Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘I told the Queen I’d acquired a crystal sphere. And would be working with it. And that I’d report back to her.’

I saw Dudley looking around the darkening workplace.

‘You won’t see one here,’ I said. ‘God knows, I’ve been trying to find one.’

Dudley began to laugh.

‘You mean one you can afford?’

‘The ones I can afford would probably be useless for my purposes. You’re right, I’m a clown. However…’

Told him, in some detail, about the crystal sphere last heard of in a former abbey in the Welsh borderlands. Finding I had his full attention.

‘So you don’t know if it’s still there and you’re fairly sure you wouldn’t be able to afford it, but you’re planning a long and arduous ride to find out?’

‘Haven’t decided yet. But the fact remains that Cecil wants me out of town for a while.’

‘You mean out of the reach of Blanche Parry. Can’t help wondering if Cecil wasn’t told about the plan to consult you by Mistress Parry herself – his fellow Welshie. Who may also disapprove of Bess’s taste in men. She’s polite to me, is old Blanche, but ever somewhat distant. Uncommon that, for a woman of whatever age.’

‘Robbie, she’s distant from me , and I’m her cousin.’

‘ Cousin. Half of Wales is your cousin. Look at that bastard – isn’t he a cousin? The notorious villain, Thomas…’

‘Jones. Thomas Jones.’

‘Who robbed his betters on the road. Almost openly. Is he your cousin?’

‘Betrothed to my cousin, Joanne. And I don’t ask what he did or to whom. He was young then. Reformed now, anyway. A scholar, with a doctorate. And given a royal pardon.’

Dudley snorted.

‘Bess is quite ridiculously tolerant towards the Welsh.’

‘Perhaps because she is Welsh.’

‘She is not Welsh! Her grandfather was Welsh. Partly. So you think Cecil might try and have me slain, do you?’

The sky momentarily was shadowed by a flock of birds going to roost, the dimmed window glass turning Dudley’s fine doublet from its mourning indigo to black.

‘He likes you,’ I said. ‘But he might not shed tears over your corpse.’

His lips tightened, vanishing into his once-proud moustache, now straggled and uneven.

‘I… had a servant die, John. Couple of days ago. A kitchen maid. Spasms of the gut, and dead within an hour. I… ordered all the meat in the house taken out and buried.’

‘You’re thinking poison?’

‘If I died from it, people would say it was no more than divine justice.’ He stared up at me, his face twisting into wretchedness in an instant, the way a child’s does. ‘They can all say what the hell they like, now I’m exiled from court, and nobody visits me for fear they’ll come away soiled by second-hand guilt. Maybe’ – pushing himself back from the board, the bench-feet squealing on the flags – ‘you can summon Amy’s spirit into a fucking shewstone to tell us precisely how she died.’

Did I mark tears in his eyes? Finally? Tears for Amy? Tears for himself? Did he even know the difference?

‘What should I do?’ he said at last.

‘Not for me to say, Robbie. We’re acting on different stages now.’

‘You’re still my friend.’

I suppose I nodded, though I’d rarely been less sure of it.

SHE’D BEEN IN a wild mood that day, the day not so long ago when they’d talked of knowing the future and having communion with angels. Red hair all down around her shoulders, the pale sun on her pale face, a faerie light in her amber eyes… and Dudley wanting her so badly that he’d fallen to his knees in the island garden at Richmond, burying his head in the grass ’twixt her feet.

Remembering now how she’d insisted that God and all His angels must surely be on her side.

Our side, Dudley had wanted to say, but didn’t. Telling me he’d been thinking of all they’d come through, both of them losing a parent to the block. Imprisoned side by side in the Tower, not knowing if they, too, would end up there.

But how will we know , she’d said, and he recalled her voice grown thin, when what we do fails to please them, and God and all His angels begin to turn away? How will we know when evil’s at the door?

‘Do you see?’ Dudley said to me. ‘Do you see where this goes?’

‘No,’ I said.

Although of course I did and was filled with a mixture of alarm and excitement, as Dudley arose and picked up the smaller of the two globes given to me by Gerardus Mercator, with whom I’d studied at Louvain. Holding it up to the last of the light, as if it were a symbol of his destiny.

‘Spirits,’ Dudley said. ‘A shewstone can bring forth spirits. Good spirits… evil spirits?’

I watched him slowly turning Mercator’s globe. Geography is one of my less-dangerous obsessions.

‘I’m a cabalist,’ I said, ‘and also a Christian. Therefore any spirits called into the stone by me must needs be touched by the angelic.’

‘Good enough,’ Dudley said. ‘So far. Go on.’

‘The Queen knows her reign could see the meeting point of science and the spiritual. A wondrous thing. If barriers are not raised against it.’

‘Ah… that old question of religion.’

‘Not an old question at all,’ I said ruefully. ‘When I was a boy, mystery was all around us. Christ was full-manifest in the Mass. Every baptism was an exorcism of evil spirits. The world vibrated with magic. And… and if men like me sought divine inspiration in the cause of making new discoveries, it would be a long time before someone cried heresy .’

‘Except possibly the Pope.’

I nodded sadly.

‘We get rid of the Pope, and what happens? In no time at all, we’ve gone too far the other way. Christ is not manifest in the Mass. It’s all theatre. Let’s strip it away, the new Bible-men cry, not for us to ask questions. The will of God is the will of God, and you either accept it or you go to Hell. You explore nothing. Jesu, I— I’m a Protestant, Robbie, I believe in the Church of England… and yet know it could take us back centuries.’

Both of us knew where the Queen stood on this. There would be no persecution of Catholics if they worshipped privately.

Or she’d be persecuting herself.

‘Tell me how it works,’ Dudley said. ‘The shewstone.’

‘I don’t fully know how it works. I know that planetary rays are drawn into the stone through ritual and the focus of the scryer, who must needs enter an altered state to perceive the flow of messages.’

‘If this French bastard Nostradamus can do it,’ Dudley said, ‘then you can do it.’

Dear God, I’d wish for a half of his confidence. I’d met Nostradamus just the one time and didn’t believe him a rooker. Not entirely. Envied him, I’d have to admit, for his standing at the French court and the monetary favours that came his way. The way he was venerated and left to experiment unmolested by Church or Crown.

‘We’re both reaching for the same things,’ I said. ‘Though my own feeling is that his prophecies are a little too… poetic. Not the best poetry, either.’

‘And shaped to the French cause.’ Dudley was yet nursing the globe. ‘This clever stone… does Nostradamus have one?’

‘Don’t know. He claims he’s a natural scryer who needs only to look into a glass of water to connect himself to channels of prophecy. But I’m a scientist and must needs have proof. Scrying stones have been around throughout history, but only now do we have the means and the knowledge to subject them to proper scientific study.’