In we went,
through the centre of the arch, along the red light carpet, and the door creaked quickly shut at our backs. We entered a pool of flame, the flaring light of a single torch. The horses snorted softly and nodded, glad to be home. A bolt clanked to, hard enough to be heard. Somebody sighed gustily: Kelley.
Dee was already dismounting; I followed, rather creakily, but managed to keep my dignity.
Kelley puffed and swore luridly at the fellow helping him, a groom, presumably. He and a couple of others gathered up the horses and led them off, speaking to them in a strange, spiky tongue I guessed was Czech. Dee called softly in the same language; they touched their caps, and other figures came scurrying, dim shadows in the red glare. Kelley came bustling up, took me by the arm, and steered me
around, more firmly than I liked. ‘Come, sirrah, best we get you within—’
Suddenly Dee made a very silly clucking sound. ‘Ah, you see, my jennet, my little jade? Am I not returned upon the very hour I foretold?’ He turned to us. ‘Be not so very hasty, brother! Shall we not spare a moment for our own homecoming, aye, and make our guest known to our gracious ladies?’
We stood in an
open space
under the vaulted arch, a sort of extended gateway opening on to a slightly wider court beyond, where my nose told me the stables were. To one side of the arch there was a door open now, a rectangle of light with two figures silhouetted against it. One of them held up a candlestick, and things got brighter in any number of ways.
The women were quite a contrast. The older one was a homely enough
body, a sort of loose roundness tied vaguely into her clothes, with straggles of long brown hair escaping all round the cap she wore. Her face was just about as shapeless, an amiable potato, but lit up by a pleasant, placid smile. She looked not too bright, but immensely genial and accepting – just the sort of homebody to warm an old scholar’s bed. But the other was something else.
Straight out
of one of those Elizabethan paintings, green gown falling away from high breasts, the lot. Those wide eyes, just as green, but sleepy and modestly downcast, framed in blonde curls above strong cheekbones and full, sensual lips. OK, they had different standards of beauty then. She might not look quite so pretty to them, but that was their problem. By my standards she was stunning, and she couldn’t
be much older than me. And she had that kind of sexual magnetism which adds up to a lot more than looks. Even just the way she stood radiated it, even the polished glide with which she stepped down to meet us. Trust that smooth bastard Kelley! And she didn’t look too overjoyed to see him back.
Dee spread
his arms wide. ‘Come clip me now and tell me where are all your foolish fears found now,
hey my little frosling?
Buc-buc-buc-bawk!’
And blow me if the one who tripped forward for a hug and another bout of chicken impressions wasn’t the blonde.
The potato undulated cheerfully towards Kelley, who gave her a casual squeeze, a peck on the cheek and a pat on the backside. Dee put a fatherly arm about her shoulders and ushered both of them forward. ‘Come, my dears, and greet Master Maxie,
come from afar to aid us in this great work! Ask him no more for now, but take him to your bosom as our honoured guest!’
Now that, I decided, I could just about stand.
‘Master Maxie, I present to you our lady wives – good Mistress Joan Kelley, and mine own, by baptism Jane, and virtuous and devoted beyond my deserts!’
Well, there was a facer for you. Luckily I had actually learned how to bow,
a long time back, or I’d have just stood there with my jaw hanging out. If that old beanpole could keep up with a little goer like this, there might be something to this magic lark, after all. She did me an aristocratic little curtsey, revealing just a hint of cleavage, and then tilted her cheek up to be kissed.
My instant reaction died as I saw the frozen look on her face. A formality, no more;
not much welcome here. This close I saw shadows under those eyes, and little tremors at the corners of her lips. She looked strained and cold, and she said nothing at all. Maybe Dee wasn’t coping so well, after all. There was certainly an atmosphere about. It was totally blown away by Joan Kelley, who rolled over to be kissed as well, chattering so cheerfully in a ripe burr that I only got about
one word in three. As they included welcome, pull up chair and burnt wine, mind you, they sounded pretty good. Maybe Kelley had the best of it, at that.
Off she bundled
me, with Jane Dee sweeping in front with the candlestick, up the steps and into a wide room, a hall really, dominated by the immense arched fireplace set in the far wall, surrounded by benches and chairs. Down the middle of it
ran a colossal table, under a horrendous litter of books and papers and slates and weird apparatus. I’d done a little work in the old scientific instruments racket, helping a friend of mine to put the odd extra century on astrolabes and that sort of thing, so I could guess the kind of price some of this stuff might fetch.
