“Were you present at the trial?” Pip asked tentatively, wiping a finger across her cheek to smooth away the first tear to escape.
“I was, for my father’s accusers wanted me to see the wages of his sins. They knew that he would have been instructing me in his knowledge and they wished to discourage me from furthering his researches.” He patted down the earth of the molehill with his foot and started to walk slowly on towards the river. “The trial was a short proceeding, lasting but a day. When it was over, and the sentence pronounced, my father was taken in chains and locked into your room, Tim. It was there I was brought to him, to make my farewells.”
He paused as if recalling the event. At that moment, it occurred to Tim that, so far as Sebastian’s waking time was concerned, all this had happened only two years before. The pain, he thought, must still be there.
“My father had known they would come for him eventually,” Sebastian continued. “He had told me often before that he was playing a dangerous game, one that he must win.” Reaching out, he touched Pip’s hand. “There is no need to cry,” he comforted her. “It was a long time ago and I do not grieve.”
They reached the river, where Sebastian sat down on the bank beside a clump of willow. The warm breeze blowing along the water whispered gently in the upright withy stems, tickling the long, thin leaves. Upstream, a mute swan was riding the current, accompanied by four gray, fluff-feathered cygnets.
“Have you lived here . . . .” Tim began — he wanted to say, all your life — “. . . since you were born?”
“Yes,” Sebastian answered, “and there is good reason, for here is much wickedness which must be fought.”
“Wickedness?” Tim said.
Pip was alarmed and asked hesitantly, “You mean — in our house?”
“No, but hereabouts. In the countryside.” Sebastian leaned back on his elbows while Pip and Tim squatted on the riverbank. “The night before they came for my father,” he went on, “he took me aside into his chamber, the one that you have visited. Here, he charged me with continuing his mission. But to understand this, you must know something of history.”
“Not my favorite subject,” Tim announced. Sebastian looked around, as if to ensure they were not being overheard, then spoke in a subdued voice.
“King Henry the Fifth was a great monarch, the most powerful ruler in Europe. He won the famous battle against the French at Agincourt and captured Normandy. Then he made peace with the King of France and married his daughter. Soon, they had a son, named after his father; yet he was but an infant of nine months when his father died and he was proclaimed King Henry the Sixth. Immediately, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, claimed to be regent, ruling in the infant’s stead. He was a man who much wanted power. However, the council of those in control did not wish this and appointed Gloucester’s older brother, John, Duke of Bedford, as regent.”
“So the second king your father served was only a baby,” Pip said.
“Yes,” Sebastian replied, “yet he was still the rightful monarch and it was to him and his throne my father owed his allegiance.”
“And,” Tim said, “because your father was a king’s man, he got caught up in the struggle between these two brothers. Right?”
“You are almost correct,” Sebastian replied. “The struggle was not so much between Gloucester and Bedford as between Gloucester and his uncle, Henry Beaufort, who was the wealthiest man in England, a power behind many thrones and my father’s friend and patron. He was Chancellor of England, a cardinal of the Pope in Rome and Bishop of Winchester. He was also interested in alchemy.”
“Hang on!” Tim interjected. “He was a cardinal and a bishop but he believed in alchemy?”
“Pope Leo III gave the emperor, Charlemagne, a book on alchemy called the
Enchiridion
,” Sebastian said, “and Pope Sylvester II is said to have practiced magic. Yet this is by the way . . .” He paused as if to gather his interrupted chain of thought. “Gloucester knew he was no match for Henry Beaufort and so he traveled to France, where he took into his commission a French alchemist by the name of Pierre de Loudéac. They struck an alliance. If de Loudéac would help Gloucester gain power, he, in turn, would withdraw the British from Normandy. Henry Beaufort came to hear of this and entreated my father to use his knowledge to defeat that of de Loudéac.”
“What was de Loudéac’s plan?” Pip asked.
“It was simple,” Sebastian answered. “He was going to make a homunculus to replace the infant king.”
While Sebastian had been talking, the swan had moved slowly downstream and was now drifting towards the reeds on the opposite bank, her cygnets keeping close. Sebastian watched them for a moment, then stood up, brushing dry leaves and dirt from his jeans. He set off along the riverbank. Pip and Tim followed him.
