Jack reached beneath the man’s red velvet cloak, grasped him by the shoulder of his pale blue doublet, and began to pull him into the house. The man brandished his cudgel, which Jack snatched with his free hand. With a bit more force than he intended, Jack pulled again, hard enough to send the messenger sprawling onto the floor. Having tossed the cudgel clattering onto the flagstone beside the man, Jack strode to the fireplace and offhandedly flicked the letter into the flames.
Furious, the messenger hissed, “Cecil will hear of this!”
Jack knelt, his face a few inches from the man’s, and said evenly, “You have seen what you came to see; the missive is committed to the flames. Go and report to Cecil that I will do his bidding, but the next time he sends you I shall toss you into the fire after the letter.”
The man sputtered a few incomprehensible syllables, picked himself up along with his cudgel, and hobbled out the door, slamming it after him.
Her eyes wide, Anne slowly shook her head. “Oh, Jack,” she said, “that were not wise.”
Jack shrugged. “Cecil is no fool; he must know his man is a dandiprat.”
Anne eyed him closely and said, “Even so, we knew such a letter would arrive. Lord Cecil told you as much. What need you use his underling so roughly?”
Jack hardly knew what to say. “I . . . I looked at him standing before me, grinning his pleasure with the letter in his hand from that devil incarnate who has caused you to weep. I. . . . You are right; I should cuff the master, not his man.”
Anne latched the door, then turned to face him. “You should cuff no man. This is what I fear, do you not see? It boots you nothing to give Robert Cecil further cause to hate you. Has he not cause enough already?”
Again Jack shrugged. “If he hates me, I had rather have him fear me too.” When Anne started to object, Jack changed the subject. “But Timothy Burr. I know the man. He is Lady Bedford’s old manservant. Now he is to be mine. I wonder at it.”
Anne turned away from him and spoke very quietly: “So Lucy Harrington has her hand in this.”
“So it appears. But whether Burr is a spy she and Cecil have set to watch me, or her gift to me, I hardly know.”
Anne spun to face him, angry tears in her eyes. “A gift? She gave you one love token already. Has she cause to give you yet another gift, and a far greater one?”
“No! Burr is a spy, more like. You have nothing to. . . .” He looked at her reddened eyes and said, “This is how Cecil would have it, don’t you see? He sets Burr to spy on me, and he sets me to spy on Chute, and like as not he sets Chute to spy on Burr. And now he sets you, my life’s love, at odds with me. It is all as Cecil would have it.”
Still angry, Anne said, “But this new servant of yours is not Cecil’s to give. He is the beautiful Lady Bedford’s.”
Jack held up his empty hands. “I tell you none of this business is my doing!”
Anne exhaled forcefully, looked around as if she had lost something in the room, then said, “You are right. We must not let Cecil divide us.” Her brow furrowed, she asked, “What, then, of this Walter Chute? I have heard the name but know not the man. Do you?”
“No better than you,” Jack said. “Never has he spoken a word to me, nor I to him.” He added bitterly, “But he is one of the great throng of men the King has knighted, as he has knighted your brother and the husbands of your sisters while your father whispered him lies about me.”
“My father does not lie!” Anne said with surprising force. Then she added more softly, “He only thought you a lesser match for me than the King’s own Secretary of State. And can you fault him for the thought? No, my father is guilty only of thinking I could ever live as wife to a wretch like Robert Cecil, a knave as misshapen in body as he is cankered in mind.”
Jack tenderly brushed an errant strand of hair from her face and said, “I know. I know. . . . But what am I to do?”
She corrected him: “What are we to do? For I will not have you piece out this business alone, though I cannot travel with you.”
This would not do. “We must not put both ourselves in harm’s way. The children—”
“Fear me not,” she said, and added wryly, “Doubt not but I shall prove more circumspect than you have shown yourself today.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “But—”
“Enough.” She spoke as if the matter had been settled. “Though the serpent part us in body, I will not have him sunder us in soul.”
How could he disagree? The very poem he had just left off writing said the same.
All business, she said, “Now: know you any Guido?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “None. An Englishman, the letter said. But the name is Spanish, or Italian. I think it must be feigned.”
