The Queen's Men

by Oliver Clements

  She wonders how much trouble that might have saved. It is incalculable.

  “Right,” she says, “I must go.”

  “You’ll bring her back?”

  He means the horse, but Frommond is gone, out onto the Strand, riding as fast as the traffic on the thronged road will permit, eastward toward Ludgate. The streets are very crowded, with all sorts drifting idly toward the riverbank. Dozens of vendors and hawkers are out, praising their wares, and someone has managed to drive a last flock of sheep across the bridge and is driving them up to Smithfield. She wishes she had brought John to shout out, to get people to clear the way, to mind their backs. When she shouts, people laugh.

  Past Fleet Bridge, through Ludgate, past Saint Paul’s, and then along Cheapside. The crowds toward the bridge are heaving already, and various companies of players are already assembling their makeshift stages along the wayside. She continues eastward.

  “Master Walsingham’s house?”

  “Just along there, dear.”

  She turns up into Seething Lane.

  The porter is there, eating a pie.

  “Tell him it is Jane Frommond. Tell him I have news of Jan Saelminck.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Greenwich Palace, east of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  Dee has become wary of barges, so today he rents a horse and rides through the fields and commons to Greenwich, with Francis the lurcher at the horse’s heels. It is a straight line east, and they arrive a little after noon. On the way he tells Francis how he will endeavor to sell Frobisher’s ore—more properly Walsingham’s ore—for as much as five thousand pounds.

  “I will make fifteen hundred pounds, Francis! Imagine what I can do with that? I will first repay all my—some of my—debts, and then I shall set about buying the rest of the books I need.”

  He has forced himself not to acknowledge that this is theft, and that in assisting de Lannoy he is become a thief, but instead is thinking of owning Petrus Bonus’s Introductio in Divinam Chemiae Artem Integra and Gildas’s De Calamitate Excidio, et Conquestu Britanniae, and Sebastian Münster’s Canones Super Novum Instrumentum Luminarium for a start. These will be expensive and difficult to find, but worth it, he thinks, even if he has nothing left over. If he does have something left over, well then, he will get at least Giulio Cesare Scaligero’s, Exotericarum exercitationum, which is reply to Girolamo Cardano’s encyclopaedic work De Subtilitate and concerns the hidden nature of angels. He would also like to buy something for Jane Frommond. He wonders about approaching Points Hilliard.

  Dee has not been to Greenwich Palace for perhaps five years, but he has strong memories of its mirrored library, and the lawns and gardens that sweep down to the decorative wooden wharf and the river beyond. Today those lawns are covered in tents, of the sort someone imagines King Arthur might sally from to joust with Sir Tristan or Sir Lancelot or any of those other fools, and there is a milling crowd of courtiers and their servants, waiting to greet Her Majesty, and be with her at her side as she progresses up the Thames to Westminster.

  Dee feels very out of place among the extravagantly dressed lords and their ladies, who fill the lawn in their taffetas and silks, in vermilion and peacock blue, with each side seam beaded with pearls, bright feathers nodding in wonderfully pointed hats, the name of which he has temporarily forgotten—hennins, that is it—as worn by Guinevere and her ladies, while he has more or less come straight from his bed.

  But he has had a long week of it, he thinks, first distilling the naft to extract that top layer to provide the essence of Greek fire, and then combining it with all the other ingredients, and finally barreling the results and stowing them in the vaults. It has been nasty, smelly work that has left him stained, strained, and somewhat breathless, and he got home so late last night that he might as well have stayed in the Tower. He certainly looks as if he did: dusty doublet, frayed breeches, and a worn scholars’ cap. His boots are rather fine, it is true, but he wishes he had a sword like all the other men.

  He wonders where Jane Frommond is, but before he can find her, there is a trumpet fanfare, and a great swirling reordering of the crowd as the Queen emerges from her palace to be admired by her assembled courtiers, and seeing her, Dee cannot help feel a twinge of autumnal sadness over the fate of Ness Overbury, and he wonders once again why anyone ever thought that Robert Beale’s intrigue would end even half as well as it has.

