Free [William Falconer 06] - Falconer and the Ritual of Death by Ian Morson

stimulating conversations with friends and talk to pretty girls.’
    A youthful William had preferred the last element of the prescription most, but even that and Bacon’s other advice had not been enough to hold him to his studies.
    ‘Friar Roger, there is much happening in the world, and I would see it before I am too old to travel.’
    Bacon smiled wisely at the young student who squirmed on the bench before him.
    ‘And the world will still be there when you have completed your studies.’
    ‘But that is seven years!’ To the youth it was an eternity, and he wanted to grasp the growing world by the scruff of the neck now. ‘You yourself say that we should not rely on what we are told or what we read alone. We should experience for ourselves.’
    The Friar ruefully saw that his own encouragement for William to apply the principle of experimentum to the accumulation of knowledge had been turned back on him. He sighed in defeat.
    ‘Then what do you intend to do, William Falconer?’ The young man edged forward on the bench, his blue eyes gleaming. He thrust the unruly thatch of black curly hair out of his ,eyes with a big bony hand.
    ‘I propose to travel the merchant routes throughout Europe, maybe, as far as east as Cracow, down to Naples and south to Marseilles. I have a strong arm, and can work to earn money for food and lodging. I am tired of disputing whether many angels can be in the same place at the same time.’ Bacon had thrown his hands up in a sort of despairing blessing, and Falconer had left Oxford. Now he rued the fact that Friar Bacon was not present to see his prodigal student return. It would have pleased the Franciscan. The intervening years had matured William rapidly, and filled his scrawny frame out too. Especially when he found he had a facility at arms, and hired himself out as a bodyguard and mercenary.
    It was not how he had originally envisaged his travels, but William was if nothing else a pragmatist. He had seen much of the known world, more than if he had followed his original plans.
    But one day, caught up in one of the interminable spats between Genoa and Venice, he realized he was not sure why he was doing what he was doing, nor even whose side he was on. He suddenly wearied of the fighting and the killing. His mind strayed back to Roger Bacon, and he abandoned his errant path. Instead, he wormed his way into the famous University of Bologna. Soon scholarship gripped him again, and under the guidance of such as William of Saliceto he became a master of the university. But it was England and Oxford that inevitably called him back.
    Now he had finally returned. It was the morning after Pentecost, and he was walking over Grandpont and in through South Gate. But where he would have expected bustle, the streets were unusually quiet. Falconer thought at first that perhaps too many traders had celebrated the festival in a more profane way than their priests would have liked, and were recovering from a sore head. But as he made his way up Great Jewry, he sensed tension in the air. His years as a mercenary soldier had not entirely slipped off his shoulders. He was still sensitive to the atmosphere of impending battle. He just hadn’t expected it walking along a street in an English market town devoted to the study of the Seven Liberal Arts and the Three philosophies. It didn’t feel like the Oxford he had known. It felt more like being in the town of Pest far to the east on the day it learned the fearsome Tartars were on the doorstep. He turned back to the watchman, who hovered nervously at the door set in the archway of South Gate.
    ‘What goes on, friend?’
    The old man’s face took on a sour expression.
    ‘You would do best to stay off the streets today, master. The filthy Jews are in for a thrashing, and the mob won’t ask questions of anyone they see abroad in Jewry.’ On another day Falconer might have challenged this spiteful invective. He had encountered many Jews in various