'Fascinating woman.'
'Agreed. What has she to do with any of this?'
'I would say she's an interested and sympathetic observer.'
'You're saying she's not involved?'
'You're the one who's spoken to her, what do you think?'
'Don't you know her?' Doyle asked, exasperation mounting again.
'Never met the woman. Effective speaker, though. Intriguing blend of crusading pilgrim and patent-medicine salesman. You'd almost swear she was American.'
'And forgive me, Jack, but I must ask, what is this tommy-rot about you working for the Queen?'
Sparks stopped and looked at him with unimpeachable sincerity.
'You must assure me that you will never breathe a word to another soul of that association. It cannot be spoken of safely even here, alone in a remote glade. Lives far more precious to the preservation of the Empire than our own depend upon your discretion. I confide in you, with the utmost reluctance, only to impress upon you the gravity of the matter in which you are now regrettably involved. How I wish that it were otherwise.'
Sparks's heartfelt invocation of the Crown brought Doyle's royalist sympathies to the fore, crippling his ability to find further objection with Sparks's veil of secrecy.
'Do I interpret you correctly to assume that this involves a threat to the lives of certain ... highborn individuals?' asked Doyle carefully.
'Indeed it does.'
'Can I ... be of any assistance to you in this matter?'
'You have already. You're a most capable chap.'
A threat to the Queen: Doyle could barely contain himself.
'Since you find my abilities not entirely without merit, I should like to place myself at your continued disposal.'
Sparks studied him with equal parts compassion and cold assessment.
'I shall take you at your word,' replied Sparks. 'Do you have the insignia I gave you the other night?'
'Right here.' Doyle retrieved the engraved eye from his pocket.
'Hold it in your left hand, please.'
'Madame Blavatsky suggested I make an amulet of it.'
'I see no harm in that, so long as you wear it away from casual glance,' Sparks said, drawing an identical insignia, in the form of an amulet out from under his collar. 'Now raise your right hand and repeat after me.'
'Is it some sort of Masonic ritual?'
'We haven't got all day, Doyle.'
'Right. Carry on.'
Sparks composed himself and closed his eyes; just before Doyle began to feel discomfited by the silence that ensued, Sparks broke it.
'From the point of Light within the Mind of God, let Light stream forth into the minds of men. Let Light descend on Earth.'
Doyle repeated the words, trying to breathe life into them even as he labored to decipher their meaning. Mind of God. Light. Light in the form of knowledge: Wisdom.
'From the center where the Will of God is known,' Sparks continued, 'let purpose guide the little wills of men—the purpose which the Masters know and serve.'
More problematic. Unchristian, not that that was especially troubling. The Masters. Blavatsky had written of them: mythological, elder beings, gazing dispassionately down at the follies of man. Every civilization developed its own version: Olympus, Valhalla, Shambhala, heaven ...
'From the center which we call the race of men, let the Plan of Love and Light work out, and may it seal the door where Evil dwells.'
Now they were getting somewhere: the door where Evil dwells; Doyle felt qualified to say that, if he couldn't pinpoint its exact location, he had definitely heard something knocking.
'Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.'
The Plan. Whose Plan? he wondered, and exactly how did they, whoever they were—now that he, presumably was one of them—intend to go about restoring it?
'What do we do now? Is there a secret handshake, something to seal the bargain?' asked Doyle.
'No. That's it,' said Sparks, stuffing his amulet back under his collar.
'What does it mean exactly, Jack?'
'What did it mean to you?'
'Do good. Fight evil.' Doyle shrugged.
'That'll do for a start,' Sparks said, and he began to walk again.
'Not very dogmatic. For that sort of thing.'
'Refreshing isn't it?'
'I was expecting, you know, a pledge of fealty to Queen and country, something along chivalric or Arthurian lines. That was pantheistic and positively nondenominational.'
'Glad it meets with your approval.'
'And what does the eye represent?'
'I've told you as much as I'm able for the moment, Doyle,' Sparks replied wearily. 'Anything more would not be in your self-interest.'
They walked on. The fields ran uninterrupted in every direction. From the arc of the rising sun, Doyle figured they were traveling due east.
Hunger presently raised its insistent voice, darkening Doyle's mood. Yes, Sparks had pulled his fat out of the fire on more than one occasion. Nothing in his actions suggested he was anything other than what he represented himself to be, but he remained impenetrable, and the cloaking of royal secrecy around his true purpose rang discordantly. Doyle was in no position to reject the man's assistance, no more than he was of a mind to forfeit his surprisingly welcome company, but common sense prevented the full conferring of his trust. It was as if he were traveling with an exotic jungle cat, its defensive abilities beyond reproach but whose very nature demanded of its keeper a tireless, wary scrutiny.
Perhaps if he questioned Sparks more cleverly, he'd inadvertently yield up details from which the astute observer could assemble a more telling portrait of the man. A number of Doyle's speculative inferences were on the verge of congealing into conclusions. It remained for him to find the right moment to confront Sparks with them and, whether by the shock of recognition or the false vehemence of denial, determine their acuity.
Along the cart path there appeared every so often hedges and occasional embankments and at one point the crumbling remains of stone brickwork, underfoot or along the shoulder. Doyle had noticed the remains from time to time without more than passing curiosity, but as they traversed a more extensive patch of the ruins, his examination of them drew comment from Sparks.
'This is an old Roman road. A trade route running to the sea.'
'Is that where we're going, the sea?' Well played, Doyle, devilishly clever the way you slipped that in.
'Of course, paths like this one were in use long before the Romans crossed the channel,' Sparks continued, completely ignoring his question. 'The early Celts used this path, and Neolithic man before them. Strange, isn't it? The same path used by so many different cultures, down through the ages.'
'Convenience, I should imagine,' Doyle said. He hadn't thought about it, in truth. 'A new lot comes along, the old path is there, remnants of it anyway, why bother cutting a new one?'
'Why not, indeed? Make things easier; there's the history of mankind in a thimble, eh, Doyle?'
'In a roundabout sort of way.'
'How do you suppose our prehistoric forebears chose this particular path to begin with?'
'Shortest distance between two points.'
'Could be these were the same paths the animals they were hunting used before them,' said Sparks.
'That has the ring of truth.'
'And why do you think the animals blazed this particular path?' Sparks had slipped into the tone of a Sophist leading the ignorant step by step to the sacred land of truth.
'Something to do with the availability of water or food.'
