Dee finds himself in a cloister, and then back outside, and here finally is the abbey precinct. The rain is coming in hard now, on the edge of a blustering wind, and a line of raindrops cling quivering from the brim of his hat. Over the wall he can see the gray sea is etched in the distance with lines of white surf. He has a while yet, he thinks.
The doors of the abbey are closed but a latecomer might be forgiven for creeping apologetically and silently in. The smell of incense and wet wool grip him by the throat.
It is a childhood memory, of terrifying times, when the Mass was one thing one day, and another the next, when what you believed one day might have you burned on a pyre the next—a time of terrible fear among the adults when all certainties were no longer so.
A creeping shudder passes through his body and he must bite a finger to stop himself giving voice to the old fears.
Instead he looks around: it is a high-vaulted church, sparsely decorated, with columns that soar unadorned to a plain roof. He finds a hidden part of him regretting that it is not filled with the ornate iconography of the papist rite.
But he has no time for this. He is in search of Father Adán, or, better still, Isobel Cochet herself, for surely they would let her celebrate Mass?
He moves around his pillar and begins up the south aisle. The abbey is crowded, and he cannot see the altar, but he works his way down, assuming the cardinal will be at the front, and his Spanish priest nearby. He sees his pilgrims, still on their knees, along with many others besides, and there are a hundred friars and priests of every color. At the front is the cardinal: elderly and sallow, but there is something intensely lively about his face, and Dee is reminded that Walsingham calls him Minister of Mischief. He wears red silk, with a white chasuble and a red zucchetto, and his expression—perhaps Dee imagines it—is that of a man on the cusp of winning a long, long game of chess against an evenly matched opponent.
Next to him is the abbé, in burgundy silks, frail and silvery, perhaps a simpleton from a good family. Both are surrounded with men in mustard and plum velvet, but there is no sign of Father Adán or Isobel Cochet.
Dee plans his next move. He will have to wait until the Mass is finished, he thinks, and then follow the cardinal, but the service is at least moving quickly: it must be because the pilgrims need to get back down the hill to their donkeys and the trip back to the mainland before the tide comes in.
Time seems to stretch and yaw. It always does in Mass. But then he feels it. Or hears it. Or tastes it. Something at odds with an abbey. An atmosphere. Dee is silent and still, every sense alert. He has ever been open to this form of communication, though he has yet to formulate the terminology to describe it. It is not unlike his lucid dreaming, but it is more than that: it is an engagement with the world in four dimensions. It is the perception of a message from beyond the usual twenty senses. Dee is yet to fully understand it, but has long been certain such a thing is possible.
Now he knows what to do.
The crypt, of course.
He waits until Mass concludes, and the blessing is given, and the congregation hurries about their business and the choir members troop out after them while the priest and his acolytes snuff the candles and clear the altar. All through this, Dee remains hidden, kneeling in his own private prayers, and when it is done, and the last of the echoing footfall fades, he leaves it for the length of sixty heartbeats, and then rises on soft feet, and slips into the south transept.
At a staircase, he descends. Candles are lit below and their warmth greets him. As does a man: small, dark-eyed, not expecting him. Dee rushes him in a few steps. He repeats his attack on the lieutenant, but this time he cannot catch him, and the man drops backward, down the steps, and cracks his head on the stones with the sound of a sparrow’s egg on a brick floor. Dee feels his own pulse in his teeth; he might vomit. There is something very dreadful about ending a man’s life, whomsoever it may be. But look, there: the man has a gun—one of the short, one-handed sorts that assassins favor—crammed in his sash. He would have killed Dee had Dee not killed him. It is true that the fuse is not lit, nor likely to be, but still: it is the principle. He who deals in death must buy as well as sell.
But… wait. He is a priest. So. Father Adán then.
The candles flicker in their sconces, as if to mark the departure of his immortal soul, and the communication Dee had felt in the nave halts, but there is still something. Some emanation, as if from the stones themselves. He stands still, looking around. Nothing. Only the candles in their sconces. Huge pillars of well-dressed stone. What masons these men were!
Was it the dead man talking to him? Summoning him down here? He thinks not. He hears a creak, from beyond the pillars, in the gloom. It reminds him of being aboard ship. Rope. Above his head. He slips to the shadowed side. Behind a pillar. His breath comes fast. There is not much air down here. Then he hears a voice.
“Well, come on then.”
A woman. Slightly strangulated, again from above. He steps around the pillar, ready for what he cannot begin to
