With some difficulty, Mrs. Ledger managed to park near the doctor’s office and they went in just in time for their appointment. Dr. Oliver was a young man with incredibly long fingers and, Pip thought, sad eyes. He told them he was a local man, requested that they fill out registration forms and asked if they had any current medical conditions or problems.
“Only Pip,” Mrs. Ledger started. “She has a small wart on her left thumb. Our last doctor was going to remove it, but then we moved . . .”
Dr. Oliver took Pip’s hand, looked at the wart and said, “That’s no problem at all. I can take it off in a day or two. Do make an appointment as you go out.”
Leaving the office, they walked in the direction of the high street.
“I’m going to look around the market,” Mrs. Ledger announced.
“We would never have guessed,” Tim said.
“And I suppose it goes without saying . . . .” their mother began. Then she added, “Be back at the car in an hour.”
“Time to kill,” Tim said, somewhat despondently. He did not want to hang around the market and there were no shops in the street he wished to visit. Apart from a greengrocer, a butcher, a pharmacy, a mini-mart, a hairdresser, a post office, a hardware store that advertised repairs to lawnmowers and a tea shop called Ye Olde Cream Bunne, there was precious little else.
“I’ve an idea,” Pip declared. “You coming?”
Tim shrugged and followed his sister as she set off across the street, weaving through the market stalls, the sauntering throng of shoppers and the slow-moving traffic. At the entrance to an alley quaintly called The Snuck, she paused to get her bearings then made her way down it. At the end, they came out into a small cobbled square in front of the thirteenth-century church. A noticeboard by the ancient lych-gate announced in gold paint:
The Church of Saint Benedict and the
Blessed Raymond Lull
Rector: The Rev. Eric Crane
Pip pushed open the gate and entered the graveyard. A gravel path led up to the church porch.
“Tim,” Pip said, “go in the church and have a look at the monuments on the wall and the graves set into the floor.”
“And look for what?”
“You’ll know when you see it,” she answered enigmatically and, stepping off the path, began to walk slowly along the first row of ancient headstones.
Entering the church, Tim worked his way around the building, studying every monument. Those on the walls were mostly dedicated to notable locals who had died since about 1750: there was a sea captain who was lost overboard from an East Indiaman in the South China Sea in 1793 and a Dr. Artemus Drage who, in 1821, had invented a clockwork astrolabe. Most of the gravestones set into the floor of the aisle were worn smooth by the feet of worshippers. The only tomb was set into an alcove in the choir and had upon it an alabaster figure of a man in Elizabethan court dress, a sword at his side and a ruff at his throat. His nose, the toes of his shoes and the fingers of one hand had been chiseled off. A little notice pasted on to a piece of plywood stated that this was the final resting place of Sir Richard Mauncey. The damage to his effigy had been caused by soldiers during the English Civil War.
Back at the church door, Tim noticed a table bearing a pile of booklets giving the history of the church. They were fifty pence each. He felt in his pocket, dropped his money into the collection box, opened a copy of the pamphlet and started to read. On the fifth line down, it hit him.
“Bingo!”
He hurried out of the church to discover Pip standing in the graveyard, halfway along the north wall of the building.
“You were right!” he called, waving the pamphlet. “Guess what I’ve found!”
“Me first,” Pip said, as he reached her.
She pointed to a low gravestone made of a slab of flint and leaning at an angle, from which she had rubbed the lichen. Upon it were inscribed the words:
Thomas Rawne Esq. of Rawne Barton. Dec’d the 12th day of May Anno Domini 1440 — Requiescat in pace
.
“Sebastian’s father,” Tim remarked quietly. Then he opened the flimsy guide. “Now listen to this.” He began to read.
“ ‘The parish church of Brampton is dedicated to two saints. Saint Benedict, the founder of western monasticism, was the saint who established the Benedictine Rule. At one time, there were over forty thousand monasteries practising his doctrine, the monks calling themselves Benedictines. The famous monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy, much damaged in World War II but now restored, was founded by him. He is the patron saint of farmers and...’”
Tim paused for effect,
“‘... of those fighting or harmed by witchcraft
.’ And that’s not all. Get a load of this.