She nodded. “Where will you seek first?” After a moment she added, “And what will you tell Cecil if you find this Guido?”
“As for where to seek, I hardly know. In England to begin, I think: among the London Catholics—I had best see the Wizard Earl before Chute and Burr join me—and then among the great Catholic houses in the North. Or maybe Warwickshire. And after that. . . .” He hesitated to mention the Continent; Anne had wept enough already. “As for what to tell Cecil, I pray God I may know that when the time sorts.”
The sadness or profound weariness he had seen in her before the messenger arrived settled into her eyes again. “I have a gift for you,” she said blankly as she turned to a little cabinet under the stairs. She pulled something out, but he could not see what. “Lady Bedford gave you a bracelet woven of seven chains of gold. I give you a plainer one. You will see it comes from my head, but know that even more, it comes from my heart.” She held out the gift: a strap of plaited leather jesses interwoven with. . . . He held it to the light of the fire.
“Your hair,” he said. “This is a bracelet of leather and your own hair.”
“Tie it about your wrist, that you may have something of me with you wherever you go.”
“With all my heart.” She helped him wrap the bracelet around his left wrist and tie the ends together. By the light of a rush-candle they went out to the little building that housed Wolley’s forge. There Jack found a sharp knife and two pairs of long-handled tongs with tight-fitting jaws. He dipped his left hand and wrist in a water-basin to soak the leather, then pulled it out and took a set of tongs in his free hand, using the jaws to grasp one free end of a knotted jess. He told Anne to take the other tongs and pull on the other end. In this way they tightened all the knots. The bracelet fit snug on his wrist, too tight to slide off over his hand. Jack picked up the knife and cut all the loose ends close to the knots. “Now:” he said. “If ever I were to remove this token, by cutting or untying it, I would not be able to tie it on again. It is here to stay.”
For the first time in days, he thought he saw her lips ease into a little smile.
The next morning Jack walked the half-mile from Pyrford Place to the River Wey and waited only a few minutes until a boatman came around the bend. The river wound lazily here, and only a dozen yards or so across. Jack gave the mossy-toothed oarsman a shilling and told him to let him off at Syon House. “House!” said the boatman. “Pellis, more like.” He eyed Jack with evident envy. “Ah, the Wizard ’imself, then, is it? ’Slid, these Percys lives loik kings, doon’t they? Always ’ave, time out of mind. What’s ’e, Northumberland’s eighth earl in the chain? Nointh?”
“Ninth,” Jack said as he sat back for the ride downstream. The receding tide made the man’s rowing easy. The oarsmen going upstream had to ply it harder.
“And you know such a man as that! ’Sblood, ’e could ’ave a feast wif a tun of ale ever’ noight and never want for money, never feel the pinch.”
Jack smiled. “So he could.”
“Would I could put on such a frolic one noight!” The oarsman wheezed out a chuckle. “That would set the tongues weggin’ proper.” After a few more strokes he asked, “But do you not fear his wizardry? These cunning-
folk ’ave power somethin’ fearsome.” He eyed Jack as if his black garments might betoken some dark allegiance.
“The Earl is a good man,” Jack said, “and gives of his plenty to the poor. A good, pious man. His wizardry is but a love of the new learning—as well as the old.”
The oarsman slowly shook his head. “Somethin’ fearsome. Well, there’s small harm in rowing to the water-gate at Syon House, I ween.”
In an hour or so the Wey joined the Thames, and not long after, the battlements of Syon House loured into view. A few minutes more and they pulled up to the water-gate. A leathery guard with a few tufts of gray hair escaping his cap recognized Jack from prior visits and swung open the iron gate to let the boat pass. Before the gate was fully open, Jack asked if the Earl were home; he might be at one of his houses in the country. The guard nodded, grunted “Aye,” and pulled the boat up to the landing. Jack stepped out, walked up a half-dozen stairs, and let himself into the anteroom. Meanwhile, the guard sent a sour-faced, barefoot boy sulking up to tell the porter of the guest’s arrival.
