Snow White and Rose Red (13 page)
Read Snow White and Rose Red Online
Authors: Patricia Wrede
“Hardly mine,” the Widow murmured.
“Intrude not on my sentences, thou hasty pudding, lest I mislay my thoughts! These wizards, by thy report, I think may be Doctor Dee and his friend Master Kelly, who live beside the river.”
“So I thought, also,” the Widow said unhappily. “But how may I be certain? More, how may I know they’ll do no ill to me or mine, apurpose or by accident?”
“Have thy daughters watch for them, that they may tell thee whether Doctor Dee and his friend are indeed the wizards thou dost fear,” Mistress Hudson said impatiently. “Then, when thou‘rt certain of their names, thou mayest find some stratagem to learn the rest.”
“How?” the Widow asked after a moment. She did not entirely approve of her friend’s proposal, but she could see the sense in it. She needed to learn as much as possible about the two wizards Rosamund and Blanche had seen; to do so, she must begin by learning their identities.
“I’ll think on‘t,” Mistress Hudson said. “There’s time to spare; Master Kelly goes up to London tomorrow, and from thence to Blakley. He’ll not return inside a fortnight. And until I send to thee, thou must draw a cross i’the lintel of thy door and hang thy house with those herbs that do protect from spells and harm.”
“I thank thee for thy counsel,” the Widow said, smiling. “I’ll follow thy advice. Though, truth to tell, ‘twas a relief simply to speak of it. I would not share my worry with the girls.”
“Thou mightest be wiser an thou did,” Mistress Hudson said. “Still, I can understand thy caution. I’ll send to thee within a fortnight to tell thee what’s toward, and how we may discover these wizards. ”
Much cheered by these reassurances, the Widow returned home, while Mistress Hudson went to her embroidery stand to sit and think.
In the book-lined study on the second floor of John Dee’s home, Dee and Kelly moved urgently about their business. The study windows had been closed, shuttered, and covered with heavy drapes of green silk, so that not even the smallest ray of light could enter from the outside. The room contained neither candles nor rushlights; the only illumination came from the small brass lamp that Dee and Kelly had taken with them into the forest three weeks before.
The lamp stood near the middle of a square table, inside a six-pointed star formed from two equilateral triangles which were inscribed on the tabletop. Though it held no oil, nor any sign of a flame, the lamp shed a pure, bright light over the engravings and inscriptions that covered the table. Beside it, in the exact center of the table, was a large globe of polished quartz, dull and milky in the unnatural glow of the lamp.
Dee and Kelly were engaged in placing four round slabs of wax, each more than two inches thick and carved with mystic diagrams, under the four legs of the table on which the lamp rested. The task required both strength and dexterity, for the table was solidly constructed and therefore heavy, and it stood on the large square of red silk the two men had taken to the forest, making it difficult to locate the wax seals properly without wrinkling the silk.
“Belike we should have been less hasty to put the lamp and crystal in their places,” Kelly panted. He, being the younger of the two by over twenty-five years, had the job of lifting the table, one side at a time, gently enough to keep from dislodging the lamp or the quartz globe, yet far enough for Dee to slide the seals into place.
“Nay, they must stand in the diagram from the beginning,” Dee said absently. “Therefore have a care to your work.”
Kelly grimaced disgustedly at Dee’s unheeding back. “Dispatch your own with speed, else I’ll not answer for the consequences. I am no carrier, to make light of such a load.”
“Peace, Ned; ‘tis done.” Dee backed carefully away from the table and watched critically as Kelly slowly lowered his side of the table half an inch. The two legs of the table came to rest precisely in the center of the wax seals. Dee smiled and rose to his feet as Kelly, massaging his left shoulder, turned to face him.
“How much time remains?” Kelly demanded.
Dee went to the shelves behind him and peered at a clock standing there. “Minutes only. To your place; we must begin at once.”
The two men took up positions on opposite sides of the table and raised their arms. Dee caught Kelly’s eye and nodded. Together they began to chant in long, sonorous Latin phrases that seemed to wind around each other and echo in the darkened corners of the room.
At first, the glow of the lamp brightened, but as the chant went on and on the lamp began to dim. No corresponding glow began to grow in the quartz globe, however, and Kelly’s eyes took on a wild expression. A bead of sweat rolled down his nose and fell into his beard. Dee seemed almost unaffected, save for a kind of tightening of the skin over the temples.
The chant wove on, and the glow of the lamp continued to diminish. As the wizards reached the final line, a single spark was all that could be seen even in the darkened room. On the final word, the lamp’s glow died completely.
There was a moment’s silence. Kelly’s face twisted, and he opened his mouth to curse. John Dee, standing tall and dignified despite the crushing disappointment, spoke first by the merest instant. “Fiat,” said Dee in a saddened tone. “So be it.”