‘The Blessed Raymond Lull, also known as Doctor Illuminatus, was the first Christian missionary to Islam in the thirteenth century. He was considered to be an alchemist who invented his own Christian interpretations of the alchemical mysteries, and is said to have succeeded in turning lead into gold, using this to finance his missionary work. A small number of his followers, known as Lullists, secretly continued his work after his death.’ ”
He closed the guide and folded it into his pocket. “Seems like Brampton and the countryside around has been a hotbed of jiggery-pokery for centuries.”
“And still is,” Pip added.
Leaving the churchyard, they returned to the main street and set off along the line of stalls, jostling their way through the crowd of shoppers. On the other side of the road, they caught a glimpse of their mother standing at a stall selling fresh meat.
“Ten pence says it’s chops,” Tim said.
“Sausages,” Pip rejoined, “and you’re on.”
At the end of the street was a stall, smaller than the rest, selling secondhand books. Tim stopped in front of the cloth-covered table and began to look at the titles. Towards the front were used paperbacks, tatty copies of bestsellers with lurid covers, or older hardbacks missing their dust jackets. According to which row they were in, each book cost either one or two pounds. Behind them, on a rack of shelves, were larger editions, travel books on Asia, novels in better condition than those below, biographies and assorted nonfiction. On the topmost shelf were several dozen leather-bound books, their bindings cracked and the gold-leaf lettering on their spines faded.
Tim ran his eye along them, studying the titles —
The Gentleman’s Magazine: 1805
,
Paley’s Natural Theology
,
The Poetical Works of Lord Hervey
and
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
in six volumes. It was not until he was halfway along the shelf that a slim volume took his attention. It was bound in red morocco leather with gold tooling and was entitled
The Ordinall of Alchimy
.
“Pip,” Tim called out.
His sister, who was two stalls away looking at arrangements of dried flowers, scented candles and bottles of aromatic oils to add to potpourri, came over to the bookstall.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Look at this,” Tim said, and he reached for the book. An old man appeared from behind the shelves. He wore a grubby checked cloth cap, an old jersey with two buttons missing, a shirt without a collar and baggy corduroy trousers.
“What d’you want?” he snapped.
“I’d like to see that book, please,” Tim replied. “Which one?”
The old man leaned forward, in front of Pip and Tim, to look at the shelves. He smelled foul — of rancid tobacco, sweat, stale beer, unwashed feet and moldy cloth. His face was slack-jowled, grime ingrained in the wrinkles, his eyes almost colorless, watery and weak.
“That one,” Tim said. “The thin one in the middle, to the left of
Poems upon Several Occasions
.”
“Norton’s
Ordinall
,” the old man sneered. “That’s not for you.”
“How much is it?” Tim inquired.
“More than you’ve got. And I’ve told you, it’s not for you.”
“I’d like to see it, please,” Tim persisted, being as polite as he could.
“You can’t,” the old man replied tartly.
“I only want to see it,” Tim said, somewhat belligerently.
“This isn’t a library,” the old man retorted. “Go away.”
“You can’t sell many books if you don’t let people look at them,” Tim observed.
At this, the old man raised his hand. The fingers were bony, the knuckles arthritic, the nails thick and long and the color of horn.
“Begone, boy,” he muttered threateningly, “or I’ll rip your bloody ears off.”
Tim and Pip stepped backwards. All around them, shoppers came and went, women carrying baskets or pushing baby buggies, two men carting a heavy arm-chair between them, another lifting a cardboard box full of old postcards into the back of a van.
The old man took two steps out from his stall, making as if to reach out at Tim. But then, as if having second thoughts or considering the boy was not worth the effort, he lowered his arm, turned and disappeared behind the bookshelves once more.
“Close shave!” Tim exclaimed. “Weird old coot.” “Talk about BO!” Pip said, wrinkling her nose. “He smelled like a farmyard.”
“Let’s put it this way,” Tim replied. “I don’t think he’s shaken hands with Mr. Soap recently.”
When Pip and Tim got back from the town, Sebastian was waiting for them. Mrs. Ledger invited him in and they sat down at the kitchen table to a lunch of sausages and mashed potato. Tim, having lost the bet, paid his sister ten pence.
