At the House of the Magician

by Mary Hooper

  ‘Go on, Dee,’ said Mr Kelly at last.

  ‘Yes. Quite,’ Dr Dee said. ‘Lucy, I … therefore … that is, we …’ He hesitated and, placing his fingers on the skull, stroked the smooth round top of it with a caressing movement, as one might stroke a pet cat.

  ‘Do get on with it, Dee,’ put in Mr Kelly.

  ‘Yes. Indeed.’ He coughed. ‘In fact, Lucy, there is a matter on which we think you might be of some not inconsiderable assistance.’

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘It may seem very unusual to you, and you may not have heard before of such a proposition, but –’

  ‘Child,’ Mr Kelly interrupted impatiently, ‘have you ever seen a masquerade or dumb show?’

  I nodded. ‘They are acted in my home village on a fair day.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘So that you know that a masquerade is merely when a figure – or group of figures – acts out a charade or a pantomime.’

  I nodded again, wondering why I was being asked such things. ‘They were performed by travelling players, acting on the back of carts.’

  ‘And did you enjoy such pieces?’ Dr Dee enquired.

  ‘I did, Sir,’ I said readily. ‘For they were most excellent entertainment.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Mr Kelly went on, ‘Would you care to take part in such a performance?’

  ‘To act on a cart, Sir?’ I asked, mystified.

  ‘Not on a cart,’ said Dr Dee, ‘but in a field. That is, something very like a field.’

  ‘It will be in a churchyard,’ put in Mr Kelly briskly. ‘Let’s be quite clear about that, Dee. We don’t want her taking fright at the last moment.’

  I stared from one to the other and suddenly realised what they were about to ask of me. They could not raise the daughter of Lord Vaizey from the dead, so wanted me to pretend to be her.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, to gain time. ‘I’ve no experience of play-acting and could not learn words, for I can’t read.’

  Dr Dee whispered something to Mr Kelly, who frowned. ‘Tell her straight what she’ll have to do,’ he said, ‘for she must do it willingly or not at all. The scheme will fail if she’s not committed to it.’

  There was another silence, during which my eyes seemed to be drawn to that dread skull under Dr Dee’s hand.

  ‘All you have to do, Lucy,’ said that gentleman at last, ‘is to appear, dressed as a young woman of the aristocracy, and speak a few words.’

  ‘Words we will teach you, which may be learned parrot-fashion,’ interposed Mr Kelly.

  I was forward enough to ask, ‘And who will be my audience for this play-acting?’

  ‘’Twill be just one man and ourselves,’ answered Dr Dee.

  The dead girl’s father, I thought. The man I’d heard speaking when I’d been hidden in the fireplace. ‘It seems a very small audience for an entertainment,’ I said boldly.

  Mr Kelly affected a laugh. ‘Oh, ’tis but a fancy someone has. An idle amusement for someone rich.’

  I began shaking my head. ‘I do beg your pardon, but I have always been told that ’tis not becoming for a woman to appear on a stage and play-act.’

  ‘’Tis not exactly a stage,’ said Mr Kelly.

  ‘And women appear in private masques – the church authorities have no objection to that. Why, even the queen goes masquerading,’ said Dr Dee.

  ‘No, I couldn’t do it,’ I said, shivering all over. ‘You’ll excuse me, but I truly could not.’

  Mr Kelly tapped his pocket. ‘Look to your purse,’ he said. ‘There’s a gold angel in it for you.’

  ‘More money than you’ve ever seen before, I warrant!’

  It was, indeed, yet the thought of taking part in such a pretence was so frightening to me that I carried on shaking my head, all the while thinking of a way to refuse them without incurring their anger. ‘I have a good reason for saying no,’ I said finally.

  ‘And what would that be?’ Mr Kelly asked.

  ‘My father is a Puritan,’ I said (I lied, of course, for his only church is the ale house), ‘and he’s always been strict about such things. I couldn’t go against all that I’ve been taught.’

  ‘But you are not in your father’s household now,’ protested Mr Kelly.

  ‘Come – we’ll make it two angels,’ said Dr Dee. ‘Two gold coins just for you.’

