‘A simplified one, yes.’
‘Nothing bothers you about it?’
‘Why should it?’
‘You don’t feel nauseated? Nothing affects your chest or stomach? You have no pains?’ Looking at it was affecting my eyes as well. ‘Dizzy? Weak?’
‘Not any more. The Black Aether has that effect, I’ll admit. The prince’s Cosmolabe attempts to represent the Black Aether. The cosmic fog, as it is called. I can represent it but I lack the resource to commission such a superb machine. He had his choice of the world’s great instrument makers. Ours relies on more local ingenuity. It is only a crude attempt to represent the cosmos we have explored.’
‘Excuse me, Father Abbot, but I still don’t know exactly what this is.’ I was mesmerised by the rods and webs and spheres. ‘Or, indeed, who the prince is you’re talking about.’ I was beginning to feel a bit scared, thinking in terms of black-magic cults and human sacrifices. Had I been lured here for a purpose? Would the News of the World be running pictures of my strangely twisted body in next Sunday’s edition?
‘On the other side of the Black or Second Aether is what is sometimes termed the Third Aether. We call ours the First or White Aether purely in order to make some rough plan of the heavens. There are seven other known planes or branes, depending upon your choice of model. Our orrery shows a simplified model of Heaven and Earth, which, of course, seems far more complex than the one you know from your lessons. In Prince Rupert’s model the Black Aether is represented. It begins to explain certain mysteries. As I said, we call ours the White Aether, but there are thought to be five other colours. Some report a blue aether and others a yellow. If we reach seven with anomalies still recurring, we shall assume further branes.’
I was still transfixed by this particular wonder, his Cosmolabe. Not only had I never imagined anything like it, I had never seen or read about anything like it! And yet it looked so ancient! The abbot’s voice had become just then simply music soothing me as my brain tried to grasp the idea of a universe utterly alien to anything I had been taught. I was sure this would interest Barry Bayley, who was fascinated by weird theories and inventions. A little part of me was already working out how to use the idea in a story. Father Grammaticus was still apologising because the prince’s orrery, once complete, would be so much more sophisticated than the abbey’s. ‘But ours serves to demonstrate the fundamental universe. Also the movement of Radiant Time. So!’ He passed his hand carefully between the various moving parts to show me golden wires spreading outwards from the base. He opened his fingers. The golden rays fanned out from them. His hand was the trunk, his fingers the branches. The orrery represented both models. The natural and the geometric. Or so I guessed. By now I was almost entirely without conscious thought, as if I were entranced by some perfect piece of music.
Father Grammaticus’s soothing voice continued to stroke the webs and strings, making them vibrate. He had the air of playing a complex instrument. ‘Not only does this model show the movement of God’s Creation,’ he explained, ‘it also allows us to measure the passage of all the worlds, visible and invisible, including what we sometimes call the half worlds, or ghost worlds, through time. Indeed the whole aether is, as the prince proves by his mathematical logic, a dimension of time. Time and space follow the same laws and enjoy a similar condition.’
Later it would take a lot of discussion with Barry Bayley and others to reconstruct what Father Grammaticus told me. To this day, in spite of all the experience and knowledge I’ve gained, I still have trouble understanding that astonishing math. It takes a special kind of mind to imagine two models at once and navigate through them, as Father Grammaticus did. But I was losing the thread, through no fault of his explanation. The whirling and twining of the so-called Cosmolabe was making me feel pretty weird.
I hoped I could reach a bathroom before I lost it.
‘It’s impressive.’ I tried to stand up. Then I tried to remember why I wanted to stand up. The Cosmolabe still had my attention.
I was desperate to hold on to familiar beliefs. They had been reached logically enough and with quite a bit of effort. But my hard-won reason was melting before everything I was now learning. Was my physical state merely an echo of my mental turmoil? I think if I hadn’t read a bit of science fiction I would have gone completely nuts trying to understand it all.
The slender gold, brass, steel and silver wires shivered delicately. The rods swung so gracefully, the cogs connected to the wheels, the regulators to the springs. Spheres circled other spheres. What had this to do with me? What had Friar Isidore seen in me which made him bring me here? And why was the old abbot so keen to show me this weird invention?
