The Heresy of Dr Dee

one-time courtyards. Why am I ever drawn to ruins?

But no time for closer study. Salmon had been brought up from the Wye for our evening meal in two sittings in a near-monastic, white-walled refectory. As ever, it was polite but unjovial, most of us tired and aching from the ride. The talk was of little more than hunting, and, as soon as I could slip away, I did. Suppressing fatigue, I cornered one of the canons and asked if I might speak with the bishop.

His name was John Scory, once Protestant Bishop of Chichester, deprived of his status in Mary’s reign, redeemed by Elizabeth. Yet sent out here into the wilderness, which seemed not much like redemption to me.

I was received into a crooked chamber with panelled walls of dark oak but no bookshelves. Only a Bible betwixt pen and ink and a wad of cheap paper on a narrow oaken trestle. A window was fallen open to the greying river.

Scory, plain-cassocked below his station, pulled out an uncushioned chair for me and went back behind his trestle, lit not by a candle but an old-fashioned rushlight. Possibly an indication of how brief he expected our discussion to be.

‘Forgive me, Dr Dee, but do I recall you as Bonner’s chaplain, once?’

For obvious reasons, this is not something I normally include in my curriculum vitae, particularly when dealing with Protestant bishops. I sought the short answer.

‘Better than being burned for heresy, Bishop.’

‘Oh, indeed. But why would Bonner choose to employ a man so narrowly spared from the flames? Do you mind the question?’

He was a wiry man of middle years, low-voiced for a bishop. He sat back in his chair, fixing on a pair of glasses as if fully to observe the quality of my response.

‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that this was to enable Bishop Bonner to tap into what I’d learned in… what you might call the outfields of divinity.’

‘Oh… keeping a pet magician?’ In the sallow light, a wry smile was shaped in Scory’s lean face. ‘I do beg mercy, Dr Dee, but Bonner’s a man who holds fast to his beliefs. If he’d signed to the Queen he’d be back on the streets, and the fact that he didn’t and he isn’t…’

‘Suggests he feels safer living quietly behind bars,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t pretend to understand him, but behind the history of terror there’s a questing mind. I… don’t know why, given his deplorable history, but I can find things in him to like. Which makes me wonder about myself.’

He peered at me through his glasses, then snatched them off, and a full smile at last broke through.

‘You’re clearly an honest young man, Dr Dee. As I’d heard. Also, it’s said, wondrous with numbers, more than conversant with the law, expert in geography, the arts of navigation…’ Scory’s eyebrows rose a fraction, and then he came forward, both elbows on the board. ‘So what are you doing in such alarming company?’

‘Alarming?’

‘Biggest bloody hanging-party I’ve ever seen in this part of the world.’

Scory fumbled in a locker under the board and produced a good candle which he held to the dying rushlight until it flared. Evidently, the discussion was not to be as brief as I’d expected.

* * *

Bishops have never been chosen for their nearness to God, but – unless, like Bonner, their working lives are over – most have kept close to prominent sinners. They’ll bully harmless parish priests without mercy but, in dealing with influential laity, ever walk on eggshells.

Not Scory. Curiously, he was proving to be a man who gave not a shit for status.

‘They’re hardly going to offer him an amnesty, Dr Dee.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Erm… whom?’

‘Believed to be a certain Prys Gethin.’

‘Truly?’ I said.

I’d never heard of this man, though the similarity of his name to that of Owain Glyndwr’s general had not passed me by.

Scory was silent for quite a while. Through the opened window, I could hear a rising night-breeze on the river. Scory moved back from the candle to study me.

‘Why do I have the feeling that you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about?’

‘Ah…’ I shrugged uncomfortably. ‘That’s because I’m not part of the judicial company. Just a fellow traveller.’

‘More and more mysterious. So what do you want from me, Dr Dee? Why would the Queen’s advisor on all manner of extraordinary matters want to keep a tired old cleric from his bed?’

‘Well, assuming your diocese includes the town of Wigmore, in the west, I wanted to ask what you knew about the abbey there. Whatever might be left of it.’

‘Not much. Gone to ruin since the Reform, like most of them. The abbot’s house is become a private home.’

‘The abbot, yes,’ I said. The former abbot was called John Smart? What of him?’

‘I’ve only been here a year, therefore never encountered the man in person. Only by reputation.’ Scory wrinkled his nose. ‘Why do you want to know about Smart?’

‘I gather that after the Reform, he was reported to the late Lord Cromwell for a number of crimes.’

‘And that’s unusual?’

‘Simony, I heard. And lewd behaviour with local women. And misappropriation of abbey treasure?’

‘And which of these might interest you?’ Scory said slyly. ‘Perchance… oh, let me think… the treasure?’

‘Bishop,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you have your own ideas where my particular interests lie. However—’

‘Well, yes, I do, Dr Dee, but if what I’ve heard’s correct we’re not necessarily talking of gold plate. On that ground, it may well be that our definitions of treasure would, to an extent, correspond,’ Scory said. ‘Would you like to see some of mine before you retire?’

‘Treasure?’

‘A very rare treasure, to my mind, and I’d certainly welcome your opinion… as an authority in geography, navigation… and other matters.’

Response from the clergy to what I do falls into two groups: those who damn me as a sorcerer and those who wonder if my work and theirs might one day converge. Men like Bonner, this is, even though he kept his interests secret while publicly damning sorcerers and Protestants to hell.

And Scory?

Carrying a ring of keys, he led me out through a back door of his house and across the shadowed green to the cathedral itself… and into this vast red-walled oven of a building. Simpler in form and less-adorned than some I’d been into. A few lanterns were lit, and Scory unhooked one and I followed him across the misty nave and out through another door and into a cloister, where another lamp met us.

‘Who’s—?’

‘Only me, Tom.’

‘My Lord Bishop,’ a shadow said.

‘Taking our visitor to see the treasure.’

‘Treasure, my Lord?’

Scory’s laugh mingled with the jingle of the keys as he unlocked a door to our right and held the lantern high. I followed him into a square cell with one shuttered window and no furniture except for a wide oak cupboard on the wall facing us.

‘I’d show you our library, too,’ Scory said. ‘If I wasn’t too ashamed.’

‘How so?’

‘Disordered. One day we’ll raise the money to pay someone to examine and list the books.’

‘I’d do it for nothing.’

‘If you had two years to spare.’ He handed me the lantern and reached up to unlock the cupboard on the wall. ‘Meanwhile, anything you can tell me about this…’

At first the doors jammed and then yielded and sprang open together and, by God, it was treasure. Couldn’t take it in at first.

‘Hidden away for years,’ Scory said. ‘Thought to be papist magic.’

‘My God…’