  Today Her Majesty is in pale silks, much roped about with pearls and studded in diamonds, and she is accompanied by Sir Christopher Hatton, who is very nearly her match for finery, in silver cloth of gold and vermilion velvet, dressed so that if you look at him with your eyes half closed, you might believe him to be in harness, as worn by King Arthur, had he lived just a hundred years ago. Courtiers bow before her.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “Your Majesty.”

  But she passes them with a fixed absent smile, her eyes boring into Dee, and comes to a stop before him.

  “John Dee,” she says.

  “B—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Your Majesty,” he says and bends to kiss the proffered hand. Hatton looks at him and rounds his eyes, as if he has some message to impart. Dee feels a warm flush of mixed pleasure and pain. The ore! He still wants the ore!

  “You look very smart, John, for our birthday.”

  “I have come as King Arthur,” he tells her, “before he pulls the sword from the stone.”

  “He was a boy,” Hatton says. “Not a dong farmer.”

  “So he was.”

  “But we are given to understand that you have been laboring on our behalf, anyway, John?”

  She means: you certainly look as if you have.

  “And it has been a pleasure,” he lies. “As always.”

  “And so as a token of our appreciation, in a contravention of the usual practice, we gift you this, on our birthday.”

  She signals to a servant, who steps forward with a silver tray on which sits a familiar bundle of cloth: the scrying stone.

  “You are too kind, Your Majesty.”

  He had hoped it would be a sword, or a new doublet. Still. He takes it up in both hands.

  “It once belonged to Nostradamus,” Hatton informs him. “And is of incalculable value.”

  Dee says nothing. Nor does the Queen. She smiles faintly. He is pleased to have it back in any event and bows in gratitude. He will have to return it to Bowes the goldsmith of course.

  “Are you still suffering dreams of fire?” he asks her.

  She admits she is.

  “But that is because all your Greek fire has been stolen,” Hatton snarls theatrically, “from right under Master Walsingham’s nose!”

  Dee steps back. Nearly treads on Francis, who yelps.

  “Stolen?”

  “Along with your apparatus for shooting it at our enemy.”

  “Th-th-that is… bad,” Dee stammers.

  Christ!

  “Who by?” he wonders. “And how?”

  “Her Majesty’s enemies. They broke into the Tower through the hole you blew in the curtain wall,” Hatton says.

  “We are most displeased,” the Queen adds. He can see her eyeing the scrying stone as if to take it back. He puts it behind his back.

  “That was an accident,” he says. “And I believed it had been repaired.”

  “Not well enough, apparently.”

  Well, that is not his fault, of course.

  Elizabeth moves on. Dee finds a drink. He thinks about the Greek fire. He tries to think what its loss might mean. If the Spanish get hold of it, then they will reproduce it a hundredfold and burn Protestant Europe off the map. He can picture Leuven in flames, all those bodies; all those books—carbon black, blistered, the stink of roasting flesh and burning paper. Christ. He can see the Inquisition torching cities indiscriminately, locking the city gates and murdering everyone within, destroying ev
erything. Christ, he thinks, I have created a terrible, terrible thing. I have created Death.

  We must get it back, he resolves. We must destroy it.

  He hurries to the river’s edge where a line of barges is moored to the wharf, each swagged with lengths of linen so that they look like, well, he is not certain. Less like barges. Her Majesty’s is at the back and has had its cabin removed and replaced with an old-fashioned tent, painted with the Queen’s arms, in which she is to sit, presumably, as if in a glade, waiting for her questing knight.

  “Where is Walsingham?” he asks one of the bargemen.

  “Stayed in the city,” he’s told. “Only sent his wife and children.”

  Christ.

  “When are we leaving?” he asks. The man looks at the tide. It is still rising. But they will need to time it right if they are to take the barges upriver and through the bridge: too early and it will be dangerous; too late, and it will be impossible.

