But he refuses to think about Walsingham’s ineptitude any further. He knows how a man can drive himself mad this way, without even the need to put him in the room with the brake or the rack, as they do in the Wakefield Tower. He thinks instead of his friends in Germany, and in Holland, and he thinks again about that third volume of Johannes Trithemius’s Steganographia, which if he could only find it would permit him to communicate with men such as Gerardus Mercator, whose great map shows the rough whereabouts of the Straits of Anian, or Gemma Frisius, who had re-created the known world in a series of segments fashioned in copper and bronze. What would such men make of DaSilva’s claim to have found the Northwest Passage?
At length, and at last, he falls into what his keeper, peering through the loophole in his door, believes to be sleep. But Dee is in a state of what he calls lucid wakefulness, in which he is able to see all past and sometimes even future events as present happenings. He dreams now of the events that led to his first incarceration here, under Queen Mary, more than fifteen years ago, when he had just finished his studies in the Low Countries and returned to England.
He had managed to secure the patronage of the young King Edward, which permitted him time to study the cause of tides, and the movement of the heavenly bodies, and he was enjoying some renown—along with his friend Jerome Cardan—casting horoscopes for those who knew their birthdates.
Among those whose chart Dee cast was the young princess Elizabeth.
She had, at that time, been in a strange limbo as the bastard half sister of the King, kept away from court in Woodstock. Yet, through various skeins of obligation, Dee had been summoned, and, intrigued by what he had heard of her, he went, in his scholar’s gown and a fresh collar. He was first struck by her slim, flickering, and ethereal beauty, for her hair was fiery red like her father’s, and her skin was so pale you might almost see through it. It was the acuity of her mind, however, and the clarity of her gaze that most impressed. My God, he had thought, here is a mind!
She had grown up in a strained fashion, and her predicament remained dangerous, but while others might have sought gentler comforts to soothe their isolation, Elizabeth chose to numb her pains with the acquisition of knowledge. She never ceased asking questions of him, from the moment of his first bow, until he was backing out of the door of her rooms. She was hungry for anything he could tell her about anything, and so it began: a system of writing that did away with individual letters, knowledge of the fortifications of the lock gates at Antwerp, familiarity with the medicinal herbs the Romans had planted on the wall in the northern parts, a device for moving heavy weights using levers and pulleys, flightless birds in certain islands off Africa.
She was above all fascinated by his astrolabe, and in every aspect of astronomy, as well as astrology and clairvoyance, and so, naturally enough, he offered to cast her horoscope. She was Virgo, he told her, the Ministering Angel, practical and hardworking, fastidious in her health, and mistrusting of fiery displays of emotion, though, in fact, this last characteristic did not apply.
But also: likely to be a spinster.
Does that upset you? he had asked.
She took a mouthful of the roasted swan they were served for supper.
We shall see, she’d said.
She was eighteen at the time, six years his junior, and any physical impulses he felt toward her were overcome by the thought of what her sister might do to his person were he to act upon them, and so he contained himself and worked to temper the girl into something he thought would one day be of very great use.
But what, though?
Meanwhile Jerome Cardan was invited to cast the King’s horoscope, for the King was a sickly child, and the chart would help his physicians choose the correct course of treatment. Cardan divined the boy was threatened with a grave illness—which any man with eyes might see—but if he could survive it, he would live to a grand old age.
But the boy could not, and the next week he died.
Cardan fled the country, though it has always puzzled Dee how he managed it in time.
Despite the best efforts of some, Queen Mary took the throne, and set about reversing the religious reforms her predecessors had made.
For a few months, all was well.
Queen Mary even appointed Dee the court astrological adviser, and in this capacity he cast her horoscope: Sun in Pisces, Moon in Virgo, Mars in Capricorn. She was a fist, cold and efficient, occasionally impetuous when it came to enacting plans. These details he sugared. She was a dreary lover, and he did not see children. These details he kept to himself.
But then he made his mistake.
Princess Elizabeth asked to see her sister’s chart, and he showed it to her.
What did it mean? Nothing, he thought. Or rather, he did not think. Elizabeth was just interested in it, as she was in everything.
But that is not how it appeared to all. Rumor spread, and it was soon believed Dee’s intent was infinitely sinister; that he had bewitched children; that he had cast spells on a goodwife; that he was plotting to kill the Queen and replace her with Princess Elizabeth.
Spies placed in the princess’s house informed the Queen that he and the princess had discussed the Queen’s horoscope and within the week Dee found himself snatched from the garden at Hampton Court, bundled aboard a boat, and rowed downstream to the Tower. His lodgings were sealed and searched, and it was then that
