The Heresy of Dr Dee (36 page)

It made little sense at first.

There was a letter within a letter, the outer and shorter of which was to Dudley from his steward, evidently written in haste and signed
TB.

I broke the inner seal and uncovered a bill of work from Lady Dudley’s London dressmaker, William Edney, for the alteration of two gowns.

Well, I knew of this from Dudley. One of the best indications that Amy had been in relatively good heart within days of her death was her continuing interest in fashionable apparel. The only
other possible explanation was that she’d wanted her corpse to be found well and elegantly clad.

Attached to the bill was a note from Edney on which some lines had been underscored in thick ink strokes, presumably by Blount.

It was dated August 27.

This, to me, was new. There had been no suggestion of Amy receiving any visitors on that last weekend.

There was another short note to Dudley from Blount which I read twice before passing the bill to Forest, who stared at it for some moments as if it might break into flames. I opened my hands,
helpless.

‘I think you should read it. All of it.’ Pushing the candle towards him. ‘Did Lord Dudley have any idea that his wife was to be visited by a dressmaker two days before she
died?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Can that be true?’

I passed him the small paper attached to the bill.

Forest, looked up, squeezing his dark-bearded jaw. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Dressmaking is… a regrettable gap in my knowledge. What think you of Blount’s final sentence? “If fever there was”. It seems Blount may have had cause to think
that the dressmaker might have lied about his fever to cover the fact that he made that journey to Cumnor after all. Perchance arriving…’ I broke off to read the note yet again, to be
quite certain ‘…two days later than arranged.’

Forest thought on it longer than was necessary.

‘No one would know, if that were the case,’ he said at last. ‘The entire household having gone to the local fair.’

‘The entire household having been virtually
dispatched
to the fair. By Lady Dudley.’

Closing my eyes upon a hollow expulsion of breath. It was all too clear that Amy had gone to some considerable effort to make sure that she’d be alone in the house that day.

For the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? For the purpose of him measuring her for a gown?

‘Listen, I—’ Forest was coughing from a parched throat. ‘I can’t… can’t discuss this any further. We should never have opened it.’

‘Was Edney deceived by the Spaniard? We must needs consider the possibility of the Spaniard acting independently of Edney, having feigned a sickness to cover his movements.’

But maybe not independently of his country, its king… or his ambassador, la Quadra. And others I could think of who were not Spanish. The implications were like to a blade in the gut, and
each name that arose in my mind was another savage twist.

Forest’s face was yet a mask of bewilderment as I gave voice to the unspeakable.

‘Why would Amy have gone to so much effort to make sure she was alone in the house for the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? Because, as Blount’s letter says, she knew him. He’d
made gowns for her before. She was fond of the Spanish styles. So… how
well
did she know him?’

‘Stop!’ Forest cried out. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dr Dee, go no further with this madness until we find Lord Dudley. There’s true darkness here. Darkness on every
side.’

‘Well enough to
wish
to be alone with him?’

‘We must needs leave this place. Without delay. Those bastards downstairs, they’d rather burn it down with us inside—’

‘A woman alone in someone else’s house?’ I couldn’t stop now. ‘A woman who’d not seen her husband for a year, only heard the persistent rumour about him
siring the Queen’s child?’

‘I pray you, Dr Dee, get out of here.’

Even as Forest snatched up the letter and the bill, bundled them together and thrust the packet inside his doublet, a knock came on the door of the bedchamber.

One knock. Truly, no more than a tap but in our present mood it had the impact of a mace. A hiss issued from Forest.

‘Don’t open it.’

I said, ‘Who’s that?’

My heart leaping at the thought that it might be Dudley.

But there was no reply, only the padding of soft footsteps, I thought receding down the stairs, but could not be sure. I waited until I could hear nothing outside then brought the candle to the
door. As I drew back the bolt, Forest pulled his side-sword, whispering.

‘Open it no more than an inch. Keep your hand out of the opening. Stand hard against the door.’

So I might slam it in a face?

But there
was
no face.

I peered through the widening gap. The only movement was the flame from the sconce on the landing slanting in the draught from the opened door. I went out, lifting the candle into the corners.
No one there, no one on the stairs.

‘Nobody,’ I said.

Stumbling, then, as my left foot prodded something on the floorboards, sending it skittering.

I crouched with the candle: a sackcloth bundle, no more than a few inches wide. Unexpectedly heavy. I brought it back into the chamber and closed and rebolted the door.

Placed the bundle on the board under the window in full moonlight.

‘Careful.’ Forest laid his sword on the truckle, pulled on his leather gloves. ‘Let me do this.’

‘You think something might spring out at us?’

‘And
you
think it’s a bar of gold as a bribe, do you?’

I supposed that any man who’d been with the Dudley family as long as Forest would, in any situation, fear a blade from out of darkness. He pulled at the sackcloth, which came easily away,
revealing another cloth underneath. Black.

‘Holy God,’ I said.

Gently lifting away the corners of soft black cloth.

What lay beneath welcomed the moon.

Forest stepped away.

‘What is it?’

Despite the circumstances of its arrival, I was stricken with awe.

‘This,’ I said, ‘would seem to be… what we came here for.’

XLII

U
NDER THE CANDLE
, it was a rich dark red. A swollen blood-drop.

Less than half the size of a tennis ball, but more perfectly spherical. After I blew out the candle, there were yet lights in it.

Lights that moved. A sprinkling of them. More lights than I could see in the air around us or the night sky, where the moon was so close-pressed by clouds that few stars were in evidence.

Only here in the inner firmament of the stone: points of white and piercing blue and a lambent orange, all in fluct.

As I looked at it, it seemed to breathe.

