Equinox

Chapter 26

Oxford: 12 August 1690. Close to midnight.

They were all exhausted. At forty-eight Isaac Newton was the oldest by almost twenty years. Landsdown had seen but thirty summers, and Fatio, the pretty Fatio, was but a score and five years out of the cradle. Newton felt ancient.

They had all the necessary codes and procedures, of course, so they had been able to pass unmolested through the 'Three Stages of Attainment', each one leading inexorably to the next. But the wisdom of the Ancients, thought by most adepts to have been lost to history in the flames of Alexandria, could do nothing to protect them from the stifling heat along the three hundred yards of passageway that led from the college wine cellar to their destination: the secret labyrinth that stretched from a place deep below the Bodleian north to the foundations of the Sheldonian Theatre two score and ten yards distant. Their nostrils were clogged with the stench of old, rotten earth and damp, decaying dead things.

Between the second test and the third, they had rested and drunk wine from a flask. The wine was good but too warm. After the briefest pause they had continued on their way. There was no time to linger tonight.

After completing the third and final test. Landsdown handed the manuscript back to Newton who returned it to safety inside his shirt. This and the ruby sphere were valuable beyond imagining. Newton had toiled for almost eighteen months to translate the coded inscription he had found in the book by George Ripley, and he had reproduced the tiny drawing of the labyrinth so that it could be followed more easily. They would be needing these things again soon, but until then he wanted to keep the precious papers with the orb, next to his own flesh.

Landsdown kept close. The torch was their only source of light. But then, suddenly, the passageway opened up. Newton had already passed alone through some of these tunnels in search of the sphere a few months earlier. In his mind he had also travelled the map while secluded in the privacy of his laboratory in Cambridge. The route was labelled 'The Path to Enlightenment', a title written in Aramaic, a language that had yielded its secrets to Newton after he had spent many years as a young man studying ancient tongues.

As they emerged into a large circular space they could see in the faint light the way in which the ceiling arched and the walls ran smooth and wet. The stone dome above their heads was grey and streaked with mineral deposits that had leached their way into the labyrinth. According to the map they were a little over ninety feet beneath the Bodleian Library.

As the men moved slowly around the room, Newton could hear Landsdown counting paces under his breath. He reached thirteen and stopped. Facing the wall, he repeated what he had done in the wine cellar of the college, running his hands along the wall at waist height. After a few moments he found what he was looking for, another metal ring, a duplicate of the one employed to secure entrance to the first passageway.

Strange shadows lay across their faces. To Newton, Landsdown's eyes looked like fathomless black discs, musket-ball holes in dead flesh. All three of them were sweating profusely and the top of Landsdown's collar was sodden and grey.

'Master. .' He paused for a moment to catch his breath in the dank chamber. 'I must ask you to prepare yourself for what you will see behind this wall. Fatio and I have been busy in preparation for your arrival and have grown accustomed to it. Please brace yourself.' With that he pulled the ring and they watched as, slowly, a panel opened before them.

Landsdown led the way and turned to secure the torch in a wall bracket. Newton had to duck beneath the stone lintel of the opening and he kept his eyes on the black ground as he walked.

This room was a smaller version of the one they had just left. It was lit only by candles that cast an insipid glow from the far end of the room. But even this seemed intense and dazzling after the nearly complete blackness they had endured for the past two hours.

At first it was difficult for Newton to focus, to understand exactly what he was seeing. In principle, at least, he knew what to expect. He had studied the ancient texts, following carefully the diagrams and the instructions of the Ancients, but it still seemed like something that could not be real.

At the far end of the room a large golden frame had been built in the shape of a pentagram. To each side stood ornate candleholders six feet high; they held huge candles that had burned down to perhaps half their original length. Wax had dripped in piles around the holders and onto the stone floor beneath.

At the head of the golden frame a human brain had been positioned. To the left, on the next apex, a heart had been attached to the gold. As his gaze moved down, Newton saw two kidneys placed at the right apex. Lower down, another organ, what he knew to be a gall bladder, and at the base lay a liver, moist and glistening in the diffused light. A powerful odour reached his nostrils. It was Oil of Turpentine, which, through long hours, Fatio had distilled from the sapwood of the terebinth tree.

Newton looked back at Landsdown and Nicolas Fatio du Duillier. He was breathing heavily and sweating. The cuts on his face had opened so that his sweat blended with blood and ran in dark red lines down his cheeks and neck. His eyes were wide with a demonic excitement that neither of his companions had seen in him before. When he spoke, his voice was cracked with fatigue but it was nonetheless alive with confidence. 'I am pleased,' he hissed, a faint and entirely humourless smile playing across his lips. 'I am exceedingly pleased.'