Alchemy, p.6
Alchemy, page 6
I dropped my gaze to the fire again. It sounded too much like the French court under King Henri; I had been driven from there, too, by determined Catholics who feared my ideas would lead the king away from God and the Church.
‘I suppose the same is true of every monarch in Europe – except Philip,’ I said. ‘These are the times we live in. So those Spaniards who attacked me—’
Hajek held up a hand for silence; I stopped, as we both became aware of a soft purring sound from behind us. He nudged me, nodding with an indulgent smile towards the chair where Besler had fallen asleep in an improbable position, the way children do, gently snoring with his head lolling in mid-air.
‘We should find him a bed,’ Hajek said. ‘You must be tired too. We can talk more when you’re rested. I’ll ask Greta to make your rooms ready.’
He left, and I shook Besler by the shoulder. He jerked awake, eyes wide. ‘What about the Spaniards?’ he said, as if the conversation had never been interrupted.
‘Never mind them for now,’ I said. ‘Bring our bags up and get a good night’s sleep for once – we’re safe here.’
He rose to his feet, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Hajek showed us to our rooms; I was to have Dee’s, in his absence, since he had been given the finest guest chamber. Besler was put in a small garret on the top floor. He didn’t complain; only fell on to the bed without another word. I was secretly delighted, and fought to contain my impatience as I looked around my quarters. If Dee had been forced to leave in a hurry, he might have left behind papers or letters that would offer some clue to his disappearance, or more detail about the warning he had sent to Walsingham. It occurred to me that Hajek may well have thought of that already, but it was also probable that the physician did not know what to look for.
Greta brought hot water and clean linen; I had begun undressing when she returned again with fresh candles and logs for the fire, and a third time with extra fur covers for the bed in case the night turned colder; she hung by the door, eyes lingering on the doublet in my hand.
‘I can take that down and brush the dirt from it if you like, sir,’ she said. ‘Looks like you’ve been rolling down the street.’
‘Something like that.’ I smiled, but my expression remained wary. Her tone was more carefully respectful than before; that might be because I was now approved by her master, or because she was hoping to get her hands on my clothes and whatever they contained. ‘There’s no need to trouble yourself. It will clean up better in the morning when the mud has had a chance to dry.’
‘Then I can hang it in front of the kitchen fire with the rest of the laundry,’ she said, still pleasant, eager to help. ‘It’s kept stoked all night. No trouble at all.’
‘It will be fine here.’ I smiled harder. ‘But I thank you for the offer.’
We looked at one another a moment longer, before she bobbed her head and backed away.
‘As you wish, sir. Give you good night.’
The door clicked softly behind her. I listened for the sound of her footsteps retreating along the landing, but heard nothing except the tell-tale creak of a floorboard. I allowed myself to exhale slowly as I sat on the bed, noticing that my hands were still trembling. Was it merely because I was shaken by my encounter with the Spaniards that I suspected even the housekeeper of treachery? I raked my fingers through my hair and mastered myself; the wine had brought the full weight of my tiredness crashing over me and I could barely keep my eyes open. But I could not allow myself the luxury of sleep yet.
Under the window that looked out over Bethlehem Square stood a table piled with books that Dee had evidently used as a writing desk, and tucked beneath it a chair, which I carried as silently as possible to wedge against the door, as there was no key to lock the room from the inside. I crouched to squint through the keyhole, half-expecting to see Greta’s eye peering back at me from the other side, but as far as I could make out the corridor was empty. She must have perfected the knack of appearing and disappearing without a sound, like the best servants. I rummaged in one of the bags Besler had brought up earlier and found a spare kerchief, which I stuffed into the keyhole, to make certain, before I emptied the purse Overton had given me on to the bed and counted the contents. One hundred thalers – the equivalent of twenty-five gold sovereigns, or twenty-five English pounds. A significant amount, suggesting that Walsingham thought this mission would be costly or of long duration, perhaps both. I wondered if Overton had paid it out of his own coffers with the promise of reimbursement – that was often Walsingham’s way, his network of informers and espials scattered across Europe so unofficial that Queen Elizabeth rarely acknowledged our existence, much less provided a budget from her treasury. I scooped the coins back into the purse and tucked it under the mattress, relieved that it would at least cover the costs of my journey from Wittenberg.
Finally I brought two candles over to the desk and took out the letter Overton had passed under the table at the Spider, now somewhat creased and spotted from my brush with the Spaniards. The seal was unmarked; as I broke it open, I realised how long I had been holding my breath.