Light flared from the quartz globe, blinding the two men’s dark-accustomed eyes. Kelly’s curse changed on his lips to a howl of mingled terror and triumph. Dee’s command of “Silence!” came too late; in another moment they heard footsteps in the hall and someone knocked at the library door.
“Doctor Dee?” a servant called timidly from outside the room. “Did you call?”
“Nay, Anne, I’ve no need of thee,” Dee said loudly. “Go thy ways.”
“Aye, Doctor Dee,” said the voice, and the footsteps retreated with far greater haste than they had come.
Dee and Kelly looked at each other as the dazzle cleared from their eyes. The quartz globe lay on the table between them, spewing golden light in all directions. “The whole of the household must have heard your cry. You should have greater caution when we work here, Ned,” Dee said.
“I am sorry for‘t,” Kelly replied. “But a portion of the fault’s yours. I’d made no noise, if you had warned me what was to happen.”
“I did not know,” Dee said.
Kelly, who had been reaching for the glowing quartz globe, jerked back. “You did not know we’d seem to fail? That the light would die i‘the lamp ere it blossomed elsewhere?”
“I did not.”
“Then how may we be certain this final step hath been successful?” Kelly eyed the quartz globe uneasily.
“We must make trial of‘t,” Dee replied. “Pull down the silks and open the shutters; we’ll do better now in the light of day.”
Kelly gave Dee a long look, then did as he had been told. When he finished, he returned to his place by the table. Dee leaned forward, the end of his long beard brushing the tabletop, and touched the quartz with his left forefinger. “Fiat voluntas nostra,” he said.
The glow vanished abruptly, as though it had been snuffed out. Kelly gave a gasp of protest, then suddenly leaned forward to examine the quartz more closely. The globe was no longer milky white; it had become clearer than the finest crystal.
“We have done it,” Dee said with evident satisfaction. “The power of Faerie is imprisoned in the crystal, for as long as we so will it, and we may make what use of it we choose.”
“Aye, an we discover how,” Kelly said, but he sounded far more cheerful than before.
“That portion of the task is chiefly yours,” Dee said, smiling.
“Then I fear it must wait upon my return from Blakley.”
“Thou needst not scowl so fierce; we’ve time and to spare now that the crystal’s finished,” Dee chided his companion. “And I think ‘twould not be amiss for both of us to rest. These past three weeks have been a grievous effort.”
“An you’ll have it so,” Kelly said ungraciously, but he did not look unhappy with this resolution. He picked up the dead lamp, leaving the crystal globe in the center of the table. Together, he and John Dee left the library.
In the realm of Faerie, a grim-faced messenger sped from Hugh’s sickroom toward the Queen’s palace. A short time later, eight strong servants carried a large net to the border of Faerie and firmly thrust its contents across into the mortal world. The half-dazed black bear that had once been John’s younger brother rolled out of the net, roared once, and lumbered into the forest. The servants watched it go, then folded their net and went sadly back to tell their Queen that the unalterable and inexorable law of Faerie had been fulfilled.
CHAPTER · EIGHT
“On winter evenings when the snow was falling, the mother would say, ‘Snow White, go and bolt the door.’ Then they all sat around the fire, and the mother read aloud while the two girls sat and spun. A lamb lay close beside them on the floor, and a white dove perched in the rafters with its head under its wing.“One evening their reading was interrupted by someone knocking at the door. The mother set her book down and said, ‘Open the door, Rose Red; it must be some traveler seeking shelter from the storm.’”
THE FOLLOWING DAY, THE SNOW BEGAN. IT STARTED as small specks of white that fell thinly and vanished when they touched the brown grass of the fields. A few of the older residents of the village raised their eyebrows and spoke in hushed voices of the severity of the winter that would surely follow so early a snowfall. Most simply shrugged; a dusting of snow was no cause for concern. The watermen on the Thames and the laborers and water carriers along its banks alike pulled their wool caps down around their ears and went stolidly on with their work.
Shortly before noon, one of the boats, responding to a servant’s signal, pulled up at the water stairs behind Master Dee’s house. A brief negotiation ensued concerning fees; then Edward Kelly emerged from the house, called a casual farewell over his shoulder, and hurried down the stairs to the waiting boat. A moment later the boatman pushed off and the boat started eastward on its ten-mile journey downstream to London.
The boat reached the city just before the turning of the tide. As Kelly disembarked, a similar boat pushed off from a wharf just above the London bridge, and started west on the somewhat more arduous trip upstream to Mortlak. The waterman, noting his passenger’s white velvet cloak and air of gloom, assumed that he was one of Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers being sent away in disgrace, as happened now and again. Wishing neither to intrude on the sorrows of such a man nor to become entangled in his follies, the waterman extracted his half-shilling fee and the name “John Rimer” from his passenger, and after that was silent.
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