It is the only castle in Normandy not to fall to King Harry’s English armies, and there is little wonder why. But the guide is more interested in the great swath of sand that surrounds the castle.
One of the French pilgrims—the least pious of the party, there to impress a woman, Dee surmises—asks if it is true that King Louis built a prison on the island.
The guide agrees.
“I heard there is one dungeon that floods at high tide,” the pilgrim says.
It makes the Tower sound palatial.
“Certainly,” the guide says. “And an iron cage, too, the size of which they can change to suit any man. Now, behind me in a single file. And keep up.”
They ride out through the swath of sandy mud. Two bowshots, perhaps three, and to the south the surface seems to shimmer like potters’ slip. It even looks lethal, Dee thinks. Behind him everyone is silent. They are stunned by the place, perhaps, or are thinking of their cold feet, and the dangers of the quickening sand that surrounds them.
They ride on until they reach the castle’s outer gate, manned by five soldiers in steel helmets and traveling cloaks. A brazier of sea coal throws up a quantity of smoke, and for a moment Dee cannot see their colors. If they are not de Guise, then he has misinterpreted his dream. He steels himself to have been wrong in this, and to have to turn back, back across the sands, to beat the tide, and to ride for Calais, after two weeks’ wasted effort, but mostly: wasted time. Time he does not have. He feels his heart screwing with anxiety.
At last one of the soldiers moves. His cloak swings open. No colors on show, because he is wearing a breastplate. Dee feels hopeful. Who wears a breastplate to protect a mere abbé? But then another man emerges with no cloak: his jacket is parti-colored, mustard and plum, the colors of de Guise.
Dee lets out a long plume of breath.
He is right: the cardinal is here.
But is Isobel Cochet?
The soldiers are bored enough to be interested in a party of barefoot pilgrims and stand watching them dismount outside the gates. Dee knows how to pass as a much older man and he huddles close to a pair of women from Angoulême as they pass through the first gate into a yard. More men in helmets. Ten so far. All in the colors of de Guise.
The guide tells them that they must keep their prayers short, and be back at these gates within three hours if they wish to ride back in safety.
“Stay any longer and you will be staying all night.”
The guide waits with the first set of soldiers, sourly chewing the ends of his mustache, but the pilgrims must pass another gate, where stand another five or six. The pilgrims get down on their knees and begin the long crawl up the hill. The road winds around the mount, through a few tight-packed houses. It is cobbled, but cleanish, and there are more soldiers and a few of the abbey’s servants up and about their business who stand aside to let the pilgrims pass with tuts and sighs of irritation. Dee feels a fool, but thank Christ they are not flagellants. Walsingham would have liked that.
The road leads them, winding through various buildings, and up numerous flights of steps. The higher he climbs, the further he works himself into the snare, and of course: the abbé’s quarters—where they will be holding Isobel Cochet, for she is, as Walsingham said, a personable young woman—will be right at the very top. She will be locked in some antechamber with barred window and a long drop to the sea. Probably a peephole too.
While they are shuffling around a tight turn, Dee hears a coarse scraping and looks up to watch a sled packed with provisions being hauled up the side of the castle on an almost vertical ramp of stone. His curiosity is piqued. The sled ascends the ramp just as did the beetle he once designed for a play when he was at Cambridge, though here the lifting device is left obvious: a rope as fat as a man’s arm. He imagines it must work on some sort of pulley system, though how is it powered?
The pilgrims’ fervor increases as they approach the level of the abbey. Dee has crawled perhaps a thousand paces and the tops of his feet are now skinned, but he believes he has seen the lay of the island now. He can see the shortcuts through the dorters and refectories, the offices and the kitchens.
At some point he knows he is going to have to slip aside and set about finding Isobel Cochet and that will not be best achieved as a barefoot pilgrim on his knees. He allows the other pilgrims to overtake him, accepting their encouragement, refusing their offers of help, until he is at the back of the line. He steals away.
Ahead, under an archway, a flight of steps goes up to the left, a noisome little alley continues flat to the right. Dee pauses at the foot of the steps. He slips his bleeding feet into his shoes. His knees feel like eggs. He straightens himself, changes his hat so that he is wearing a biretta, and turns his cloak.
He is Père Dee.
He follows the alley into a courtyard, crosses that, and then walks through another doorway. Down some steps, and out through another arch onto the road he has just crawled up. Beads of blood in the dust.
He walks up as if