‘Are you—is this—?’ I could get no closer than that to framing a question. The abbot took pity on me and smiled: a teacher happy to help a curious pupil. ‘Who is it for?’ I think I meant to ask him what, but he seemed to understand.
He made an expansive gesture. ‘It is for everyone who needs it. Are we not all part of the same brotherhood?’ Did he mean himself and the monks, or the monks and the Alsacian congregation, or the entire human race? ‘Aren’t we all presently drifting in troubled waters? Once the scale of the Creator’s plan is known and our power is recognised we shall understand its function thoroughly. Do you know what it is?’
The orrery was still mesmerising me. I was reminded of a description I’d read in the H.G. Wells novel. My eyes were transfixed. ‘It’s some sort of time machine, isn’t it?’
He smiled again. ‘Oh, if life were so simple! It’s merely a model. As I said, it lacks the refinements of the prince’s great orrery. But you can imagine the light sphincter and how it works to draw and expel the ectoplasm creating a perfectly balanced cosmos. We cannot begin to demonstrate here the suggestion, as yet unpresented in any coherent way, concerning the infinity of such objects of balance and the meaning of Scripture in their respect.’
‘Scripture?’ I was growing dizzy again. I leaned back in my chair. Now even the whizzing spheres and weaving rods were hard to distinguish.
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘you must not fear that we are practising the black arts. We take our plans from Scripture. We know too much to want to meddle in those. We are trying to save all we value. No soul was ever sold here. No bargain was ever struck between man and devil. The only bargains we make are honourable.…’ His voice now seemed indistinct. ‘And they are usually with the Creator or His agents in the best accomplishment of His will.’
I missed much of the meaning of what he said. I tried to rise. I still found it difficult to get up from my chair. I sat down again. He had changed the subject. ‘No doubt she loves you as much as she ever did.’
‘Who loves me?’
The old man frowned and glanced around him, puzzled. ‘Ah. I am so sorry. Your mother?’
But I knew he didn’t mean my mother.
‘The prince knows a better method but this gives a certain verisimilitude to our model.’ He reached in and sprinkled something into the elaborate mechanism. ‘This will help you understand why we were so glad you came to us all those years ago.’
I was absolutely baffled. ‘What do you mean, Father? I came here a few hours ago, at your invitation. Out of curiosity. And before that…’
He was hardly listening. His expression was wonderfully benign. ‘Your curiosity helps you see the roads. Soon you’ll learn to walk them. The time is upon us. Those hunters have increased the frequency and intensity of their attacks. We have to get our Treasure to a safer place. The Green Knight cannot. His prophet needs him. So you shall help us.’ His voice seemed to come from some distance off. I wanted to ask more but the beautiful machine drew my attention. Darkness flowed through the Cosmolabe forming shapes I almost recognised. I feared I was being hypnotised.
Time passed quickly and, in spite of feeling increasingly ill, I remained sitting, transfixed in front of that astonishing arrangement of gold, brass, ebony, silver, platinum and ivory. I watched clusters o
f crystals, some like diamonds, others like rubies, emeralds, sapphires. I peered deeper into the thing. I saw shapes, faces. I had no power to move and I didn’t care. I was helpless. I thought I heard another, drawling voice. Perhaps I was imagining the entire experience. Was this astonishing concoction of alchemy and baffling cosmic theory actually created to reach deep into my inner self? Must I believe I owned a soul before I could see it at all?
I tried to break the connection by imagining the tarot deck until all I saw in my mind’s eye were the cards. The swords and the cups, the wands and the pentacles became webs and rods and planets and suns whirling before my eyes.
I still heard Father Grammaticus’s faraway voice speaking to me. Radiant Time, he said. The Black or Second Aether. A greater darkness lies within the familiar darkness of the void. ‘Here the black sun sits, drawing us all into its insatiable orbit. But on the other side of that sun are the antiworlds thrown out by a blazing light bursting fresh. And so it turns, throughout Creation! The Great Galliard!’ There were so many kinds of light: crystalline, fiery, gaseous, sharp. He passed his hands through the orrery again. I felt powerless to look at his face. I saw the Queen of Pentacles dancing with the high priestess and the emperor dancing around the sun. I saw the King, Queen and Knight of Swords form a circle. And in the middle of all was the fool. The fool, poor Pierrot, who had let his Columbine dance off with her Harlequin.
