by Lee Carroll
Will watched the driver, whom he was paying a hefty fee to wait for him, tie up his horses and carriage to a wind-weathered timber pinned upright between two paving stones. Then the man returned to his elevated seat and put his chin in his hands, as if preparing to rest in that posture. Will knocked on the front door.
After a few moments, it was opened by a slender man with a gray, triangular beard and auburn mustache. His long face, with deep-set amber eyes and a prominent nose, resembled the sketch of Dee in the pamphlet Guy Liverpool had given him. But there was something penetrating, and condescending, about his gaze that no sketch could communicate. Dee stared at him with interest, but did not extend a hand. As Will continued to return his gaze, the man’s appearance unnerved him. His eyes were intelligent and deep, but also cold, and, in a shadow cast by moonlight, they began to look more yellowish than amber, certainly a pigment he’d never seen in human eyes before. The catlike pupils were so narrow they were almost slits. Will observed that Dee’s skin, despite his age, was relatively free of wrinkles, as if Dee, too, had immortality on his mind and had been making alchemical progress in that direction. Despite his age … but what was his age, anyway? It was hard to tell in this blade-angled moonlight. In any event, Dee was about to close the door and retreat without another word when Will forced himself to break the silence.
“Good evening, Sir Dee,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m—”
“Here to quiz me about Euclid, are you son? I don’t mind the attention, but it’s not fair that Henry Billingsley doesn’t do his share of tending to the public nowadays,” Dee said in a low, meticulous voice. “Oh, well, come in.” Dee stepped back and then ushered Will through a narrow hall into a small, square room, well lit by dozens of candles. The room contained several high-backed, velvet-cushioned chairs, arranged around a long oak table that was unadorned. Perhaps this was a place for an entire group to summon spirits, Will thought, not entirely sarcastically. Dee took a seat at one end of the table and gestured Will to the chair opposite. Will was mulling over what Dee’s Euclid reference could have meant, and weighing the relative risks of confessing ignorance and sitting in lost since. He chose the latter.
Dee grew impatient again. “You’re quite the incurious interviewer, aren’t you, boy? Have you at least got a name?”
“W-W-Will Hughes, sir. My apologies, I’m no expert in Euclid. I’ve heard of him of course and studied a bit of Greek for that matter, but my logical bent is centered on the math of music, as in poetry, and not that of measurement. Except when measuring out sonnets.”
Dee stared at Will as if he’d claimed to be an octopus. His eyes blazed briefly, as though they were made of the finest alchemist’s gold. “So you have not even heard of the new edition of Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Elements with my preface in it?”
The boom in Dee’s voice now could have been the reason some of the stones had fallen off the cottage, Will thought.
“My preface which explains how math can transform England into the center of the world? How it can fill the void left by falsified faith and all manner of superstition, replace it with its own miracles but of logic and reason? How our very faculty of math itself is a miracle worthy of a new scripture?! Speak up, boy! Surely you know of this work that all London speaks of right now, thanks to the great grace of John Day, printer extraordinaire? Countless youth have been coming here recently to question me about my insights, my wisdom. They have become a nuisance in their numbers, but nonetheless I have continued to admit such youth, marking it the cost of my genius. But apparently that’s not the attraction for the great”—Dee seemed to be searching for Will’s name—“Houghton, as you are. And if it’s not, then what is?” Dee glared at Will.
Will vacillated as to the degree of flattery with which to respond, deciding not to claim to have heard of the Billingsley Euclid, let alone this new edition, let alone to have read it. Too much risk of Dee following up with questions. “I come, in all my ignorance, on a different matter, Your Excellency. But surely it takes my breath away that you are so glorious an expert on this geometer as you remind me you are, and yet one of comparable stature in the, pardon the expression, dark arts. It is amazing that one mind can encompass two such areas of genius! And that is the Lord’s truth.”
