The Cornerstone

Copyright ©2013 by Anne C. Petty

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN:   978-1-936564-67-5  (sc)

ISBN:  978-1-936564-68-2  (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012953062

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date:  January 25, 2013

Cover Design:  Denise Daniel

Cover Art:  Vincent Chong

Edited By:    Elizabeth Reuter

For Bill, Lynn (who will especially appreciate all the

Marlowe lore), April, and Lissa

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Acknowledgements

Several editions of Christopher Marlowe’s play “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” were consulted for the history, quotations, and paraphrases from the play, including:

Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Plays
, edited by J. B. Steane, New York: Penguin Books, 1969.

Doctor Faustus
(Norton Critical Editions), edited by David Scott Kastan, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Doctor Faustus and Other Plays
(Oxford World's Classics), edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Oxford University Press, USA, 2008.

Thanks to: Lissa Griffin, LMHCA and Sex Therapist, for reviewing all the psychological material in the book.

Ugly hell, gape not, come not, Lucifer!

I’ll burn my books. Ah, Mephistopheles!

—Christopher Marlowe,
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Brú na Bóinne, Ireland 1581

Doctor John Dee—accomplished mathematician, alchemist, Hermetic magician, herbalist, astrologer, and advisor to Queen Elizabeth herself—pulled his fine wool cloak tightly across his shoulders. The late afternoon sun was disappearing behind a cloudbank massed low over the rolling hills, their deep green shaded to mossy black. A chill wind whipped at his beard and the mane of his mare.

An adequate horseman, he guided his skittish palfrey over the narrow footpath skirting the riverbank, a firm hand on the reins. He glanced behind him. Dee envied the easy grace with which his hooded companion sat the stallion he'd acquired from the stable back in Dublin. The horse had gone wide-eyed with nostrils flared and shivers rippling over its hide when Monsieur C had put his booted foot in the stirrup, but the moment he was seated it was as if horse and rider had become one.

On their left, the river meandered between shallow banks thick with fen sedge, marsh-horsetail, and bulrush. To the right, dense woodland. Stands of ash, hazel, alder, and oak, trees Dee knew from Mortlake in Surrey, near his riverside house, occasionally thinned enough to reveal distant hill country dotted by limestone outcroppings and wild, untended grasslands covered in gorse.

Dee watched the thunderheads piling up over the valley ridge. He supposed it mattered little if the rain caught up with them; the scheme in hand would go forward. He was glad to be in the lead as he searched for the landmark left by the witch, marking the turnoff into the trees. He preferred not to look at the drugged body of the girl draped lengthwise over Monsieur’s lap, her thin arms hanging down and flopping with the horse’s gait. She was a prostitute and cutpurse, which was why he’d taken her. They were likely saving her from a worse fate…imprisonment in Newgate amongst other thieves and worse criminals, and eventual death on the gallows platform. No reason to feel remorse for her soul, as she’d already damned it herself, but he
would
say a small prayer for her passing.

The river took a sharp bend where clumpings of silverweed and meadowsweet grew thicker along its bank. It flowed more swiftly over a rill and around low-arching willows trailing their long fingers in its gray waters.

“Not far now, my lord. The mark should be up ahead.”

“Nay, my good doctor, as I’ve told you, I am no lord. Merely your devoted friend and mouthpiece for the One who is above us.” The voice radiated intimate good humor, the kind of voice you’d expect from a close friend. Dee relaxed his shoulders.

He’d met Monsieur C on the continent more than a year ago, during a series of so-called “spiritual conferences” he’d conducted for the edification of kings and courtiers, from the Polish King Stephen and his court to Emperor Rudolf II, who’d not been moved by the notion of summonings and divinations. In Bohemia, however, the angel Uriel had spoken through C’s mouth to an assemblage of nobles and scholars, and had given tangible proof that his presence was not mere imagination. A crippled child had been made whole, his mother collapsing at the sight of him tottering across the chamber toward her. Uriel had given his blessings to all who witnessed the miracle and assured Doctor Dee that he would continue to send guidance through his chosen interpreter.

They’d traveled far and wide together since then.