“Did he succeed?” Tim wanted to know.
“No. He failed.”
“What has all this got to do with you?” Pip asked. “It all happened centuries ago.”
Sebastian made no response until he was well away from the willows.
“That is so,” he eventually replied, casting a sideways look at the swan, which was continuing downstream, its wings set like parallel sails, “yet, after the attempt to replace the infant king had failed, de Loudéac persevered with his quest to make a homunculus.”
“So what . . . ?” Tim began.
“It is a vital matter,” Sebastian interrupted him. “A homunculus is more than just an artificial creature. It is a living human, yet one that has no soul.” He fell silent, to give this fact time to sink in.
“What you’re saying,” Pip said, after a pause, “is that this . . .
thing
isn’t just a created man, but one that, if it has no soul, has no mind of its own.”
“Exactly so!” Sebastian came back. “This creature, without its own free will, may be commanded by its maker.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Tim declared. “It might be unnatural, but . . .”
Sebastian sighed. “You see nothing wrong in an evil man being able to create a creature — or many creatures — that will do his every bidding?”
“Wow!” Tim held his hands up. “This is way too sci-fi! Any minute now,” he added skeptically, “we’ll have some Hollywood hulk charging over the hill, toting a laser gun, with half his computer-generated skull split open to show the circuit boards inside, and liquidizing anyone that gets in his way.”
“You may be flippant, Tim,” Sebastian said curtly, his voice growing agitated, “but what I tell you is fact. De Loudéac has, through the centuries, not given up on his quest — and he continues to this very day.”
“C’mon!” Tim said. “You’ve got to admit it’s a bit off the wall. Like, what’s he going to do with this fleshand-blood robot? As he failed to get power over Henry the Sixth, what’s next? Take over the royal family? Turn them into zombies? Clone them? Rule England? Rule the world?”
“These may well be his intentions, for has he not already sought to overthrow the established throne of England?” Sebastian rejoined, continuing, “Of this I can be sure. Whatever his plans, he seeks to do terrible wrong in the world by his creation and, should he achieve his end, it will mean much danger. If he were to fashion a homunculus, there would be abroad in the land a creature of infinite malevolence, a fearful beast spawned of great iniquity, capable of bringing such wickedness as you would never have known, nor could imagine. Therefore, it is imperative,” he went on, his voice calming, “that I succeed in foiling de Loudéac’s plan, prevent him from reaching his objective. Should I fail, it will be the beginning of chaos and an age of evil will commence that may destroy all we know as good.”
“Don’t you think that’s just a teensy bit OTT?” Tim replied. “I mean, this is the stuff of Superman.”
“OTT?” Sebastian asked.
“Over the top,” Tim explained. “Too much. Way out. Implausible. Like,
really
unlikely.”
“No,” Sebastian answered tersely. “This is not. It is, I assure you, plausible.”
“Like, yes . . . .” Tim said, yet, as he looked at Sebastian, he saw he was in deadly earnest, his face set.
Pip, who had been thinking while the others argued, asked, “What do you mean, ‘continues to this very day’?” No sooner had she spoken than she wondered if she wanted to hear the answer.
“I mean,” Sebastian said, “that de Loudéac is here, now, pursuing this end.”
Tim thought for a moment and said, “But how can he be here?”
“He can,” Sebastian replied, “because, when my father was arrested and tried, de Loudéac was present. It was he who was my father’s accuser. And he acquired a bottle of
aqua soporiferum
.”
“So you have seen him!” Pip exclaimed.
“Yes,” Sebastian confirmed, “I have seen him many times.”
“What does he look like?” she asked.
“If this de Loudéac has a bottle of your father’s gloop,” Tim mused aloud, “he must be able to hibernate like you.”
“Indeed, he can,” Sebastian said. Then, looking from Pip to her brother and back again, his eyes seeking out theirs, he went on, “Understand this, you live in a time of great peril, for de Loudéac has returned. Whenever he is awake, I am awake, for my father trained me thus. This is my mission, my task. I must combat de Loudéac and stop him in his endeavors. To do this, I require your assistance.”
He looked down the river, shading the sunlight from his face with his hand.
