At the Mortlake landing, he handed the ferryman his coin. The ferryman pocketed it.
“My change, please, sir,” Andrew said.
“Change? Fourpence is the fare, boy.”
“No, sir. Twopence is the fare from London Bridge, and that includes my thank-you.”
A man had come up behind. “My change, please, sir,” Andrew said again loudly so the man behind him could hear. “I gave you a groat. The fare from London Bridge is twopence, including my thank-you. The change due me is twopence.”
With a grumble the ferryman gave him his change.
Although the day was cool, Andrew was in a sweat as he walked to the doctor’s.
He’d expected to meet a stooped and musty old onion-eating scholar with gravy on his shirt and tallow in his beard. The man he met was tall and slender in a long blue velvet robe and black skullcap. He had a tapering white beard and shining dark eyes. His face was bright.
As the boy handed him Mr. Raleigh’s note, the doctor gave him a halfpenny for his pains. If this was what Mr. Raleigh called quarrelsome, Andrew liked his quarrel.
The doctor came and stood so close the boy could feel his heat. His breath was sweet. He stared into Andrew’s eyes. His look went deep. The boy struggled not to step back, blink, or look away. His eyes began to tear.
“How old are you?” the doctor asked at last.
“Eleven years, sir.”
“Your eyes are older. You have taking-in eyes.”
Doctor Dee studied Mr. Raleigh’s note. “I am to give you a lesson in the new geography. Are you interested in that?”
“Yes! I’d like that!”
The doctor led Andrew into his study. He worked and slept in a large room crammed with apparatus, skulls, globes, books, and papers, separate from his family so no moment would be lost if one of his angels came to him suddenly. At any moment, he could begin where he’d left off. The north-facing wall had large windows to catch the best light.
As he showed Andrew his collection of instruments and ancient maps, he talked about exploring, measuring distances at sea, the mathematics of surveying and making charts.
The boy followed as best he could, but it was too much. The long showing and explaining left him drowsy. He was struggling to keep from yawning when the doctor said, “And this is my newest chart,” as he unrolled the map Mr. Raleigh wanted.
Suddenly Andrew was all awake. The doctor’s map was different from any map he had ever seen: coastlines changed according to the latest surveys, fabled islands gone, new things marked.
“Only what we know for sure,” the doctor said. “Only what the sea captains confirm.”
Andrew wanted to ask for it, but something checked him; it was not yet the moment.
“Will you take dinner with me?” the doctor asked.
“Thank you. Please,” Andrew answered. He was tense but hungry too.
The doctor rang his bell. A few moments later he pushed aside maps and instruments to clear places as his man brought pork pies steaming fresh from the oven, mugs of dark ale, and fragrant quarters of Spanish oranges.
As they began to eat, the doctor asked, “What is your plan of life?”
The friendly way the man asked made Andrew relax a little. “I want to go to America,” he replied.
The doctor studied his face. “Yes,” he said. “I saw that in your eyes. You see over the water. You have strong ambition.
“What will you do there?”
“Make a farm and trade, sir.”
The doctor nodded. “My father was a merchant. A merchant must be nimble as a flea to keep fed.
“And later, if you become rich, will you come back to England?”
“I’m for America. I’ll make my place there.”
“Oh, but when you’re rich you can buy a place here,” the doctor said.
“I want to make my own, sir. A place for Catholics too.”
The doctor looked up sharply.
Andrew blushed. He’d said too much.
The doctor nodded as he looked away.
“I understand,” he said. “A few years ago the Queen gave her charter to a man who planned to establish a Catholic colony in America at Newfoundland. ‘Put them away but keep them loyal’ was what he proposed.
“He got swallowed up by the sea. Mr. Raleigh has his charter now. The man who drowned was his half brother.
“I helped him,” the doctor said softly. “I drew his maps.”
For a while they ate in silence. Then the doctor asked, “Does your horoscope show you becoming a planter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has anyone cast it?”
