Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  “Would that I could.”

  “Well, write then.” Jack promised he would. To the Earl, Goodyer said, “No need to see me down. I know the way.”

  When Goodyer had left, the Earl said, “So you think Copernicus was right.”

  “I suppose so, yes. Well, we all suspected it. And Goodyer is right too: the problem is not with Copernicus but the Mother Church.”

  “Yes, there are many problems with the Mother Church. Many problems. But . . . one does not get to choose his mother.”

  Seeing his opening, Jack said, “I have felt of late the pain of separation from my mother.” That much, at least, was true.

  “Then you. . . . Wait: are we talking about your mother Elizabeth Heywood Donne, or your . . . ecclesiastical mother?”

  “Both.”

  “Then go back to her, Jack; she will welcome you. Whichever mother we’re talking about.”

  “I intend to do precisely that.”

  “Precisely which?”

  “Precisely both: rejoin the Church of Rome and rejoin my mother Elizabeth, whom I have not seen these several years.”

  The Earl beamed as he rose from his chair. “Jack Donne, a Catholic again! Well, I knew. I knew one day you’d. . . . Did I not say this very thing to you? I knew one day, one day you would come home.”

  Jack returned the Earl’s embrace, doing his best to disguise his queasy sense of betrayal. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Ah: brave tidings, these. Careful, though. I will. . . . Must be careful. Protect you if I can. But. . . . Spies everywhere.”

  “You’re right. Spies are everywhere. Whether my action be wise, perhaps only God can say.” He thought it best to change the subject back to the optic tube. “But this device: there is no telling where its uses might end.”

  “Yes. No telling. Harriot says he has written to the Tuscan Galileo in Florence. Sent him drawings of the instrument. And more stars. Harriot says he has seen stars in the black void, stars invisible to the eye. Think of it, Jack: new stars—new worlds, maybe—hang in the firmament.”

  “New worlds. . . .” Jack fingered his beard and took a few slow steps along a path through the room’s clutter. He said, “Who knows of this?”

  “None but the three of us. Harriot, you, and me. Oh, and Raleigh.”

  “And Galileo. You said Harriot had written to Galileo.”

  “Ah, yes. Galileo. I forgot.”

  “And Goodyer.”

  “Of course. Goodyer.”

  Jack said firmly, “Percy, that makes six already. Can you not see that this thing poses a threat to us all? Catholics especially. Already Cecil wants us dead. Already King James has betrayed us. We do not want to give them cause to move against us. Do you not see the danger?”

  The Earl looked unconvinced but said, “I suppose. . . .”

  “You must say nothing of this thing: tell no one else. And warn Raleigh and Harriot not to speak of it. I will write to Goodyer. I wonder I did not smell it from the start. Already men murmur you hold a School of Night within these walls. Some whisper that you—and Raleigh—are atheists.”

  The Earl lifted his palms as if his innocence were self-evident. “I am no such.”

  “I know. But that matters nothing. Do you not see? Cecil, or some other enemy, will say this instrument offers proof that you are.”

  The Earl scowled. “Cecil. But for Cecil, Raleigh would walk free.” The Wizard looked sadly at the device and after a moment slumped back into his chair and said, “You are right, I suppose.”

  Jack turned a chair to face his friend’s and sat. “Tell Harriot to write again and warn Galileo.”

  The Earl pursed his lips, then nodded. “You are right. As usual.” He leaned forward, and his face regained some of its eagerness. “But Jack: how can a man hide this? We draw the very heavens near to us!”

  “We will not hide it. We cannot—not for long. Only, we must take care how and when to reveal such a thing. Cecil is ever watchful, ever crafty.” Jack paused a moment and said, “I myself might be a spy, employed by Cecil to claim I would rejoin the Church of Rome.”

  The Earl dismissed the idea with a snort. Jack continued, “And the King! You must know this king has whimsies in him: superstitions and fretsome irks. Where a man is called the Wizard Earl—a Catholic man—the Scots king will suspect dark magic.”