In a few minutes the Wizard Earl himself appeared, smiling broadly. The man had tousled hair, a broad, boyish face, and clear blue eyes. He eagerly beckoned Jack in, saying, “Come, come. . . . Jack, it’s. . . .You must see it, this optic glass of Harriot’s. He . . . just yesterday, he. . . . Goodyer is here, too. You know Henry Goodyer. Of course you do. From your. . . .”
“From our time at Lincoln’s Inn.”
“Yes, yes, studying the law: I remember. But this invention of Harriot’s. And such a simple device! Has to leave soon, Goodyer, but you’ll catch him. He’s up in the. . . . All the heavens! Left it with me to study, Harriot did. Or amuse. . . . Well, he has another at his house. But truly, Jack, how are you?”
“Well enough,” Jack said. Even this little lie chafed. He was here to deceive this good man, a man with much to lose, a man who had always been kind to him. True, some four years ago when he had delivered Jack’s ill-fated letter to Sir George More, the Earl had shown himself helpless to prevent Sir George’s rage about the elopement, or to quell the old man’s wrath once it had been aroused. But he had tried. Jack would never forget that.
And Goodyer was here at Syon House, too: Henry Goodyer, Jack’s old friend from their time studying law together. Of all men on earth, it was Goodyer who really knew Jack Donne, really understood the workings of his mind and the stirrings of his heart. At any other time Jack would have welcomed such a meeting of friends; what could be better than to talk with the Wizard Earl and Henry Goodyer about some new device of Thomas Harriot’s? But already the shadow of Robert Cecil had fallen across the gathering.
Cecil had said months before that he wanted to hear something of the Earl’s doings, and Jack had stalled as long as he could. He would do all in his power to protect the Earl, but the report had to sound credible. Jack would very much like to tell the Wizard everything; the good man bore little love for Cecil, especially now that Raleigh had been sent to the Tower. But the Earl could hardly keep a secret. He was always blurting out things others of his rank would know better than to say.
No doubt Cecil hoped Jack could provide evidence that the Earl was part of some Catholic plot, or at least was aware of one. Everyone knew the Wizard was Catholic, but everyone also knew he was not very eager to promote the cause. That much Jack could confirm in a report to Cecil without harm to the Earl. And as a well-born Protestant loyal to the crown, Goodyer would be of no interest to Cecil.
The two men walked briskly past palatial, well-ordered chambers that the Earl seemed not to notice. Up two flights of stairs at the end of a narrow, dank hallway a battered door stood ajar. Ah, yes, this was the place the Earl called the schoolroom. Only once before had Jack been here, four or five years since. Then as now, the pungent musk of tobacco had hung in the air. Harriot had been in the room then, and Raleigh had left only a few minutes before. The talk that night had moved freely from the Twelfth Night revels, to the old queen’s likely successor, to the strange prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation, to the Algonquin language of the Indians Harriot had befriended in Virginia.
Now the Earl pushed open the door, which creaked faintly on its hinges. The room was both large and cluttered. Books lay in careless heaps, some open, some not, some with scraps of paper crammed with notes holding places in the texts. Maps, charts, and drawings of all sizes hung hastily tacked to the walls, in some spots partly obscuring the ones that had been put up days or months or years before. Astrological charts vied with geometric proofs, sketches of strange plants and animals, alchemical ciphers, and architectural plans. The floor and tables stood heaped not only with books and papers but stoppered or open flasks and vials of colored liquids, bowls of herbs, boxes overflowing with partially dismantled machinery of every sort. Still intact were a theodolite and several astrolabes of varying complexity: armillas both equinoctial and solstitial, and a large planisphere with intricate brass rings and movable sights. Four or five chairs and end tables stood at various angles around the big fireplace. A generous pile of split firewood had been heaped into a corner. Someone—Jack guessed it was some thoughtful manservant forbidden to tidy the room too thoroughly—had at least cleared the floor of books and papers in a rough semicircle around the fireplace, which had been fitted with a well-made screen.