The black energy pulsed and coiled between the stars. The silver threads arced and twisted making impossible connections. Heavy drops of blood fell like summer rain. Huge shadows spread to obscure a mass of suns. I was in agony. My sickness had become an intense burning sensation. I did all I could to shrink it and rid myself of it. Mass is present but invisible, explained by the presence of identical worlds unseen by us. They nest, one inside the other. Frequently, the only clue we have is the Dark Flow! Step this way, then that, between the worlds. Step and step. So and so. You dance the Great Galliard!
He was teaching me something through hypnotism? Was I learning what he wished me to learn? Should I have listened better? Perhaps if I had been in a different situation I would have done. My new interest in Moll Midnight kept me involved. I felt all this had something to do with her. The science involved was over my head! Was it time I turned to Harlequin in pursuit of my love? I was crying hard now. I gave no further attention to Father Grammaticus. Silver roads? An illusion? Still crying I stood up. I tried to shake my head to rid it of all the images. I closed my eyes. Began to sway. It felt like dying.
I came to know what death was. I couldn’t tell anyone. I knew what it felt like when they said they were in God’s hands. Even now I had almost no control over my thoughts or my limbs. I watched the black tendrils snake amongst the brightness, appearing to absorb it. I saw what looked grey and yellow like flames flaring and dying. I felt I was actually outside the universe. From Limbo I regarded it. The universe was a rippling pool of many dimensions. My hands especially burned but were numb at the same time. Everything had the familiarity of a recently remembered dream. All kinds of strange, uncomfortable thoughts came to me. They blossomed into images. Faces leered. Faces cried out, begging me for aid. Molly? She was there in a thousand aspects. Faces showed pity, love, pain. I couldn’t help them. I had no volition. My whole being, every part, every inch of me, wanted to rest, to sleep. Slowly I became unable to move or think. I lost any sense of identity, any memory, any emotion. Yet still Father Grammaticus continued to talk in that calm, cultivated voice. I wanted to escape. I could neither move nor think. I felt myself grow entirely numb. I wept until there were no more tears.
5
PROTECTING THE PROTECTOR
And then I was standing again in the chapel as an exhausted old man said goodbye before handing me back into the keeping of Friar Isidore.
Another pat on the shoulder from the abbot and I was led from the abbey grounds. Friar Isidore was childishly excited by what he called our successful séance. When he kissed me as we parted at the gate, I was in no way surprised. The act was entirely spontaneous and without any kind of sexual overtones. I cheerfully agreed to see him the following Wednesday at the typesetter’s and I shook his hand. Afraid of hurting his feelings, I didn’t mention that I had agreed to meet Moll Midnight the next day. I could think of nothing to ask him about the beautiful young woman whom I’m sure he would not have known. Besides, I felt at liberty to come and go for reasons which had nothing to do with him or his church. I would have found the pub eventually, I was sure. That said, I did feel as if I betrayed the monks and didn’t want to lie to them by omission.
Turning to make my way home I was surprised again by the fog’s rapid descent. Suddenly I could recognise nothing. The street lights would not come on again for an hour or so. As carefully as I walked I could not avoid crashing suddenly into a hard, masculine shoulder and gasped, feeling for a bruise. At the same time I apologised as the English always do. I expected an automatic reply in kind but the answering voice was surly, affronted, haughty. I smelled danger. The Brookgate Courts were full of it. I had always been able to sniff potential violence on the wind. This ability to anticipate threat is the urban form of a countryman’s sixth sense.
Here we go again. I tried to guess what happened next.
‘What’s this? A king’s weasel slips from its lair, hoping to do the Protector and his people some evil.’ This rolling Welsh brogue had a sinister music to it. Out of the fog loomed a massive red head, all bristling orange eyebrows and whiskers. The black halo of a befeathered hat brim shrouded his glaring blue eyes above a vast, wicked grin. ‘Did ye think ye could avoid our defences?’
