Night

Pitch black was that room, illumined by a single shaft of light. In a corner a slow-burning wick faintly glowed. Vaughan took a long slither of wood and lit from it the thick tallow candles. A room seldom cleaned but cosy from the constant heat of a furnace. A room lined on one side with large oak shelves that sagged wildly, bowed under the weight of the books stuffed every which way. A large table ordered with objects. A book lay open next to a large piece of slate, pottery bowls, bottles, knives and instruments for grinding. A chair stood near a large burning glass upon a wooden frame. . Vaughan went into a small adjoining closet and returned dragging a sack. Out of this he took several lumps of cut peat, opened the door of the furnace with a tool, and stuffed them into the low burning embers. Gingerly, Vaughan lifted the lid of a stone basin, positioned so as to absorb the heat of the furnace. His nose wrinkled as the vapour rose from inside. His eyes smiled. That night he would bank the fire higher, remove the lid and sit ‘til dawn observing closely the subtle changes passing over the iridescent liquid within the crucible. Vaughan pulled a book into the candle’s light. ‘Well’ he said, again wrinkling his nose, ‘smells like my fellow tenants have pissed over you. Are you still here? Thank you! Your piss is said to be the best defence against the worm!’ He fell to reading the book, taking an occasional swig from a half-finished flagon of cider. He read on for a time before dosing. In the stillness there came the scratching sound of a small bird or rodent. Vaughan shifted slightly and set his eyes upon the tiny creature. The mouse, for that’s what it was, did not seem alarmed by Vaughan's presence. ‘My friend’ said Vaughan, ‘I must thank you for the attention you lavish on my humble library; you are more conscientious then any clerk. They tell me that in the miraculous continent of India, the elephant god of learning rides on a mouse. An elephant never forgets or so they also say. That same elephant uses a broken tusk as a quill. I have even heard said that there are churches there, devoted solely to the worship of your fellows, and that no-one dares even to shoo them away for fear of sacrilege. So I am in exalted company tonight.’ ‘Tell me mouse, whilst you were caring for my library, did you perchance read? I wondered if you might express an opinion on the relative merits of some of these esteemed authors. What of this one, the blessed Avicenna, Liber Canonis De Medicinis Cordialibus, a faithful translation or so I am told, from the Arab tongue into the Latin? This book is a great favourite, one of my oldest and most treasured. From this book I learnt the mysteries of mercury. See, here, where I have marked the page in silver point, all those years ago. “What is mercury?” asks the sage, a question I have often asked myself and am still no wiser after all my experiments.’ “One kind” he says “is obtained by purifying its mineral; another is extracted from crystals by fire, just as gold and silver are obtained. When pure it has the colour of cinnabar.” Aye yes’

Vaughan went on ‘I have prepared the quicksilver myself with the aid of this glass and the summer sun. Burning the mineral and brushing aside the metal with a pigeon’s feather. But I bore you, do please take the floor.’ The mouse was silent. Vaughan went on ‘cat got your tongue, oh perhaps I should not mention that. Forgive my lapse in manners. You must be a learned mouse, spending so much time pissing on my books. Here is one you haven't seen for sure. Abbot Synesius, a learned Greek, a poet so I hear, but this little treasure is truly that. Wondrous stuff, if only I'd seen this ten years ago.’ Again silence, apart from the sound of clogs clattering across cobbles in the yard outside. The rodent scurried away. Vaughan, now silent, set his eye to a tiny crack in the doorframe, through which he peered out into the yard. ‘Father Vaughan! Is that you I can hear in there? I’ve to take the dish back. Ma sends this pie for your supper, shall I leave it?’ ‘There’s mercury,’ Vaughan whispers to himself, his eye still at the peephole. ‘No wait Thomas if you would.’ In an instant Vaughan stands blinking in the late afternoon sun. Peering over Vaughan’s shoulder, the boy, says: ‘Looks like night in there father?’ Vaughan ignores him and makes for the kitchen, the boy following. ‘You’re limping bad today father.’ ‘Yes...the gouty humour has fallen into my leg.’ ‘At least you’ve a good appetite father!’ he says, nodding in the direction of the plate, ‘licked clean by the cat I’d say.‘ ‘I’d prefer a mouse.’ ‘What?’ ‘Oh no matter, yes an appetite today.’ ‘Must be funny not having someone to do for you at your age. Do you never wish to marry?’ Vaughan’s eyes filled with tears. Thomas remembered how Vaughan’s wife Rebecca was dead seven years of a fever. ‘Tis a wonder with all your cunning you could not save her, they says...’ ‘Yes!’ Vaughan broke in ‘it was a pity, but I must get on.’ Flushed, Thomas grabs the plate ‘I be off then’. As soon as the door is secured, Vaughan went up to his cot and slept until awoken by the sound of Thomas’s voice: ‘I got peat for you, and mam left a jug of soup.’ Vaughan took a lamp, for it was dark outside, and held it up whilst the farmboy shouldered his way into the laboratory. ‘It’s warm in here’ he said, setting down a sack. Not long after the boy's departure, Vaughan himself went out and limped across the yard to the kitchen, taking up the bread and jug of soup left there. Back in the laboratory he locked himself in for the night.