  But even for two angels I could not – would not – get involved in the deception, for I greatly feared the devilish practice of it, and also pitied the bereaved father, Lord Vaizey, and wanted no part in the misleading of him.

  Begging their pardons heartily once again, I said that I relished working in the household and hoped that my refusal wouldn’t go against me. I then went to my room to think on what I’d been asked to do and wonder on Dr Dee and Mr Kelly’s competence as necromancers, for it seemed to me that they could not truly be capable of raising dead corpses, or would not have risked all by asking me to be a substitute.

  The following day I went with Beth and Merryl to the market. Dr Dee must have obtained credit from somewhere – perhaps in anticipation of the thirty gold angels he hoped he had coming to him – for in my pocket was a list of things to buy and several silver shillings. As we walked, Beth and Merryl tested me on the items on the list, and I proudly read out the groceries they’d written down under Mistress Midge’s dictation: a rope of onions, twelve sausages, six red herrings, fine wheat flour, a sugar loaf, some cloves, mace and saffron. I was fast learning to read, and hardly stumbled on any word apart from onions, which I found devilish difficult.

  ‘And when we get home, you must try writing down the words yourself,’ Beth said.

  ‘And we will rap your knuckles if you don’t get them right,’ added Merryl.

  Reaching the market place and looking around, I saw my new friend, Isabelle, selling squares of iced gingerbread from a tray. She looked pleased to see me, though went quite pink with embarrassment when Merryl said solemnly to Beth that she was the girl who’d stolen Lucy’s basket of clothes. I hushed her, saying it wasn’t Isabelle herself who’d stolen them, and anyway, it had just been a misunderstanding. Isabelle was, I noticed, wearing the same skirt and bodice that she’d changed into a week previously, and which now had a large rent down the front where the worn material had pulled away from a seam. This must be her only outfit, I thought, and rather pitied her.

  ‘Has the queen come to call on you?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘She has!’ I replied, and though I wanted to tell her how I’d hidden, I was unable to do so with Merryl and Beth within earshot.

  ‘We didn’t see her,’ said Merryl, ‘for she just came to speak to Papa.’

  ‘I did just glimpse her,’ I said.

  Isabelle’s eyes lit up. ‘And what was she wearing? How did she look? Did she have many jewels about her person?’

  ‘It was just a tiny glance,’ I admitted, ‘and I saw only parts of her gown, but it was bejewelled all over and very fine.’

  ‘I saw her once being carried on a litter,’ responded Isabelle. ‘She had a string of sapphires around her neck and each one was as big as a plum!’

  We spoke some more of the queen and who she loved, for all the talk still, everywhere, was of whether she might marry and who would be the chosen man. When a woman stopped to buy gingerbread from Isabelle’s tray, however, the girls and I went on to do our shopping, saying that we’d look for her later.

  The shopping took some time, for there was a great deal of choice – much more so than in Hazelgrove – and each item we bought had to be inspected, compared with another and bargained for before it was purchased. Mistress Midge, although lax on most things, was very concerned that we should always obtain value for money and I knew she’d examine our purchases carefully when we got home.

  I only saw Isabelle once more, very briefly, and I asked her to come and visit me one afternoon, for – although I didn’t tell her this – I had a mind to give her one of my old gowns.
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  ‘You want me to come to the magician’s house?’ she said, her eyes wide.

  ‘It’s quite safe, I assure you, and not at all frightening,’ I said. ‘Look at me and Beth and Merryl – there’s nothing alarming about us, is there?’

  She hesitated. ‘It doesn’t seem so …

  ‘Then come when you have time.’

  She promised she would and I went home glad that I’d made a friend of her, for I longed to tell someone all that went on at the house, and inform her of what Dr Dee and Mr Kelly had asked me to do. I could never tell Mistress Midge, of course, for then I’d have to tell her that I’d found the priest’s hideaway. Besides, I knew that she’d certainly have nothing to do with any talk of the raising of Mistress Vaizey.

