Falconer and the Death of Kings by Ian Morson Page A

sojourn in Paris. As for himself, he felt like an interloper. But he fancied he was such an ascetic that it shouldn’t matter. He could make his home wherever he could lay his head. And now he was so fired up with his new task of recording Doctor Mirabilis’s thoughts that any discomfort seemed to pale into insignificance. But he would have liked to have discussed what the friar had said to him today after Falconer had left.
    ‘Listen, young Thomas,’ said Bacon, ‘and I will tell you about the boundless corruption everywhere. Even the Court of Rome is torn by the deceit and fraud of unjust men. The whole Papal Court is defamed of lechery, and gluttony is lord of all.’
    Thomas had gone pale at such words being spoken out loud, and he was not surprised that the Franciscan order had kept Bacon under lock and key so long. He had been anxious to test Falconer with his friend’s words. But William was more intent on examining Paul Hebborn’s scrip. He was already pulling the drawstring and tipping the contents out on to a space he had cleared on the small table in the centre of the room.
    ‘Hmm.’
    Falconer rummaged in his own purse, extracted his eye-lenses and put them on. Peering down at the tabletop, he poked at the scattering of items with a bony finger. There was a horn spoon, three small coins, a broken comb and a tattered copy of Priscian’s grammar book.
    ‘Not much to go on, is there?’
    Thomas agreed.
    ‘It was not worth stealing, after all.’
    ‘I wish you would stop referring to it as stealing. I merely borrowed the scrip in order to help trace what happened to the boy.’
    ‘Yes, but it hasn’t helped, has it?’
    Reluctantly, Falconer had to agree, and he shovelled the items back into the leather purse.
    ‘I shall have to talk to his master and fellow students somehow. Though without any authority here, I am not sure how they will receive me.’
    ‘He was studying medicine, under an Englishman called Adam Morrish near the Petit Pont.’ Thomas named the bridge that linked the Ile de la Cité to the university quarter on the south bank of the river. ‘I could talk to the students, if you wish. The faculty of medicine has what they call here a dean as its head. He is called Gérard de Osterwiic. I have met him, and he is a most amenable man. He will know all about the individual schools of medicine. And if we are to set up this subterfuge of Friar Bacon teaching at a faculty outside the order’s building, it might as well be at the Petit Pont.’
    Falconer frowned, seeing that this might cut him out of the process altogether.
    ‘Will you have time to do that, and act as scribe for Roger? That will be your primary task, after all. Perhaps I should speak to this dean.’
    But Thomas would not have it. He felt for the first time that he was at the centre of things in Paris, where before he was scurrying at Falconer’s shabby boot-heels. And, though neither man knew it then, Falconer would soon find his burden greater than Thomas’s. Sir John Appleby was already reckoning to be at the Abbey of St Victor soon after prime on the very next day. Edward was chafing at the bit to speak to the regent master who had served his father in his last days. And to present him with a complex puzzle that he had been thinking about all day. He knew he could make use of this Falconer to serve his own ends. It was just a matter of how he would arrange to have Falconer do his bidding.

SEVEN
    W illiam Falconer was never an early riser, and at Aristotle’s Hall in Oxford he relied on the students lodging in the hall to have drawn him a bowl of water in the morning. With it he would refresh his face and wake himself up. In the abbey in Paris where he and Thomas were staying, the seemingly incessant chant of the monks at prayer woke him early and kept him awake. It seemed that, no sooner had they completed nocturnes, they were intoning lauds. And hard on the heels of lauds came prime. By then the abbey was already