“My father had a woman do it when I was born. He wanted to know if I would live. Each of the three before me died before he could get named in church.”
“Do you know your date and time of birth?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll see what you’re to be.”
He studied the marks in Andrew’s fingernails and the lines in his hands. Then he brought out a large bronze disk he called an astrolabe.
“With this,” he said, “I can figure the position of the planets and the stars at any moment of the year. Navigators use it to locate their positions east and west at sea.”
The thing was heavy, with a hoop for hanging at the top. It bore strange markings. At the center there was a silver bar on a pin. He hung it on a hook over his desk, set the needle, and got out his zodiac book.
“What do the marks mean?” Andrew asked.
“This was made in Baghdad a long time ago,” the doctor said. “The characters are Arabic numbers, degree marks, and names of the heavenly bodies.”
Andrew thought about Mr. Harriot’s brass tube for looking at a distance: here was the second instrument he’d seen since coming to London that had something of the Arab about it.
The doctor then brought out what he called his magic eye, the crystal ball Mr. Raleigh had mentioned. He pored over it for a long time.
“I see travel and trading,” he said at last. “You will get an honest sufficiency but not more.”
He looked up. “More than sufficiency brings greater grief than less. Keep your conscience clean, and your teeth. Teeth are the guardians to health. Riches cannot buy a clean conscience or good health.”
He unhooked the disk and put his glass away. Andrew wanted to know more about his future, but the doctor was on to something else.
“What have you noticed about Mr. Raleigh?” he asked.
“Nothing—I mean, everything, sir! I mean, I have just begun his service,” Andrew stammered.
“Yes,” said the doctor gently, “but what have you found most remarkable?”
Andrew stood bewildered. “What he knows about maps and plants, medicines, ships…”
The doctor was shaking his head.
“His scent?” Andrew asked at last.
“Yes, that,” the doctor said. “It is sweet, yet he wears no perfume. What else?”
Andrew shook his head.
“He is like the kept dog in the Aesop fable,” the doctor replied at last. “Do you know that story?”
“No, sir.”
“One winter day at dusk a wolf came into a farmer’s yard, drawn by the scent of roasting meat. The wolf was gaunt and ragged. As he approached the door, he was greeted by the farmer’s dog. The dog was sleek. There was no getting past him, so the wolf stopped and bowed politely.
“‘You are handsome, my friend,’ said the wolf. ‘How is it you feed so well?’
“The dog swelled his chest. ‘I guard the farmer against robbers. For this he gives me all the food I want and a house by his door.’
“‘Ah,’ said the wolf. ‘Do you think I might join you in this work?’
“‘You have good teeth and claws to fight with,’” the dog said, studying the wolf. ‘Perhaps he could use you.’
“Just then a flea annoyed the dog. He shook his ruff. There was a rattle of chain.
“‘What’s
that around your neck?’ the wolf asked.
“‘The collar I wear to stay in place,’ the dog replied.
“‘Oh,’ said the wolf. ‘Then I think I’ll be off. I’d rather be hungry and free than fed and not.’
“You see,” the doctor continued, “the Queen feeds and houses Mr. Raleigh, but his leash is too short for him to sail to America. If his exploring captains give a good report and the expedition goes, he won’t be along. The Queen keeps him tied to Court.”
“Why?” Andrew asked.
“She cannot risk his loss. He is one of the few she can tell her mind to.”
Doctor Dee grew silent. He looked at Andrew and nodded.
“You have a good plan. Your sign is friendly to adventure. Merchants are heirs to adventure, but your fortune will hang on winds—a fair breeze may bring your fortune, a storm sink it. Men will live better for your risks; your failures will cost them nothing. That’s the way it is with merchants. London gets more intelligence from her traders than from all her scholars.”
He paused.
