Free Crucible by S. G. MacLean Page B

from a nearby border and crushed it between his fingers.
    I offered more. ‘Has he spoken to you at all of brotherhoods, fraternities?’
    At this he gave off his crushing of the herb. ‘Yes,’ he said, animated now, ‘yes, he has. Perhaps four months ago.’He looked again at the sundial. ‘And that would explain the Vitruvius, too.’
    I moved closer to him. ‘Slow down, you begin to lose me.’ He lifted a hand to stay me while he let the thoughts follow their paths and connect.
    ‘About four months ago, on a Friday evening, after all our duties were done and the students safely accounted for, Dr Forbes invited John and myself along with one or two others to take supper and have a hand of cards with him. I was glad to go, for the nights were still long and dark and there is little enough entertainment to be had in the evenings, but John declined, citing prior arrangements. Now, as you know, John is not a man to have “prior arrangements”. I noticed that he did, occasionally, leave the college on a Friday evening and return late, but it was not my place to question him on it. Then, after several weeks, perhaps two months of this, he approached me and asked if we might speak confidentially. We went to his room and he began to talk to me about the Hermetic quest: he had become fixated on the idea that there is some secret knowledge of the ancients that will unlock for us God’s great plan of the universe, that will help us find the essence of that universe deep within ourselves, and that the discovery of this essence, this element, will lead to universal harmony, the key to solving all the problems and contentions of the world.’
    ‘The great quest of the alchemists,’ I said.
    ‘Yes. And he had been studying the works of Paracelsus.’
    ‘Which ones?’ I knew of the Swiss physician,Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus as he had called himself, from long discussions by the fire of my good friend Dr Jaffray in Banff. Jaffray was a great admirer and follower of Paracelsus’ method in the diagnosis and treatment of the sick, the physical examination of the patient and the application of alchemical knowledge to the diseased element, and he enjoyed recounting tales of the contempt for authority that had seen the Swiss hounded from one university town in Europe to another, but he deplored what he and many others saw as the descent into magic of Paracelsus in his later years.
    Carmichael spread out his hands. ‘I don’t know. I believe he had begun with the medical works, but moved on.’
    ‘And this was the practice of their fraternity?’
    ‘I believe so. And I expect,’ he continued, ‘that this new-found fascination with what is fundamental to us and to the universe would explain also his interest in Vitruvius.’
    ‘I see that.’ I knew that the Hermetics venerated Vitruvius and his views on architecture as the greatest of sciences, necessarily encompassing all forms of human knowledge and endeavour. And the greatest architect of all was God, the universe His divine and perfect creation of which each one of us was an interlocking part. We would all come together to realise the perfect vision of His creation, if only the secret behind it could be understood. No more war, no more illness, no more hunger, no more hatred, drought or famine. ‘But what has all this to do with Robert Sim? With brotherhoods?’
    Carmichael chewed at his bottom lip a moment. ‘I cannot say for certain that it has anything at all to do with Robert Sim, but as to fraternities – well, at the end of his discourse on the promises of Hermetic knowledge, John asked me tentatively if, in the course of my studies abroad, I had ever come across any who might have been of a secret society of Hermetists, in pursuit of this knowledge. I told him I never had, and that should I have done, I would have counselled them to look to the world they can see, and not try to conjure the secrets of a world beyond their