Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

Khunrath,sinking to his knees and kissing the bony, diaphanous hand of Dr.Dee. "Master, so I will do. And you will have what you wish.Remember these words: the Rose and the Cross. You will hear talk ofthem."

Dee wrapped himself inhis cloaklike coat, and only his eyes, glistening and malign, couldbe seen. "Come, Kelley," he said. "This man is now ours. And you,Khunrath, keep the golem well away from us until our return toLondon. And then, let all Prague burn as a sole pyre."

He started to go off.Crawling, Khunrath seized him by the hem of his coat. "One day,perhaps, a man will come to you. He will want to write about you.Be his friend."

"Give me the Power," Deesaid with an unspeakable expression on his fieshless face, "and hisfortune is assured."

We went out. Over theAtlantic a low-pressure air mass was advancing in an easterlydirection toward Russia.

"Let's go to Moscow," Isaid to him.

"No," he said. "We'rereturning to London."

"To Moscow, to Moscow,"I murmured crazily. You knew very well, Kelley, that you wouldnever go there. The Tower awaited you.

* * *

Back in London, Deesaid, "They're trying to reach the solution before we do. Kelley,you must write something for William....something diabolicallyinsinuating about them."

Belly of the demon, Idid it, but William ruined the text, shifting everything fromPrague to Venice. Dee flew into a rage. But the pale, shiftyWilliam felt protected by his royal concubine. And still he wasn'tsatisfied. As I handed over to him, one by one, his finest sonnets,he asked me, with shameless eyes, about Her, about You, my DarkLady. How horrible to hear your name on that mummer's lips! (Ididn't know that he, his soul damned to duplicity and to thevicarious, was seeking her for Bacon.) "Enough," I said to him."I'm tired of building your glory in the shadows. Write foryourself."

"I can't," he answeredwith the gaze of one who has seen a lemure. "He won't letme."

"Who? Dee?"

"No, Verulam. Don't youknow he's now the one in charge? He's forcing me to write worksthat later he'll claim as his own. You understand, Kelley? I'm thetrue Bacon, and posterity will never know. Oh, parasite! How I hatethat firebrand of hell!"

"Bacon's a pig, but hehas talent," I said. "Why doesn't he write his ownstuff?"

He didn't have the time.We realized this only years later, when Germany was invaded by theRosy Cross madness. Then, from scattered references, certainphrases, putting two and two together, I saw that the author of theRosicrucian manifestoes was really he. He wrote under the pseudonymof Johann Valentin Andreae!

Now, in the darkness ofthis cell where I languish, more clearheaded than Don IsidroParodi, I know for whom Andreae was writing. I was told by Soapes,my companion in imprisonment, a former Portuguese Templar. Andreaewas writing a novel of chivalry for a Spaniard, who was languishingmeanwhile in another prison. I don't know why, but this projectserved the infamous Bacon, who wanted to go down in history as thesecret author of the adventures of the knight of La Man-cha. Baconasked Andreae to pen for him, in secret, a novel whose hiddenauthor he would then pretend to be, enjoying in the shadows (butwhy? why?) another man's triumph.

But I digress. I am coldin this dungeon and my thumb hurts. I am writing, in the dim lightof a dying lamp, the last works that will pass under William'sname.

Dr. Dee died, murmuring,"Light, more light!" and asking for a toothpick. Then he said,"Qualis Artifex Pereo!" It was Bacon who had him killed. Before thequeen died, for years unhinged of mind and heart, Verulam managedto seduce her. Her features then were changed; she was reduced tothe condition of a skeleton. Her food was limited to a little whiteroll and some soup of chicory greens. At her side she kept a sword,and in moments of wrath she would thrust it violently into thecurtains and arras that covered the walls of her refuge. (And whatif there were someone behind there, listening? How now! A rat? Goodidea, old Kelley, must make note of it.) With the poor woman inthis condition, it was easy for Bacon to make her believe he wasWilliam, her bastard¡Xpresenting himself at her knees, she beingnow blind, covered in a sheep's skin. The Golden Fleece! They saidhe was aiming at the throne, but I knew he was after somethingquite different, control of the Plan. That was when he becameViscount St. Albans. His position strengthened, he eliminatedDee.

* * *

The queen is dead, longlive the king...Now, I was an embarrassing witness. He led me intoan ambush one night when at last the Dark Lady could be mine andwas dancing in my arms with abandon under the influence of a grasscapable of producing visions, she, the eternal Sophia, with herwrinkled face like an old nanny goat's...He entered with a handfulof armed men, made me cover my eyes with a cloth. I guessed atonce: vitriol! And how he laughed. And she! How you laughed,Pinball Lady¡X and gilded honor shamefully misplaced and maidenvirtue rudely strum-peted¡Xwhile he touched her with his greedyhands and you called him Simon¡Xand kissed his sinisterscar....

"To the Tower, to theTower." Verulam laughed. Since then, here I lie, with this humanwraith who says he is Soapes, and the jailers know me only as SevenSeas Jim. I have studied thoroughly, and with ardent zeal,philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, and, unfortunately, alsotheology. Here I am, poor madman, and I know as much as I didbefore.

* * *

Through a slit of awindow I witnessed the royal wedding, the knights with red crossescantering to the sound of a trumpet. I should have been thereplaying the trumpet, for Cecilia, but once again the prize had beentaken from me. It was William playing. I was writing in theshadows, for him.

"I'll tell you how toavenge yourself," Soapes whispered, and that day he revealed to mewhat he truly is: a Bonapartist abbe buried in this dungeon forcenturies.

"Will you get out?" Iasked him.

"If...." he began toreply, but then was silent. Striking his spoon on the wall, in amysterious alphabet that, he confided in me, he had received fromTrithemius, he began transmitting messages to the prisoner in thenext cell. The count of Monsalvat.

* *