“‘Dark arts’? What ‘dark arts’? There are none, I assure you,” Dee answered hotly. “There’s only the darkness of the population’s ignorance regarding certain matters, a shameful state I have spent my adult life trying to correct. I shine the light of logic in the darkest of corners. For only by math’s laws of probability can we witness something truly miraculous. If everyone walked on water, would Jesus doing it have been a miracle? Of course not! Singularity makes the miracle! That’s what I do, with sacred math. Prove miracles. What do you do with your gifts—lad?”
“… I am a poet,” Will finally said, uncomfortably, since he lacked a book. Then his expression brightened. “And a prospective trader in stock certificates, for which I have been having a discussion with Sir Guy Liverpool.” Why not say this? “As you know, it was Liverpool who directed me here this evening. But rgent matter for me on this errand, Your Brilliance, is immortality.” Will hoped that Dee would not be offended by such an inventive form of address. “You have a great reputation in this sort of dark affair, as I mentioned, and I thought—”
As if it had taken several seconds for immortality and dark to register, Dee now stood and leaned dramatically toward Will across the table, seeming to elongate an elastic torso halfway along the table length as if he had serpentine powers. “Silence!” Dee shouted, pointing an adamant finger at Will. Will obeyed.
“It’s no dark affair as you blasphemously put it,” Dee said in a tense voice, as though trying to restrain himself from violence. “Immortality is like an alp in perpetual sunshine, a summit to which all of us alchemists aspire. Unfortunately I have not been able to personally reach it, no matter the numbers, incantations, geometries, séances, and charms I have tried, and you will note the mix of methods I cite. But I have not failed for lack of trying.” The force of Dee’s personality was such, Will noted, that he seemed to brag when speaking about failure as much as when referring to success. Then Dee’s expression turned wistful.
“Alas,” he went on, in barely more than a whisper, “in such immortal research, I have recently happened to learn by accident the year of my physical death. Sixteen oh eight, a year even a novice like you can count to meaningfully. So I don’t have forever to work on this intractable problem. Sadly, as you’ve no doubt inferred, I have little to offer you, lad. But innate kindness compels me to query you. How have you wandered into such an interest, which usually arises in the aging, not in reckless youth?”
Will had not planned to convey this information unless absolutely necessary, but he reflected now on how unrealistic a hope anonymity had been.
“Sir, I have had the strange fortune to fall in love with a woman who is of the fey and immortal. Tragically, she can’t or won’t give me the means to transform myself so we can be together forever. I have decided to seek my remedy elsewhere. Without a solution I will go mad!”
Dee retracted slowly to his previous posture, somewhat like a serpent uncoiling back to being at rest. Or a new striking position. Will shook his head, trying to clear the webwork of unnatural impressions from his eyes.
“Who is the woman?” Dee asked sharply.
“I’d prefer not to say.” Will rose from his chair, nerves on guard against a sudden lunge by Dee. “Now that I’ve learned my quest is futile, I’ll—”
“Halt!” Dee commanded. Once again, something in his voice made Will do so. “I said I have sought it in vain, young man. I said nothing of someone else’s quest being futile. All lives and all circumstances are different. I have no way dismissed your entreaty. But we are helpless without a name. The fey are rare now in England, at this late day. I know of only a couple of possible candidates, and they merely rumored. And I cannot make a mund
ane person immortal, any more than a pigeon, or the wind. I need context, circumstance. Provide that, Will Hghes, and perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope. We’ll see.…” Dee made an attempt at a smile, one so suffused with calculation that it made Will shrink back.
But he asked himself what choice he had except to go along with this conniver. Still, he had a dread of mentioning Marguerite by name that he neither understood nor seemed able to conquer. So he started to turn away again, trembling.
“I must go, sir. I—” But glancing back just once, Will froze, as the look the sorcerer (irrespective of his claims to logic) speared him with was as terrible yet magnetic a look as he’d ever beheld.
Dee screamed, in a way that filled Will’s mind and veins until he couldn’t breathe, “What is her name, foul maggot?”
