Doctor Illuminatus Read online

  “What was de Loudéac’s plan?” Pip asked.

  “It was simple,” Sebastian answered. “He was going to make a homunculus to replace the infant king.”

  While Sebastian had been talking, the swan had moved slowly downstream and was now drifting towards the reeds on the opposite bank, her cygnets keeping close. Sebastian watched them for a moment, then stood up, brushing dry leaves and dirt from his jeans. He set off along the riverbank. Pip and Tim followed him.

  “Did he succeed?” Tim wanted to know.

  “No. He failed.”

  “What has all this got to do with you?” Pip asked. “It all happened centuries ago.”

  Sebastian made no response until he was well away from the willows.

  “That is so,” he eventually replied, casting a sideways look at the swan, which was continuing downstream, its wings set like parallel sails, “yet, after the attempt to replace the infant king had failed, de Loudéac persevered with his quest to make a homunculus.”

  “So what . . . ?” Tim began.

  “It is a vital matter,” Sebastian interrupted him. “A homunculus is more than just an artificial creature. It is a living human, yet one that has no soul.” He fell silent, to give this fact time to sink in.

  “What you’re saying,” Pip said, after a pause, “is that this . . . thing isn’t just a created man, but one that, if it has no soul, has no mind of its own.”

  “Exactly so!” Sebastian came back. “This creature, without its own free will, may be commanded by its maker.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Tim declared. “It might be unnatural, but . . .”

  Sebastian sighed. “You see nothing wrong in an evil man being able to create a creature — or many creatures — that will do his every bidding?”

  “Wow!” Tim held his hands up. “This is way too sci-fi! Any minute now,” he added skeptically, “we’ll have some Hollywood hulk charging over the hill, toting a laser gun, with half his computer-generated skull split open to show the circuit boards inside, and liquidizing anyone that gets in his way.”

  “You may be flippant, Tim,” Sebastian said curtly, his voice growing agitated, “but what I tell you is fact. De Loudéac has, through the centuries, not given up on his quest — and he continues to this very day.”

  “C’mon!” Tim said. “You’ve got to admit it’s a bit off the wall. Like, what’s he going to do with this fleshand-blood robot? As he failed to get power over Henry the Sixth, what’s next? Take over the royal family? Turn them into zombies? Clone them? Rule England? Rule the world?”

  “These may well be his intentions, for has he not already sought to overthrow the established throne of England?” Sebastian rejoined, continuing, “Of this I can be sure. Whatever his plans, he seeks to do terrible wrong in the world by his creation and, should he achieve his end, it will mean much danger. If he were to fashion a homunculus, there would be abroad in the land a creature of infinite malevolence, a fearful beast spawned of great iniquity, capable of bringing such wickedness as you would never have known, nor could imagine. Therefore, it is imperative,” he went on, his voice calming, “that I succeed in foiling de Loudéac’s plan, prevent him from reaching his objective. Should I fail, it will be the beginning of chaos and an age of evil will commence that may destroy all we know as good.”

  “Don’t you think that’s just a teensy bit OTT?” Tim replied. “I mean, this is the stuff of Superman.”

  “OTT?” Sebastian asked.

  “Over the top,” Tim explained. “Too much. Way out. Implausible. Like, really unlikely.”

  “No,” Sebastian answered tersely. “This is not. It is, I assure you, plausible.”

  “Like, yes . . . .” Tim said, yet, as he looked at Sebastian, he saw he was in deadly earnest, his face set.

  Pip, who had been thinking while the others argued, asked, “What do you mean, ‘continues to this very day’?” No sooner had she spoken than she wondered if she wanted to hear the answer.

  “I mean,” Sebastian said, “that de Loudéac is here, now, pursuing this end.”

  Tim thought for a moment and said, “But how can he be here?”

  “He can,” Sebastian replied, “because, when my father was arrested and tried, de Loudéac was present. It was he who was my father’s accuser. And he acquired a bottle of aqua soporiferum.”

  “So you have seen him!” Pip exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Sebastian confirmed, “I have seen him many times.”

  “What does he look like?” she asked.

  “If this de Loudéac has a bottle of your father’s gloop,” Tim mused aloud, “he must be able to hibernate like you.”

  “Indeed, he can,” Sebastian said. Then, looking from Pip to her brother and back again, his eyes seeking out theirs, he went on, “Understand this, you live in a time of great peril, for de Loudéac has returned. Whenever he is awake, I am awake, for my father trained me thus. This is my mission, my task. I must combat de Loudéac and stop him in his endeavors. To do this, I require your assistance.”

  He looked down the river, shading the sunlight from his face with his hand.

  “Wherever I am,” Sebastian added, “he will be trying to overhear what I say, studying my actions, seeking a way to defeat me. And if you are my accomplices, he will seek to undo you as well. Of this you must be aware. I do not demand your help, I only request it for I fear I am not able to defeat him alone.”

  “Say no more!” Tim replied, the excitement rising in him. “We’re on your train, my man!”

  Sensing Tim’s levity, Sebastian warned, “This is not a game we play, Tim. It is a deadly enterprise upon which we are engaged. Much lies at stake, for, if de Loudéac succeeds, there will be on Earth a man not born of woman who will answer only to the darkness. And to his creator.”