Easier than could I, who dared not touch it, this precious portal to the Hidden. Wondering: if I could have sat in this window-space, alone and concentrated, with the Trithemius manuscript and
the whole untroubled night ahead of me, might I then find one of those fragments of light projected into the chamber in angelic form?

Whatever planet rules in that hour, the angel governing the planet thou shalt call
,

sayeth Trithemius.

Raphael… Uriel…? I had no books or charts here. I didn’t know. Couldn’t think. And the night was far from untroubled.

‘So you
were
right,’ John Forest said.

‘Mercy?’

‘Everything you said to them. They’re in so much fear of how much you might know and who you might tell that they think to pay you off. Send you on your way with what you came here
for.’

‘Yes. So it would appear.’

I took a last long look at the Wigmore shewstone before covering it over with the black cloth. A cloth of velvet like the one Elias, the scryer, had kept around his.

I could not believe they’d let such a treasure go so easily.

‘It must go back,’ I said.

‘
What?
’

Forest had snatched the stone from the boardtop, clutched it ridiculously to his breast.

‘No spiritual device should ever be acquired this way,’ I said. ‘It’s corrupted from the start. No good will come of it. Not for me or Dudley. Or the Queen.’

‘Are you gone mad?’ Forest thrust the stone at me. ‘Take it, for Christ’s sake! They’ll think you’re silenced. It’s your talisman. It’ll get you
out of here. When you’re well away, throw the damned thing in the river if that’s what you want.’

‘I pray you, put it down,’ I said quietly.

John Forest weighed the stone in one hand before tossing it to the other and then he shrugged and replaced it on the board. Looking, for a moment, almost grateful, as if it had been too hot or
too cold or he’d felt its alien energy racing up his arm.

‘You’d best ride back to Hereford,’ I said. ‘Where Dudley knows he can reach you. Where other letters may be waiting.’

‘And you?’

‘As you said, maybe they think I’m bought off with the shewstone.’

‘Dr John, they want you to take it and
leave.
’

‘I can’t leave. Not without Dudley. But you can.’

‘And leave you alone with these bastards?’

‘If I’m troubled by Bradshaw or Meredith or Martin, I’ll say I’ve written an account of all I know about property theft from the abbey and you’ve ridden with it to
London. And if I’m not back there in a week, you’ll put it before whoever in the Privy Council deals with such matters, and Presteigne will be overrun with accountants. Now…
go.’

Forest pulled on his leather gloves.

‘And what will you do?’

‘I’ll find him. Somehow I’ll find him.’

Hoping this sounded more confident than I felt, I dragged the board away from the window. Forest swung himself up on to the sill, looked down into the mews then back at me, his head bent under
the lintel.

‘All right, I’ll go. But I’ll ride not to Hereford. Ludlow’s the place. To the Council of the Marches. Where I’ll rouse people, identify myself as Lord
Dudley’s man. Tell them he’s missing within twenty miles of their stronghold. Return with a hundred armed men, at least, before sunrise. Take this town apart.’

‘And if all the time he’s with some other whore?’

He stared at me.

‘You think that,
now?
’

‘No,’ I said soberly. ‘Have a care. God go with you.’

I watched him lower himself from the window, gripping the ivy, his feet kicking against the wall until he could jump to the ground. Watched him leading his horse to the opening of the mews
without looking up. Listened to the hooves as they gathered pace.

I’d never felt so alone, so useless. Twisted by contempt for myself and what drove me – a thirst for secret wisdom disguised as love for queen and country. I thought I might never
unwrap the stone again.

The stone I’d thought to deliver to the Queen, with the promise of angelic advice on how best to exalt her majesty. The stone which might procure knowledge of which islands remained to be
discovered beyond the known world, which unknown natural forces might be harnessed to the Queen’s cause.

What had led me to think that a man who could not see might walk in celestial light? The only man in the Faldos’ hall who’d caught no glimpse of even the boneman’s ghost, if
such it was.

And worse, how could I have brought Dudley into this? A man with more enemies than he could name in a year. No matter that he’d leapt at it like a dog in a butcher’s shop, I was the
one who’d laid the scented trail.

Hear his voice from that moment of engagement:

We’ll make a good bargain with this man, in the noble cause of expanding the Queen’s vision.

It had come too easy. The bargain was a black bargain, founded upon threats, and no good could come of it.

I gazed, without hope, at the shrouded stone. My Christian cabalism, that shield against the demonic, had been compromised by the means of its acquisition.

To begin with, how had John Smart known of my desire for it? As I’d not mentioned it in my own letter to my cousin Meredith, it surely could only have been through the whore, who’d
learned of it from Dudley. The whore whose fishmonger, as we say in London, was Smart. I wondered how many bawdy houses in Presteigne were owned by this man, whose shrill laughter I could almost
hear.

Go on… take the stone… for all the good it will do you.

Tainted.

I flung myself on the floor by the truckle, my teeming head buried in my quivering hands. Filled with dread, now, over Dudley who, in pursuit of my own ends, I’d left alone in a town full
of hostile strangers. Where might I even begin to search for him?

Friendship apart, the thought of returning to London without him made me cold to the spine. I’d tell the Queen almost everything – for how could I not? – and be lucky to escape
with my head, let alone my occasional place at court. For even though she’d ever dithered over his suitability as a husband, Dudley, beyond all doubt, was the only man she’d ever
loved.

Maybe the angels could tell me where to find him. I stared at the black-wrapped stone and began to laugh, in a crazed way which could only break asunder into weeping, and then I was down on my
knees in a vault of moonlight, praying for inspiration to a God who seemed this night to be very far away.