The Heresy of Dr Dee (3 page)

He’d paced a slow circle around the oak.

‘Yea, well,’ he’d said at last, ‘I suppose you oughter have somefink to take your mind off what’s happening downriver.’

He’d meant London. Becoming known in Europe as Satan’s city. And not, at this moment, a good place to be if you were a friend of Robert Dudley.

IV

W
HEN
B
ROTHER
E
LIAS
had made his stately departure to the inn, we ate bread and goatcheese with Goodwife
Faldo.

It had been Jack’s idea that she should play the pigeon so that I might observe a scrying without giving away my identity. Goodwife Faldo, who’d once taken my mother to see a cunning
woman in the hope of asking my dead father if there was money hidden anywhere, had agreed at once to accept me as her brother for the day.

After our meal, she said she’d walk out to the meadow to suggest to her husband and sons that, rather than disrupt our sitting, they might eat at the inn tonight. I gave her my last
shilling to pay for their meat and small beer, and then Jack and I walked down to the riverside where casks of fresh-brewed ale were being loaded into a barge. The air was cooling fast these
evenings and the ambering sky above the distant city was smutted and heavy from first fires. And the smoke of rumour.

I hadn’t ventured into London for more than a week, but the gossip had been drifting down to me like black flakes from a lamp-scorched purlin. The city all atremble in the glitter of a
dangerous lightning.

‘What were they saying when you were in town?’ I asked.

One reason I’d come to trust Jack Simm: he was a man of intelligence but without ambition.

Without ambition.
What a blessed state that must be. Oft-times, my mother had accused me of it – far from the truth, of course, I
did
have ambition, though it related not to
the attainment of high office so much as the acquisition of high knowledge. Not easy, however, without the level of protection that only wealth and position could provide.

Thus far, the Queen’s patronage had given me freedom to pursue my studies but not the means, for the fingers gripping the royal purse were famously held as tight as the rectal muscles of
the ducks upon the river. Having calculed, by the stars, a smiling day for her coronation, I’d hoped for secure office, but nothing had come. And if things went wrong I could soon, as Jack
had warned, be dangerously out of favour. In many ways, the daggers-out world of political advancement was far simpler than mine.

We’d moved away from the beer-barge, back into the wood, but I still kept my voice down low.

‘What
were
they saying?’

‘About Lord Dudley? You really want to know?’

‘In truth, I suspect not, but…’

‘Here it is: nobody I spoke to, from the pieman to the pamphlet-seller, finks he didn’t murder her. Although the pieman reckoned killing your wife to make room for the next one is
only part of a great Tudor tradition, so he’s just getting in some practice for his future role as—’

‘Oh God, enough of this!’

‘You asked.’

‘Yes,’ I said wearily. ‘I asked.’

I’d barely seen Robert Dudley since he’d journeyed with me to Glastonbury in search of the bones of King Arthur, through which to strengthen the Queen’s majesty as
Arthur’s spiritual successor. A quest with mixed success.

I’ve been hearing all about your journey to the West
, she’d said on my one visit to the court since that mission.
The horrors of it! Lord Robert was so very appreciative of
your assistance in this matter.

My
assistance,
Highness? That’s what he said?

John…
She’d laid a white and fragrant hand on my arm.
He’s told me everything.

The lying, self-promoting
bastard.

‘He’s never been mightily popular since she made him Master of the Horse, has he?’ Jack Simm said. ‘The lavish festivities, the arrogance, the preening.’

‘Behind all that,’ I said, not without doubt, ‘is a man of… integrity. Who’s seen much death.’

The execution of his father, the Duke of Northumberland, for the support of Jane Grey, the shortest-lived queen in history. Then his own confinement in the Tower under a death sentence, later
withdrawn.

And all this time coming closer to the Queen than any man. Grown up together, locked away in the Tower at the same time during her sister’s reign. Always an understanding betwixt them. And
the carnal attraction. As Master of the Horse, he took her hunting. Knew how best to entertain her – make her laugh, which she loved to do. Little doubt they’d have wed.
If…

Jack shrugged.

