by Phil Rickman
The Heresy of Dr Dee
( John Dee Papers - 2 )
Phil Rickman
All talk is of the End-time... and the dead are rising.
At the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth.
Did Dudley's wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it murder?
Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudley's oldest friends, is uncertain.
Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his family's old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited supernatural properties.
With Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England.
They travel with a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas.
After the battle, many of the English bodies were, according to legend, obscenely mutilated.
Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed.
Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father.
The Heresy of Dr Dee
(John Dee Papers #2)
by Phil Rickman
JOHN DEE
The early history
Born in 1527, John Dee grew up in the most volcanic years of the reign of Henry VIII, at whose court his father was employed as a ‘gentleman server’. John was eight when the King split with Rome, declaring himself head of the Church of England and systematically plundering the wealth of the monasteries. Recognised by his early twenties as one of Europe’s leading mathematicians and an expert in the science of astrology, John was introduced at court during the short reign of Henry’s son, Edward VI.
When Edward died at only sixteen, John Dee was lucky to survive the brief but bloody reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor. Mary died in 1558 and was succeeded by the Protestant, Elizabeth, who would always encourage John’s lifelong interest in what he considered science but others saw as sorcery. Caught between Catholic plots and the rise of a new puritanism, he would feel no more secure than Queen Elizabeth herself, who was fending off the marriage bids of foreign kings and princes.
1560 began what biographers have seen as John Dee’s ‘missing years.’ A dangerous period, especially after the mysterious death of the wife of Dee’s friend and former student, Lord Robert Dudley, thought by many to be the Queen’s lover.
PART ONE
All my life I had spent in learning… with great pain, care and cost I had, from degree to degree, sought to come by the best knowledge that man might attain unto in the world. And I found, at length, that neither any man living, nor any book I could yet meet withal, was able to teach me those truths I desired and longed for…
JOHN DEE
I
Source of Darkness
IT WAS THE year of no summer, and all the talk in London was of the End-time.
Even my mother’s neighbours were muttering about darkness on the streets before its time, moving lights seen in the heavens and tremblings of the earth caused by Satan’s gleeful stoking of the infernal fires.
Tales came out of Europe that two suns were oft-times apparent in the skies. On occasion, three, while in England we never saw even the one most days and, when it deigned to appear, it was as pale and sour as old milk and smirched by raincloud. Now, all too soon, autumn was nigh, and the harvests were poor and I’d lost count of the times I’d been asked what the stars foretold about our future… if we had one.
Each time, I’d reply that the heavens showed no signs of impending doom. But how acceptable was my word these days? I was the astrologer who’d found a day of good promise for the joyful crowning of a woman who now, less than two years later, was being widely condemned as the source of the darkness.
By embittered Catholics, this was, and the prune-faced new Bible-men. Even the sun has fled England, they squealed. God’s verdict on a country that would have as its queen the spawn of a witch – these fears given heat by false rumours from France and Spain that Elizabeth was pregnant with a murderer’s child.
God’s bollocks, as the alleged murderer would say, but all this made me weary to the bone. How fast the bubble of new joy is pricked. How shallow people are. Give them shit to spread, and they’ll forge new shovels overnight.
All the same, you might have thought, after what happened in Glastonbury, that the Queen would seek my help in shifting this night-soil from her door.
But, no, she’d sent for me just once since the spring – all frivolous and curious about what I was working on, and had I thought of this, and had I looked into that? Sending me back to spend, in her cause, far too much money on books. Burn too many candles into pools of fat. Explore alleys of the hidden which I thought I’d never want to enter.
Only to learn, within weeks, that heavy curtains had closed around her court. Death having slipped furtively in. The worst of all possible deaths, most of us could see that.
Although not the Queen, apparently, who could scarce conceal her terrifying gaiety.
Dear God. As the silence grew, I was left wondering if the End-time might truly be looming and began backing away from some of the more foetid alleyways.
Though not fast enough, as it turned out.
II
Rooker
September, 1560. Mortlake.
IT WAS TO be the last halfway-bright day of the season, but the scryer had demanded darkness: shutters closed against the mid-afternoon and the light from a single beeswax candle throwing shadows into battle on the walls.
‘And this…’ Dithering now, poor Goodwife Faldo looked at me over the wafer of flame and then across the board to where the scryer sat, and then back at me. ‘This is my brother…’ her hands falling to her sides and, even in the small light, he must surely have seen the flailing in her eyes ‘…John,’ she said lamely.
‘John Faldo,’ I said at once.
And then, seeing the eyes of my friend Jack Simm rolling upwards, realised why this could not be so.
‘That is, her husband’s brother.’
Thinking how fortunate it was that Will Faldo was out with his two sons, gleaning from his field all that remained of a dismal harvest. Had he been with us, the scryer might just have noted that Master Faldo was plump, with red hair, and a head shorter than the man claiming to be his brother.
