Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

It was Brother Peter's aim and ambition to collect, collate and draw together the teaching and praxis of these three men and out of the consensus, the accord and harmony between them, build a unified philosophy of life that would be the foundation stone on which mankind could move towards a millennial perfection. It was a matter of great pride to me, first, that he acknowledged how much of their knowledge represented in turn a growth from the great philosophers of my own Arab nation, particularly Ibn Rushd, known to the Christians as Averroes, and second, that he valued my own insights into and experiences arising from the hermetic teachings of Hassan Ibn Sabbah. Whether he knew I was an initiate because Uma had told him so before she departed, or whether he deduced it from the presence of the thin steel dagger they found in my loincloth when they bathed me, whose scabbard or sheath is marked in Arab calligraphy with the central tenet of our denial of faith. I did not ask.

The snowdrops, which was the apt name Peter gave the tiny white bell-like flowers we had seen in the hills, gave way to daffodils, which we call jonquils, celandines, anemones, love-in-idleness, with, beneath the russet brick walls, gillyflowers, forget-me-nots and even some tulipans. The bulbs of the last named had been a gift from the Ottoman Sufi Grand Imam of the dervishes' mosque in Iconium, who had enjoyed philosophical discourse with some of Peter's brethren. My the middle of March the gut problems I had had, a particularly vicious and persistent form of dysentery, had responded to Peter's potions and we spent much of another warm spell in the gardens, sitting in simple double seats made from dressed planks. The backs of these commemorated in carved lettering the wise men who had meditated so fruitfully in the past in this same garden, amongst them the three who were the subjects of most of our conversation,

All was tidy and orderly here; even the paths were gravelled with small round stones like peas, and behind us on the walls, following the custom of the Arab gardeners in Spain, the espaliered apples, pears, and even a vine began to push out tiny buds. The air was fragrant with the smell of the daffodils and their narcissistic cousins.

Our conversations followed patterns and routes dictated by the logic or fancy of our thoughts, which pursued concepts and conclusions rather than the chronological track dictated by the three lives, the three bodies of work, which we picked at and attempted to unravel. Our aim was to weave all into an intricate but self-sufficient garment of thought that might clothe the bewildered minds and souls of men against the cold winds that blow out of the darkness that surrounds our existence. But, for the sake of clarity and brevity, dear Mah-Lo, I shall now take them in order.

First came Roger Bacon, who flourished some two hundred years ago. Nothing in the world of learning comes from nothing, and Roger based his thought on that of the great Arab thinkers, going back not only to Avicenna and Averroes but to Abu Yusuf Ya' Qu Ibn Ishaq al-Kindl and Albumazar. From the former of these last two he learnt much about optics and was thus able to invent, or at any rate vastly improve, spectacles, without which we would all, as scholars, be as helpless as blind mice, and from the latter mathematics and the faith in mathematics that decrees they are as reliable a source of truth as revealed scripture.

Hut even more important than spectacles were the principles on which Friar Bacon based his study of optics, which were mathematics, of course, but also observation and experimentation.

You ask what I mean by experimentation [and I have to say that at this point Ali became more animated than I had yet seen him, at any rate when his philosophical fit was upon him]. You observe a phenomenon – say, the way sunlight may be focused through a lens to a fine point on a surface set in a plane perpendicular to the sun's position in the sky. and you discover that the distance between the lens and the surface on which the point of light appears at its smallest and brightest varies according to the thickness of the lens. From these phenomena you produce a mathematical, algebraic formula that allows you to predict what thickness of lens will require a certain distance between it and the surface for it to achieve perfect focus, or knowing the thickness of the lens, you will predict the distance. Now. You test the validity of your algebraically expressed formula by using it repeatedly to predict thickness of lens when you know focal length and vice versa. Algebra? A mathematical methodology discovered by Muhommad ben Musa al-Khwarizmi. When an experiment, which can be repeated, or controlled observation of phenomena, thus support the mathematically-based hypothesis one can be sure that a truth has been arrived at. Knowledge or scientia has been acquired.

Friar Bacon believed that knowledge so attained was the only knowledge worth more than a groat (a small sum of money, dear Mah-Lo, in Ingerlond a skilled manual labourer's daily wage) but, of course, he could not declare this publicly. Why not? Because to do so would be to deny the certain truth of God's laws and will as bequeathed to us in Holy Writ and interpreted by Mother Church. These are jealous gods and would have burnt him alive if he had spoken against them.

He did indeed go as tar as he dared in naming tour causes of ignorance: one. the example of frail and unsuited authority; two, the influence of custom; three, the opinion of the unlearned crowd; and four, concealment of one's ignorance in a display of apparent wisdom. When you think about it, Peter asserted, three of these four come pretty close to describing the processes by which both Scripture and the Church arrive at what they would have us believe…

Somewhere at about this point I asked Brother Peter what he thought of the myth of the Brazen Head that Bacon was reputed to have made and which he bade speak forth prophecies, but which produced only the banality of 'Time was. Time is. Time's past' before exploding into atoms, the atoms Democritus took to be the building blocks of matter. My new friend's voice dropped, he glanced about him to be sure no one was near enough to hear what he said, and then he murmured, 'Gunpowder. Gunpowder used as such to fire a gun, to project a cannon-ball. He was the first to do it, and he did it using a huge church bell, made of brass, with a huge bell mouth, and with those very words inscribed around its lip.'

'But why whisper? There is no secret about gunpowder now. It is used in battle and in sieges from Bristol to Bombay.'

Brother Peter kept his voice low. 'Why do you think his brass cannon blew up?'

I thought for a moment. 'Because Friar Bacon's gunpowder was better than he thought it would be?"

'Precisely. Through experiment and mathematics he arrived at the receipt, correct to the last scruple, that produces a powder more powerful and certain in its effect than any other.'

My heart quickened. At last it seemed I might be on the point of achieving one of the aims that made up the purposes of our expedition across the world to this barbarous island, namely to seek out the latest in military technology.

'Do you have the receipt here in Oxenford?'

'Here in Osney. But… coded. Of course.'

'Why coded?''

'His superiors in the order were not unsympathetic to his enquiring mind; for much of his life he was allowed to speculate and experiment without interference. The condition imposed, though, was that the records of his work should be hidden from the gaze of those who might lack the discipline to treat them with the care and respect they deserve. In other words to prevent their exploitation for personal gain or power, or to subvert the teachings of the Holy Church. So. Code.'

'But you know the key?'

Peter touched the side of his nose with his index finger. 'Trust me.' he said. 'Roger had no inclination to hide his light under a bushel. His code demands little of the cryptologist's art to unravel. He left a thread-end protruding: one good pull and it all falls apart.'