The Heresy of Dr Dee

My Lord, Edney tells me that the personal dressmaker was unable to visit Lady Dudley, being ill with a fever during the week of the appointment. You will know of my Lady’s fondness for the Spanish styles and it seems the personal dressmaker was a well qualified Spaniard who had been in Edney’s employ these past five months and made other apparel for Lady Dudley but has since returned to Spain. I was therefore not able to establish the severity of his fever, if fever there was, during the first week of September.

Forest, looked up, squeezing his dark-bearded jaw. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Dressmaking is… a regrettable gap in my knowledge. What think you of Blount’s final sentence? “If fever there was”. It seems Blount may have had cause to think that the dressmaker might have lied about his fever to cover the fact that he made that journey to Cumnor after all. Perchance arriving…’ I broke off to read the note yet again, to be quite certain ‘…two days later than arranged.’

Forest thought on it longer than was necessary.

‘No one would know, if that were the case,’ he said at last. ‘The entire household having gone to the local fair.’

‘The entire household having been virtually dispatched to the fair. By Lady Dudley.’

Closing my eyes upon a hollow expulsion of breath. It was all too clear that Amy had gone to some considerable effort to make sure that she’d be alone in the house that day.

For the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? For the purpose of him measuring her for a gown?

‘Listen, I—’ Forest was coughing from a parched throat. ‘I can’t… can’t discuss this any further. We should never have opened it.’

‘Was Edney deceived by the Spaniard? We must needs consider the possibility of the Spaniard acting independently of Edney, having feigned a sickness to cover his movements.’

But maybe not independently of his country, its king… or his ambassador, la Quadra. And others I could think of who were not Spanish. The implications were like to a blade in the gut, and each name that arose in my mind was another savage twist.

Forest’s face was yet a mask of bewilderment as I gave voice to the unspeakable.

‘Why would Amy have gone to so much effort to make sure she was alone in the house for the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? Because, as Blount’s letter says, she knew him. He’d made gowns for her before. She was fond of the Spanish styles. So… how well did she know him?’

‘Stop!’ Forest cried out. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dr Dee, go no further with this madness until we find Lord Dudley. There’s true darkness here. Darkness on every side.’

‘Well enough to wish to be alone with him?’

‘We must needs leave this place. Without delay. Those bastards downstairs, they’d rather burn it down with us inside—’

‘A woman alone in someone else’s house?’ I couldn’t stop now. ‘A woman who’d not seen her husband for a year, only heard the persistent rumour about him siring the Queen’s child?’

‘I pray you, Dr Dee, get out of here.’

Even as Forest snatched up the letter and the bill, bundled them together and thrust the packet inside his doublet, a knock came on the door of the bedchamber.

One knock. Truly, no more than a tap but in our present mood it had the impact of a mace. A hiss issued from Forest.

‘Don’t open it.’

I said, ‘Who’s that?’

My heart leaping at the thought that it might be Dudley.

But there was no reply, only the padding of soft footsteps, I thought receding down the stairs, but could not be sure. I waited until I could hear nothing outside then brought the candle to the door. As I drew back the bolt, Forest pulled his side-sword, whispering.

‘Open it no more than an inch. Keep your hand out of the opening. Stand hard against the door.’

So I might slam it in a face?

But there was no face.

I peered through the widening gap. The only movement was the flame from the sconce on the landing slanting in the draught from the opened door. I went out, lifting the candle into the corners. No one there, no one on the stairs.

‘Nobody,’ I said.

Stumbling, then, as my left foot prodded something on the floorboards, sending it skittering.

I crouched with the candle: a sackcloth bundle, no more than a few inches wide. Unexpectedly heavy. I brought it back into the chamber and closed and rebolted the door.

Placed the bundle on the board under the window in full moonlight.

‘Careful.’ Forest laid his sword on the truckle, pulled on his leather gloves. ‘Let me do this.’

‘You think something might spring out at us?’

‘And you think it’s a bar of gold as a bribe, do you?’

I supposed that any man who’d been with the Dudley family as long as Forest would, in any situation, fear a blade from out of darkness. He pulled at the sackcloth, which came easily away, revealing another cloth underneath. Black.

‘Holy God,’ I said.

Gently lifting away the corners of soft black cloth.

What lay beneath welcomed the moon.

Forest stepped away.

‘What is it?’

Despite the circumstances of its arrival, I was stricken with awe.

‘This,’ I said, ‘would seem to be… what we came here for.’

XLII Contempt

UNDER THE CANDLE, it was a rich dark red. A swollen blood-drop.

Less than half the size of a tennis ball, but more perfectly spherical. After I blew out the candle, there were yet lights in it.

Lights that moved. A sprinkling of them. More lights than I could see in the air around us or the night sky, where the moon was so close-pressed by clouds that few stars were in evidence.

Only here in the inner firmament of the stone: points of white and piercing blue and a lambent orange, all in fluct.

As I looked at it, it seemed to breathe.

Easier than could I, who dared not touch it, this precious portal to the Hidden. Wondering: if I could have sat in this window-space, alone and concentrated, with the Trithemius manuscript and the whole untroubled night ahead of me, might I then find one of those fragments of light projected into the chamber in angelic form?

Whatever planet rules in that hour, the angel governing the planet thou shalt call,

sayeth Trithemius.

Raphael… Uriel…? I had no books or charts here. I didn’t know. Couldn’t think. And the night was far from untroubled.

‘So you were right,’ John Forest said.

‘Mercy?’

‘Everything you said to them. They’re in so much fear of how much you might know and who you might tell that they think to pay you off. Send you on your way with what you came here for.’

‘Yes. So it would appear.’

I took a last long look at the Wigmore shewstone before covering it over with the black cloth. A cloth of