet, friendly lad, and as he grew up he and Ramon, now his tutor, became firm friends. The future King James of Mallorca would appoint Ramon his seneschal and major-domo. Ramon would travel much in the royal diplomatic service, visiting Catalonia and Aragon, Castile and France.
In his early twenties Ramon married Blanca Picany, yet his wild womanizing continued unabated. Inflamed by lust for a lady called Ambrosia de Castello, Ramon was said to have spurred his horse into church in pursuit of her, so as to lay at her feet a madrigal he had composed exalting her charms. A minor scandal ensued. Ramon was forever writing luscious love poetry to that lady, with far from courtly aims in mind. Finally, at her wit’s end, Ambrosia invited him secretly to her private chamber,
Upon a gloomy night,
With all his cares to loving ardours flushed.
Ramon rushed there and entered hot with excitement. Ambrosia coolly disrobed, and displayed cancer of the breast. Profound shock ensued for Ramon; and Ambrosia suggested that he might do better to seek bliss everlasting in the bosom of Jesus.
That was one version of the story of how Ramon turned over a new leaf. According to a different version he was sitting in his room at home, tussling with one of his randy love songs, when he glanced up — and saw a vision of Christ crucified upon the wall. Five times over the course of the next few days he struggled to complete the song. Each time the blood and nails and thorn crown and that suffering body interposed, till finally he got the message.
So he resigned as seneschal. He settled sufficient money on Blanca and his children Dominic and Magdalena, sold off everything else, and gave the proceeds to the poor. Then he set off on a pilgrimage to think things over. Returning in sackcloth to Mallorca, he was widely regarded as insane, or simply lazy. Not so! He climbed up stony Mount Randa to live in a cave for several years and undertake a great work.
“That would be Jingling Lully’s Hole, I suppose?”
“Ah ha! You’re catching on, John. You’re getting there. Keep it up.”
Ramon made a triple vow.
One: he would do his best to be martyred as a missionary. Well, you can’t say he didn’t try. He frequently managed to be beaten up, tossed into prison, stoned by enraged Moslems, banished from North Africa on pain of death, not to mention being shipwrecked and investigated by the Inquisition. Nevertheless he lived to a ripe old age, and died in bed back home.
Two: he would campaign for the founding of schools of oriental languages to prepare missionaries throughout Christendom to convert Moslems and Jews and heathens in their native tongues. Mallorca was still home to a small population of Moslems, so Ramon set out to learn Arabic from a Saracen slave, and he succeeded magnificently. Eventually the slave tried to stab him. The slave had been rude about Christ; Ramon thrashed him; the man retaliated and was tossed into prison. Ramon decided to forgive the man, but doubting Christian charity the Saracen had already hanged himself in his cell.
Three: Ramon would writethe definitive book proving the truth of Christianity logically for the benefit of Jews, Moslems, and other reasoning heathens. Military crusades had produced nothing but bloodshed and chaos. Let reason have its day!
“Hang on, Jack! Wasn’t that what Harriet Martineau started out by doing? Trying to convert the Jews and Moslems by reason?”
“Yes. But Harriet got over it. He didn’t.”
Ramon not only educated himself deeply in Arabic, but also in Latin — a skill which the jingling courtier and lover had neglected. Friends advised him not to bog himself down in the big scholastic University of Paris, where his command of Latin might prove less than adequate.
His unique do-it-yourself approach in the cave on Mount Randa resulted in the enormousCompendious Art of Finding the Truth. In this encyclopaedic volume Ramon codified the way in which the whole universe could be related back analytically to the attributes of the Christian God.
He devised concentric circles of subjects (Angel, Heaven, the Negative … ), and qualities (Duration, Virtue, Magnitude), and faculties (Perception, Cogitation … ), and questions (How large? When? Where? … ). These circles could be rotated so as to produce all possible permutations. To facilitate these operations Ramon also invented his own symbolic logic of letters. Thus, at several centuries’ remove, he inspired Leibnitz’s dream of a universal algebra, and unbeknownst ploughed the first furrow of computer programming.
“Er, Jack? Didn’t Harriet set out tocodify the Bible?”
“Right! She was also a friend of Mr. Babbage, who built the first primitive computer, the analytical engine. Do you reckon Harriet might be a reincarnation of Ramon? All that traveling she and he both went in for — and all those practical, populist books that poured from their pens! Every branch of human life and wisdom: Ramon related it all to divinity, and Harriet to political economy. Both tried their hand at novels too! Ramon wrote the first utopian romance:Blanquerna, 1284. Lots of magical, allegorical forests in it. He founded all that science-fantasy stuff. Maybe Harrietwas Ramon, reborn.”
“I don’t believe in past lives.”
“Why not? Connexions abound!Patterns , John.”
“If you try hard enough you can relate anything to anything else.”