  It was two more days before Isabelle came to visit. It was afternoon and the girls had gone to take a nap when I heard the sound of hooves on the river path, followed by a tentative tap on the window. When I went out, Isabelle was standing there holding the reins of a fine, tall black horse, saddled in leather and with a red bridle and plaited tail.

  ‘Is he yours?’ I said in surprise, although I knew he couldn’t possibly be.

  She shook her head. ‘My brothers are ’prentices in a livery yard and have horses to exercise every day. If there are too many, they send one for me to ride.’

  I patted the horse’s glossy flanks, then reached up to a tree to pick a crab apple to give to him. He took it between his teeth for a moment, then dropped it.

  Isabelle laughed. ‘He scorns those! He’s a gent’man’s horse and has been brought up on hot bran and honey. Do you ride?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve sat on a horse, but only play-riding. I’ve never used a saddle and stirrups.’

  ‘’Tis easy,’ she said. ‘The horse does all the work. Would you care to take a trot, sitting behind me?’

  I nodded, eager for any sort of distraction from the afternoon’s routines.

  She looked at me shyly. ‘Perhaps you could ask your housekeeper to excuse you for an hour or so and we can take a little canter in Richmond Park?’

  I nodded and then my heart leaped, for it had occurred to me that we might visit the place which had been on my mind ever since my nightmare. ‘How far can a horse travel in an afternoon?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘A good, healthy horse can be ridden until he drops. This one could ride to London and back, for sure.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t want to ride as far as that.’

  ‘Then where do you wish to go?’

  ‘To see my ma in my home village,’ I said eagerly. ‘Would we be able to go there, do you think?’

  Isabelle nodded. ‘I daresay … if you know the way.’

  I pointed downriver with some excitement. ‘’Tis Hazelgrove. Along the riverbank and past Richmond.’

  She smiled. ‘Go and ask if you may absent yourself for a few hours, then, and fetch your cloak, and you and I shall have an adventure.’

  Chapter Twelve

  It took me a little time to get used to the movements of the horse, for I felt very unsteady mounted behind Isabella with no stirrups nor reins of my own to hold on to. She didn’t keep both legs to the side, but rode like a man on a pillion saddle, with one leg each side of the horse. I travelled the same way, clasping her tightly around the waist, and once I’d learned to mimic her movements, to bounce up and down in rhythm just as she bounced, I began to feel more confident and was able to relax, and soon we fell to talking.

  Isabelle first told me of her life, which was a sad one, for her father had died six years ago when plague had struck. At first the parish had provided for her family out of charity, but then, due to their extreme poverty, her ma had been forced to take work at a local rope-makers. Isabelle, then ten years old, had also gone out to work to help the family survive. ‘One winter we were so poor we were reduced to eating turnips,’ she told me, ‘and as there was no fire to cook them on, we had them raw.’

  I shuddered, for we had never been that poor.

  ‘Of the five others, two were but babes when Pa died, so Ma and I had to tie them in their cots when we went out to work.’ She sighed. ‘They got up to all sorts of mischiefs.’

  ‘And what sort of jobs do you do?’

  ‘Any little matters in the houses of the gentry,’ she replied. ‘Repairing torn lace and ruffs, helping with the wash, cleaning out the sooty ranges or making soaps. Sometimes I’d work in a blacksmith’s, holding the horses, or in the tavern washing pots. Now, though, I’m mostly at the market selling stuffs – whatever I can buy cheaply that day.’ She half-turned to look at me, smiling. ‘And sometimes I put on a sombre expression and a black hood and get myself hired for funeral processions.’

  I laughed, surprised.

  ‘Not many will do it,’ she said, ‘but ’tis worth a good deal, for as well as a silver coin, mourners always get given a new pair of leather gloves, black shoes and sometimes a cloak besides. And all we have to do is walk beside the corpse with a sombre face and shed a few tears. Once I was given an expensive piece of black lace to wear over my face which I sold after for sixpence.’

  We approached Richmond and, the path beneath us being sound, she took the horse into a canter. This made me rather afraid, for despite my new confidence it was a tall horse and the earth seemed a long way off.