Henry Goodyer rose from one of these chairs to greet Jack. Goodyer’s clear, brown eyes shone with the eagerness of a childlike intelligence. Cradled in his hands lay a metal tube with a smaller tube protruding from one end. Goodyer said, “Jack, this device—”
The Earl said, “Wait, we’ll show him.” He rooted through the firewood until he found a small wedge-shaped piece. He took the tube from Goodyer, tucked the wedge under his arm, and with his free hand hastily stacked some books on a long, narrow table beneath a window that looked out onto the river. He put the wedge on top of the stack and held the device to the wood so that the tube angled down toward the river. Then he put his eye to the smaller end and slowly swiveled the instrument. After a few seconds he said “Aha!” and held the tube firmly in place as he stepped aside and said, “Now you look.”
When Jack put his eye to the tube, at first he could see nothing. Then he closed his other eye and shifted slightly to the left. Suddenly the tube was filled with light, and. . . . “Jesu!” He jerked back and tripped over a box, spilling parts from dismantled clocks and watches. From the floor he pointed to the tube and said, “What is that?”
The Earl was laughing so hard there was no hope of getting an answer from him, so Jack looked to Goodyer, who was making some effort to stifle his own laughter as he reached a hand toward Jack to help him to his feet. Jack ignored the offer, quickly picking himself up and peering out the window. All looked as ever it did: the river lay glimmering in the midday sun, boats and barges lazily made their way upstream or down, trees on the far shore rose above their wavering reflections in the water. Laughing and coughing, the Earl collapsed into a chair. Jack put his eye to the small tube again, then pulled away and looked carefully out the window in the direction the device pointed. Yes, there stood a rough-faced boatman on a barge moored to poles driven into the riverbed. It was the man’s toothless face that Jack had seen through the tube. But the image had been much larger—as though the man hung in the air a few feet outside the window. Again Jack looked through the instrument. The monstrously enlarged visage of the man on the barge squinted in the sunlight, scowled, and spat. Jack turned to the Earl, who still sat convulsed in the chair, now coughing uncontrollably.
“Percy,” said Jack, “Harriot made this?”
The Earl nodded and coughed.
“This is. . . .” Jack took a moment to sort his crowded thoughts. The device could be put to a thousand good uses. “A ship’s watchman,” he said, “could descry a pirate’s vessel at a great distance. A general could tell the enemy’s numbers and direct his own troops to advantage.” The Earl nodded again as he began to gain control of his coughing. Wid
e-eyed, Jack said, “A spy could. . . .” Then it hit him. As if stunned, he said faintly, “A man could turn it on the heavens.”
The Earl drew his sleeve across his face to wipe his watering eyes, coughed once more, took a deep breath, and blew it out. His face sobered. “He could. We have.”
“And?”
Goodyer answered: “Blemishes, Jack. The sun has blemishes. And the moon: every child knows her face, botched and mottled in color, like a painted harlot. But it is not just pied; it is also rough, with hills and vales.” He paused to let Jack absorb all this, then said, “And there is this: Jupiter has little moons that fly about him. Four of them.”
“You mean . . . they circle him?”
“They do.”
“Then his crystalline sphere. . . .”
“There is no sphere. There cannot be. Jupiter is not lodged in any sphere, or the moons would shatter it in passing through.”
It was all a wonder. Copernicus, then, must be right: the earth was not at the center of all, surrounded by crystalline spheres. He asked, “Then by what power does all hang in the quintessence?”
The Earl shrugged. “I took it to show Raleigh in the Tower yesternight. He says it means there is no God.”
Jack considered the idea. The new way of thinking about the stars and the planets unsettled the mind somewhat, but Jack knew his own theology ran far deeper than Raleigh’s. “No, it means no such.”
Goodyer said, “That’s just what I was telling Percy when he went down to meet you. You see, Percy, Jack agrees: it does not mean there is no God. It only means the Church of Rome needs better mathematicians, and better watchers of the skies.”
The Earl said, “Well, I know not. But will you smoke another bowl?”
Goodyer put up a hand and said, “No, I have had enough. You know I have unhappy brains for tobacco, and in any case I have stayed too long; I am promised home before sunset. Jack, next time we will talk longer. Come and stay with us. Stay a week or two.”
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