abbey, founded by St Joseph, uncle of Christ, was torn down and its streets filled not with pilgrims but witches and sorcerers.
Just as the first Tudor to usurp the throne had ensured that his first son was born in Winchester, claimed for the court of the great King Arthur, so this child would be born in the town of Arthur’s death.
Born to Elizabeth, the witch queen.
The pamphlet reported that England’s most notorious black sorcerer, ‘Dr’ John Dee was himself just returned from a visit to Glastonbury to meet the circle of witches there and make preparation for the birth of the child. The sorcerer having journeyed to Glastonbury with the child’s…
‘ Father?’
I let the paper fall.
Cecil said, ‘It’s not been the only pamphlet to suggest that the Queen’s already pregnant by Dudley.’
Described here as a known wizard, trained in the black arts from boyhood by the evil Dee.
‘We found signs of a similar campaign being planned for London,’ Cecil said. ‘While you were away, Walsingham raided the premises of a disreputable lawyer called Ferrers. Took away a printing press. Copies of pamphlets purporting to contain your astrological forecasts. Usual end-of-the-world drivel. Ferrers, naturally, denies any connection with France. Even Walsingham sees him as just another lunatic.’
‘I’ve… had dealings with this man,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Probably quite annoyed that he failed to get me burned.’
But there was surely more than an old hatred behind this.
Cecil took the French pamphlet out of my hands and crumpled it.
‘We’re not too worried as yet, but a word or two from you to the Queen about the absence of sinister signs in the sky would do no harm. I’ll make you an appointment.’
I said, ‘How is she now?’ ‘Well,’ Cecil said. ‘Quite well.’
Despite my full written report, he hadn’t once mentioned the bones of Arthur or the attempt to afflict the Queen with wool-sorters’ disease. She would have had the full story at length from Dudley, but I wanted to discuss it with Cecil. I wanted to know exactly how the Queen had received those Nostradamus predictions and who had suggested she might act on them. But he wasn’t giving me an opening.
Cowdray’s boys had caught up with Dudley in the Mendip Hills, turned him round, and thank God for that. Twice I’d awoken in a sweat after dreaming that he was putting the poisoned bones before the Queen. And once I’d dreamed Nel Borrow had not been cut down, and my arms had given way through exhaustion and I’d looked up to see the whites of her eyes and her lolling tongue.
Big Jamey Hawkes had gone back to his old grave at the church of St Benignus, with a weight of rocks piled on top of his box so that his toxic remains might never be disturbed.
Cecil smiled. ‘You see, we kept your mother and her housekeeper quite safe in your absence.’
‘Did you?’
With Catherine Meadows back and no evident threat from her puritan father, I’d not asked for protection.
‘More safe than when you were in the house,’ Cecil said. ‘Turning out to be a good man, Walsingham.’ He paused. ‘Makes one think, John… are they more secure when you’re away?’
‘You have more work for me, don’t you, Sir William?’
‘For the Queen,’ Cecil said.
I’d left angry, swearing that on the morrow I’d make plans to go back to Glastonbury to undertake full and detailed research into the Zodiac formed on the ground. A garden of stars upon the earth. What could be more important than finding the key to that?
And also finding Nel. Not an hour passed when I didn’t think of her.
A month ago, I had a letter from Monger, telling me she’d successfully taken over the medical practice opposite the church of St Benignus while continuing her work in the herb garden with the help of himself and Joan Tyrre.
She seems happy. I tried to find some small solace in Joan’s prediction of my future marriages. Until shortly before dusk yesterday, when Blanche Parry arrived in Mortlake with the letter from Dudley and word of what it contained and the hellish and piteous scandal with my friend at its heart.
I think I’ve said that his ailing wife, Amy, lived in the country.
This was true, but not in any great style. Even after ten years, Dudley had kept postponing plans to set his wife up in a grand house, and she seemed to spend her time at the homes of friends or relatives, journeying from one to another.
With Dudley at Windsor with the Queen, Amy has been found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in Oxfordshire. Her neck is broken.
Dudley maintains she’d been unwell for some time. What he’s never spoken of are the rumours that she was being poisoned, with at least one doctor refusing to attend her because he feared for his own life whether she was cured or dead.
The staircase down which Amy is said to have fallen apparently is quite short. Dudley tells me in his letter that her bones were made thin and fragile by some malady in her breast.
God help me, John, but I had no part in it. I swear she was ill. I swear I loved her and always will…
The Queen, meanwhile, is said to be recovered from her nightmares.
‘What happens now?’ I said to Blanche, when we were alone.
‘She’s ordered full mourning at court while in a constant state of barely concealed merriment. She thinks they’ll marry. I have my doubts.’
There’s to be an inquest. No danger that Dudley will be implicated… except in the minds of everyone in Europe.
The inquest is also unlikely to hear of a story I heard not from Blanche but from my mother, who had it from a relative of Goodwife Faldo whose sister is maid to a minor lady-in-waiting.
The crux of it is that, only days ago, the Queen told the Spanish ambassador that Dudley would soon be free to marry her as his wife was close to death.
Nostradamus again?
Given the alternative explanations of the Queen’s foresight, just for once I’d dearly like to think this was something from Michel’s mist of perceiving.
Strange to think that under different circumstances, we might even have worked together to uncover the secrets of Arthur’s round table. Such matters are beyond religion and matters of state. I’ll make a point, now, of acquiring all the manuscripts of Leland I can afford.
One day, if the boundaries of science are pushed that far, I may even be equipped to talk to Abbot Whiting.
He was standing next to you for several moments.
Not much use to a dull and bookish man who has not the sight.
I fold Dudley’s letter and walk out of my mother’s house and into the orchard, where a hare lopes across my path.
Notes and Credits
Many elements in this story are part of recorded history – Dee’s background, his relations with Bonner and Dudley. Carew, Cowdray and Joan Tyrre all existed.
And the Queen did visit Dee at Mortlake, several times, although she didn’t go into the house. Dee would often bring out items to demonstrate to her what he was working on.
Three major biographies should be mentioned: John Dee, The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter J. French, John Dee, Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I by Richard Deacon and, most recent and best, The Queen’s Conjurer by Benjamin Woolley.
The surviving diaries of John Dee don’t really begin until many years after the events recorded in this book, but do offer many clues about his character, particularly his paranoia, often turning to anger, at other people’s attitudes to his work. Dee’s distaste for spectator bloodsport is more than hinted at (along with his fondness for cats) when he doesn’t exactly shed tears over the collapse of a stand at Paris Gardens, causing the death of a number of bear-baiting fans on a Sunday. ‘The godly expowned it as a due plage of God for the wickedness there