  “Have to be soon,” the man says.

  Dee paces.

  “Come on, come on.”

  The shadows shift across the grass, the tide rises. It will be another hour, Dee supposes, and then there will come the moment when the water level is the same height on both sides of the bridge, and boats swing free on their moorings. After that the tide will turn, and run out, and the water on the inland side of the bridge will begin its twice daily buildup, and surge through its arches, and all the moored boats will turn their bows upriver to face the river’s flow.

  He is standing there when Hatton comes, trailed at a discreet distance by guards and servants.

  “Dee,” Hatton greets him. “Before we proceed to Westminster, I want to fix a final price for that ore.”

  Now is not the time, Dee thinks. News of the Greek fire’s theft has driven away all pleasure in supposing himself a rich man. The titles of the books he was going to buy are forgotten. It gives him, he supposes, an edge in the negotiation. But the truth is, now it has come to naming sums and figures, he balks at the thought of perpetrating this swindle on Hatton. It will make him no better than de Lannoy. It will make him a fraud.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Hatton. I am not sure I want to sell it. As you say, if your man de Lannoy can get gold out of it, then why can’t I?”

  Hatton tenses.

  “Do you know what your problem is, Dee?”

  Dee is all ears.

  “Your problem is that you are a third-rate alchemist, puffed up with pride and the sweet-talking blandishments of Cecil and Walsingham to believe yourself first-rate. You are a commoner masquerading as a gentleman, and there is nothing worse than that. You should step aside. Admit you are a failure and let your betters do better.”

  Dee could kiss him.

  “Very well, Sir Christopher,” he says. “You are right. Thank you for that lesson in proper humility. It is time I learned my place. So I will let you have it for—what?—fifty pounds a ton.”

  Even as he says it, he laughs. That is a vast sum of money. Hatton flinches. Dee is careless, really. This is not the time to be worrying about money, about alchemy. Something much more serious is unfolding. Nevertheless, that same slippery look comes into Hatton’s eye as before, when Dee told him about Saelminck being in Ludgate. Christ, he is going to accept it! De Lannoy must have persuaded him he could make him an absolute fortune!

  And he does.

  “Fifty pounds a ton, Dee. Not a penny more.”

  Despite everything, Dee cannot help but grin. He extends his hand to shake and after a moment’s hesitation, as if he risks contagion, Hatton takes it. His hand is wonderfully smooth.

  “I will kick myself in the morning, Sir Christopher,” he says. “And again when I see you plying the river on a golden barge.”

  Hatton laughs with pleasure at the thought.

  “Let us not get ahead of ourselves, Doctor. There is many a slip between cup and lip.”

  “Quite so,” Dee agrees.

  “I will need a week to raise the gold,” Hatton goes on, “and we may complete the exchange in the days subsequent thereafter.”

  Subsequent thereafter! Hatton is pretending to have done this sort of thing before. Dee nods. Just then a signal is made, another trumpet fanfare, some pompous shouting, and the crowd of courtiers moves toward the barges. Dee is assigned a place in the second to last, with Her Majesty’s beautiful barge coming last, as the climax of the procession. Dee sits on a bench at the front of the cabin, behind the eight beefy oarsmen, with Francis curled under his feet, next to a man who—he stops listening after he mentions land in Shropshire. These people, he thinks. At least he has a sword though.

  Come on. Come on.

  Eventually—it seems—the barges are cast off, and out into the current. There are buglers in one who begin their fanfare as they round the bend past Limehouse, and Dee cannot help but peer over to see the house where the marksman Hamilton tried to shoot the Queen that first time. He cranes his head to see if the Queen points it out to Hatton: she does, and despite everything, he—Dee—is pleased.

