The Earl smiled a strange little smile, and said nothing.
Rather as Faust did with the book of necromancy, I opened the codex and eagerly began to read. I was half expecting some instant miracle to occur: darkness would fall and, in a roll of thunder, the Spirit of the Earth would rise up before me in all its awesome grandeur.
The next moment I felt thoroughly ashamed of my naivety. The book was no different from all the others containing ‘the ultimate wisdom of the Rosicrucians’. Its message was allegorical and so opaque I understood not a word of it.
The only bits of text that stuck in my brain were those written in the familiar Greek — the delightful but meaningless motto of the Persian sage Osthanes: ‘’E physis te physei terpetai. ’E physis te physei nika. ’E physis te physei kratei. (Nature delights in Nature. Nature conquers Nature. Nature governs Nature.)’
“When was this written, and by whom?” I asked the Earl.
“No one can say. It’s impossible to narrow it down by analysis of the contents. It may even be the Latin translation of an old Arabic text. The manuscript itself originates in the fourteenth century.”
“And what is it about?”
“So far as anyone can understand it, it’s about the way life can be prolonged for hundreds of years.”
“And does it give specific instructions, or does it, like the other books, confine itself to allegorical generalities?”
The Earl pondered a moment, then answered quietly:
“You could say, it offers instruction to those who understand.”
“Oh, My Lord … one question. Do you think anyone has ever understood these mysteries?”
“Oh, yes. Fludd, for one. And Asaph Pendragon.”
For a while he said nothing, but gazed at me searchingly.
“There is a fund of human wisdom, some primal revelation, of which all human knowledge is a mere dilution,” he went on, in the same quiet tone. “But people forgot it in the very process by which they became able to think rationally.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “This has almost become a scientific truth. The myth-system of every nation begins with the wisdom of an ancient lawgiver: Hamurabbi in Babylon, Hermes Trismegistos in Egypt … ”
“And all the great thinkers felt certain that truth had been given to man in some remote, primordial past. Think of Atlantis, in Plato’s Timaeus … There was once a world, a great island, that sank beneath the sea. The drowned island could be just a symbol of the magical modes of understanding sunk deep in human consciousness, that surface only now and then, in the form of dreams …
And there have always been individuals, or secret societies,” he went on, “who insisted they were the guardians of some ancient knowledge. From the Egyptian priesthood it was passed down to the mystery cults of Alexandria; from the Alexandrians to the Hebrew Kabala and the Gnostics; from the Gnostics to the Knights Templar and from the Kabala to the late-medieval mystics, Pico della Mirandola, Pater Trimethius, Cardano, Raimundus Lullus, Paracelsus and finally the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians are the last link in the chain … ”
“And then?”
“Then came the Age of Reason. People started to think methodically and scientifically. They invented the steam engine and democracy. So the ancient knowledge now exists as a paradox: our rational minds can’t fathom it, just as we can’t fathom the superstitions of the negroes. What followed — occult science — was nothing but fraud and parody: Rational Man’s fancy dress frolic with the irrational. The eighteenth-century Freemasons, the spiritualists, the theosophists, St Germain and Cagliostro all claimed to be thousands of years old. Of course they were lying. On the other hand, lots of people falsely claim that they know the Prince of Wales, but does that make his existence a mere superstition? We just can’t grasp these things with our modern patterns of thought. As we see it, the body is a machine which in time wears out and breaks down. But Asaph Pendragon and Fludd knew that human life could be prolonged at will. Physis physei kratei. Nature governs nature.”
He stood up again and crossed the room with his long strides.
“My Lord … so many people had the secret of making gold — even if none ever actually succeeded — so why is it that those who knew how to prolong life never tried to put that into practice?”
From somewhere in the depths of the enormous room his voice answered:
“Why are you so sure no one has?”
In that moment everything I knew about the Earl’s experiments flashed across my mind. The huge axolotls whose lives he suspended for years on end and then revived … and the rumour that he’d had himself buried and dug up again …
Then other, even wilder connections, began to dawn on me.
“My Lord,” I shouted, as I sprang to me feet. “This afternoon we went to the old castle.”
“I know,” he said.
“You know? Were you in the tower at the time?”
“No. It’s not important where I was. I also know that you went down into the crypt. And I believe you solved the mystery of Rosacrux’ identity.”
“He and Asaph Pendragon were one and the same person, were they not?”
“Yes. Asaph was the Master. The others were mere disciples — including Fludd, who was by no means the outstanding pupil. He wasn’t from a very good family, and he was desperate to publish everything he knew. That’s why he wrote so much that now looks so ridiculous. Every explanation falsifies the original truth. Real scholars don’t express their knowledge in words. Asaph hadn’t the least desire to acquaint greengrocers with his discoveries.”
I felt he was trying to evade the main question.
“Then where is Asaph’s body? The tomb is empty … ”
For a long time he made no answer.
“He might have been removed to some other place. Possibly to the park here in Llanvygan. The tomb was opened by John Bonaventura, the thirteenth Earl.”
John Bonaventura! I’d come across the name before, reading the family history in the British Museum. And even then I’d had the feeling I encountered it somewhere else before that. Suddenly I remembered where.
“That’s right. He opened the tomb because the hundred and twenty years had passed.”
“How do you know about that?” the Earl exclaimed.
“I read it in the memoirs of Lenglet du Fresnoy.”
“Lenglet du Fresnoy? Who wrote that history of the alchemists, around 1760?”
“Exactly so.”
“What else is in those memoirs?”
“I don’t recall … but there was something rather strange. Something about Asaph Pendragon not having died at all … but the details have escaped me.”
“How did you come by du Fresnoy’s memoirs? Where are they?”
“The manuscript was a bequest of the Viscount of Braedhill. We catalogued it about a year ago. That’s when I came across it. It’s now in the British Museum.”
“What are you saying? In the BM? That’s horrible!”
He was pacing back and forth with his huge strides. I suddenly grasped that the dimensions of the room had been calculated for just those strides. The floor reverberated and the half-dressed old worthies on the shelves were trembling and nodding furiously.
“We must do something, Doctor; we must do something. I can’t bear the thought that every Tom, Dick and Harry should have access to the most carefully guarded secrets of my ancestors. I feel as I would if a public promenade had been driven through the family crypt … And besides, I have to know what is in those memoirs. We must get hold of that manuscript … But right now I can’t go to London … those gangsters … I have it! Doctor, you must go to London on my behalf.”