“Avoid the trade in human flesh. Mr. Raleigh’s sea dog friends Francis Drake and his kinsman John Hawkins do well by slaves, but it is an evil business. What one handles one becomes.”
It was now late afternoon. The doctor had given Andrew dinner and the lesson Mr. Raleigh had requested, and he’d told the boy his future. It was time to leave, but Andrew didn’t have the map.
He took a deep breath.
“Sir, your new map…”
“Yes?”
“It’s like nothing we have,” Andrew whispered.
The doctor looked at him steadily, saying nothing.
“We need it.”
“He sent you for it?”
“Yes.”
Doctor Dee nodded. He said nothing as he rolled up the map, tied it, and wrote a note to Mr. Raleigh. He didn’t seal his note.
“Be careful when you make your copy,” he said. “I have no other. Return it tomorrow.”
“I will, sir. Thank you.”
The doctor smiled as he reached out and hugged the boy goodbye.
On the boat downriver, Andrew opened the note:
“For the boy’s sake I lend it. He will go. You will not.”
11
THE CONJUROR
That evening, Andrew stayed up with Mr. Harriot through two rounds of candles, copying the doctor’s map. The stink of candle smoke left him queasy.
“This is excellent,” Mr. Harriot muttered as they worked. “The doctor has a nose for mariners’ secrets like a fox’s for rabbits.”
Mr. Harriot kept rubbing his hands together. He noticed Andrew watching.
“They’re always cold,” he said. “Winter and summer, whatever I do. I sleep in mittens.”
The next morning, Andrew ate nothing. He wrapped the map tight and took the ferry back up to Mortlake.
There was a strange hush about the doctor’s place. His garden was trampled. As Andrew turned in at the gate, he saw books and papers strewn in the yard. The door hung on a hinge.
He called out.
No one answered.
The boy’s heart began to pound.
Finally the doctor’s serving man appeared in the doorway, ghastly pale, his eyes bright and darting like a cornered rat’s.
“He’s gone,” he whispered. “People came in the night.”
“People?” Andrew asked. He felt a chill.
“They called him a conjuror. ‘He casts spells to make us sick,’ they screamed, ‘our animals too!’”
Andrew looked around.
“Who? Was it his neighbors?”
“I couldn’t see,” the man blubbered. “It was a mob. I ran to the cellar and hid.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He ran off in the dark when he heard them coming.”
Andrew kept the map. As he left, he spied something black in the brush by the broken gate. It was the doctor’s skullcap. He put it in his pocket.
Back at Durham House, he and Mr. Harriot took the map to Mr. Raleigh.
“He’d been warned,” Mr. Raleigh said, fingering the black cap. “We’d heard that Spanish agents were stirring up his neighbors. That’s why I sent you when I did.”
“Where is he?” Andrew asked.
“Safe,” Mr. Raleigh replied as he turned and put the skullcap in the drawer beneath his writing board.
Andrew started to leave.
“Wait!” Mr. Raleigh called as he turned back. “Be careful what you write home. Use this ink our friend the doctor prepared,” he said, reaching for a stoppered jug.
“We call it onion juice. It isn’t, but that’s what it smells like. Once the liquid dries, your writing will be invisible until the letter is gently rinsed with the doctor’s tincture and held before a flame. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, “but how will I get the tincture to my family so they can read what I send?”
“Leave that to me,” Mr. Raleigh replied, opening his eyes wide.
12
WILLIAM
Peter always fell asleep first. The two younger boys got in the habit of whispering back and forth in the dark, glad to have a friend to share things with.
One moonlit night they snuck out of the dormitory and crept downstairs. No one was up. They began a game of silent hide-and-seek, faster and faster, choking back cries and giggles as they swerved around chairs and hid behind and under, until William slipped on a rug and crashed into a table. A huge china jug went over. That brought James. He caught sight of Andrew’s back as the boys scurried upstairs.
A cat got blamed for the jug. For days William’s arm was so sore he couldn’t hold his hawk.