The writing inside brought a pang of memory so sharp it was almost painful; rows of letters, numbers and signs in the small, precise hand of Thomas Phelippes, Walsingham’s scribe and master of ciphers. The mere sight of a code, like a lock waiting to be picked, seemed to collapse time, jerking me back to those years in England in a rush of sensation that only now made me acknowledge how much I missed it. Not just the place, but the work; that constant prickle of danger at the back of the neck, the sense of being at the secret centre of the war between freedom and tyranny that was being fought in the shadows all over the continent.
I rubbed my eyes; perhaps that was too grand a description of what I had done for Walsingham. But I could not deny, faced with this glimpse of a life I thought I had turned my back on, that I had been fooling myself for the past two years, thinking I could be content solely with the life of the mind. The challenge implicit in those rows of apparently meaningless characters spiked my blood like strong drink; my pulse quickened as my eyes skated over the paper, searching for patterns to be shaped into meaning. I had felt a sense of purpose when I was working for Walsingham, that was it; though he had drawn me into a world of mistrust and dissembling, he had also made me feel I was part of a greater cause, and the value of that to a man who lives in exile, belonging nowhere, dependent on the whims of others – it cannot be underestimated. It was a feeling I grasped at when I wrote, striving to set down what no one had dared say about the universe and our place in it, and yet in the solitude of my study it had always eluded me.
I supposed Dee had felt the same. I wondered how long he had been sending intelligence to Walsingham. The two men had known each other for decades; perhaps this had been the whole covert motive for Dee’s journey to Prague. So what could he have stumbled upon now that had prompted such an urgent response from England? Hajek’s mention of Dee’s enemies had troubled me further; if conservative Catholic emissaries from the Vatican and the Spanish court had taken it upon themselves to keep the Emperor from heretical influences, that did not bode well for my chances of patronage, and the last thing I needed now was to find myself in the sights of Rome again.
I smoothed out the paper and rolled my shoulders, cursing the cracks of my joints and the ache in my muscles. Besler was right, damn him; I was past my youth, no matter how I might try to deny any waning of my powers. The intellectual thrill of a puzzle like the cipher before me was one thing; the prospect of deliberately putting myself in the way of paid brawlers like those Spaniards was a different game altogether. I retrieved the cipher Walsingham had sent me for Dee and laid it next to the letter Overton had brought. But as I bent over the table, my eyes flicking from one to the other, it struck me how few papers there were in the room.
Dee was no fool, of course; at least, not in matters of security. So much of his work was potentially incriminating that he had learned not to leave it lying around for curious eyes, as Hajek had mentioned; if he made sure to carry with him the notebooks detailing his seances, I guessed that any secret correspondence from England would be guarded with equal care. Whatever letters he might have received from Walsingham would have been quickly committed to memory and destroyed. But Dee was messy, too, or had been when I knew him. At his home in Mortlake, every surface had been a riot of scribbled notes and scattered sheets with fragments of ideas, snatches of conversation and esoteric diagrams jotted at random; it seemed obvious to me now, looking around the room, that it must have been cleared since he vanished. By whom – Hajek? If so, why? Was he searching for clues to Dee’s disappearance, keeping his guest’s writings safe, or had he passed them to some other hands?
Besides a small pile of books on the desk, there were only a few leaves of blank paper; any letters Dee had written here had vanished with him. I stood with my fingertips resting on the topmost page, my vision blurring with tiredness, when I realised that I could feel indentations on the surface of the paper. I held it up to the candle and made out faint lines; this sheet must have been under one Dee had written on, and he had pressed hard enough with the quill for the markings to have come through. I grabbed the poker and edged a piece of charcoal out of the fire; when it was cool to the touch, I rubbed it lightly over the paper and lines of script began to appear as white marks. At first I could not make sense of the symbols, until I turned the paper and realised I was looking at Hebrew characters. This was not so unusual: Dee, like many of the more open-minded Christian scholars in Europe, could read and write Hebrew fluently and believed there was much to be gained from studying the texts of Jewish mystics and adepts, but as I worked to interpret the words (many of the letters were too faint to make out clearly), I realised that I was looking at a letter. It began:
Most Worthy Maharal,
I write in haste, to warn you of [here there were a couple of words I could not read] to come. For I fear our enemies suspect, if not all then part. Vile slanders are spread against me, the which, if they be believed, will mean banishment or prison, though I fear it would go worse for you and your [again, illegible] if we are discovered. I send this by way of B; if anything should happen to me, it will fall to you to tell him of the danger to his—
I flipped over the sheet urgently but there was no more; either Dee had begun a new piece of paper or he had been interrupted. My thoughts scrambled to catch up. So Dee had believed himself in serious danger – a fear his subsequent disappearance seemed to justify. Who were these enemies he spoke of, and what did they suspect? ‘Vile slanders’ – could he mean the public denunciation by Ziggi Bartos? Hajek thought that Dee had fallen foul of the Catholic authorities; it would appear that, whoever these enemies were, they were also a threat to the intended recipient of the letter, who – given the Hebrew – must be a fellow scholar or, more likely, someone in the Jewish quarter. Who was Maharal? A name or a title? Either way, it was not one I had encountered before. And who was this B? Bartos? Bruno? Had he been waiting for me to arrive and deliver this letter for him? Surely not; it had been written at least three weeks ago, before he had any knowledge of my coming. And ‘tell him’ – who was the recipient supposed to warn of danger? The mysterious B? If Dee had meant Bartos, it was too late for warnings.
