Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘What are we seeking here, John?’

We? I sought a careful answer.

‘Knowledge of the hidden engines that power the world? The workings of the mind of God?’

Jesu , that wasn’t careful at all, was it?

‘The mind of God , John?’

Dudley took breath in a kind of shudder, and I endeavoured to back away.

‘I just don’t believe we can do anything of significance alone. All great art comes through divine inspiration. Advances in science… the same.’

Told him what I’d gleaned from Bishop Bonner about the former Abbot of Wigmore, John Smart.

‘Bonner? You consulted Bonner ? And the fat bastard’s going to keep his mouth stitched?’

‘I believe he will.’

‘You’re an innocent, John.’ Dudley shaking his head in feigned wonder. ‘All right, tell me about the mysteries of divine inspiration.’

I told him that while we could hardly aspire, either side of the grave, to a direct approach to God, there were… intermediaries.

‘Angels. Archangels – Gabriel, Michael?’

‘Just names, Robbie. Just names for whatever moves the celestial forces which make us what we are. Just names for the controlling—’

‘Good enough for me, John. How much does this man want for his stone?’

‘Probably more than I have in the world.’

I looked away in sudden apprehension, heard Dudley stand up.

‘But not, presumably,’ he said, ‘more than I have.’

Oh God help me… Shutting my eyes in dismay. Had this been what I’d been hoping for all along? Was this, in truth, why I’d writ the letter to him in Bonner’s cell?

‘All right, we’ll both go,’ Dudley said. ‘You and I. We’ll make a good bargain with this man, in the noble cause of expanding the Queen’s vision.’

We? The way we brought back the bones of Arthur?

‘Her stone,’ Dudley said. ‘Dedicated to the Queen’s majesty. But as you’re the only one who knows how to make it speak, you can keep it here and study it and caress it in your bed, whatever it takes, and bring it regularly to Bess at Richmond or Windsor. Present to her whatever you see within it. Or consider it advisable to see.’

What? I drew back across the chamber, hard against the door to the library, something twisted like a knife in my chest. I began to panic.

‘Robbie, we don’t know he still has it.’

‘We don’t? I thought you were of the opinion that the scryer had deliberately conveyed to your apothecary friend just enough information to tempt the infamous Dr Dee.’

‘What if it’s a rook?’

‘Then we have the abbot brought back and thrown in the Fleet. Jesu , John, I have to do something. I’m sick to my gut of confinement at Kew, everyone regarding me with half-veiled suspicion… barred from court for the sake of appearances. What’s the matter with you? Suddenly you don’t think yourself worthy to know the mind of God? Listen to me…’

It felt as if the surging of his energy was taking away the air, and I found it hard to breathe. A half moon, ridged by cheap glass, shone behind the owl, and Dudley’s voice rose in the darkness as if from the hollows of a dream. Talking of responsibility towards his heritage… all that his father had died for… the beheading of Jane Grey and all the other cruel deaths, the ashes of martyrs from which Elizabeth had arisen like the fresh and glistening spirit of a new age. Repeating her words from the island in the garden at the Palace of Richmond.

… how will we know when what we do fails to please them? How will we know when evil’s at the door?

And over this I heard the voice of Brother Elias, the scryer, repeating the exhortation of Trithemius of Spanheim.

‘ … and whatever good gifts, whether the power of healing infirmities, or of imbibing wisdom, or discovering any evil …

Did I sense in Dudley this night a manner of madness? The haste with which he’d seized on this had made me wonder if truly he did fear for his life if he remained in London. Feared public assassination or a sordid, squirming death by poison. Or even a faked suicide. If so, what I’d told him about Cecil would scarce heighten his confidence of survival… unless…

Unless.

Across the board, his shape had almost gone to black and only the savagery of his smile shone through to show me he was afire.

Five days later, Sunday, as I returned, with my mother, from church, a letter was delivered to me by Dudley’s senior attendant John Forest who, along with Thomas Blount, his steward, seemed to have replaced his murdered servant Martin Lythgoe in the position of most-trusted.

The letter was to detail our itinerary, through Gloucester and Hereford, to the Welsh Border.

We shall be riding with a judge sent to preside over an assize court trial at Presteigne. In the border lands, in sombre attire, we should be inconspicuous in this company.

It seems likely the judge will be returning to London within a few days, which should give us ample time to conduct our business.

Until the company leaves, knowing of your problem, I should be glad to accommodate you here at Kew.

Please tell Forest if this is what you wish.

We were to travel with a judge on his way to preside over a trial? I guessed Dudley would be blind to the irony.

Still, it seemed a good and safe way to make the journey. Presteigne, county town of the new shire of Radnor, was within a few miles of my father’s old home, and my cousin Nicholas Meredith lived in the town. The invitation to stay at Kew also made sense, as long as I didn’t leave the house. And yet…

That evening, as the sun’s last amber strips tinted the river, I packed a bag with a change of doublet and my hand-scribed copy of the writings of Trithemius relating to the rituals of scrying.

Outside, Cecil’s builders, who had arrived this day to begin repairing my mother’s roof, were packing up their tools, loading them on to their cart. As it was pulled away, I stood in my workplace, next to the owl, feeling lost and solitary. Last night, I’d lain too long awake, trying to divert my thoughts from the coming journey by thinking of Nel Borrow who, in my mother’s eyes, would have made a most unsuitable wife – what Cecil would call, in contempt, a carnal marriage.

As distinct from the most dangerous of all marriages which beckoned Dudley. In writing to him from Bonner’s cell, I’d followed only my conscience, but was now become part of the engine which powered his determination to wed the Queen in the belief that it was right … for England and thus for the world.

Your Highness, the archangels Gabriel and Uriel both send their respects and what look to be dread warnings of what may happen if, to gratify the political ambition of others, you turn away from love…

Oh, you might think my part in it would be no more than smoke. For everyone who calls me a sorcerer there’s another who scorns me as a pretender to powers I don’t have. And they, God help me, may be closer to the truth.

Was I then supposed to remind Dudley that, for all my learning, I could not make the leap from the written page into the void? That the birthcharts I’d drawn were craft not prophecy, the dreams I’d so assiduously written down upon awakening were invariably mundane? That even the ghost which had travelled in my baggage all the way from Glastonbury to London was apparent to everyone but me?

That I was afraid to my gut that if we acquired the shewstone of Wigmore it would not speak to me?

And would that, anyway, stay his hand?

Last night, after my prayers, I’d told all this to Eleanor Borrow, wherever she lay. Nel, who would forever be a part of my past.