‘Maybe he’s seen so much of death, it’s trivial to him now. Man who has his wife pushed down the stairs to get his paws on the Queen—’

‘Not proven.’

‘Nah, and never will be after they bribe the coroner. He’ll walk away in a pomander haze, but it won’t make no difference, will it? Still be the dog turd on a platter of
sausages. And the closer
you
are to him…’

He was right, of course. But Dudley and I went back too long. Though only a few years older, I’d been appointed by his father to teach him mathematics and the mapping of the heavens, and
he it was who’d sought my astrological advice on the coronation date.

Now, in the lowest alehouses – and some higher places, too, by all accounts – they were saying John Dee had taught Lord Dudley the blackest arts of sorcery, to win the Queen for
Satan.

Never underestimate the malice of the common man.

I sank my hands into the pockets of my doublet and, in one, found a hole. I could never forget that, while in Glastonbury and rendered delirious by a fever, my friend had confessed that
he’d wished his wife dead.

And now she was. Found at the foot of some stairs at a house called Cumnor Place in Berkshire where she was ‘staying with friends’. Dumped there by Dudley because the Queen
wouldn’t have wives at court. Least of all, his.

My hands felt cold.
Bess and me, we’re twin souls
, Dudley had said when he was recovered from the fever. As if convinced that a marriage to the Queen was ordained by the heavens,
though he’d never dared ask me to confirm it through astrology. Dear God, never in all history had there been a better reason for a man to kill his wife.

‘And what’s your thinking, Jack?’

Jack Simm leaned against an ash tree’s bole, smiling faintly.

‘
I
fink… if the Angel of the Lord come down on top of the Tower and proclaimed that Lord Dudley never done it and, while he’s here, that Dr John Dee ain’t a
sorcerer… they’d all be waiting for his bleedin’ wings to drop off.’

‘Thank you, Jack.’

‘Now ask me why the scryer’s had to go back to the inn to warm his crystal.’

Were a shewstone to be used to reach the angelic, extensive preparation would be needed: days of purity, fasting, abstinence from alcohol. In this instance, I could think of three more practical
reasons for the departure of Elias to the inn.

‘He wants to ask what John Dee looks like. What apparel he wears. And if Will Faldo’s brother works at the brewery. But… he’s not quite a rooker, is he?’

Or, if so, certainly of a higher grade than the lowlifes who hang like ravens around the taverns of Southwark.

‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘he did come recommended by a chaplain of the Bishop of London.’

‘
Did
he now?’

A good apothecary is ever well-connected.

‘Oh, he’s well-patronised. That’s why he costs. You still want me to ask him if he has a fine crystal to sell?’

‘For… an un-named customer of yours?’

‘Yea, yea. Dr John, look, he won’t learn noffing at the inn. This is Mortlake and he’s a stranger. They all remember your old man, whatever he done, and they like your mother.
And, as long as you’re welcome at court, they like you.’

‘The wizard in his cave?’

‘They try not to fink too hard about that. Or the owls what goes
woo woo
. But they ain’t forgot when the Queen come to visit you at Candlemas, and how much the inn raked in,
refreshing all the pikemen and the boys what carried the banners and the rest. Don’t make light of what you done for Mortlake, Dr John.’

I shook my head, bemused.

‘Just don’t bleedin’ ruin it now,’ Jack Simm said.

V

A
WAXING MOON
’
S
the best time for it.

This was what I’d read, and it makes good sense to anyone who has stood on the edge of a tranquil pond and observed moonlight shivering in the water. Even more to those of us who watch and
chart all the bright spheres of the heavens.

Reflected light. As above, so below. To hold a perfect crystal sphere in your hands is to enclose earth and heaven.

Dear God… to what level is this the truth?