  The Earl shrugged as if to say I know, but what can I do? From the table beside him he picked up a rounded, flat-bottomed flask of greenish glass. A narrow pipe angled off near the top. Next to the pipe the Earl had fixed a small basin, hardly bigger than Jack’s thumb. The Earl had lined the bottom of the little basin with fine wire mesh. Another slender pipe descended from a hole beneath the mesh into the murky water that half-filled the flask. The Earl put the first pipe to his lips and inhaled, sending bubbles through the water from the bottom of the second pipe. “You see?” As the Earl grinned, his livelier eyebrow darted even higher than usual. “One takes in the air but not the water. The water cools the smoke. Doesn’t burn the throat, the lungs.”

  “What smoke?” Jack asked.

  “Ah!” From a box on the floor beside his chair the Earl pulled a broad, brown leaf, tore off a piece, and stuffed it into the little basin. Then he picked up a long pair of tongs that had been propped against the fireplace. He moved the screen, stirred through the ashes until he found a small ember, pulled it out with the tongs, and dropped it in with the tobacco. As the leaf smoldered, the Earl inhaled some of the smoke and passed the flask to Jack, who took in a deep lungful. The scent of the smoke pleased, but Jack’s nose, throat, and lungs rebelled. He stifled the urge to cough. His eyes watered, and he felt light-headed. As he passed the basin back to the Earl, Jack sneezed.

  “Raleigh . . . the Indians, the old ones,” the Earl said. “Great restorative, tobacco. In Virginia. Raleigh has seen it. Cures everything. The Indians, the wisest of them. Only the old, wise ones are allowed to smoke it. Some of them, Raleigh told me this: never get sick. He has seen it. The wise ones. With his own eyes. Some are so wrinkled he says they must be two hundred years old.”

  The Earl scraped the flask’s ashes into the fireplace, loaded the little bowl with tobacco again and said, “Let us smoke to your salvation. Bosom of the Mother Church. Home. They do this in the Indies. Virginia too. Glad occasions like this, and solemn ones. The Indians.”

  They passed the flask twice more before Jack said, “Not three days since, I spoke of my resolve with a priest of the old faith. A great help and a comfort he proved. He asked me, then, if I knew the whereabouts of one Guido. He seemed to think it was a matter of some import.”

  The Earl’s arching eyebrow fell as he considered the matter. “Ah, Guido. . . . His Christian name, is it, this Guido?”

  “I know not. The priest did not say. Or would not.”

  The Earl leaned forward in his chair as he asked, “Which priest? Most of them I know.”

  Jack’s left hand began to tremble slightly, unaccustomed as he was to this lying to a friend. Or maybe the trembling was an effect of the smoke. He was a little queasy, lightheaded, unsure he could think quickly. So he named the first priest who came to mind: “John Gerard.”

  “Ah. The Jesuit that escaped. In London again, is he? Tall man? Rides a horse like he was born to it? With the Dowager, last I knew. Falcon. Beautiful. Back again, is he?”

  “When he heard my confession, yes. Dowager, did you say?”

  “What? Oh, Eliza Vaux, I thought. Dowager of Harrowden.”

  “Ah. Of course.” So Father Gerard was, or had been, in Northamptonshire with Eliza Vaux. Jack had to tread carefully here. He put his right hand on top of his left to still the faint tremor.

  The Earl showed no sign of suspicion. “But again. Welcome home, Jack. Bosom. Bosom of the Mother Church.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Earl sat back in his chair. “The Netherlands, I thought he was.”

  Puzzled, Jack asked, “Father Gerard is in the Netherlands?”


  “No, no,” said the Earl. “Guido. Guido. . . . What’s his family called? By God’s bodykins, I have forgot it. I know of only one Guido. Voss, or Foss, or. . . . Well, I know of one such. Fights in the Netherlands. Englishman, but fighting for the Spanish, not the English. Where I heard that, I cannot. . . . I think Stanley mentioned him in a letter. Or. . . .” He ended with a shrug.

  So some English Guido served in Sir William Stanley’s army, as Cecil had said he might. Surely this was the man Cecil wanted found, fighting his own countrymen after Stanley’s defection to Spain and the Spanish Netherlands.

  They smoked another flask of tobacco. “I have something to ask,” Jack said. The Earl waited for him to continue. “An old widow I know, one who showed me great kindness in my youth, a good Catholic: the pursuivants have bled her dry, and now she spends her days begging at the Savoy.”

