Peter Ackroyd - The house of Doctor Dee

'Yes. We did.'

'That's good.' We walked slowly down the path, admiring each shrub and plant in turn, until we came to the sunflowers, which were growing beside a rubbish heap near the back of the garden. 'It's amazing how they grow out of all this muck and dirt,' he said.

'I don't think they do. Not wholly.' He looked at me in surprise, but said nothing. 'Why do you think they are called sunflowers?'

'Because they always face towards the sun.'

'No. They are the sun.'

'I can't follow you there.'

'You mean you don't follow the son?' I muttered this under my breath, and he had not heard me.

'I know what would interest you, Matthew. You know that I'm working on the new London extension?' He had told me on many occasions how he was acting as a surveyor for the development of an eastern 'corridor' into the city. 'The other day we were plotting the course of the old river Soken, just to make sure there was no danger of subsidence. It runs from Waltham Forest down through Bethnal Green and Shadwell. Do you know where I mean?' I nodded, although I was hardly listening; I was looking up at the window of my mother's bedroom. 'We were inspecting some old sewers which ran into it, when we came across something.' Now he did have my attention, and we sat down together on a wooden bench at the side of the lawn. 'We found some narrow tunnels, somewhere between Wapping and Shadwell. Of course I assumed they were built at the same time as the sewers, but then I realized that they weren't in alignment with them at all. Not at all. So we decided to walk down one of them — it was wet, and slippery, and smelly, but we're used to that. And then we came across the strangest thing.' My mother waved from her window, and I waved back. 'We came out into an open space, and there were some old stones there. One looked like a fragment of a pillar, and one like a paving stone. You know, it was worn smooth. And then there was a piece of archway, just lying on the ground. What do you think of that?' I thought only one thing: a buried city had been discovered. Something from the past had been restored.

At that moment my mother's cairn terrier came dashing out of the house to greet us with its strident bark. I had never really paid much attention to the dog before, but now I was able to see its brightness and fierceness. It was a creature of the fire world, in this garden of water and earth. But was there some place where the elements might be reconciled — where ghosts and real people, lost cities and present ones, my past and present lives, my mother and myself, could be reunited in love? Geoffrey picked up the little dog, and excitedly it licked his face. 'It's time for me to go,' I said. He was about to rise and leave the garden with me, but I put my hand upon his shoulder. 'No. Stay with the dog. I'll just find mother.'

She was waiting for me in the kitchen and, for the first time, we shook hands. It was the strangest gesture, and yet somehow it was appropriate. Then I kissed her on the cheek. 'I'll be back,' I said.

I left the house, and was walking down Wulfstan Street when the first wave of feeling hit me. Something had risen within me, and dashed me against the brick wall of a front garden. I knew that I was struggling on the surface of some emotion more voluminous and powerful than anything I myself possessed. It filled me, and then after a few moments it was gone. I was still leaning against the wall, and now I put my hand up to my face. After a while I turned the corner into Braybrooke Avenue and started walking towards Ealing Broadway. This was the place of my childhood, which I had once despised and rejected, but now I felt oddly contented and even joyful. I saw a girl helping an old man across the road, and I could hear someone singing in the distance. It was then, I suppose, that I began to pity my father.

'HAVE YOU PURIFIED yourself, Mr Kelley? You know well that whosoever attempts this and is not pure shall bring upon himself the judgement.'

'I have abstained from coitus for one day and one night. I have refrained from gluttony. I have washed all, and I have cut my nails.'

'Go forward then, and enter. This place is holy.' And so we proceeded into our secret study, our scrying room or chamber of demonstration, bearing with us the crystal, which with all due reverence I placed upon the silken cloth. 'Sit down at the table of practice,' I said, 'and hold yourself in readiness for anything that might be seen or heard.'

'No harder task is there, Doctor Dee. This work consumes me.'

'Well, you are whole yet.' I stood beside him in my customary place, since it has not been given to me to have visions in crystallo. 'Is there anything that you see as yet?'

'Nothing. Nothing appears in the stone, not even the golden curtain.'

'The stone is its natural diaphanite?'

'It is so.'

'Then we must wait faithfully, knowing ourselves to be entrusted with a great power. We have learned much and will learn yet more.'

'I see the golden curtain now,' Kelley whispered after a little time. 'It hangs very still within the stone. No, it moves. It seems to be far backwards, and the stone is clear between the curtain and the forepart. Under the curtain I see the legs of men up to the knees. Now all remains still.'

'Possess your soul in patience, Mr Kelley, for these things are wonderful.'

So once more we began our course. Each action takes a day, yet since there is much care and trembling anxiety in this pursuit we enter the chamber of demonstration once upon a week only. There is much matter to be interpreted also, and I am compelled to pore over my books for the meanings of all we see: these truths are not to be snatched up greedily, as a dog takes a bear by the ears in Paris Garden.

It is a full twelve months since Edward Kelley entered my service, on that day when we first travelled to the drained marsh of Wapping in search of the ancient city of London. Yet the mists of time were not to be so easily dispersed: we journeyed back several times to the same ground, but found nothing further beyond the mound and the piece of old stone. On a winter's evening when all was quiet (much to Edward Kelley's misliking), I even went so far as to set up a table upon the mound and to place there the vessels of oil, wine and water: it is reported by Agricola in his De re metallica that the candle's ray, when reflected by some polished metal upon the surface of these liquids, will reveal the shape of forgotten things. But there was nothing within the beam to aid us, and all remained concealed. We might have dug deeper into the ground itself, but only at the risk of our plans being discovered. 'I feel myself to have been born out of my time,' I said to Edward Kelley as we rode back that night from the Wapping marsh. 'It is as if I had been given sight of a wooden globe, when I long to behold the entire sky.' Indeed I was then close to despairing, when suddenly I found the arrow which might hit our target by another way. 'But then again,' I said to him, 'why should you not see for me?'

'Which is to say?'

'We must turn our eyes back to the stone. You know well how the parabolic speculum, or burning mirror, will employ the rays of the sun. Why should our holy crystal, our principal stone, not magnify and objectify the world of spirits which surrounds us? Where could we find better guides into the buried city?'

'Certainly,' he replied, 'there is a mystery within it, for already I have obtained sight of wonderful things. But I am not sure —'

'This is no time for a faint heart, Edward. If indeed it does contain mysteries, then surely they must be preserved and guarded. I will furnish a little room beyond my laboratory, which will be closed and locked to all comers — no, not even my wife will dare enter. And there, in this reserved chamber, we will consult the stone with many very constant and diligent enquiries. It is the only course now open to us.'