“Wherever I am,” Sebastian added, “he will be trying to overhear what I say, studying my actions, seeking a way to defeat me. And if you are my accomplices, he will seek to undo you as well. Of this you must be aware. I do not demand your help, I only request it for I fear I am not able to defeat him alone.”
“Say no more!” Tim replied, the excitement rising in him. “We’re on your train, my man!”
Sensing Tim’s levity, Sebastian warned, “This is not a game we play, Tim. It is a deadly enterprise upon which we are engaged. Much lies at stake, for, if de Loudéac succeeds, there will be on Earth a man not born of woman who will answer only to the darkness. And to his creator.”
“We’re still with you,” Pip said, “but one thing I don’t understand. Why, when he could go anywhere in the world, does he return here?”
“Because here,” Sebastian explained, “is where the powers of good and the powers of evil come together. You know of Stonehenge?”
“Yes,” Pip replied.
“It is a place where natural power is centered. The ancient people knew this and built there to attempt to harness it. De Loudéac comes here for the same purpose.” Looking beyond Pip and Tim, he lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. “You asked what de Loudéac looked like. He appears as he wishes you to see him.” Sebastian raised his hand and pointed beyond the willows. “Behold him now.”
Pip and Tim spun round. In the middle of the river, six meters away from where they had been talking, was another swan.
It was black.
No sooner had they seen the swan than it took flight. They watched as its wings beat the air, the flight feathers whistling as it gained height, banked and disappeared over the water meadows across the river. When it was gone, Sebastian left Pip and Tim, saying that he would meet them in the afternoon at the rear of the coach house.
The black swan had unnerved Pip and, although Tim discovered from the Internet that there were such things as black swans, that they were indigenous to Australia and that there were a small number in Britain, living exclusively on the lakes in the royal parks of London, her mind was not put at rest.
“I expect they lose one or two every year,” Tim said, by way of explanation. “They fly away to look for a mate or go on their holidays or something.”
“London’s over a hundred miles away,” Pip said. “So what?” Tim was determined to justify the black swan and reduce his sister’s fears. “Bewick’s swans migrate here from Arctic Siberia and whooper swans from Greenland. A quick jaunt down the motorway would be nothing.”
Yet, despite his reasoning, Tim could not help wondering if the swan really had been de Loudéac. It was fast becoming plain to him, as it was to Pip, that nothing could necessarily be taken at face value any longer.
Shortly after two o’clock, Pip and Tim approached the coach house. It was about fifty meters from the main house, across what had once been a cobbled courtyard but was now a graveled turning circle with an oval of lawn in the center, ringed by beds of roses. A spur of raked gravel led off to the former stables, now converted into a two-car garage and a garden store, but only a dirt path went to the coach house.
“What did the estate agent say? ‘In need of renovation’?” Tim remarked as he surveyed the tenacious ivy- and moss-covered stone walls, broken window frames and double oak doors clearly half off their hinges. “In need of bulldozing and starting again, more like.”
They turned the corner of the building, avoiding a dense patch of nettles and deadly nightshade, one or two of its little faint violet flowers drooping from the top of the tall stem. Lower down were two ripe berries, as black and as shiny as onyx.
The land beyond the coach house was wilder than the meadows near the river and more undulating. The grass was long and in dire need of cutting for hay. The trees seemed more unkempt and the distant overgrown hedgerow had clearly not been trimmed for a long time and should have been laid years before.
Sebastian was waiting for them, standing in the long grass some way behind the coach house.
“I have much to do before nightfall,” he declared urgently, “and require your help. I am in need of a quantity of alcohol. Can you know where there is such a liquid?”
Pip was about to say that his request would be difficult to fulfill — she knew one could buy drink in a liquor store, or surgical alcohol from a pharmacy, but the shopkeeper and pharmacist would only sell it to someone over eighteen — when Tim said, “Does it have to be pure alcohol?”
“As pure as possible,” Sebastian replied.
“No problemo!” Tim exclaimed, and he made off back towards the house.
“Come,” Sebastian invited Pip. “I wish to show you something.”
They set off across the rough meadow, the grass seed heads tickling Pip’s hands, the dusty smell of pollen making her nose itch.