‘Steady on,’ I said, playing the shocked citizen. ‘You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know you from Adam and London hasn’t had any wall for centuries, certainly not in these parts. So I’d be glad—’
‘Glad is he? Hear that Corporal Love? He’s glad. And he’s just an innocent young fellow strolling home through the fog without a lamp to light his way. Correcting his betters on the subject of walls. Happen he can see in the dark? The way a witch can, is it?’ The Welshman’s voice was fractured limestone. ‘A witch, Corporal Love, do you see. Tsk, tsk, tsk.’
‘Them witches, Colonel, sir, are as wicked and devious as they come.’ A dangerous toady, this, by his ingratiating tone. ‘Consorting with Romans, I don’t doubt, sir. Gypsies are all slaves of the pope, sir. Falsely seeking God’s protection. Very bad, sir, them gypsies.’ The unseen speaker, evidently from somewhere like rural Sussex, imitated its master’s tsk-ing.
All this menacing melodrama had the desired effect. I was frightened. I paused. I had been talked to like that before by Teddy Boys in the Brookgate tenements. I knew the colonel’s tone, the self-righteous taunting voice of a bully who thinks he’s found an easy mark. ‘Corporal Love,’ lurking like a sly ape in the folds of his cloak, was a classic bully’s creature. I had been taught by my mother always to resist them or, if necessary, report them. She knew crime dressed as the law. In Berlin in the thirties my mum would have been arrested. She recognised that tone in policeman and gangster alike and never let herself be cowed. She was, in that respect, a typical London working-class mother. I had yet to prove her wrong.
I laughed as confidently as I could. ‘Witches? You poor superstitious buggers.’ I walked on. But now they threatened to lay hands on me. Wide brims partly hid their faces. Corporal Love’s was all but fleshless with planes of bone from which grey eyes gleamed. I saw long rapiers at their belts as they pressed towards me. I had a police whistle but no time to reach it. I got a good look, through the strands of fog, at the colonel’s tall, crouching companion, the cadaverous corporal, and guessed their ranks to be self-given, for neither wore uniform, just stage clothes like the rest. The colonel was all lace and brocade and feathered flounces. He even had a big black feather in his hat. The corporal wore a Quaker’s plain black and white.
‘Don’t be silly, lads. You’re really out of your depth here. Go on, get
back to your panto or your puffed-wheat advert.’ Although scared, I spoke with the quiet authority I had learned from all the serious local gangsters. But this didn’t do much more than give them a moment’s pause.
‘It is not we who are silly, knave!’ The redheaded Welshman sneered dramatically, as only Welshmen can, his eyes bright with aggressive malice. ‘You need a lesson, look you. Something to teach you to respect Parliament’s laws and its keepers. It would do you good to cool your heels in the Bridewell!’
I realised I might not be able to talk my way out of this. Those blades looked real. I was in serious trouble. I’d determined all this even as I laughed spontaneously at his self-impressed tone and his weird accent. But this encounter in the fog was not the same. Bent coppers? I wasn’t much of a mark. They meant business and I didn’t want to find out what that business was. Fog was guaranteed to cloak an evil deed. The redheaded Welshman had more than a few evil deeds written on his lean, satanic muzzle. He now thrust his head forward with a ‘Colonel Clitch’, by way of introducing himself. Off came the greasy, plain-black hat. A horrid smile. A sarcastic bow. ‘Upon Parliament’s service.’ He was about to pounce.
I heard a low sound like someone clearing their throat. Another figure stepped out of the fog, a short man also wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a sash around his waist in which were stuck two large pistols. He, too, had a sword in his hand. ‘I do not believe, gentlemen, that this young lad is of any threat to man nor God. But if you wish to contest that opinion I’ll be happy to oblige you.’ The pair immediately lowered their weapons and began explaining themselves. While that was happening, the short newcomer, possibly their employer or a feared enemy, called to me to get on home. I was happy to oblige. I cried out my thanks and took to my heels as if I were a kid running from those particularly nasty Clerkenwell Court Teds who had tried to set up a kind of juvenile protection racket in the market area until the men of our families had a word with the chief Teds and that was that.