[William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death Read Online Free Page A

was another witness to the discovery. The man’s eyes seemed to pierce the gloom in which he stood, and transfix Thorpe. He sighed deeply, and spoke to his foreman.
    ‘Wilfrid, you had better send a message to the constable.
    This man is long dead, but he will want to know we have found a body.’
    When he looked across the street again, the shadow had disappeared as if it had never been there. And Thorpe wondered if he could have got away with it after all.

    Falconer occupied the largest upper room in Aristotle’s Hall, which was a domus scholarum accommodating a dozen or so students who paid him a few pennies a week for their lodgings. However, though large, the room seemed to shrink the further Falconer delved into the natural sciences that obsessed him, and accumulated oddities. A visitor to his solar would first have to squeeze past a precarious stack of books and papers wedged in the recess to the left of the fireplace. Standard Church works such as the Historia Scholastica were buried deep and uncared for under the more used and well-thumbed texts that Falconer preferred. Frequent use ensured that works by the Arab mathematician A1-Khowarizmi, medical works and studies of geography such as De Sphaera Mundi topped the stacks. To the right of the fireplace under the unglazed window stood an array of jars of various sizes, all of them exuding exotic and sometimes malodorous scents. Proximity to the window did little to alleviate the stench, to which, however, Falconer appeared to be oblivious. Most of his visitors were not so blessed. In the farthest corner stood a narrow cot that was his bed, at the bottom of which was a small chest housing his meagre supply of clothes and personal goods.
    The centre of the room was dominated by a great oak table on which was usually piled a bewildering array of objects that gave some indication of the eclectic nature of regent master William Falconer’s mind. There were animal bones, human skulls, small jars of spices, carved wooden figures, bundles of dried herbs, stones that glittered and lumps of rock sheared off to reveal strange shapes inside their depths. All was presided over by the basilisk stare of Balthazar, a white ghost of a barn owl. Some visitors to Falconer’s solar were inclined to think the bird was dead and stuffed. Until they were startled by a stately turn of Balthazar’s head, as his cold eyes followed their progress round the cluttered room. In actual fact, anyone who knew Falconer had good reason to imagine the bird stuffed and somehow animated, for barn owls rarely live longer than eight years. Balthazar had lived with the regent master for twice that length of time, and was a marvel to many. The answer to the miracle was simple. This bird was the third of that name, and like his predecessors, Falconer had hand-reared him from a chick. The conceit of permitting people to think he was the same bird amused him enormously.
    Today, a morass of papers covered the table top, half-burying the disconsolate regent master • Falconer had begun two years earlier on a task that had gradually proved to be an insurmountable mountain. In his early days in Oxford, twenty years before, study had been dominated by the outpouring of scientific works by Robert Grosseteste. The Bishop of Lincoln had been prevented from calling himself the chancellor of the university, and had modestly called himself magister scolarum Oxonie . But for years before Falconer’s arrival his knowledge had been regarded as compendious. Later, Falconer’s old friend Roger Bacon had rivalled him in the spewing out of new ideas.
    So much so that he was called an alchemist, and a necromancer, endangering his very existence. William preferred to append the tag to Bacon that one of his admirers had concocted.
    Doctor Mirabilis - the Marvellous Doctor.
    For Falconer, the problem was to resolve the often conflicting views of his two mentors. Sometimes he felt as if one pillar of the edifice of his