Will gasped for breath and thought he felt his body beginning to decay as if he’d just been murdered, maybe by the knife-edge of the scimitar moon above, he thought feverishly. He felt his body start to turn liquid, then ashen, then foul as a sewer. This sensation forced him to his knees, and he lay full out on the floor as if in imitation of a rancid corpse. He couldn’t help it. Capitulation. The word popped into his thoughts as if a hot sword point inserted there. Only capitulation could bring relief, stop the death spiral. Whatever was left of his reason knew it was all a spell. But this conjurer’s horror, writhed of worm and stench, was too much.
“Marguerite D’Arques,” he whispered, still lying stretched out on the cold and grimy floor.
Then he managed his body back up and into the chair, quivering with a suppressed sob he would not let escape his lips, lest Dee obtain such satisfaction. Will sat in the chair with the self-esteem of a worm. Maybe the king of worms, he thought despondently, maybe the Charlemagne of worms. But still a worm.
“Oh, that’s the name,” Dee said simply, with a calm that infuriated Will. “In that case, all is not lost. No. A simple plan may do. But before I reveal it, let me confess my surprise. I’m not up on the latest news. Isn’t she still entangled with that lout of a poet from Stratford-on-Avon? Which makes you a victim, even one more time over, it would appear? Heh heh. Though your taste in loose women is, of course, no business of mine.”
Will tried not to take too much offense at Dee’s leering tone. After all, he was offering a sliver of hope now.
“That’s over, with the poet,” Will replied calmly enough. “Destiny has brought Marguerite and me together. And I’ll make sure it’s for her entire lifetime, not just mine, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Yes, of course you will, my boy,” Dee clucked sympathetically. “And I’m going to do my utmost to help. I cannot provide any guarantees, but these are more promising circumstances than I initially perceived. Promising!”
Will allowed himself to wonder why, but then he was suddenly beside himself with elation. His emotions were those of a man first told he had a month to live and then told he wasn’t ill. “How soon?”
“Soon enough,” Dee said soothingly. “First there are a couple of practical tasks you must accomplish for me.”
“Such as?”
“I will need a couple of the good lady’s possessions. Her silver box and her gold ring. With them worlds will open. Without them, I’m afraid, all is lost. Do you know them?”
“Just the ring. It has a tower emblem on it. I have seen her wear it, though not often. I don’t know any box.”
“The box will be unmistakable once it’s brought into your presence. It’s silver, with a swirling design, but I don’t need to describe it. You’ll feel it. It opens onto other worlds; it surges with an energy most people never get anywhere near experiencing in their lifetimes. Once you’ve felt the box, you’ll never regret having been in its presence, nor coming to see me tonight either. And possibly your immortality will be just one more meeting with me away!”
“But how will I get these things? Are you asking me to steal them?”
“Well, that’s your challenge. If Marguerite wanted you to be immortal, she’d have already given them to you. Perhaps—I don’t know the woman or what’s inside her psyche—perhaps you’re all the more delectable to her for being fleeting. That would be typical, from a fey point of view.”
Will bristled, but endured the innuendo. What was crucial for him was to get these things and live on forever with his beloved—not to respond to taunts.
“It strikes me, Mr. Will Hughes—and by no means am I asking you to steal or commit any other crime—that if you’ve had the singular fate to be this close to an immortal, and if you’ve made such an impression on me, the great John Dee, that I am willing to try the door to immortality on your behalf, that you’ll have the intrepidness to bring me these items. Otherwise I will be disappointed in you, promising youth that you otherwise seem to be.”
“What will I owe you,” Will asked curtly, put off by such flattery while not being certain of its motive, “for this profound service of yours, if it happens?”
“Owe?” Dee raised his eyebrows. “The joy of immortal love is more than enough coinage for me, I assure you. I would not dream of something so crass as charging for your transformation!”
