The Heresy of Dr Dee

Exaggerating, in hope that he’d contradict me.

‘Poor boy,’ he said.

* * *

I’d hoped he’d be able to tell me more, but all he could recall were this man Smart’s alleged crimes against both Church and Crown. Crimes for which, in earlier times, he would have roasted. The fact that he seemed to have survived suggested he knew men of influence.

So where was he now? Still at Wigmore? Bonner thought he might be able to find out if I could come back, say, in a week?

I supposed I could find accommodation in some part of London well away from the court and Cecil, but I’d forever be watching my back, and anyone, from a street-seller to a beggar, might be one of Walsingham’s agents.

And why would I take the risk of discovery for something I’d never afford?

I shook my head, Bonner regarding me from his pallet, a pensive forefinger extended along a cheek.

‘What else are you not telling me, John?’

Kept on shaking my head. I’d been drawn into circumstances I’d had no role in shaping. However the matter of Amy’s death and her own marriage was resolved, the Queen would remember that I’d not been here when she had need of my services. And Dudley… Dudley would also remember. If he survived.

… if a messenger was to come knocking on my door now with news that Dudley had been cut down… or shot… or skewered in a crowd…

I saw Cecil’s narrow, long-nosed face and dark, intelligent eyes, flecked, for the first time in my experience of him, with what seemed a most urgent need.

And then he’d said,

Were you to be gone, even for a matter of weeks, that might be sufficient.

For what? Sufficient for circumstances to alter so that Dudley’s marriage to the Queen was no longer a possibility…

… due to his death?

Was I mad to think thus?

‘Dudley, eh?’ Bonner said.

As if he’d tapped into my thoughts. I stared at him, startled.

‘Poor Dudley,’ he said. ‘Exiled from court, compelled to keep his burrowing tool out of the royal garden. Do you see him these days?’

‘I had… a letter from him, in which he told me that his wife may have fallen because her bones were made brittle through a malady in her breast. He’d spoken before of her illness.’

‘Interesting. I was told that the malady related to her humour. An advanced melancholy. Bodily, she appeared in good health… apart from the sallowness and loss of weight symptomatic of such a condition.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Ah…’ Bonner shrugged. ‘You’d be surprised at the people who come and go from the Marshalsea. However, that’s neither here nor there.’

Something pulsed within me, and I knew what I had to do.

‘Ned, how do you get letters out?’

‘From here? There’s a guard who’ll collect them, for a consideration, and take them to a stable lad who, for another consideration—’

‘Nothing more private than that?’

‘An approach to the stableman himself is usually found safer for those of us allowed out of here. He’s at an inn round the corner. Offers a first-stage post-horse service. You want to send a letter?’

‘If you can spare me paper and ink.’

‘Where to? May I ask?’

‘Not far. Kew.’

‘He’ll do that by mid-afternoon. Paper and quill are in the box under the bookshelf. Sealing wax and ink, too. If it’s gone hard, add a little wine.’

‘Thank you.’

I sat down at the board with paper and quill and ink and kept the message short, asking only for a meeting. Bonner evidently didn’t feel the need to inquire who I was writing to, knowing full well who lived at Kew.

I sanded the ink and sealed the letter it with wax. He may not want to meet me at this time, but at least I would have tried.

‘I assume you know what you’re doing,’ Bonner said.

‘Not really.’

‘I’ll pray for you, then.’

‘Now I know I’m dead.’

But neither of us was laughing as I stowed the letter away in my doublet. Bonner arose and clasped my hand a final time and then brought out from his robe a single key with which he unlocked the door of his cell.

‘You have a key to your own prison?’

‘For reasons which escape me,’ Bonner said, ‘I yet seem to be less than popular in some quarters. It would not help the mood of the Marshalsea were I to be set alight in my own cell.’ He held the door open. ‘Good luck to you, John, in all your quests.’

‘Thank you, Ned.’

‘And should you ever come to possess the stone,’ Bonner said, ‘perchance you might bring it here one day. And we shall see what we shall see.’

I nodded and walked away along a short passage and down the stairs towards the darkness of the day.

XIII Court Clown

ALREADY, HE WAS saying, her ghost had been seen on those stairs at Cumnor Place. The little stairs, the too-short stairs.

‘All in white,’ Dudley said, ‘but with a grey light around her, like to a… a dusty shroud. Walking off the top step, gazing ahead of her and then… then she vanishes.’

His body stiffening as if to forestall a shiver, and then he was pouring more wine, as though to prove to himself that his hand was not shaking.

‘But never coming to me,’ he said. ‘Why not to me?’

He didn’t drink.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never see them either.’

The weak sun had begun to fade into the river at the bottom of my mother’s garden. A garden which, like Dudley’s beard, was less tended these days. He looked hard at me, his skin darkening – stretched parchment held too close to a candle, as though the rage in him were burning through the grief.

Was it grief, or was there a suppressed excitement? How could I be sure? But the rage was ever there, and some of it might have been directed inwards.

He must have called for a horse the minute my letter had arrived. Five men had ridden with him to Mortlake – John Forest, his lieutenant, Thomas Blount, his steward and three men armed as though for war. Blount and Forest were in the old scullery, probably reducing my mother’s larder to crumbs, but two armed men were outside and one guarded the door of my private workroom, where Dudley and I now sat.

‘You know about these matters,’ he said. ‘If I murdered her, why’s she not haunting me?’

He spoke roughly, and then sat back, as if ashamed. Both of us silent now. Early evening light cowered in the murky glass behind my finest owl. Through a system of pulleys, this owl could flap his wings and make hoot but now stood like a sentinel in the small window.

‘Your men are all laden with weaponry,’ I said. ‘One with a firearm?’

‘You noticed that.’