  But that was then. This is now.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Southwark, City of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  There is nothing of any interest in Rotherhithe save mud and midges, and the threat of bestial violence, and now Samuelson’s bonhomie has worn off and he is become wearingly fierce about the makeshift stages that line the shore. He would pull them all down if he could and throw their occupants in Bridewell, or worse.

  “Shit, that is. How is she going to see that? Fucking playactors. Titting about like twats.”

  A walled-eyed woman from Kent tries to give him some flowers and he barks at her.

  “Let’s go back and see Saint George chop that fucking dragon’s head off.”

  Beale thinks: Christ, why not?

  They walk back along the shore, stopping to peer over their shoulders as the first of the barges in the procession appear around the headland. It is full of trumpeters.

  “Bastards,” Samuelson offers. “Blowing their horns while other fuckers do all the work. Tide’s on the fucking turn, too. Rowing against it’ll only get harder.”

  Beale and Samuelson make their way back past all the breweries and into Southwark and turn up the road toward the bridge. The drawbridge is lowered, of course, and across it is the framework of beams for the house that has been brought over from the Low Countries, which is to be made with treenails and thought to be such a marvel that it is already being called Nonsuch House, in that there is nonesuch in all the world to match it. Today, though, a broad floor of planks has been cunningly constructed in what may be the future servants’ wing, raised up above head height on the west-facing side of the bridge.

  “That didn’t go up this morning?” Beale asks. It looks very solid.

  “The chippies who’ve been working on the house made it,” Samuelson tells him. “Do for a scaffold, wouldn’t it?”

  He mimes a beheading. Behind it is a cloth backdrop on which is painted a simple but effective landscape of sky and distant hills, and in the foreground some gray lumps that are intended to be rocks or boulders perhaps, and on the stage, before these rocks is placed a tent, likewise painted rock gray, in which is an aperture to represent a cave, from which, it is presumed, will emerge—when Her Majesty’s barge comes into view—the dragon. A man in cloth armor, complete with a cloth helm, stands in the forefront of the stage, being mock-heroic and shouting that he is George of England, come to rid the world of a terrible dragon and asking the crowd that is gathered there whether they have seen it. Behind him, through various apertures in the back cloth, a painted dragon on a stick is stuck, bright red, and steadily getting larger, and the crowd cries out that the dragon is behind him, and he whips around to find it gone. Beale can see that everyone there is enjoying themselves, though, of course, it goes on for too long, because the physical dragon—who is probably hidden in the cave—must time
his appearance with the arrival of Her Majesty’s barge in the river below.

  Beale fights his way through the crowd to the east side of the bridge and peers over heads and shoulders down the length of the river toward the Tower, where the mass of barges—perhaps twenty of them—are now rowing with the wavering tide in a broad arrowhead, with the Queen’s barge coming last.

  “Where is the dragon?” cries the actor onstage, swishing his sword. “Has anyone seen my dragon?”

  “Behind you!” the crowd roars.

  It is only then that Beale wonders how Her Majesty will ever be able to see the performance, if the stage is set on the west side of the bridge, facing west, while she is coming from the east? They must know she will never turn around to watch it, mustn’t they?

  Then why?

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  City of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  Dee has so offended the minor lord from Shropshire that he is no longer being spoken to, and he prefers it that way, sitting mute, hearing the bells and watching the Tower come into view with Francis asleep under his feet, even though they—the feet—are jiggling with impatience. “Come on. Come on,” he keeps whispering. He needs to be back. He needs to find Walsingham.

  He has the scrying stone cupped in his hands. He cannot stop glancing down at it, and whenever he does, he experiences the strange sensation of having something drawn out of him, or up in him, from some depths. It is both physical and spiritual, a sort of summoning forth, but just when he thinks whatever is being summoned forth will come forth, the feeling dies, and he is left staring at a shiny stone. It seems as if he cannot commit completely, or he cannot get the stone to commit completely. He is on the outside of something, among its outer rings, he feels, but of what? What lies at the center? Perhaps a barge, surrounded by fools, is not the ideal place for the stone’s effective use.