Will was not clear as to motive here either, but when he saw the opportunity to seal such a bargain, he took it. He walked to Dee’s end of the long table and shook his hand. Dee’s grip felt feeble, but the expression in his eyes crackled with intensity, as if he were flush with a lightninglike excitement. Will waited for Dee to escort him back to the front door, but then Dee indicated that Will should exit alone. “I’m feeling a bit old tonight,” he told Will. “Mentally, your visit has been a tonic for me, but physically I’m afraid it has been no help. But I look forward to your return with those items.” Dee turned away and vanished into the dark interior of the se.
Will, feeling a vague dread despite his new hope, perhaps at the idea that he had uplifted the likes of John Dee even for a moment, walked back out into a night in which the chill sharpness of moonlight was making the carriage horses shiver. Or maybe they were feeling the same dread he was. But after waking the driver with a firm clasp of his shoulder, and climbing back in the carriage, renewed hope bloomed again and distracted Will from dread. The hope was a dark flower, petals of black, but it seemed to be irrigated by his blood and to grow straight toward the moon. And toward all the immortal days to come.
15
The Wild Hunt
The hounds herded me down onto a long, wide path bordered on the right by a canal and on the left by a straight line of trees, and then they left me, bounding down the avenue as if they’d sensed prey. I could hear their baying long after they vanished in a cloud of dust at the end of the long path. Then I was alone in the moonlit woods.
At least it wasn’t as dark as it had been in the Luxembourg. No fairy shroud lay over the forest. Instead, bright moonlight illumined everything, turning the dusty footpath into a long, broad silver ribbon. Nor had the trees broken rank like the ones in the Luxembourg had. They stood like sentinels alongside the allée, straight and dispassionate as palace guards. The wind that now came bowling down the path barely rustled their leaves.
That was strange, I thought, stopping to listen. I could hear the wind, but the sound it made wasn’t the thrashing of leaves; it was hoofbeats approaching fast, coming straight toward me even though I couldn’t see anything ahead but a flurry of dust …
I scrabbled to the side just as the dust rushed past me, the sound of hoofbeats hammering in my ears. Then they were gone. I followed the path to the end and crossed to another path that ran parallel. The whole woodland was cut into long, straight avenues—not a trackless wilderness at all. When I was halfway down the next path, I heard the hoofbeats again, welling up behind me. I turned and tried to stand my ground, but at the last minute I ducked to the side again, my heart racing to the staccato beat of the pounding hooves. Instead of retreating this time the sound stayed with me, as if it had lodged in my brain, a maddening tattoo.
I took off into
the trees, trying to stay off the paths, which I saw now were just great big runways for the hunt to barrel down. But I wasn’t alone under the trees. Something—or some things—were moving along the ground, stirring the dry leaves with soft, padded paws and hot breath. Hounds. And their prey. People were in the woods, stragglers from the square who hadn’t returned to their hotels when the bells tolled midnight, but who had instead been lured into the woods … and into the hunting grounds. The woman in Breton shirt and capris ran past me, leaves and twigs clinging to her disarrayed hair and a wild, unseeing look in her eyes. She was pursued by the invisible hounds out onto the broad path where she took off running on bare feet. A cloud of dust pursued her. I stared at it, trying to make out what was inside it … and then wished I hadn’t.
Amid the horses and hounds were creatures with cloven feetued horns that were not quite human and not quite beast. Hair covered their haunches and long tails, but their chests and faces were bronzed bare. Most awful were the expressions on their faces. They grinned and grimaced and salivated, leering after the woman in capris in a way that combined hunger and lust in a queasy mix. Their pupils were vertical, oblong slits—like goats’ eyes. Satyrs. I recognized them from pictures and statues, but these obscene creatures were nothing like the prancing goatmen of classical art. These were monsters.
When the dust ball caught up with the woman, I lost sight of the individual creatures inside it. Cries came from the mêlée that sounded like a mix of the peacock calls I’d heard earlier that night and snarling dogs. When the dust cleared, nothing was left. Not the horrible creatures of the hunt or the innocent woman who had fallen victim to it.
