The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘Just don’t bleedin’ ruin it now,’ Jack Simm said.

V The Ingle

A WAXING MOON’S the best time for it.

This was what I’d read, and it makes good sense to anyone who has stood on the edge of a tranquil pond and observed moonlight shivering in the water. Even more to those of us who watch and chart all the bright spheres of the heavens.

Reflected light. As above, so below. To hold a perfect crystal sphere in your hands is to enclose earth and heaven.

Dear God… to what level is this the truth?

* * *

The sun’s last stain lay upon the river when the scryer returned with his wood-framed cloth satchel.

This time, we truly had need of the candle, and I leaned into its halo to watch him unpack his bag, carefully taking out his treasures, all swathed in layers of grey and black cloth.

‘Have you eaten, Brother?’ Goodwife Faldo asked.

‘Goodwife,’ he said softly, ‘one must needs fast before a scrying.’

Which could be true; fasting prepares the body and keeps the spirit light and permeable. This man’s pomp and solemnity continued to imply a degree of learning I’d not expected. I watched him laying out his bundles on the board, his back to the empty ingle and the door to the winder-stair.

Then I stiffened when, from the most shadowed end of our bench, Jack Simm spoke.

‘And did you find Dr Dee?’

All dark in this simple, square farmhouse hall, except for the white of Jack’s beard and the goodwife’s coif. I felt her black cat rubbing his head against my left calf and reached down to stroke him, as if this discussion was no concern of mine. The scryer looked up, his eyes still.

‘If I were looking for Dr Dee, I’d be disappointed. Not often here these days, it seems. Appears to spend much of his time in the Low Countries, giving lectures. When he’s not at court teaching magic to the Queen.’

‘So now you see,’ Jack said, not looking at me, ‘why us lowly folk have no dealings wiv him.’

‘Though we do see his mother,’ Goodwife Faldo said.

I made murmurs to the cat. Brother Elias took out the shrouded stone and set it down before him and lowered the satchel to the stones behind his stool.

‘Hard to believe that bodged place is his family home.’

‘They say appearances have little value for the doctor,’ Jack said. ‘Not a man for whom a display of wealth —’

‘If wealth he has.’

‘The house is very tidy inside,’ Goodwife Faldo said. ‘Very tidy indeed.’

‘A man with neither wealth nor honour.’ Elias had unwrapped a pair of eyeglasses which he balanced on the bridge of his nose without looking up. ‘You’d think, given his position as the Queen’s primary advisor on the Mysteries, he’d be Sir John by now.’

I could almost hear Jack Simm inside my head, screaming at me to say nothing.

‘He’s good to his mother,’ Goodwife Faldo said, firm-faced.

‘And she to him, apparently, Goodwife. From what I’m told, without his mother he’d have no roof over his bed.’ Brother Elias chuckled absently and then looked up at last. ‘But then that’s no affair of mine. Let’s now proceed, shall we?’

The stone lay before him, still covered. Father Elias placed his palms together above it, closed his eyes.

‘Oh, God, author of all good things, strengthen, I beseech thee, thy poor servant, that he may stand fast, without fear, through this work. Enlighten, I beseech thee, oh Lord, the dark understanding of thy creature, that his spiritual eye may be opened to see and know thine angelic spirits descending here into this crystal.’

He laid both hands upon the shrouded stone, and my stomach tightened as if he’d touched me.

For I’d read these words, this entreaty. Written them, even.

‘Oh be sanctified and consecrated, and blessed to this purpose, that no evil phantasy may appear in thee… or, if they do gain ingress they may be constrained to speak intelligibly, and truly, and without the least ambiguity, for Christ’s sake. Amen. And forasmuch as thy servant here desires neither evil treasures, nor injury to his neighbour, nor hurt to any living creature, grant him the power of descrying those celestial spirits or intelligences that may appear in this crystal…’

My hands went cold upon my thighs below the board top. I’d translated it myself, in the past year, from unpublished writings I’d borrowed in Antwerp.

‘… and whatever good gifts, whether the power of healing infirmities, or of imbibing wisdom, or discovering any evil likely to afflict any person or family, or any other good gift thou mayest be pleased to bestow on me…’

I threw a glance at Jack Simm but could not make out his eyes.

‘… enable me, by thy wisdom and mercy, to use whatever I may receive to the honour of thy holy name. Grant this for thy son Christ’s sake. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ Goodwife Faldo said faintly.

Outside, the leaves on the trees were astir, the evening shaking with the last birdsong. When the scryer bent to his bundles I now knew exactly what he’d unveil. I saw an ebony pedestal and a golden plate and knew it would carry the engraving of the divine name, Tetragrammaton… and the names Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, the four archangels ruling over the Sun, Moon, Venus and Mercury.

A continued tightening in my chest, a cool sweat upon my face and forehead. Trithemius had written that the names and characters must be drawn in order… the names of the seven planets and angels ruling them, with their seals or characters.

Let them be all written within a double circle, with a triangle…

Silence, now, and an odd sense of sacrament. I watched Elias place the crystal, still shrouded, upon its pedestal, becoming aware of Goodwife Faldo’s rapid breathing.

…this being done, thy table is complete and fit for the calling of the spirits…

I watched the scryer’s hands pulling away the cloth and saw, for the first time, the sphere.

* * *

What had I expected?

Scrying crystals – I’d seen some during my work abroad. But I’d been a mathematician, sometimes a teacher, sometimes a student, therefore interested only in their perfect geometry. There hadn’t been time then to approach their deeper mysteries. Nor had I been entirely convinced of what was said of them.

A stone’s just a stone.

At what point this night I became afraid, I’m not quite sure. To a scholar, fear arrives with a certain shame, akin to the shame a soldier feels, holding himself back from the heat of the fray as his comrades are cut down before him.

Not that I’d know. Unlike Dudley, I’ve never been a soldier, the kind of knowledge I hold having preserved me from bodily conflict. A bargain with the Crown which decrees I must stride out, wearing knowledge like armour, the questing mind thrust forward like to a sharpened blade.

Soon blunted tonight. I’d set out from my mother’s house believing that my own knowledge would far exceed that of the man I was to meet. Now I knew it wasn’t so and I suppose the fear came out of this. Yes, I’m a man of science and natural philosophy, skilled from years of study in mathematics, geography, celestial configuration, theology and so on. And no, I don’t believe this is the End-time, far from it. In fact, signs everywhere I look are