“That’s exactly what Ramon succeeded in doing. He produced the key to the whole shebang. The Compendious Art. He could apply his method to anything — and he did! Ar-ithmetic, Ge-ometry, Ast-ronomy, Ast-rology! In short in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral — !” Jack was singing, to a tune fromPrincess Ida .
“Please leave Gilbert and Sullivan out of it.”
“And Law and Rhet-oric and Med-icine and Al-chemy!”
“Alchemy? Not likely.”
Ideally a hand-cranked machine ought to have been built, with theCompendious Art as blueprint. Medieval technology missed a trick there. You could have had ecclesiastical computers — wheels within wheels — by the Renaissance.
In the absence of mechanical Llull Wheels, books constantly spilled out of Ramon. He also expanded his travel horizons. He lectured and proselytized all over the place. Certainly he toured Italy, Turkey, and Palestine. Probably, Egypt and Ethiopia. Conceivably, Greece, Germany, Russia, and England. Quite the medieval jet-setter.
“Yes, I said England. That would have to have been before 1299. His date-book’s full after that.”
His friend King James founded a college of oriental languages for him at Miramar in Mallorca — and obviously if you speak to an Arab in Arabic, you speak to a Mallorcan in Catalan; so Ramon wrote in Catalan as well as in Arabic and Latin, and thus founded Catalan literature.
Sadly, following James’s troubles with his brother, the college at Miramar fell into decay.
Let’s fast-forward to 1310. By then Ramon was seventy-seven years old — thin and pale, with a long white beard and long white hair. But he was lecturing on his Art at the University of Paris, and as usual he was writing furiously. As usual, he was campaigning for his colleges of oriental languages. Perhaps because he sensed that time’s string was running out, unlike in earlier years he was now calling for a crusade — despite the fact that personally he got on well with Moslems and Jews, and actually liked them.
This new crusade ought to be fought at sea, not on land. That was because Christians owned more galleys than the Saracens. And thus events panned out — to a certain extent. The King of England also favoured a crusade, so a sea-borne venture was launched which succeeded in capturing the island of Rhodes in 1310; and there it stopped, profitably.
To support his own schemes Ramon applied to the King of France, Philip the Fair, for a letter of general commendation, and received one. “Notum facimus quod nos audito Magistro Raymundo Lullio, exhibito praesenti, ipsum est virum bonum, justum et Catholicum reputamus.” “Be it known by these presents that we regard Master Ramon Llull as a jolly good and Catholic guy.”
That was the same Philip the Fair who had recently confiscated all the wealth of the Knights Templars and was currently torturing the captive officers of the order excruciatingly to death and madness to wring confessions, so as to justify his seizure of their assets. This process was to culminate in March 1314 in the square in front of Notre Dame de Paris, before a vast crowd of spectators, when Grand Master Jacques de Molay — godfather to the King’s own daughter — was finally led out after years of torment, minus fingernails and such, publicly to plead guilty to sodomy and cat-worship and spitting on the Cross, and to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Unexpectedly, the wreck of de Molay declared the total innocence of the Templars; and an enraged Philip ordered him burnt at the stake.
King Philip was called “the Fair” because he had fair hair; no doubt there were some greasy smuts in it the next day.
Armed with the royal commendation, Ramon took himself off in King Philip’s wake to attend the Council of Vienne. This had been organized so as to officially abolish the Templars internationally, and to share their European assets among interested parties. At Vienne Ramon petitioned the Council and the Pope, who was in the chair, begging them to occupy Constantinople and Ceuta in Morocco as forward bases for the faith — and to found a unified military wing of the Church, not like those reprobate Templars. He also appealed to the Council to base Medicine upon experimental science, instead of on incorrect texts 1,000 years old. And yes, to set up colleges of oriental languages.
Jubilate!Pope and Council issued licenses for schools of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Chaldee to be founded in Rome, Bologna, Salamanca, Paris, and Oxford.
When the Council wound up in May 1312, Ramon headed back toward Mallorca by way of Montpellier, with its familiar university and its perpetual fair.
Thence to Sicily, then back to Mallorca; then over to Tunis, and back again to die, in 1316.
And all this while books and pamphlets poured from him; such as theDe novo modo demonstrandi, or new method of demonstrating, in September 1312, in which he demonstrated in passing that “Alchymia non sit scientia, sed sit figmentum,” that alchemy is no science but only eye-wash. Likewise, in theLiber principiorum medicinae, he said sternly that “unum metallum in speciem alterium metalli converti non potest,” that you can’t change one kind of metal into another.
His wife Blanca, now long deceased, had been forced to ask her male kinsman Galcerán to become legal administrator of the affairs which Ramon had dumped in her lap; and Galcerán had grown all too accustomed to manipulating the family purse. So, on April 26th1313, before gadding off, Ramon drew up a proper testament in favour of his son and his daughter and his son-in-law Peter de Sentmenat.