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He sipped the cooling soup. His eyes were smiling as he tore a gobbet of bread, dunking this before propelling it into his mouth. Vaughan scraped his chair closer to the book. Through the corner of his eye he saw the mouse on the table, nibbling crumbs of bread. ‘Ah! Forgive my manners, here take some of this.’ he said, breaking off a few more crumbs for the visiting rodent. ‘You have that look in your eyes Do I detect disapproval? Those rules of yours...how many times have I prayed for forgiveness for my errors of the past, especially with you know who. What of my wife you ask. Yes what of my wife…I still miss her… look here for yourself… on this note in the margin of my book: ‘I went to bed after prayers and hearty tears and had this dream towards daybreak. I dreamed I was in some obscure, large house, where there were a tumultuous raging people, amongst whom I knew not any but my brother Henry. My dear wife was there with me, but having conceived some discomfort at their disorder, I quitted the place, and went out, leaving my dear wife behind me. As I went out I considered with myself, and called to mind some small, at least seeming, unkindnesses I had used towards my dear wife in her lifetime, and the remembrance of them being odious to me I wondered with myself that I should leave her behind me and neglect her company, having now the opportunity to converse with her after death...’ ‘I must stop reading this or I shall bring down a melancholy humour on myself and spoil my light mood this night. My head is quite swimming. Shall I be damned? ...You don’t answer...I am admonished by your silence…ha!’ The mouse scuttled off, startled by the sound of Vaughan’s exclamation. ‘Yes now, I must not forget that.’ Vaughan rose from his seat to replenish the fuel for the alchemical stove. He took two pieces of black peat from the sack. The slow burning fire banked, he drew the chair near and removed the lid from the crucible. As before his nose wrinkled slightly as a whiff of gas escaped. But he was pleased to see a slight but tangible change. He settled himself for a few hours watching the scummy surface of the crucible’s contents. Time passed and it seemed to his sensitive eyes that the scum had completely detached itself from the sides of the pot to form in the centre an island of black, crystalline substance. The mass of the liquid was now white and the amorphous island of crystal a very dark black. ‘If my eyes do not deceive me a crisis is imminent’ he said out loud. Quite fascinated by what he saw, Vaughan made no effort to move. So fixed was his body that the muscles were frozen in their attitudes. The oil from the lamp burnt low, his reading lamp grew faint and guttered. As he gazed intently on the surface, the whiteness of the liquid grew ever more pure and luminescent, the blackness ever darker. The apparently random shapes of the black and the white had by some trick of the light, began to resemble two mythological beasts, each entwined within the other. The white was a lion, prostrated and wrapped around itself grasping its

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own tail, and surrounded by this creature, a great winged eagle of purest black crystal. Vaughan blinked involuntarily, causing the effect to fade but not disappear. The hours passed in the dimly lit room as the black crystalline eagle began a further transformation, a red tinge steadily replacing the black until the entire body and wings of the eagle became red. Time passed and the redness deepened. After several hours of intense watching Vaughan's concentration began to waver. Pain shot up and down his back and neck. His feet were numb. He sat another hour, dazzled and fascinated by the unfolding mystery of the lion and the eagle, ‘til his twisted stomach rumbled and his neck became unbearably stiff. At last Vaughan replaced the lid on the crucible. Long moments of agony before he was able to open the door to the laboratory and step out into the evening air. The sky had cleared to reveal gorgeous night. Vaughan was greedy for one last lungful of air before forcing himself back to the open ledger on his desk. ‘Write it up,’ he told himself. His pen scratching across the paper for at least an hour. At the end he stared intently at the page, thinking of that transcendent image of the white lion and red eagle, iridescent and glorious. His heart expanded within his chest, filled with natural compassion for all creatures. Then he remembered the fuel for the stove, stood up with a jerk and strode over to the open sack to extract two further lumps of black peat. He stopped an instant weighing up in his mind whether to finish the experiment now, to consolidate what he had learnt, or to press on. Vaughan again drew his chair up to the crucible. *** The long night was over. Thomas, knocked, then finding the door to the laboratory unlocked, pushed it open, releasing, as he did so, a faint smell of peat, mixed with some other unidentifiable, subtle fragrance, soon to be dispersed in the cold morning air. Inside, it was dark, the lamps burnt out. In the shaft of light from the door he saw Vaughan's back over against the stove. ‘Father! Are you asleep?’ There was no reply. Story on the theme of night by Mogg Morgan

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