S Parris - Prophecy

‘He was a gentleman, then, this visitor?’ I ask, suspicion pricking. ‘Well dressed? What did he look like?’

‘Oh, tall. He wore a hat with a great feather which he didn’t take off even indoors — I thought that ill-mannered, I remember. Just shows you can have all the fine cloth you like and it won’t improve your manners. He had a pointed beard, dark, cut like this in a triangle.’ She indicates with her free hand, taking it from the baby’s mouth; it complains loudly.

‘A young man, was he?’

She considers.

‘Younger than John. Older than you, I’d guess. Forties, maybe.’

My heart seems to contract; it sounds unmistakably like Henry Howard. No doubt there are other men who would fit such a description, but who else would take the opportunity to rifle through Dee’s library, knowing he was detained? And if it had been Howard, what was he hoping to find?

‘So you observed him in the library?’ I make sure my voice betrays no alarm; the poor woman has enough to be anxious about. ‘Did you see what he read? Did he try to take anything?’

‘I don’t think so. But it was strange. He combed those shelves like the hounds of hell were at his heels, almost in a frenzy. And when he thought I wasn’t looking I saw him trying the door to John’s inner rooms, you know, where he keeps his secret books. Thank God John had locked it up and taken the key with him. Tapping on the panelling, too, this fellow was, as if he were looking for some secret hiding place. He even stuck his hand up the chimney breast — I didn’t see him do it, but when he came to leave he had soot on his sleeve.’ She half laughs at the man’s audacity.

I happen to know, as she must, that Dee keeps certain papers in a box hidden in a recess inside the chimney breast in his own office. Whoever this man was, he clearly had a good idea of what he hoped to find, and it must have been something he suspected Dee would keep away from prying eyes.

‘How long did he stay? Did he give the impression that he found what he wanted?’

‘So many questions, Doctor Bruno!’ Jane tries to make her voice light, but I catch the fear in it as she jiggles the baby more urgently on her hip. ‘He stayed until it was past dinner time, though he didn’t seem to notice. He took down one or two books and glanced inside them, I didn’t see what, but that was more for show. I started to think maybe he’d come on purpose, knowing John was away, thinking he’d have free run of the place. But who could have known about that, except the queen and her people?’ Her voice has risen; she looks at me as if for reassurance. ‘Do you know who he was? You suspect something, I can tell by your face.’

‘I think you should not allow any stranger in while your husband is detained,’ I say. ‘Especially not this man, if he shows up again. And I will see if someone can be sent to keep an eye on you while John is at court — it is not right that you should be left alone with the children.’

‘Oh, I am not alone,’ she says drily. ‘Not while I have that slattern for company.’

I glance around, guessing she means the sullen maid who opened the door. I wonder that she doesn’t get a different servant, since she appears to resent this one so much. Perhaps this one is all they can afford, which might explain the resentment.

‘Might I look in Ned Kelley’s room?’ I ask. ‘There may be something there that will offer us a clue as to how he invents his visions, and that might be enough to clear John of any suspicion.’

‘Of course.’ She shows me to the door, hands me a candle and points up the main staircase. ‘The room over the stairs. Go on in and root around all you will, with my blessing. And don’t mind her ,’ she adds, darkly.

Dee’s house is old and crooked, the wood of the stairs and banisters dark and smoothed to a sheen by generations of hands and feet. The treads groan like living things weary with age as I climb, and from the corner of my eye I glimpse shadows at my back as the watery pool of light moves with me. Though I know there is no one in the house except Jane and her children, save for the maid, still I find I am tensed against any sudden surprises, half-expecting someone to leap at me from a passage or doorway, as if Kelley might have been squirrelled away in some spidery corner all this time.

The door at the top of the stairs is not locked. It opens on to a generously proportioned room with two casement windows that must overlook the front of the house, towards the river path. Now, against the black sky, they offer only a distorted reflection of my outline with the flickering candle flame. As I turn with it slowly, the room reveals itself as a jumble of objects in the frail light: a wooden truckle-bed, the sheets twisted and thrown back, as if Kelley had only moments ago leapt out of them; two chests, one locked, one spilling with clothes or linen; a table with a few stumps of candle; beside them, a pair of dice and a locket. Their shadows climb up and down the walls as the candle passes them.

I push the door to behind me and fit my candle to one of the holders from the table; setting it on the floor beside me, I kneel by the closed trunk. Its lock is old and crusted with rust, and when I insert the tip of my little bone-handled knife, it takes only a few moments of easing and jiggling before the mechanism clicks open and I can prise up the lid. My pulse jumps as my fingers brush against paper; sheaves of letters, perhaps, and, further down, the calfskin cover of a book. I bring out a bundle of manuscript pages and examine them in the thin circle of light; what I see makes me gasp.

Here are pages of notes and drawings in a rough hand: astrological and alchemical symbols and Cabbalistic codes; lists of names in a curious unknown language; geometrical designs that match the table of practice Dee uses in his seances, whose components he said were told to him by spirits via Kelley; there are star charts, and sketches of the images of the decans according to the descriptions given in the writings of Hermes; scraps of magic lore culled from books forbidden throughout Europe, and three recent illegally printed pamphlets, the kind from Paul’s churchyard, decrying the murder of Cecily Ashe as a sign of the end of days, complete with gruesome illustrations. Most disturbing of all, at the bottom I find a series of hand-drawn images, more explicit than those in the pamphlets. They depict a young woman with flowing hair, her arms flung wide and holding in one hand a book, in the other a key, her bodice torn and her breasts thrust out, with a dagger plunged into her heart, some showing the sign of Saturn marked on her chest, others the sign of Jupiter. These pictures vary in their particulars — in one, she is standing in what appears to be a raging river, in another, she is laid out naked on something that looks like an altar, but the ravaged expression on her face remains the same. I find my insides knotted by a peculiar nausea; there is an unmissable relish in these drawings, the expression of a young man’s violent fantasy. You sense that the artist has taken pleasure in illustrating not only the woman’s naked body but her suffering — and Kelley, though his writing is uncultured, is not without talent when it comes to drawing; the pictures are vivid. Assuming that these are his own work, the drafts that would enable him to pronounce his visions to Dee in convincing detail.

Slowly, I fold away the drawings of the young woman and tuck them inside my doublet. These look like nothing so much as preparatory sketches for the murder of Abigail Morley, and if they can be proved to be by Kelley’s hand, they may be enough to convict him, or certainly to bring him to trial. Even contemplating the possibility that Kelley could have acted out his lascivious fantasies on Abigail makes a fist of anger bunch beneath my ribs and my breath quicken; I close my eyes for a moment, forcing myself to remain calm, to act in the light of reason. But Kelley, if he was a killer, would not have the means to get near the queen’s maids, unless he were the hired hand for someone better connected.