That was four hours ago. I am soon to depart Craven Street in yet another carriage, this one headed to Portsmouth, where I will board a packet ship bound for the colonies. This night I have crossed the Rubicon, the bridge in flames behind me. As for the sacred relic, I propose to take Thoth’s stone to the City nearest the Centre to that place where men strive to improve the common stock of Knowledge so that all may prosper in mind as well as spirit.
Though tempted to delve into the relic’s supernatural mystery, I shall refrain. Enlightened man, empowered with intellect and reason, need not fall victim to the counterfeit claims of medieval occultism. I do believe that Francis Bacon was a gifted man who straddled two universes, one foot firmly planted in the enlightened world and the other firmly planted in the medieval age, a man of science with occult inclinations. But a man cannot be so divided, his very nature torn asunder. He must commit to one or the other. An enlightened man, a man burnished in the fire of science, knows that the mind is the most powerful weapon of all. God did not intend for man to take his sustenance from the meager larder of alchemy and magic, false sciences the both of them. Rather the Creator, the Supreme Deity, desired that man eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
To safeguard the relic, I intend to create a Triad of like-minded men who will ensure that Thoth’s stone is hidden away. As I am not entirely oblivious to the relic’s import, I shall propose to my fellow Triad members that we leave signposts lest a future age, unencumbered by the superstitions of this age, would find some scholastic merit in archiving the relic. If that day should come to pass, I suspect it will be long centuries from now. Since the dawn of time, man has been burdened with a superstitious nature that is not likely to dissipate in the near decades. In this, as with a good many things, there is a fine line between the sacred and the profane. Yea, for every Francis Bacon there are ten Francis Dashwoods who would leap at the chance to exploit the relic’s supposed power.
Given that these are dangerous times, I further propose that each member of the Triad select his successor. Should a Triad member meet an untimely end, another shall assume his responsibilities. In this way, the Triad can germinate itself indefinitely. My task is now made clear. I must find the catheti to my hypotenuse. Men of good moral character but not given to public piety. Men possessed of intellect but not lacking in compassion. And, most important, I seek honorable men who will not be seduced by the relic’s potential power. Alas, there are no men in my current circle who I feel sufficiently capable of discharging this monumental duty. However, in two months’ time, the Second Continental Congress will convene in Philadelphia, and I will have the pick of the bushel.
The looming storm clouds portend a crisis that must be met. The Creator bequeathed to Adam’s progeny the gift of reason so he may safely navigate through this dark night. If, long years from now, my actions come to light, posterity may harshly judge me. But it is to safeguard posterity that I now steer my course, knowing that I have done all that I can do, certain in the conviction that Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God. Thus I do God’s will.
CHAPTER 60
“ ‘Morning has broken,’ ” Mercurius murmured, luxuriating in the sun’s rays shining through the bedroom window.
As he stretched the kinks out of his seventy-two-year-old back, he slid his bare feet into a pair of ornately beaded Moroccan slippers. The Ali Baba slippers, his amoretto liked to tease. The frivolous footwear was a colorful reminder of the deprivations suffered during the war years. Those years when he had no shoes, climbed garden walls to pilfer oranges, and wore mended clothing.
He snatched his silk robe from the hook on the back of the door and slipped his bare arms into the sleeves, tying the garment at his waist.
Before retiring last evening, he’d listened to the recordings that his amoretto had made, distressed to learn how much Aisquith and his two cohorts had pieced together. Not only did they know about the three streams of hidden knowledge—alchemy, Kabbalah, and magic—they knew the Emerald Tablet contained a pictograph in which the secret of creation had been encoded.
He took a small measure of comfort in the fact that even if they uncovered the relic, without the encryption key they could not access the sacred power. Not even the brilliant Sir Francis Bacon had been able to decipher the encryption. Long millennia ago, Thoth had devised an ingeniously complex code.
Entering his study, Mercurius walked over to the built-in bookcase and rolled the floor-to-ceiling ladder several feet to one side. Hit with a twinge of arthritis in his right hip, he gingerly climbed the rungs. It took a moment to locate a slender volume: New Atlantis.
One could not help but admire the utopian thinkers who attempted to fashion a better world. One without war. Without hunger. Without misery. But every utopian colony ever founded had collapsed, besieged, the dark energy from the outside world too great a force to withstand. The inhabitants beaten down and demoralized because they dared to remake the world anew. While their aspirations were commendable, there was a flaw in the very concept of an earthly utopia. Simply put, it was impossible to remake or rehabilitate this dark planet.
For ours was a cursed world.
Which is not to say that a better world doesn’t exist. It did, on a plane of existence where the Light permeates every thought and every action of every man. Contained within each living creature, there was a divine spark. The soul. Our individual piece of eternity. Imprisoned within a physical body, from the very moment of conception, our souls long to be reunited with the Light. To return to the Lost Heaven.
Mercurius glanced down at his own withered body. How could anyone possibly accept the ridiculous notion that this belching, farting, perspiring vessel was made in God’s image? Physical existence was proof positive that this dark world was a failed experiment created by a malevolent demiurge.
To be free of this dark world, a soul must wrench itself from the physical prison of the body. Once liberated, the soul could return to the Lost Heaven and dwell in a state of luminous grace. That being the only true utopia.
He idly flipped through the pages of the slender volume that he held in his hands, the New Atlantis less than fifty pages in length. He stopped on page thirteen, a sentence in the text capturing his attention: “Thou hast vouchsafed of thy grace, to those of our order to know thy works of creation, and true secrets of them.”
In the New Atlantis, the scholars of Solomon’s House posses the secret of creation. Moreover, the esteemed scholars know that there’s a link between creation and the hidden stream of knowledge. While the brilliant Sir Francis was correct in postulating that the hidden stream of knowledge was the key, he was unaware that there were four streams of hidden knowledge. Not three. And that the fourth stream was the key to unlock the mystery of the Emerald Tablet.
As fate would have it, Mercurius had the key.
CHAPTER 61
Finished reading The Book of Moses, Edie released a gusty breath. “Whew! Those monks of Medmenham were very bad boys.”
“A nom de plume for London’s notorious Hell-Fire Club,” Caedmon informed her. “Rakes, lechers, and pornographers, the lot of them.”