  “We’re still with you,” Pip said, “but one thing I don’t understand. Why, when he could go anywhere in the world, does he return here?”

  “Because here,” Sebastian explained, “is where the powers of good and the powers of evil come together. You know of Stonehenge?”

  “Yes,” Pip replied.

  “It is a place where natural power is centered. The ancient people knew this and built there to attempt to harness it. De Loudéac comes here for the same purpose.” Looking beyond Pip and Tim, he lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. “You asked what de Loudéac looked like. He appears as he wishes you to see him.” Sebastian raised his hand and pointed beyond the willows. “Behold him now.”

  Pip and Tim spun round. In the middle of the river, six meters away from where they had been talking, was another swan.

  It was black.

  No sooner had they seen the swan than it took flight. They watched as its wings beat the air, the flight feathers whistling as it gained height, banked and disappeared over the water meadows across the river. When it was gone, Sebastian left Pip and Tim, saying that he would meet them in the afternoon at the rear of the coach house.

  The black swan had unnerved Pip and, although Tim discovered from the Internet that there were such things as black swans, that they were indigenous to Australia and that there were a small number in Britain, living exclusively on the lakes in the royal parks of London, her mind was not put at rest.

  “I expect they lose one or two every year,” Tim said, by way of explanation. “They fly away to look for a mate or go on their holidays or something.”

  “London’s over a hundred miles away,” Pip said. “So what?” Tim was determined to justify the black swan and reduce his sister’s fears. “Bewick’s swans migrate here from Arctic Siberia and whooper swans from Greenland. A quick jaunt down the motorway would be nothing.”

  Yet, despite his reasoning, Tim could not help wondering if the swan really had been de Loudéac. It was fast becoming plain to him, as it was to Pip, that nothing could necessarily be taken at face value any longer.

  Shortly after two o’clock, Pip and Tim approached the coach house. It wa
s about fifty meters from the main house, across what had once been a cobbled courtyard but was now a graveled turning circle with an oval of lawn in the center, ringed by beds of roses. A spur of raked gravel led off to the former stables, now converted into a two-car garage and a garden store, but only a dirt path went to the coach house.

  “What did the estate agent say? ‘In need of renovation’?” Tim remarked as he surveyed the tenacious ivy- and moss-covered stone walls, broken window frames and double oak doors clearly half off their hinges. “In need of bulldozing and starting again, more like.”

  They turned the corner of the building, avoiding a dense patch of nettles and deadly nightshade, one or two of its little faint violet flowers drooping from the top of the tall stem. Lower down were two ripe berries, as black and as shiny as onyx.

  The land beyond the coach house was wilder than the meadows near the river and more undulating. The grass was long and in dire need of cutting for hay. The trees seemed more unkempt and the distant overgrown hedgerow had clearly not been trimmed for a long time and should have been laid years before.

  Sebastian was waiting for them, standing in the long grass some way behind the coach house.

  “I have much to do before nightfall,” he declared urgently, “and require your help. I am in need of a quantity of alcohol. Can you know where there is such a liquid?”

  Pip was about to say that his request would be difficult to fulfill — she knew one could buy drink in a liquor store, or surgical alcohol from a pharmacy, but the shopkeeper and pharmacist would only sell it to someone over eighteen — when Tim said, “Does it have to be pure alcohol?”

  “As pure as possible,” Sebastian replied.

  “No problemo!” Tim exclaimed, and he made off back towards the house.

  “Come,” Sebastian invited Pip. “I wish to show you something.”

  They set off across the rough meadow, the grass seed heads tickling Pip’s hands, the dusty smell of pollen making her nose itch.

  “Why is this field uneven when the other is flat?” she asked.

  “Men have lived in this place for many centuries,” Sebastian explained. “Long before my father was given the land, there were houses here. Each of these raised areas is where a building stood, the dips between them ditches or the course of lanes.”

  A cock pheasant, startled by their approach, suddenly burst into the air almost from their feet, cackling with annoyance. Pip squeaked in alarm and jumped.

  “There is no need to be afeared,” Sebastian said calmly.

  “But what if it was de Loudéac?”

  “It will not be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because he is away at present.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know,” Sebastian replied inexplicably, watching the bird glide down, spreading its wings to brake its flight and disappear into the depths of the far hedgerow.

  In the center of the field, surrounded by grass so tall that it was invisible even from a short distance away, was a pond. The banks were gently sloping, the water covered in a green carpet of duckweed and water-crowfoot, the edges lined by small bulrushes and a plant that somewhat resembled parsley, but which Pip knew immediately was deadly hemlock.

  “This pool,” Sebastian announced, “was made by men well before the time of the coming of Our Lord. A tiny spring feeds it from the far side.”

  “I suppose it was the water supply for the settlement,” Pip said.

  “No,” Sebastian explained. “For that, they went to the river. This pool is a holy place. I will show you.”

  Sebastian sat down in the long grass, removing his sneakers and rolling his jeans up above his knees. Once barefoot, he slowly stepped into the pool, the duck-weed parting before him and closing behind him. Three meters from the bank, he halted, then started to move around very slowly.

