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organization did exist. Falconer nodded. So Yeh-Lu had
encountered a Templar knight, and a renegade one at that. And if
he had served at the Tartar court in Persia for twenty years, he
was older than he looked. He gestured for the man to continue.
The man was thoroughly unpleasant, parading the superiority
of his own faith before everyone. But he would never explain why
his religious brothers had ejected him from their company. Hulegu
the Lord khan at the time used him for errands that required
use of the man s own tongue, and, though they were only menial
tasks, the man inflated them into major diplomatic missions.
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Hulegu soon tired of him and sent him on a bogus mission to the
khan of the North. I understand the man was later captured in
Austria, and executed by one of your warrior lords. Rightly so, of
course, for you can never trust a turncoat. But while he was at
Hulegu s court, I persuaded him to teach me his language. He
was greedy for gold, so he was not difficult to persuade.
Falconer still stood over the foreigner, who, slumped in the
chair, looked smaller than he had done when performing his magic
tricks before Sir Hugh Leyghton. He may have learned his English
twenty years before, but it was perfect, though spoken with a
strange lilting accent. Falconer wondered what the sallow-faced
man wanted of him, that had driven him to brave discovery at the
gates of Oxford. No one would have been keen to admit a Tartar
to the town, and he might even have been attacked if uncovered.
Why are you here?
Yeh-Lu s face betrayed deep concern. It s your friend, Roger
Bacon.
What of him? Falconer asked, thinking that the man spoke of
Bacon like a colleague.
I fear there is something wrong. You see, I was intrigued by
the breadth of his knowledge when we talked on the journey to
Oxford. And since then I have visited him more than once in his
tower. It is very convenient that it is outside the city walls.
Falconer realized his sighting of Yeh-Lu in the vicinity of Bacon s
tower the previous night had clearly not been the only time the
man had been there. He wondered if it had been Yeh-Lu who had
been in Bacon s room the time he had been snubbed by his friend.
He also wondered what knowledge they had shared and what
they might have been up to. But Yeh-Lu obviously wasn t going
to enlighten him on that matter. However, he did say he had
gone to Bacon s eyrie early this very morning, and had got no
response to his knocks on the door.
I am worried that something may be amiss. He is, after all,
not in the best of health.
Yeh-Lu was beginning to worry Falconer now. He didn t want to
be reunited with his old friend only to have him snatched away
by illness, even if Bacon had been behaving oddly with him of
late. Both men hastened towards the door, Yeh-Lu pulling the
fur-trimmed hood of his cape up over his shiny black hair. They
hastened in silence through the narrow back streets towards
South Gate. The area was populated largely by students, but as
the morning sun had hardly begun its climb into the pale blue
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sky, few people had yet stirred. It was a different matter as they
turned out of St Frideswide s Lane into Fish Street. There the
traders were opening up their shop fronts, and the buzz of a
normal day had already begun. Here and there the black-clad
figures of Jews could be seen hurrying towards the synagogue,
which was squeezed in among the narrow houses opposite St
Aldate s Church that made up part of Oxford s Jewry.
Yeh-Lu drew his cloak closer around him, which in truth drew
him almost as many curious stares on this warm morning as if
he had gone undisguised. Near the gateway, a beggar pulled at
his cloak, entreating alms, and the hood slipped back to reveal
his oriental face. But luck was with Yeh-Lu. The blind beggar
stared with eyes as white as a seethed egg, and the moment of
danger was gone. Falconer thrust a coin into the poor man s
outstretched hand, and Yeh-Lu yanked the hood back over his
features.
They negotiated the ramshackle hovels outside South Gate
without another mishap, and Falconer s long legs took him swiftly
up the spiral staircase to Bacon s tower room. He hammered on
the door, almost expecting to have to break it down, and was
therefore taken aback when, moments later, the door was opened.
The friar s wrinkled face appeared, his halo of sparse hair sticking
out as though he had just risen.
William! What s so amiss that you have to hammer on my
door so early? The sun is barely up over the trees. And, as you
look out of breath, I assume you have run here in order to apprise
me of whatever it is that could not wait.
The friar stood squarely in the crack of the door as before, not
allowing his visitors to see the interior of his cell. Though, if
what Yeh-Lu had told Falconer was true, the man from Cathay
had on more than one occasion gained admittance to Bacon s
inner sanctum himself. Bacon seemed nervous and anxious to
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