The weirdest of all, though, had a table to itself at one side, an extraordinary
affair of linked-up tubes and cans and glass globes full of nasty-looking liquids, bowls of powder and brass braziers overflowing with ashes. It had a kind of cranky, unstable, explosive look about it, supported by suggestive scorch marks on the faded wall-hangings behind and the metal sheet beneath. Kelley propelled me past it just a shade too fast, and I made a mental note that it might
be worth some attention. Instead I just sort of idly picked up one nice little piece, what looked like some kind of ethnic hand mirror in polished black stone. It caught the light beautifully, and I looked up to see the two men staring at me.
‘Oh,
sorry—’ I began, before I realised it wasn’t that kind of stare.
‘There now, brother Edward!’ breathed the old man. ‘Did I not tell you? Has he not
lit upon the true gem?’
‘I told him naught o’that, I’ll allow!’ said Kelley shortly. You could practically see the wheels spinning. ‘Know you what you hold there, my – young sir?’
I shrugged and made as if to put it down, but Dee held up a hand. ‘No need, no need! Do you see aught?’
‘Just my face. Much the same as usual.’
‘I bid you look again,’ said Dee earnestly. ‘For that is the first of
all my scrying devices ever to yield ready results. It comes from the New World, a sacred mirror of the Mexican heathen made from some stone of great strength. That you should have seized upon it is … interesting.’
‘I think it’s obsidian,’ I said, peering at it. ‘A sort of glass that forms in volcanoes.’
Dee raised his bushy brows, pleased. ‘Really? Is that so? A fit beginning, then, in the
fires of creation! Still seeing naught? Keep it by you in the house, nevertheless. Gaze in it often, when you have leisure. Strive to see, as you would over great distances. Who knows, we may make a scryer of you yet! Not that all men have the art inborn in them. I myself began to see in it only when we came here. Before that there was a fellow called Saul who professed to perceive much therein, but
I see now ’twas all invention. I had some hopes of my son Arthur, but only when brother Edward was sent to me did we achieve true communion with the angelic realms!’
One or two things
were rapidly becoming clearer. ‘So … it’s mostly through him they speak?’ I enquired innocently, tilting the stone this way and that.
‘It is,’ Dee answered, waving us to cushioned benches by the fire. ‘Although
with my humble help in the rites that open the ways, and with the reading of their meaning. For much of what these noble beings say is too high and lofty for our comprehension, and their dictates, though noble, are often passing strange. Why, figure you that—’
‘Need our friend be bothered with such deep compacts so soon?’ Kelley chipped in, so slickly the bells jangled again. ‘They might perhaps
disturb one who has as yet no deep grounding of knowledge—’
‘But why conceal anything,’ I demanded gently, ‘when one day soon all men shall hear the angelic word?’
‘True!’ exclaimed Dee, greatly struck. ‘Know then that they have commanded a new order upon the Earth, in which all men shall recapture the innocence of Eden and live as brothers. All are to labour for the common good,’ he added excitedly,
‘and all things are to be held in common for the good of all.’
I couldn’t resist it. ‘What – you mean, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs? Something like that?’
Dee stared delightedly. ‘Aptly put, young sir! He is surely ripe for enlightenment, is he not, brother Edward? Well, the seraphim in their might have dictated that we shall set an example, he and I—’
‘And
others!’ chipped in Kelley, with the faint relief of somebody turning the stampede at the last moment. What was he trying to stop Dee saying? It must be an absolute lulu. ‘But we must not rest here too long, my friend. The rite that’ll free you we cannot carry out in this house, where eyes and ears may pry and the Spiral is still not at its strongest. We have found a hilltop beyond the walls
that is a most mighty nexus, at dawn and dusk especially. If we’re to reach the gates before daybreak and the hill while the light’s yet low, best we set out as soon as may—’
‘By no means!’ exclaimed Dee. ‘Brother, do not let your natural zeal to free our friend carry you on too much apace! This is no small matter, to take the swiftest course with. We must be some days, even, in preparation,
lest it miscarry and place all in deep peril—mots of all the brave Master Maxie!’
‘Look, I’m all for speed, but what’s this peril business? I’m not
that
bloody brave!’