  The Earl looked pained. “Why do they . . . ? They do themselves more harm than good. Much more of this . . . they’ll rebel. The people will rebel.”

  “Sometimes I think Cecil wants a rebellion so he can have a few thousand heads to crack.”

  The Earl nodded. “And crack them he would. Blood in the streets.”

  The men talked on until a well-dressed servant entered with the news that the evening’s guests had arrived. “Guests?” asked the Earl. “I’m not expecting any. . . . Who?”

  The servant spoke without surprise, as if used to the Earl’s lapses in memory. “The Count of Villa Mediana and his lady, my lord.”

  The Earl winced. “Oh. Yes. Evening with. . . . A trudge. Like a trudge through the mud. Jack, tell Lawrence here.”

  “Tell him about an evening with the Count? I don’t—”

  “No, your widow, of course. Tell him how to find your widow at the Savoy. She will be provided for.”

  “Oh. I thank you.”

  The Earl waved away Jack’s thanks and put on the exaggerated accent of a stiff Spanish courtier: “I am the Count of Villa Mediana, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”

  Jack laughed, and the servant looked as if he wanted to.

  In his own voice the Earl said, “And his wife! The evening will drag itself sore. Hours. Cannot subject you to it, Jack. But come below to meet them. Then you can escape.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Dressed in soggy finery and seated on a magnificent Friesian war horse, Sir Walter Chute led the way through the rain along the muddy road to Harrowden Hall. A mile or two back, one of Chute’s little jennets had begun to show signs of going lame, so Jack now plodded along beside the pony. Burr’s mare was so small and sway-backed the lanky old servant’s feet hung within a few inches of the ground. “Master Jack,” said Burr, “once more I ask: allow me to change places with you. It is unbecoming for a servant to ride while his master walks.” Having already settled the matter, Jack gave a slight shake of his head and trudged on in silence until Burr added, “Or at least allow me to dismount this . . . this noble steed and walk beside you.”

  In no mood for negotiation, Jack said only, “The mud is thick, and you are old.”

  Burr considered the matter. “The former is evident by the sucking sound of your boots, and the latter I cannot deny. I must be almost as old as this venerable flop-eared beast I ride.”

  Chute turned his chubby, boyish face to them and said cheerily, “You both may ride. Jack, your little nag but feigns. I think she is not truly lame.”

  Jack said, “I think she is.”

  “Ah, well,” Chute said airily.

  The journey had only begun, and it was most like to last month upon month. Already the absence from Anne and the children seemed somehow to have taken a life of its own. It was a blind, unthinking, unhurried beast, gnawing its way into all but a few of Jack’s thoughts; respite was rare. Already he longed to go home.

  What would Anne be doing now? Her duties to the children would have pulled her from her torpor soon after he left, her tears spent and her spirits tractable. Her unborn child would move within her, perhaps stirring her into remembrance that Jack’s temporary absence spelled the best hope for the growing family’s lasting support. Constance and Little Jack, even in their petulant demands, would prove a blessing in distracting their mother from her sorrow.

  The three men and their three beasts plodded on. After an hour they rounded a bend, and Harrowden Hall rose before them, its grounds looking unkempt but its honey-colored stone glistening in the rain. Finding no footman at the main door, they followed a path to the back of the house, where the large stables offered shelter. They saw no one, but from somewhere in the shadows came the sound of a hammer. When Chute’s big horse snorted and pawed the ground, the hammering stopped. From the shadows emerged a short, bandy-legged man with a ring of coarse silver hair around a bald spot so cleanly circular it made him look tonsured. He calmly watched the strangers through steel-gray eyes, taking their measure. If he was suspicious he was placidly so, as though the truth would be revealed to him if he but waited for it. Perhaps only fifteen or twenty years older than Jack, the man was already lined with the creases of old age. The face made Jack think of a high tor carved by the wind for age upon age, the sculpted folds etched by neither great joy nor great pain: no more than the harrowed bark of an oak grew from joy or pain within the tree. The sinews in the man’s arms looked as if they wielded strength all out of proportion to his size.

  As he dismounted, Chute said, “Oats for my horse, my good sirrah, and hay for the others.” The gray-eyed man did not move. “Oats, I say,” Chute continued irritably. “Here, take the reins.” The man made no move to take the reins. His voice faltering, Chute added, “My good. . . .”

