Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

“You mean alchemists, people like that?”

He looked scornful. “Once, maybe, I meant such people. But their skill and power is waning. They seek now to explain what is, not to explore its power. Alchemy is now a mechanical trade, full of brews and potions which will be able to explain how things are made, but loses sight of the greater questions, of what they are for.”

“You are an alchemist?”

He shook his head. “No. I am an astrologer and, if you will, a necromancer. I have studied the enemy, and I know his powers. My skills are limited, but I know what I can do. If I can help you, I will. If not, I will tell you so.”

He stood up. “Now, you must give me the information I require, then leave me in peace for a few hours. I need the exact time of your birth, and the place of it. I need the time and place of your conjunction with this girl, and the times of your dreams and encounters with the animals.”

I gave him all that he required, and he dismissed me to walk around the village, which I was quite happy to do, for I knew it had been the scene of one of the battles of the war, in which my father had played a distinguished and noble role by advising the king so well that the day ended with the capture of all the enemy’s cannon and the death of much of his force. Had the king kept my father close to him, rather than relying on the advice of better-born but less experienced men, the result might have been different. But the king came increasingly to rely on cowardly pen-pushers like Clarendon, who wanted merely to surrender, not to fight.

It is low-lying, lush land around the northern part of Oxfordshire, fine countryside for crop and cavalry, and its richness could be seen even when all was dead, the fields brown and still and the trees stripped of their leaves for winter. The hills give some concealment to troops, but do not greatly impede their movement, and the woods are small in scale and easily skirted. I walked out of the village and up the river, imagining in my mind how the two armies had slowly edged their way upstream, the king on one side, General Waller and the rebels on the other, watching each other like cocks in a ring for a slip which would give the slightest advantage. It was my father who gave the advice which turned the day, encouraging the king to move the van forward, and advance the rear at a slower pace, opening up a gap in the middle which he knew a man like Waller would not be able to resist. Sure enough, Waller sent a good portion of his horse and all his cannon over the little bridge at Cro-predy, and they were still in disarray from breaking ranks to cross when the good Earl of Cleveland, warned of the tactic, fell upon them and cut them to ribbons.

It must have been a wonderful sight to have beheld; to have seen the cavalry, so far from their current perfumed dissolution, charging in perfect order, their sabers glistening in the sun, for I remember my father saying that it had been a warm, cloudless day of midsummer.

“Tell me,” I asked of a laborer who passed me by, giving me the downcast look of sullen suspicion which all villagers adopt with foreigners. “Where is the tree the king dined under the day of the battle?”

He scowled at me, and made to sidle past me, but I grabbed him by the arm and insisted. He nodded in the direction of a small lane. “There is an oak tree in the field at the end of that track,” he said. “That is where the tyrant ate.”

I struck him, full in the face, for his impudence. “Mind your tongue,” I warned him. “You will not talk like that in my presence.”

He shrugged, as if my reproof was of no importance to him at all. “I speak the truth,” he said, “as is my duty and right.”

“You have no rights and your sole duty is to obey,” I replied incredulously. “The king was fighting to save us all.”

“And on that day all my crops were trampled, my son killed and my house ransacked by his troops. What cause do I have to love him?”

I moved to hit him again, but he guessed my intention and shrank back like a dog that has been beaten too often, and so I waved the miserable creature to be out of my sight. But he had spoiled my mood; my plan of standing where the king had stood, so I could breathe in the atmosphere of the time, seemed less appealing now, and after a moment’s hesitation, I turned back to the inn in the hope that Greatorex had finished his task.

He had not, and he made me wait a good hour before he came down the stairs bearing the sheets of paper which, supposedly, bore all my past and future on them in his little squiggles. His attitude and mood had changed, no doubt to frighten me and thus put up his fee; whereas before he had been relaxed and, I think, treated my tale with less than complete seriousness, now he had a heavy frown, and an air of the greatest concern.

I had never troubled before, and have troubled little since, with astrology. I care not to know what the future brings for, by and large, I already know. I have my place and in the fullness of time, tomorrow or thirty years hence, I shall die, as God wills. Astrology is of use only to those who do not know their position, or what it will be; its popularity is a mark of a people in distress and a society in torment. No doubt that is why such people as Greatorex were so much in demand during the troubles, for then a man could be a grandee one moment and less than nothing the next. I have no doubt that if the leveling principle prevails amongst us, and more men claim advancement merely for merit, then the fortunetellers will profit the more. Certainly, that was why I needed him then, and why I dismissed such people when I needed them no longer. No man who truly accepts the will of God can attend to astrology, 1 now think, for whatever happens is the goodness of Providence; if we accept that, we should not want to know more.

“Well?” I asked when he had composed his papers before me. “What is the answer?”

“It is disconcerting and worrying,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. “And I hardly know what to make of it. We live in the strangest of times, and the heavens themselves bear witness to great prodigies. I myself know this; there is a great teacher, far greater than I can ever be, who might explain it to me if I can find him; I have traveled from Ireland for that express purpose, but so far with little success.”

“Times are hard indeed,” I said dryly. “But what about my chart?”

“It disturbs me greatly,” he said, peering at me as though I was newly introduced to him, “and I scarcely know how to advise you. It seems you were born for a great purpose.”

Perhaps this is the currency of all soothsayers, I do not know, but I felt that he was saying the truth, and I felt that it was so; what greater purpose was there, after all, than the one I had taken on myself? Greatorex’s confirmation of it bolstered my strength greatly.

“You were born on the day the battle of Edgehill was fought,” he continued, “a strange and frightening day; the skies were in disarray, and portents abounded.”

I did not point out that you hardly needed to be an adept to see that.

“And you were born not greatly distant from the battle,” he continued. “Which means your chart was affected by the events which went on around you. You know, of course, that the chart of the querent intersects with that of the country in which he is born?”

I nodded.

“So, you were born a Scorpio, with your ascendant in Libra. Now, as far as the question you pose is concerned, you asked it at exactly two o’clock, and it was for that time that I prepared the horoscope. The best sign of witchcraft is if the lord of the twelfth house be in the sixth, or if one planet be lord of the ascendant and the twelfth, which may happen when the proper ascendant may be intercepted, then it may be witchcraft. If the converse applies, however, and the lord of the ascendant be in the twelfth or sixth, then it shows that the querent occasioned his problems by his own willfulness.”