Peter Ackroyd - The house of Doctor Dee

I did not assent to this. 'You are not a foolish man,' I said, 'despite your apparel. How have you lived in this sad world?'

'I go solitary walking, with no man to comfort me, but only a dog.' There was indeed a bundle of skin and bones nestling close up to him, which stirred now that he touched it. 'We eat what we can. It is forbidden to kill kites and ravens in this city because they devour the filthiness of the streets, so they are our companions.'

I felt a little pity for him then. 'I can give you some rye brown bread —'

'Better porridge than no repast, as they say. Better an old bone than an empty plate.'

'You give great words,' I replied, laughing. 'There may also be a hot pie for you and your dog.'

'Then I will leave you afterwards. I will bing Romeville.'

'What was that?'

'It is the canting speech, sir. I said that I will leave London.'

These strange words interested me. 'Cant me some more, good canter.'

'I couched a hogshead in a skipper this darkmans.'

'Which signifies?'

'I lay me down to sleep in this shed last night. Now big me a waste to the highpad, the ruffmans is by.'

'And that?' These words were like some ancient tongue of the country, unknown to me.

'It is as much as to say, well, let me go past to the highway. The woods are at hand.'

'I do not understand these words, or the reasoning for them. Tell me something of their age, and of their origin.'

'I cannot say how old they are, or from where they came, but my father taught them to me, and his father did likewise, stretching far back. I give you a demonstration. Look upon this.' He pointed to his nose. 'A smelling cheat.' And then to his mouth. 'A gan.' And then to his eyes. 'Glaziers.' Then he lifted up his hands. 'Fambles.'

'Wait,' I said, 'wait till I fetch food for you.' I hurried back into the kitchen, where the servant-girl was already preparing the meal, and demanded from her plentiful bread and meat. I piled this upon a plate, but I also brought into the garden a piece of chalk and slate so that I might write down the words he spoke.

'Peck,' he said, holding up a lump of the meat I gave him. 'Pannam,' thus signifying the bread. 'Bene for my bufe. Good for my dog.' They both fell upon their food now, but when they had eaten heartily he wiped his mouth upon his filthy sleeve and continued. 'The lightmans is the day and darkmans is the night. Solomon is an altar and patrico a priest, while autem is canting for church.' All these I wrote down as he spoke. 'Glimmer is fire. It was bitter cold last night, sir, and I wished to put my prat in ken or libbege with new duds.'

'Which is to say?'

'I wished to put my buttocks in a house or bed with new clothes upon me.' He raised himself now a little, and patted his dog. 'I will not filch your bung,' said he, 'because you have fed us both. But do you have some lour? Can you translate this for me?'

'Money?'

'Which is so! Money! I need money!'

I went back into the house, and found some pennies left in the chimney corner; on returning to him I gave them with a right good will, for had he not opened to me a new language and thus a new world? 'There's for you,' I said. 'And what is the name of your dog?'

'Dickins, sir. He is very much like the Devil.'

He left me soon after, but not before I walked with him to the bank of the Fleet. 'There is a theory,' I said, 'that parallels, because they maintain diverse lines, can never join. Do you think it is true?'

'I understand none of that, sir. But I do know that you should not place a patch of fustian in a damask coat. I am not of your kind, and I must leave you.' At that he paused; taking some papers of close writing from the pocket of his ancient coat, he presented them to me with a smile. 'I have been wonderful troublesome to you, sir, and am without doubt much misliked —'

'No, no. It is not so.'

'But read these words I leave with you.' He said no more but went on his way with his dog, going by the side of the river and singing the old hanging tune, 'Fortune my foe, why dost thou frown on me?' I watched him until he was quite out of sight, and then with a sigh turned back to the house and went up again into my library.

*

Shall I tell you of my dreams? In my first dream I had a vision and show of many books, newly printed and of very strange argument; among them was one great volume, thick and in large quarto, which had on its first page my house as its title in great letters. In my second dream I was walking between Aldgate and the posterns on Tower Hill when a great tempest of mighty wind followed me, at which I said out loud to several great personages around me, 'I must ride to Clerkenwell; someone is writing upon a theme concerning me and my books.' In my third dream I knew that I was dead, and after my bowels were taken out I talked with diverse people of a future time. In my fourth dream I dreamed that my wife, Mistress Katherine Dee, had an abortion; I helped to find the dead birth within, one hour after I had caused her to be given myrrh in warmed wine, and the dead thing was a volume with a black cover which stuck to my fingers. In my fifth dream I found myself within an excellent little library room, which seemed in times past to have been the chamber of some student skilful in the holy stone; a name was in various places noted in letters of gold and silver, 'Petrus Baccalaureus Londoniensis', and among other manifold things written very fairly in this study were hieroglyphical notes on the houses, streets and churches of our city. Certain verses were inscribed over the door, viz.

Immortale Decus par gloriaque illi debentur

Cujus ab ingenio est discolor hic paries.

I look down at myself, and find myself with letters and words all upon me, and I know that I have been turned into a book…

There was a cry somewhere and I awoke. I must have poured out my eyes in this place, for I had closed them in a state between slumbering and waking without thinking to steal a nap. But I returned to myself in a moment. It was eleven before noon, and I had been called to dinner by Mrs Dee. I was hungry for my meat and was brisk in coming down the stairs into the hall where, to my delight, the table was already covered. I had long since dismissed any sullen drabs out of the kitchen, and now I have only good and clean servants to aid my wife. She sat opposite to me at the long table, and bowed her head meekly enough as I prayed for grace. Then I began to carve the veal and with great silence and gravity we began to eat our boiled meats, our conies, our pies and our tarts. There are but two courses with us for, as I have told Katherine Dee, too much bread and meat induce melancholy; hares are thought particularly to cause it, so they are banished from our table. Melancholy is cold and dry, and so melancholy men must refrain from fried meat or meat which has too much salt; they must also eat boiled meat rather than roasted. For the same reasons I abstain from the drinking of hot wines and, to preserve myself from distempered heaviness, I abjure cow milk, almond milk and the yolks of eggs. Katherine Dee knows the disposition of her husband and has full keeping of the foodstuffs: I give her money for the month and, having been trained by me in the secret virtues and seeds of all foods, she goes to the market with her maid and buys only good butter, cheese, capons, hogs and bacon.

'Did you see the maypole set up in Cow Lane?' she asked me as I drank my white wine opposite to her.

'I came back another way.' I had already determined to keep silent concerning the canting outcast in the garden, because I knew that it would disturb her.

'It is for the wedding. Did you know? The daughter of Grosseteste, the merchant, is to be married today.'

'So what of it?'