  “Your good sirrah. Is that what I am, then?” The tone was serene, with a touch of Welsh in the accent.

  “Forgive my friend,” Jack said. “We are all of us, man and beast, wet from the ride.”

  The man nodded. “That I can see.”

  “Our business here is with the Dowager,” Jack continued. “We would thank you for any help you might provide our animals.” The bandy-legged Welshman reached out a hand for the little nag’s reins, and Jack led the pony two or three steps forward.

  His brow creased in concern, the Welshman knelt and put his hand to the pony’s left foreleg. “Warm,” he said. “She’ll want a poultice of comfrey and vinegar on this fetlock. You won’t be riding her for a few days.”

  His face flushed, Chute said, “My good man, she is my horse, as are these others. I shall be the judge—” Jack held up a hand, and Chute fell silent. Burr could not suppress a little smile.

  “We would be grateful,” Jack said to the man. “My name is John—or Jack, if you like—Donne. This is Sir Walter Chute and this, Timothy Burr.”

  The leathery little man eyed all three before saying, “Donne. A Welsh name, is it not?” When Jack nodded, the man said, “There are Donnes ’round Swansea still. An old family, and a good.”

  “Distant cousins,” Jack said. “My branch lived in Rhyl before King William’s time.”

  The bandy-legged man smiled a little, the lines on his face gathering around his eyes. He said simply, “Rhyl,” as if he missed a place long ago left behind.

  “We Chutes have always been English,” Sir Walter said as he removed his gloves, “and we always will be. None of your Irish, Scots, nor Welsh in these veins.”

  “Well,” said the little man, “your English mother must think you the very pink English apple of her pink English eye.”

  Chute looked at the bandy-legged man warily, but the Welshman’s expression betrayed nothing. Burr, on the other hand, let out a snort that he tried to disguise with a cough. “Well,” said Chute, “I note that we have told you our names, but you have not told us yours.”

  “So you have,” said the bandy-legged man, “so you have.” As he began to unsaddle Jack’s pony, he said, “My name. . . . Business with the Dowager, do you say? Business of what sort?”

  Before Chute could begin his reply, Jack cut him off with
a glare, then pulled a letter from his pocket. “We bring greetings,” Jack said, “from the Wizard Earl.”

  The Welshman’s features softened. “Ah. That, I think, will sort with Lady Vaux. How fares the Earl?”

  “Well, when I left him,” Jack said.

  The man extended a hand to Jack and said, “Owen. Nicholas Owen.” The name sounded somehow familiar, but Jack couldn’t think where he had heard it. Owen’s handshake was strong, his fingers callused. He shook Burr’s hand, too, then turned to Chute and hesitated. “Something too rough for so fine-veined a gentleman, I fear.”

  Chute blushed a little as he tried to think of a reply. After a few seconds he said, “Well, I care not. I can be as hale a fellow as the next, I warrant.” He reached toward Owen, who took his hand and clasped it briefly, then went on unsaddling the horses. Jack and Burr helped while Chute strolled about, humming a tune.

  When the horses were stabled and feeding, Owen led the three through the drizzling rain to the mansion’s back door. Once inside, he said, “The kitchen here is warmest, and I’ll warrant the best place to dry yourselves.” With well-feigned concern he nodded in Chute’s direction and said, “If, that is, Sir Walter here does not think it stooping.”

  Chute glanced around the kitchen as if sizing it up for inspection and said brusquely, “No, no, this will serve.”

  Owen added, “Our ways here in the country, as you can see, are homelike. Get yourselves comfortable, then—beer in the firkin there—and I’ll tell Lady Vaux you’re here.” Jack gave Owen the Earl’s letter to take to the Dowager, and the three settled into the warm, strong, yeasty beer.

  In a few minutes the Dowager appeared: a large woman with a broad jaw, iron-gray hair, and one eye perpetually squinted. She gave the three men a shrewd, sharp appraisal. So formidable did the woman appear that Jack imagined she could easily command men. The look explained what people as far away as London had heard: Eliza Vaux was the one being on earth who could cow her late husband, legendary for his fits of rage. Anyone else who suffered George Vaux’s wrath would come away hurting. But when Eliza told him what to do, he had obeyed, often without protest.