The sun’s last stain lay upon the river when the scryer returned with his wood-framed cloth satchel.

This time, we truly had need of the candle, and I leaned into its halo to watch him unpack his bag, carefully taking out his treasures, all swathed in layers of grey and black cloth.

‘Have you eaten, Brother?’ Goodwife Faldo asked.

‘Goodwife,’ he said softly, ‘one must
needs fast
before a scrying.’

Which could be true; fasting prepares the body and keeps the spirit light and permeable. This man’s pomp and solemnity continued to imply a degree of learning I’d not expected. I
watched him laying out his bundles on the board, his back to the empty ingle and the door to the winder-stair.

Then I stiffened when, from the most shadowed end of our bench, Jack Simm spoke.

‘And did you find Dr Dee?’

All dark in this simple, square farmhouse hall, except for the white of Jack’s beard and the goodwife’s coif. I felt her black cat rubbing his head against my left calf and reached
down to stroke him, as if this discussion was no concern of mine. The scryer looked up, his eyes still.

‘If I
were
looking for Dr Dee, I’d be disappointed. Not often here these days, it seems. Appears to spend much of his time in the Low Countries, giving lectures. When
he’s not at court teaching magic to the Queen.’

‘So now you see,’ Jack said, not looking at me, ‘why us lowly folk have no dealings wiv him.’

‘Though we do see his mother,’ Goodwife Faldo said.

I made murmurs to the cat. Brother Elias took out the shrouded stone and set it down before him and lowered the satchel to the stones behind his stool.

‘Hard to believe that bodged place is his family home.’

‘They say appearances have little value for the doctor,’ Jack said. ‘Not a man for whom a display of wealth—’

‘If wealth he has.’

‘The house is very tidy inside,’ Goodwife Faldo said. ‘Very tidy indeed.’

‘A man with neither wealth nor honour.’ Elias had unwrapped a pair of eyeglasses which he balanced on the bridge of his nose without looking up. ‘You’d think, given his
position as the Queen’s primary advisor on the Mysteries, he’d be
Sir
John by now.’

I could almost hear Jack Simm inside my head, screaming at me to say nothing.

‘He’s good to his mother,’ Goodwife Faldo said, firm-faced.

‘And she to him, apparently, Goodwife. From what I’m told, without his mother he’d have no roof over his bed.’ Brother Elias chuckled absently and then looked up at last.
‘But then that’s no affair of mine. Let’s now proceed, shall we?’

The stone lay before him, still covered. Father Elias placed his palms together above it, closed his eyes.

‘
Oh, God, author of all good things, strengthen, I beseech thee, thy poor servant, that he may stand fast, without fear, through this work. Enlighten, I beseech thee, oh Lord, the dark
understanding of thy creature, that his spiritual eye may be opened to see and know thine angelic spirits descending here into this crystal.
’

He laid both hands upon the shrouded stone, and my stomach tightened as if he’d touched me.

For I’d read these words, this entreaty. Written them, even.

‘
Oh be sanctified and consecrated, and blessed to this purpose, that no evil phantasy may appear in thee… or, if they do gain ingress they may be constrained to speak
intelligibly, and truly, and without the least ambiguity, for Christ’s sake. Amen. And forasmuch as thy servant here desires neither evil treasures, nor injury to his neighbour, nor hurt to
any living creature, grant him the power of descrying those celestial spirits or intelligences that may appear in this crystal
…’

My hands went cold upon my thighs below the board top. I’d translated it myself, in the past year, from unpublished writings I’d borrowed in Antwerp.

‘…
and whatever good gifts, whether the power of healing infirmities, or of imbibing wisdom, or discovering any evil likely to afflict any person or family, or any other good
gift thou mayest be pleased to bestow on me
…’

I threw a glance at Jack Simm but could not make out his eyes.

‘
… enable me, by thy wisdom and mercy, to use whatever I may receive to the honour of thy holy name. Grant this for thy son Christ’s sake. Amen.
’