‘Casting nativities, fastings, prayers and purifications,’ Dee ploughed on like a runaway icebreaker. ‘Orientations, ascensions, declensions, recensions – oh, the peril? I should not concern yourself too much. There are aspects
of the rite which are capable of miscarrying. Always there are hostile forces hanging about us, as about any human activity. But the angels have assured us they will ward us faithfully. So if you are truly in haste—’
Joan Kelley began handing around platters of bread and scrambled eggs, and wooden mugs of steaming mulled ale. I took a deep swallow from mine. ‘Yeah. Well, that’s very, um, reassuring.
But just you go ahead and take all the precautions you want. Er, angels help those who help themselves, that sort of thing, eh?’
Dee
sighed. ‘Ah yes – the Emperor himself said as much, when we tried to bring their word to him.’
‘I can imagine, somehow. You were hoping he’d be one of the brothers, eh?’
‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Dee. ‘We did our best to explain to him that the panacea for all the ills
of his realms lay in its lords abandoning all base concerns and submitting themselves to the angelic behest. But he seemed curiously uninterested.’
‘Wow. Fancy that!’
‘Aye, ’tis hard to credit. The Papal Legate, too. One would think that he of all people would appreciate that the clergy should live by strict Christian principles, but no! When we passed on the angels’ word to that effect, he
did but threaten to have us put out of the window! Which is a common barbarity in palaces here.’
‘Sounds a bit undignified, sure.’
‘His receiving chamber was on the fourth floor,’ said Kelley grimly. ‘As is also common.’
‘Oh. Still—’
‘No, young sir!’ exclaimed Dee indignantly, wagging a long finger. The ale was putting a flush in his cheeks. ‘All men should be able to subdue their base passions
– and can, at need! Why, have not brother Edward and I had to do so? And in a most unusual fashion—’
‘Aye!’ interrupted Kelley hastily, positively blazing with visionary zeal. ‘As one in the Angelic Brotherhood, owning no exclusivity in life nor any conflict, but sharing a common will—’
‘Aye! Sharing all!’ There was no shutting Dee up now. ‘Even those matters most commonly the object of mankind’s
most ignoble jealousies!’
I boggled. God, he couldn’t mean …
Couldn’t he?
‘Aye,
even the most sacred property of all!’ cried Dee fervently. ‘All we must practise in common, even to wedlock. All we must hold as one – even our most dear possessions, our lady wives! And though it has been hard—Is aught amiss, Master Maxie?’
‘No, no, nothing!’ I said hastily. ‘Just … saw something in the stone.
Thought I did, anyhow. Maybe a glimpse. But it’s gone now.’
I was telling the truth. Jane Dee, leaning over me to top up my ale from a steaming earthenware cruche. Jane Dee reflected, rigid in the flickering firelight. In the dark mirror our eyes met, and she hastily looked away. But not before I’d understood a bit more about Master Edward Kelley.
‘Oh, wonderful!’ Dee chortled. ‘I beg you, try
again! As often as you may. As I was saying, it has been hard for us – though not without some benefits I would not have looked for, I admit. Yet this subjugation of our base instincts we achieved, brother Edward and I. And if we two, why not all men?’
‘And all ladies?’ I enquired. Jane Dee had finished pouring and offered me the cup with both hands, courteously, no hint in her demure face of
what I’d read there.
‘Oh, yes,
yes, they also,’ he added a little absently. ‘In an ideal commonwealth there shall be room for all—’
I let him run on. Apparently even women and servants could be admitted, though exactly why they’d go on being servants seemed to have escaped him. ‘If only we can convey the angelic word to more of mankind, I shall gladly consider it fair use for the talents I one
day return to my master – eh, brother?’
Kelley had been sitting very still, a watchful stillness. Now that I wasn’t roaring with laughter at Dee’s revelation, or otherwise throwing a wobbly, I could see him relax. That stone really did have its uses. ‘I’m impressed,’ I said, and meant it.
Dee beamed; but I wasn’t talking about him. The black stone had given me a revelation of a sort, after all.
And an idea.
‘Who know? Who knows?’ said Dee cheerfully. ‘One day, perhaps, you also, young sir, may hear the word. Let us see what your nativity says—’
‘High time that we do!’ agreed Kelley cheerfully. ‘Ere we read Master Maxie any homilies, we must keep faith ourselves. If we’re to take all these precautions, needful or no, best we make a start!’