  ‘We can get by now, for everyone but little Margaret is out at work,’ she continued, ‘and next year she will be able to come with me to funerals, for she has a bonny, sad face and I’ve taught her to cry on command.’

  ‘You’ve left out one of your jobs,’ I said. ‘For sometimes you make lavender wands.’

  ‘Sometimes I do,’ she said, and hesitated. ‘There’s something I must say on that … on the manner in which we met.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said, fearing she was going to begin apologising once more.

  ‘No, I must tell! It was one of my brothers, you see, who found your basket on the riverbank, and he brought it home to show us. Ma said we must take it to the constable and we were about to do so when I saw your bodice and skirt in there, and had a fancy to try them on – though I knew I shouldn’t have done so, and that it was very wrong of me.’

  She faltered and I squeezed her arm to say that I understood.

  ‘And then, when I put them on they fitted me so perfectly with scarcely a tuck or a pin needed that even Ma said they must have been made for me, and my little brothers all said how comely I looked, and with my own gown being almost in tatters I decided …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, smiling as I thought of what I was planning. ‘My new mistress has seen that I’m fitted out and I now have four outfits all of my own!’

  ‘She’s kind to you, then?’

  ‘She is, though she’s still confined to bed and I rarely see her.’

  ‘And what of your famed master. What of Dr Dee?’

  ‘He is peculiar enough,’ I said, eager to tell someone of my life with the Dee family, ‘and the household is a strange one, for though ’tis rich in books and paintings – and the children have a monkey for a pet – until recently there has never been enough money to spend on things like food.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, because along with all the books he buys, Dr Dee collects strange things from other countries, specimens, and puts these things about his room, which is a library. Have you heard of an ally-gator?’

  ‘Never. What is one?’

  ‘A creature very like a dragon.’

  ‘He has one in the house?’ she said in alarm.

  ‘Two,’ I said. ‘But they are dead and stuffed. And more strange things, too: giant eggs and great bird’s nests, pearly shells as big as a man’s hat and tiny little horse-like creatures that swim in a tank of water.’

  She turned to look at me wonderingly. ‘And does he use these things to do magick?’

  ‘So it is said,’ I replied, ‘but I’ve never seen any performed.’ And I told her about Beth saying that it
was only Mr Kelly who ever saw angels – and also about being mistaken for a wraith the first night I’d stayed at the house.

  She laughed, then said, ‘They say that magicians seek to discover that elixir called acqua vitae.’

  ‘What do those words mean?’ I asked, very interested, for that was the expression, the very strange expression, I’d heard spoken by Dr Dee and Mr Kelly.

  ‘I believe they are Latin,’ Isabelle said, ‘and mean a magick liquid which will make the old young again. They say if you can only discover and drink it, ’twill give you eternal youth.’

  ‘I believe it was that very thing which the queen asked about,’ I said wonderingly.

  The horse slowed down a little on some stony ground and Isabelle turned right round and looked at me. ‘You heard the queen speak of it?’

  I nodded. ‘I will tell of the circumstances in a moment,’ I said. ‘She asked Dr Dee if he had yet prepared any.’

  ‘That may well be so, for they say she’s ageing fast and mislikes it very much, for she’s always adored having men admire her.’

  We both considered this for a moment: the notion of the queen being vain, like an ordinary woman, and about her having cares concerning how she appeared to men.

  ‘And there is something more,’ I said. ‘Dr Dee let her see a strange crystal ball of his, which is usually kept locked up.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that!’ Isabelle said. ‘When I’ve been working in the Green Man I’ve heard men discussing it.’

  ‘What do they say?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘’Tis called a show-stone and they say miraculous things can be seen in’t.’

  ‘Well,’ I declared with some importance, ‘I have held the very object in my hand!’

  She gasped.

  ‘I looked deep into it and saw …’ I hesitated; what was it that I’d seen? ‘A lot of blue and sparkling stones, and something like a flask, or a bottle.’

  Startled, Isabelle pulled in the reins of the horse so that it almost stopped, then regarded me fearfully. ‘You saw something within it? You have the Sight?’