Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

Born in 1527, John Dee grew up in the most volcanic years of the reign of Henry VIII, at whose court his father was employed as a ‘gentleman server’. John was eight when the King split with Rome, declaring himself head of the Church of England and systematically plundering the wealth of the monasteries. Recognised by his early twenties as one of Europe’s leading mathematicians and an expert in the science of astrology, John was introduced at court during the short reign of Henry’s son, Edward VI.

When Edward died at only sixteen, John Dee was lucky to survive the brief but bloody reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor. Mary died in 1558 and was succeeded by the Protestant, Elizabeth, who would always encourage John’s lifelong interest in what he considered science but others saw as sorcery. Caught between Catholic plots and the rise of a new puritanism, he would feel no more secure than Queen Elizabeth herself, who was fending off the marriage bids of foreign kings and princes.

1560 began what biographers have seen as John Dee’s ‘missing years.’ A dangerous period, especially after the mysterious death of the wife of Dee’s friend and former student, Lord Robert Dudley, thought by many to be the Queen’s lover.

IT WAS THE year of no summer, and all the talk in London was of the End-time.

Even my mother’s neighbours were muttering about darkness on the streets before its time, moving lights seen in the heavens and tremblings of the earth caused by Satan’s gleeful stoking of the infernal fires.

Tales came out of Europe that two suns were oft-times apparent in the skies. On occasion, three, while in England we never saw even the one most days and, when it deigned to appear, it was as pale and sour as old milk and smirched by raincloud. Now, all too soon, autumn was nigh, and the harvests were poor and I’d lost count of the times I’d been asked what the stars foretold about our future… if we had one.

Each time, I’d reply that the heavens showed no signs of impending doom. But how acceptable was my word these days? I was the astrologer who’d found a day of good promise for the joyful crowning of a woman who now, less than two years later, was being widely condemned as the source of the darkness.

By embittered Catholics, this was, and the prune-faced new Bible-men. Even the sun has fled England , they squealed. God’s verdict on a country that would have as its queen the spawn of a witch – these fears given heat by false rumours from France and Spain that Elizabeth was pregnant with a murderer’s child.

God’s bollocks, as the alleged murderer would say, but all this made me weary to the bone. How fast the bubble of new joy is pricked. How shallow people are. Give them shit to spread, and they’ll forge new shovels overnight.

All the same, you might have thought, after what happened in Glastonbury, that the Queen would seek my help in shifting this night-soil from her door.

But, no, she’d sent for me just once since the spring – all frivolous and curious about what I was working on, and had I thought of this , and had I looked into that ? Sending me back to spend, in her cause, far too much money on books. Burn too many candles into pools of fat. Explore alleys of the hidden which I thought I’d never want to enter.

Only to learn, within weeks, that heavy curtains had closed around her court. Death having slipped furtively in. The worst of all possible deaths, most of us could see that.

Although not the Queen, apparently, who could scarce conceal her terrifying gaiety.

Dear God. As the silence grew, I was left wondering if the End-time might truly be looming and began backing away from some of the more foetid alleyways.

Though not fast enough, as it turned out.

September, 1560. Mortlake.

IT WAS TO be the last halfway-bright day of the season, but the scryer had demanded darkness: shutters closed against the mid-afternoon and the light from a single beeswax candle throwing shadows into battle on the walls.

‘And this…’ Dithering now, poor Goodwife Faldo looked at me over the wafer of flame and then across the board to where the scryer sat, and then back at me. ‘This is my brother…’ her hands falling to her sides and, even in the small light, he must surely have seen the flailing in her eyes ‘…John,’ she said lamely.

‘John Faldo,’ I said at once.

And then, seeing the eyes of my friend Jack Simm rolling upwards, realised why this could not be so.

‘That is, her husband’s brother.’

Thinking how fortunate it was that Will Faldo was out with his two sons, gleaning from his field all that remained of a dismal harvest. Had he been with us, the scryer might just have noted that Master Faldo was plump, with red hair, and a head shorter than the man claiming to be his brother.

Or he might yet see the truth when he uncovered what sat before him. It made a hump under the black cloth as might a saint’s sacred skull. My eyes were drawn back to it again and again. Unaware that the scryer had been watching me until his voice came curling out of the dark.

‘You have an interest in these matters, Master Faldo?’

A clipped clarity suggestive of Wales. Echoes of my late tad, in fact.

Jesu… I met his gaze for no more than a moment then looked away towards the crack of daylight betwixt shutters. The Faldos’ dwelling, firm-built of oak and riverbed daub, was but a short walk from Mortlake Church which, had the shutters been open, would have displayed itself like a warning finger.

‘The truth is,’ I mumbled, ‘that I’m less afraid of such things than my brother. Which is one reason why I’m here. And, um, he is not.’

The scryer nodded, appearing well at ease with his situation. Too much so, it seemed to me; the narrow causeway ’twixt science and sorcery will always have slippery sides and in his place I would ever have been watching the shadows. But then, that, as you know, is the way I am.

I studied him in the thin light. Not what I’d expected. A good twenty years older than my thirty-three, greying beard tight-trimmed to his cheeks and a white scar the width of his forehead. Well-clothed, in a drab and sober way, like to a clerk or a lawyer. Only the scar hinting at a more perilous profession.

He’d introduced himself to us as Elias, and I was told he’d been a monk. Were this true, it might afford him protection from whatever would come. Certainly his manner implied that we were fortunate to have his services.

‘And the other reason that Master Faldo is not with us?’

He smiled at me, with evident scepticism. I was silent too long, and it was the goodwife, alert as a chaffinch, who sprang up.

‘My husband… he knows naught of this. He’s working the day long and falls to sleep when he comes in. I…’ She lowered her voice and her eyelids, a fine and unexpected piece of theatre. ‘I was too ashamed to tell him.’