  “What are you doing?” Pip asked.

  “I am feeling with my toes.” He stopped and bent down, plunging his arm into the water. When he stood up, duckweed clung to his skin. “I have one,” he announced and made for the bank.

  “What is it?”

  Sebastian placed a small circular disc about two centimeters in diameter and covered in mud in her hand.

  “Wash it clean,” he said.

  Pip knelt at the water’s edge and rubbed the object between her finger and thumb. As the mud sluiced off, she saw a silvery pattern of some sort appear.

  “What do you see?”

  Turning it in her hand, Pip realized it was not a pattern but a head in profile, wearing what resembled a crown of spike-like thorns. Around it was lettering in block capitals.

  “It’s a coin,” she exclaimed, flicking it over to see more writing on the other side, surrounding a figure standing holding what might have been a spear or scepter. She washed it again and the silver became brighter.

  “It is a Roman coin,” Sebastian corrected her. “Why was it in the pond?” Pip asked.

  “To Romans, springs were holy places and they cast money into them as offerings to their gods. And to the Romans, the emperor was a god . . .”

  Tim appeared around the coach house, running towards them.

  “Here you are,” he declared. “Alcohol!” He held out a bottle of vodka.

  Sebastian took the bottle, unscrewed the cap and sniffed at it.

  “Aqua vitae!” he said with obvious glee.

  Without saying anything further, he set off in the direction of the river, clutching the bottle as if it were immensely valuable.

  “If Dad finds that bottle missing,” Pip warned her brother, “you and I are going to be neck deep in serious trouble.”

  “He won’t,” Tim said confidently. “When last did you see Mum or Dad drink vodka? He’s a scotch-and-water man and Mum drinks gin and tonic. It was only in the drinks cabinet for guests and, anyway, if they can’t find it, they’ll assume it got lost in the move.”

  They followed in Sebastian’s footsteps, where he had flattened a swathe through the long grass.

  “Look what he found in that pond,” Pip said, handing the Roman coin to Tim. “That pool was a holy shrine in Roman times. It’s full of coins and offerings and things.”

  “Now that is cool!” Tim replied.

  When they caught up with Sebastian, he was striding out, walking at almost a trotting pace.

  “Slow down a bit!” Tim said.

  Sebastian, who seemed to be walking in a semi-trance, eased up on his pace.

  “Can I ask you something?” Pip inquired. “Certainly.”

  “How is it that you know so much?” Pip asked. “I mean — you are more or less the same age as us. At least, you are in waking terms. You’ve never been to school and while your father taught you a lot, I’m sure, he can’t have taught you everything you know in just ten years.”

  “And for the first five years, you must have been just a little sprog anyway,” Tim added. He went on, “And some of the stuff you know about, like atomic half-life of elements and such, is knowledge men have only had for the last fifty years or so. And the Human Genome Project’s only been going on for a few years, yet you know about it.”

  “It is simple,” Sebastian replied, “for I exist not only here, now, in this time, but also in another.”

  “Of course!” Tim exclaimed. “Like turning the page.” “Not exactly. I am able to acquire knowledge whilst I am asleep, for then I am able to exist in a parallel universe.”

  “Run that one by me again,” Tim said. “According to some scientific thought,” Sebastian began, “there exist other worlds — other universes — which connect with or relate to our own. These are called parallel universes, which are similar and may even be duplicates of our own, occupied by human beings who are duplicates of ourselves. It is said that we can visit these parallel universes in our sleep and that, when we dream, we are in fact entering one of these other worlds that mimic our own.”

  “So when you are hibernating, you can go into
one of these places?” Pip suggested.

  “Yes,” Sebastian replied, “and, once there, I can learn, bringing the knowledge with me whither I go.”

  “Presumably,” Tim observed, “de Loudéac can do the same thing.”

  “Yes,” Sebastian said, nodding soberly, “he can.” The ground began to rise slowly. Ahead, half covered in brambles and hawthorn, was a single line of rusty barbed wire strung loosely between fence posts that had rotted through and were either leaning over or held upright only by the wire and the tenacity of the tangle of briars and branches. Behind, on a rise, was a dense clump of trees. Sebastian headed for an almost in-discernible path, holding the barbed wire up for Pip and Tim to duck under.

  “This copse is called the Garden of Eden,” Sebastian announced, striding past them, pushing the under-growth aside as he went. “Follow me.”

  “Isn’t this the place the headmaster mentioned?” Tim said under his breath as Pip passed him.

  She nodded and set off after Sebastian, Tim a few paces behind her.

  After some twenty meters or so, they came upon a clearing in which a large number of different plants was growing, separated by narrow strips of grass.

  “It looks like a herb garden gone wild,” Pip remarked.

  “Which, in a way, is what it is,” Sebastian said. “Every plant was originally sown or placed in the ground here by my father. My family have tended them down through the centuries, cultivating them and, where necessary, sowing fresh seed or setting new cuttings. My uncle was the last to honor the responsibility but now, as you can see, it has been abandoned and is in much need of attention.”