Or he might yet see the truth when he uncovered what sat before him. It made a hump under the black cloth as might a saint’s sacred skull. My eyes were drawn back to it again and again. Unaware that the scryer had been watching me until his voice came curling out of the dark.
‘You have an interest in these matters, Master Faldo?’
A clipped clarity suggestive of Wales. Echoes of my late tad, in fact.
Jesu… I met his gaze for no more than a moment then looked away towards the crack of daylight betwixt shutters. The Faldos’ dwelling, firm-built of oak and riverbed daub, was but a short walk from Mortlake Church which, had the shutters been open, would have displayed itself like a warning finger.
‘The truth is,’ I mumbled, ‘that I’m less afraid of such things than my brother. Which is one reason why I’m here. And, um, he is not.’
The scryer nodded, appearing well at ease with his situation. Too much so, it seemed to me; the narrow causeway ’twixt science and sorcery will always have slippery sides and in his place I would ever have been watching the shadows. But then, that, as you know, is the way I am.
I studied him in the thin light. Not what I’d expected. A good twenty years older than my t
hirty-three, greying beard tight-trimmed to his cheeks and a white scar the width of his forehead. Well-clothed, in a drab and sober way, like to a clerk or a lawyer. Only the scar hinting at a more perilous profession.
He’d introduced himself to us as Elias, and I was told he’d been a monk. Were this true, it might afford him protection from whatever would come. Certainly his manner implied that we were fortunate to have his services.
‘And the other reason that Master Faldo is not with us?’
He smiled at me, with evident scepticism. I was silent too long, and it was the goodwife, alert as a chaffinch, who sprang up.
‘My husband… he knows naught of this. He’s working the day long and falls to sleep when he comes in. I…’ She lowered her voice and her eyelids, a fine and unexpected piece of theatre. ‘I was too ashamed to tell him.’
She’d already paid the scryer, with my money. I’d also been obliged to meet his night’s accommodation at the inn – more than I could readily afford, especially if I were to make a further purchase. Served me right for starting this game and involving the goodwife in the deception.
Brother Elias smiled at her with understanding.
‘So the treasure you want me to find… would be your wedding ring?’
Goodwife Faldo let out a small cry, hastily stifled with a hand. How could he possibly have known this by natural means? I stiffened only for a moment. It was no more than a good guess. He must oft-times be summoned to locate a woman’s ring or a locket. It was what they did.
‘What happened…’ Goodwife Faldo displayed her fingers, one with a circle of white below its joint ‘… I must have taken it off. To clean out the fire ready for the autumn? Laid it on the board, where you’re…’ Peering among the shadows on the board, as if the missing ring might be gleaming from somewhere to betray her. ‘And then forgot about it until the night. And it… was gone.’
‘You think someone stole it?’
‘I’d not want to think that. We trust our neighbours. Nobody here bolts a door. But… yes, I do fear it’s been taken. Been many years in my husband’s family, and has a value beyond the gold. Can you help me?’
‘Not me alone, Goodwife. Not me alone.’
Brother Elias speaking with solemnity and what seemed to me to be a first hint of stagecraft. Goodwife Faldo’s stool wobbling and the candlelight passing like a sprite across her coif as she sat up. Like many women, my mother’s neighbour was much attracted to the Hidden, yet in a half-fearful way – the joy of shivers.
‘I can only pray,’ she said unsteadily, ‘that whatever is summoned to help you comes from the right… quarter.’
This, I’ll admit, was a question I’d primed her to ask. No one should open a portal to the Hidden without spiritual protection. There are long-established procedures for securing this; I wanted to know if the scryer knew them.
‘Oh, it must needs be Godly,’ Elias assured her confidently. ‘If it’s to find this ring for us. However…’ his well-fed face became stern ‘…I must make it clear to you, Goodwife, that if the ring has been stolen and we are able to put a face to the thief, then it’s your business, not mine, to take the matter further.’
‘That’s, er…’ I coughed ‘…is another reason why I’m here.’
Me, the fighting man. Dear God.
‘And what are you, Master Faldo?’ the scryer said, but not as if he cared. ‘What’s your living?’
I shrugged.
‘I work at the brewery.’
The biggest employer of men in Mortlake. Tell him you work at the brewery, Jack Simm had said to me earlier. And then, looking at my hands. Dealing wiv orders.
‘And you…’ the scryer turned to Jack, ‘…were once, I think, an apothecary in London?’
‘Once.’
Jack stubbornly folding his arms over his wide chest as though to ward off further questions. Get on with it. The scryer cupped his hands over the black-draped object before him, drew a long breath, as if about to snatch away the cloth… and then stopped.
‘It’s not mete.’
Pulling his hands away from the mounded cloth, stowing them away in his robe.
A scowl split Jack Simm’s lambswool beard.
‘What?’
‘I regret it’s not mete for me to go on,’ Brother Elias said. ‘The crystal’s cold.’
