Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

Perhaps worth more attention, John, don’t you think?

‘Jesu, Dr John,’ Jack Simm said. ‘You really know how to put yourself between heaven and hell and a pile of shite.’

‘We all walk a cliff-edge,’ I said.

‘She’ll forget, though, won’t she? She got too much to worry about.’

I blinked Jupiter away. Of course the Queen would not forget. Unless by design, she forgot nothing.

‘Yea, well…’ Jack Simm tossed the heel of a hand into my shoulder. ‘Leave it alone, eh?’

‘I fear I shall have to,’ I said.

‘Good.’ He picked up his lantern. ‘It’s a wasp’s nest. Go to your bed and fink not of ghosts.’

I nodded, resigned. This was not a night to remember with satisfaction, not in any respect.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But—’

‘Just… piss off , Dr John!’

I nodded. Passed through the coffin gate to the churchyard and the path to our house.

Even made it up to the rickety, stilted terrace before turning around to make sure I was not followed by the sickly shade of Benlow the boneman.

How much easier we could all sleep, now that Lutheran theologians had assured us that, with the abolition of purgatory, ghosts were no longer permitted to exist.

THAT NIGHT IT rained hard and my sleep was scorched by dreams.

Lately, I’d been welcoming journeys through the inner spheres and would keep paper and ink at my bedside to write down their substance upon awakening. But these… these I made no notes upon, because I dreamed not, as I’d feared, of Benlow the Boneman…

…but – oh God – of Eleanor Borrow with her green eyes and her soft body so close that I could feel its eager heat and had thrown out my arms in a feral desire. One of the few dreams I’d wished never to awake from, even if it meant, God help me, embracing death.

But I had, of course, awoken at once, and Nel’s warm body was gone to cold air, as if she’d been no more than a succubus, some siren of sleep sent to taunt me. I may have cried out in my anguish. In the pallid dawn only the pain in my heart was real. For, since Nel in Glastonbury, I’d not lain with a woman. And, before her, never at all.

It would have been wrong to feel a bitterness about this, for my waking life had been given over to study. My father had not oft-times been a wealthy man. He’d been proud to see me at Cambridge at the age of fourteen and, in order to repay him sooner, I’d eschewed strong drink, carousing and even sleep.

And now my poor tad was disgraced and dead and, while my scholar’s knowledge of mathematics and the stars had brought me some small fame in the universities of Europe, in England I was regarded by many as little more than—

Jesu! I rolled from my bed in a rush of anger.

—as little more than a rooker myself. I had few friends, not much money and no wife.

And oh, how my perception of this last condition had changed. The hollow emptiness of the single man’s life was something I’d never felt before my time with Nel. A constant raw longing which, for virtually all my sentient years, had applied only to knowledge.

Dear God, what am I become?

At the breakfast board, my mother said, ‘The hole in the roof that you attempted to mend last week is a hole once more.’

Holding up the painted cloth which had hung in the hall. Soaked through, now.

I closed my eyes, with some weariness. She’d probably been up since well before dawn, preparing sweetmeats with Catherine, her only servant. Making sure the house was as fit as ever it could be to welcome the woman closest to the Queen.

Hardly for the first time, I felt a strong pity for my mother. Something in that terse letter had told me it was unlikely that Blanche would even leave her barge this day. Just as with the visits of the Queen, all my mother’s work would be wasted.

‘It’s been a summer of endless rain,’ I said, ‘And I’ve never pretended to be any kind of builder. Builders are… men we should employ. When the money’s there.’

‘When the money’s there’ – My mother’s voice was flat – ‘you buy more books.’

I tore off a lump of bread. It was true enough. But I needed books, and all the knowledge therein, and more. All the knowledge that was out there . Needed to be ahead of the others, or what hope was there for us?

‘Another winter’s coming.’ My mother pulled her robe close about her and came out with what clearly had long been in her mind. ‘By the end of the summer, I’d rather expected you to have been… favoured.’

There could be no happy reply to this. I suppose I also had expected… well, something , by now. Not necessarily a knighthood – Sir William Cecil, as the Queen’s chief minister, inevitably would advise against the ennoblement of a man still considered by many to be a common conjurer.

What I needed, far more than social status, was a secure supply of money. Oft-times, the Queen had sent for me and would receive me pleasantly, and we’d talk for two or more hours about the nature of things. If she truly valued what I provided, both as an astrologer and a cabalist, then surely something with a moderate income would not be out of order… something to replace the rectorate of Upton-upon-Severn, awarded by the short-lived King Edward only be to taken away in Mary’s time.

More than a year and a half had passed since Elizabeth’s coronation, held on a day calculed by me, according to the stars, as heralding a rewarding reign. And such, for the most part, it had been.

Until the death of Amy, wife of Dudley.

I rose, brushing a few crumbs from my fresh doublet and the ridiculous Venetian breeches my mother had had made by a woman in the village. There was nearly an hour to spare before Blanche’s barge was due, but, almost certainly, she’d be early. A severe and efficient woman, my cousin, and usually disapproving of me.

Until she wanted something.

My mother had insisted I should be at the riverside over half an hour before the royal barge was due to arrive from Richmond Palace. But, as I had no wish to draw attention to what I guessed would be a discreet visit, I used the time to go to the inn to leave a letter for the post rider.

My dream of Nel had reminded me of the journeyman mapper, John Leland, who might have been her father, and I’d gone into my library early this morning and taken down his Itinerary to confirm that Wigmore Abbey was within a few miles of my tad’s birth-home, Nant-y-groes. With this in mind, it had seemed worth writing to my cousin, Nicholas Meredith, who lived in the nearest small town.

I’d never been to the town or met Nicholas Meredith but had received a letter of congratulation from him after the Queen’s coronation on the date calculed by me – this being widely spoken of at the time. We’d exchanged a few letters since, so I felt able to ask him, in confidence, if he knew anything of the present whereabouts of the former Abbot of Wigmore, whom I wished to consult on a matter of antiquarian interest.

It had been madness to lie to the Queen about owning a shewstone and the only fortuitous aspect of the current turbulence at court was that she hadn’t asked me to bring it to her. Yet.

I hear the French king consults one owned by the seer, Nostradamus.

Hmm. It seemed unlikely that the crystal consulted by the well-favoured and undoubtedly wealthy Nostradamus would be the kind of minuscule, flawed mineral that I could afford. I’d wondered if I might see Brother Elias at the inn and if it might be worth revealing my identity in hope of learning more about the Wigmore stone. It was a relief, I suppose, to find he’d gone at first light. Which left only one other man in London who might know of the stone or at least be able to direct me to someone who did. Maybe I could see him tomorrow – for at least I knew where he was.