Their mother’s invitation, both Pip and Tim knew, was more than a pleasantry. Mrs. Ledger wanted the opportunity to quiz Sebastian further about his past. However, by good chance, a representative from the developers who had restored the house arrived to sign off the property just as they sat down to eat. This meant Mrs. Ledger had to leave the kitchen and go around the entire building with him while he inspected it and she pointed out minor defects to him that needed attention.
“Sebastian,” Pip said, once her mother had left the room, “Tim and I went into the churchyard in Brampton today. We found your father’s grave.”
“It is to the north side,” Sebastian replied.
“Do you . . .” Tim was not quite sure how to phrase it, “. . . go to see it at all?”
“I need not,” Sebastian said. “The grave is but a monument to him. It means nothing to me, for it is empty.”
“Empty!” Pip and Tim repeated in chorus.
“Of course. My father was burned at the stake. There was nothing of him to bury.”
“But . . . what about his ashes?” Tim said.
“They were scattered by the wind, absorbed into the soil. I like to think,” he went on, “that my father lives still in the flowers of the field.”
To this, neither Pip nor Tim could think of a response. It seemed to them utterly bizarre that a relative could be, for all intents and purposes, buried in the garden.
“If your father was an alchemist,” Pip asked at length, “why was he was given a monument in a Christian cemetery?”
“My father was, as am I, a Christian.”
“But,” Tim continued his sister’s train of thought, “how could he be a Christian and yet still be an alchemist? Surely, if you were an alchemist, then you were involved with magic and that was . . .”
“Heretical?” Sebastian suggested.
“Yes,” Tim said.
“It is recorded,” Sebastian said, “that the great Saint Dunstan carried out alchemical experiments and, one day, had Satan himself appear before him, whom he caught with a pair of tongs from the fire and held by the nose as he screamed and howled. What you must understand,” he went on, “is that there were Christian alchemists as well as those who were heretics or atheists.”
“Like Blessed Raymond Lull?” Pip suggested. Sebastian laughed quietly and said, “You have been much engaged in study.”
“Not really,” Tim admitted, and he pulled the church guide out of his pocket.
Sebastian put down his knife and fork, then, reading the introduction to the guide, announced, “It is time for you to know more. My father was one of those whom they called Lullists. This is why he was so feared by his enemies, for they were sorely afraid that, being a Christian, he might call down the wrath of God upon them. You will recall his patron, Henry Beaufort, was a cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, who would not have associated with a practitioner of the black arts. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, had no such principles, hence his alliance with Pierre de Loudéac.”
“What does
Doctor Illuminatus
mean?” Pip inquired. “
Illuminatus
means
he who enlightens
,” Sebastian translated. “After Blessed Raymond’s death, whoever became the leader of the Lullists took upon himself that appellation. My father was known thus.”
“Your father was head of the Lullists?” Tim ventured. “Indeed. Blessed Raymond died in the year of Our Lord, 1315. He is buried in the church of Saint Francis in Palma, upon the island of Majorca. My father was the fifth to be so named. Yet, by the time my father passed into heaven, there were but few Lullists remaining. Most had drifted from the Christian way, corrupted by the aspirations of the dark side of alchemy, which science they used for their own ends.”
“And now?”
“The night before they put him to his death, my father passed to me this honor, for he said I was no longer an apprentice. I am, therefore, Doctor Illuminatus in my father’s place.”
For a long moment, Pip and Tim were silent. It seemed incredible that this boy, sitting at their kitchen table, was not only nearly six hundred years old and an alchemist, but the only survivor — indeed, the leader — of a secret religious sect dating back to the thirteenth century.
“This is hard, as you put it, for you to get your head ’round,” Sebastian said.
Tim laughed and, collecting up the dirty plates, replied, “Now you’re talkin’!”
As he slid the cutlery and plates into the racks of the dishwasher, Pip said, “Tim, tell Sebastian about the book.”
“The book?” Sebastian repeated.
“Yes,” Tim began. “When we were in Brampton this morning, the market was on. I found a secondhand bookstall. Most of the stuff was junk, but there were some old books on a shelf. One of them was called
The Ordinall of Alchimy
.”