Speaking with finality, where most of his kind would be smiling slyly at you while holding out their grubby hands for more money. Maybe it came to the same. Elias’s apparel showed he’d already prospered from his trade.
Yet I felt this wasn’t only about money. The air in here had altered. The hearth looked cold as an altar, the room felt damp. I became aware of the fingers of both my hands gripping the edge of the board as the scryer reached to the flagged floor for his satchel.
‘We should light a fire?’ Jack Simm said.
Halfway to his feet, angry, but Elias didn’t look at him.
‘If you want this to have results,’ he said quietly, ‘then I must needs go back to the inn and rest a while. I’ll return shortly before nightfall. That is, if you wish to continue with this…’
… comedy? Was that what he thought?
Did he suspect false-play?
Look, I wanted to say, if we’ve insulted your art, I beg mercy, but I feared you’d be a rooker. Back-street scryers, I thought all they sought was a regular income. That they had no aspiration to walk in the golden halls of creation and know the energies behind their art. I thought that all that mattered was that it worked. And if it didn’t, you faked it. I want to know where the fakery begins, to separate artifice from natural magic. I want to watch what you do, observe your methods. And… I want to know where to obtain the finest of shewstones.
Should I identify myself, accept a loss of face?
No. I held back, watching him shoulder his satchel and make his stately way to the Goodwife’s door, wondering if he’d return or vanish with my money.
‘Oh,’ he said mildly. ‘I have one question.’ He opened the door and the light washed over him. ‘Why am I summoned to Mortlake?’
From outside came the scurrying of birds.
‘Why Mortlake?’ the scryer said. ‘When Mortlake’s surely home to a man more qualified than I?’ He looked at each of us in turn. ‘Or is the good Dr Dee too busy conjuring for the Queen these days to waste his famous skills in service of his neighbours?’
Jack Simm glanced at me. I knew not how to respond.
‘Dr Dee,’ Jack said, ‘doesn’t scry.’
Hmm… not yet, anyway.
III
Call Them Angels
JACK SIMM WAS a gardener now. He’d abandoned his London apothecary’s shop during Mary’s reign, when the agents of Bishop Bonner had been scouring the streets for signs of Protestants and witches alike, and anyone else who might be deemed an enemy of the Catholic Church.
Like many a poor bastard who’d burned in Bonner’s purge, Jack had been neither, but the scent of roasting flesh singes the soul. And he had a young wife and so chose to pursue his trade in a quiet way, from his home on the edge of the village, growing herbs in other people’s gardens as part-payment for his services. Growing certain mushrooms for me, to bring about visions. Not that they’d worked, but that wasn’t Jack’s fault.
I’d tell him he had no need to be a secret apothecary any more. It was a new reign. Everything was changed for the brighter. Kept telling him all this, but he was wary yet.
Particularly wary when, about four weeks previously, I’d asked him to find me a good scryer and perhaps a shewstone for sale.
For pretty much the same reason I’d wanted the mushrooms.
* * *
‘You ain’t a complete fool, Dr John,’ Jack had said, ‘but you’re ever running too close to the bleedin’ cliff-edge.’
We’d been walking the pathway through the wood behind his dwelling. An unusually muggy day – a sneer of a day, a taunt at a drear summer’s end. My shirt had been sweated to my spine whi
le my boots were yet soaked from the puddles.
Look, I’d been aware of the scrying profession most of my life, my tad oft-times making mock of it – all furtive foreigners and gypsies who’d gaze into a stone or a mirror and tell you where your missing property might be recovered or how many children you’d have. Or, if you underpaid them, exactly when the children could expect to inherit your worldly goods.
Rookers to a man, and they oft-times conduct their trade through an apothecary, who takes a cut of the fee.
‘I could find you one, no problem,’ Jack had said. ‘When I was in town, we must’ve had a dozen or more of these bleeders in the shop. Wanting me to put ’em in touch wiv the sick and the bereaved or anyone who needed somebody to talk to the dead on their behalf, intercede wiv angels. I’d kick their arses down the street. And been cursed for it a few times. But I’m still here, ain’t I?’
He’d been gazing out between the heavy, dripping trees towards the swollen river and his voice was damp with disdain.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘That’s all I’m asking. I ain’t getting it, Dr John. I’ve watched men and woman staring into stones and seeing fings I can’t see. And if I can’t see it…? You know what I’m saying?’
‘Everything’s open to abuse,’ I said.
‘But you’re a… a whatsit, natural-philosopher… a man of bleedin’ science.’
‘Well, exactly,’ I said. ‘Knowing the science behind crystal-gazing makes all the difference.’
I could have told him then precisely why I was, of a sudden, interested in the art of scrying. But, although I trusted him more than most, it wasn’t the time. And I’d have to admit that I’d been as sceptical as he was until, at the university of Louvain, I’d been given sight of a rare manuscript by the scholar and cabalist Johannes Trithemius of Spanheim. Which explained why certain stones, if used with knowledge and reverence, could give access to the very engines of heaven.