A few nights later, Andrew couldn’t sleep for being hungry. The boys glided down to the cellar kitchen. Andrew stirred up the fire to look around. Again their noise brought James. They slipped into the larder as he came in. They’d left the bread box open. Next morning James told the cook she had a clever mouse, perhaps a pair. “Too small for rats, I’d say,” he told her, raising his great eyebrows and pretending to peer around the door.
“You let them mice of yours know I’ll be leaving for them under a plate,” she chuckled. “No need they should gnaw stale bread!”
Thereafter she left out second suppers for the boys—plate-scrapings and remainders of the best things served at Mr. Raleigh’s high table.
They had less and less to do with Peter. William would walk with him to Whitehall Palace in the morning for their hawking and jousting lessons, but all his free time now he spent with Andrew.
One afternoon Andrew took William to see the new shoots in the garden plot Pena had given him.
“Spanish seeds and roots,” he explained. “We don’t know what they are, so Pena says when they’re grown, we’ll have to try eating them—leaves, roots, fruits, everything—to see if they’re food. He says we’ll have to be careful, because some may be medicines to loosen the bowel or cure fever, and one root the Spaniards call potato, eaten green, can kill.”
“Make a stew for Peter!” William whispered as they made faces and put their hands to their throats as if they were gagging and throwing up.
“What are the bowls for?” William asked, pointing to the dishes set along the path.
“Flat beer to trap slugs,” Andrew explained.
“Phew!” gasped William, looking close. “Serve that to Peter for his drink!”
William showed Andrew the heavy embroidered glove he wore for hawking and the delicate velvet hood worked with silver his bird wore.
“Do you want to hear how I whistle him back?”
Andrew nodded.
William scrunched up his mouth and blew a shrill piercing call that made Andrew wince.
“It’s like his own,” William said.
The glove was scored deep with claw marks.
There was a tiny leash with a clip that went on the bird’s leg. “It’s called a jess,” he explained as he packed away hi
s gear.
“Why do you do it?” Andrew asked. “Do you eat what it catches?”
“No,” William laughed. “You think like a farmer—everything for food! It’s for sport. It’s something courtiers do, like dancing.”
The two boys sang together and played duets, talked about home and their schools before and what they hoped to do when they finished Mr. Raleigh’s service.
“Mr. Harriot told us before you came that you’re for America,” William said. “That’s why Peter hates you. Mr. Raleigh is more for America than Ireland now. Peter’s for Ireland. His father has the Queen’s grant to thousands of acres there, but the Irish natives won’t work it because they say it belongs to them. They kill the English he brings over. If he can’t get tenants to settle and work his land, he’ll lose it. Peter wants to go make those natives submit.”
“What will you do?” Andrew asked.
“I’m training to lead soldiers.”
“And later?”
William shrugged and rubbed his head. Mistress Witkens had just cut his hair. It was like rubbing a black bristle brush.
“What about you? What do you want to do?” William asked.
“Set up a trading station and make a plantation in America,” Andrew answered.
“Out there? Away from everybody, like an exile? Why?”
“To make my fortune on my own land, free of landlords, sheriffs, and taxes!” Andrew exclaimed.
“Spoken like a farmer!” William laughed. “You’ll make your fortune, sure enough, but I’d miss London too much.”
Andrew wanted to add the part about making a place safe for Catholics like Rebecca and her family, but he held back. His father had warned him to keep those things to himself.
William was good at drawing figures and faces. He’d snatch bits of cold charcoal from the fire to scratch a likeness of whomever he was looking at—Andrew, Peter, Mr. Raleigh, Pena, Mistress Witkens, James, Mr. Harriot. He got them all. Folks liked to be drawn. They’d pose until he’d finished, then they’d ask for their picture even though he’d scribbled it on a scrap of paper or some stiffened cloth he’d got from Mistress Witkens.
“How did you learn to do that?” Andrew asked.
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