Encouraged by Monsieur C, he’d delved deeply into the angelic languages, convinced the key to creating a unity of all mankind lay in the books he’d laboriously penned through his companion’s willing communion with the higher spheres. He felt no conflict in the crossing over of his mathematical and navigational studies with his magickal and spiritual explorations. In his mind the two were one great bridge to the Eternal, to the revelation of Mysteries beyond man’s waking life. Mysteries that could describe and define the human
spiritus
. This evening’s mission, while related, was somewhat darker. Dee felt his resolve slipping at the enormity of what they intended.

Apparently sensing his thoughts, Dee’s companion remarked, “Be of good cheer, my friend. Think how our success in this experiment will affect the community of the learned, those
cognoscenti
, mages and masters who have failed to acknowledge the brilliance of your hypotheses regarding the nature of death and the human soul.”

“True enough,” Dee said, sitting straighter in the saddle. “‘Tis not that I question your angelic guidance. But I do wonder…” He bit back what he’d been about to utter. That if the witch proved inadequate to the task or if the exchange went wrong, the consequences were unimaginable.

“I am here to support you,” the honeyed voice replied. “You will not fail.”

Dee flexed his fingers, stiff and chilled in his calfskin gloves. The cold was retreating from spring with petulance, keeping buds underground and dusting the higher elevations with lingering snow. His horse stumbled on the path as the ground became stonier, veering away from the river and curving slightly uphill. Near the treeline he spotted the cairn, an arranged pile of rough-cut limestone cradled among the roots of a mammoth oak.

“There,” he said, pointing. They turned off the path and into the trees where the lemony scent of forest gum sweetened the air.

A few minutes into the canopy, Dee pulled up and dismounted. “A moment, if you will.” His companion smiled indulgently in the gloom, or so it seemed to Dee as he removed a glove and rummaged through the leather bag affixed to his saddle. His thin fingers closed on the round brass casing and pulled the contraption out, an amazing invention given to him by Gerardus Mercator, his mentor at the University of Cambridge. The combination sundial and compass rested heavy in his palm. Underneath the arm of the sundial, a glass-covered rose compass with a spindled needle indicated the position for magnetic north at zero degrees. East lay at ninety degrees. The tomb where Radha Ó Braonáin, a sorceress of great depth and cunning, had agreed to meet them was a few degrees away from the eastward mark. Dee’s previous dealings with her had convinced him she was not to be taken lightly or ordered about in this particular endeavor, regardless of his own paranormal prowess or that of his companion. They must tread carefully.

She likely would not have agreed to be party to this day’s task at all if she did not have a personal interest in it (a fact C had discovered and revealed to Dee as the means for enticement). At his initial description of the plan, she’d laughed aloud and called him mad. It wasn’t every day someone asked her to help catch a banshee.

Confirming their direction, Dee remounted and guided his horse into the underbrush thick with enchanters—nightshade and urbanum, woodland herbs he knew well. The heavy compass rested in his ungloved hand. His fingers were cold to the bone, but he would not take the risk of handling it clumsily, or
Jesu
forbid, dropping it. The girl across C’s saddle moaned and Dee looked back. Monsieur rested a hand on her back and she stilled again.

Dee shivered and wished he’d brought a heavier cloak. Something fur-lined, perhaps. His sense of chill was not entirely due to the weather. He recalled how he’d finally persuaded the widow Ó Braonáin.

“The banshee is the gateway guardian between life and death, is it not?”

She’d nodded, her wrinkled mouth drawn into a purse, her eyes hooded under dark brows.

He’d continued. “Everyone knows that her wail precedes the passage of the departed’s soul into the afterlife. It is she who calls Black Coach.” The manifestation of Death on the physical plane. Dee shivered again. He’d never seen the apparition itself nor heard the blood-freezing cry of its herald, but if things went as planned, he would experience both those things before the night was done.

“Aye,” the witch had said, frowning.

“What I propose,” he’d stated with what now seemed arrogant confidence, “is to create a magickal object that can hold death at bay…nay, time itself.” He’d waited for the impact of those words, but the witch held his gaze without a blink.

“If the gateway guardian could be trapped within an object of power, I have the means to bind it to the will of the object’s owner—literally to stave off dying and age not a year beyond the instant of the talisman’s creation.”

“And how would ye do that, Master Dee? What spell d’ye have in yer black bag of tricks that could command such a spirit?”