I stowed all the papers in the hidden pocket of my doublet and sat heavily on the bed to unlace my breeches. My mind was too fogged with tiredness to attempt the deciphering of Overton’s letter; I decided to work on it in the morning when I had slept and could think more clearly. I must also try to find this Maharal, the person Dee had been writing to. There was no way of knowing whether he had finished the letter and sent it, or if he had been interrupted in the writing, and who else might have seen it; either way, it appeared that at least three people were potentially in danger, and the nature of that threat might lead me to John. I would go to the Jewish quarter and make discreet enquiries.
I snuffed the candle and lay down with the blanket pulled up to my ears. With such a swarm of questions buzzing around my head, I feared sleep would elude me, but I must have dozed because I was startled awake by the clatter of hooves on the cobbles under the window and a hammering at the door. I sat up, straining to listen, but I could only catch a murmur of male voices and then a thunder of footsteps on the stairs followed by a knock at my own door. I hesitated a moment then swung my legs out of bed; wincing at the chill, I shifted the chair out of the way before opening it a crack. Hajek stood on the landing, fully dressed, a cloak in his hand.
‘I’ve been summoned to the castle,’ he said. It was so cold his breath made clouds in the air. ‘There’s news in the Bartos business. Get your clothes on. Clean ones, if you have them.’
‘What? Why?’
‘You’re coming to meet the Emperor.’
‘But – I’m not prepared,’ I said, drawing a hand across my stubble.
‘Doesn’t matter. He’s heard of your arrival and he thinks you might be of use.’ Noting my reluctance, he added, ‘This is an honour, Bruno. I’ve known him to keep credentialled diplomats waiting eight months for an audience, and you’ve not been in the city eight hours. You don’t want to miss this opportunity, trust me. I’ll see you in the yard.’
An honour. Perhaps, though this was not the glorious first encounter with His Majesty that I had envisaged. What could be so urgent that the Emperor had called us out in the middle of the night? I pulled on my breeches and doublet, snatched up my cloak and ran down to join Hajek. It did not feel much like an honour at that moment; in truth, it felt more like a potential trap.
FOUR
I held tight to Hajek’s back as we cantered through the dark streets of Prague with the court messenger leading the way. At the checkpoints each side of the bridge and at the castle gate, the seal he carried allowed us to pass unhindered. We rode under the gatehouse into a broad cobbled courtyard lit by torches, though I could make out only indistinct shadows of buildings on all sides; towering above them, the spire of the great cathedral within the walls. The horses were led away by silent servants the moment we dismounted, and the messenger vanished into the interior. I hurried after Hajek, who was already striding away across the courtyard.
Ahead, a door swung open and we were met on the steps by a slightly built man who exchanged a few words with the physician and, turning, greeted me in Italian with traces of a Mantuan accent.
‘Ottavio Strada,’ he said with a brief bow. ‘His Majesty’s court librarian. I have long wished to make your acquaintance, Dr Bruno – though perhaps not in such circumstances. Follow me, if you please.’
He led us up a flight of stairs, along a corridor and into a well-lit chamber, where I saw that he was around my own age, good-looking with prominent cheekbones and cropped dark hair (no threads of silver in his beard yet, I noted), and carried himself with a nimble, upright grace, like a fencing master. But I was too entranced by the room to dwell long on his appearance. All the walls were painted with bright images illustrating the four elements, a frieze around the upper parts depicting the twelve months of the year and their astrological symbols. I thought I recognised the hand of my countryman Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the profusion of fruit and vegetables, but before I could ask about the paintings, Hajek had drawn closer to Strada with a glance at the far door.
‘How is he?’ Hajek asked, in a low voice.
The librarian grimaced. ‘Greatly disturbed. You know how he can be. Much talk of dark forces. But then His Majesty has had a terrible shock tonight.’
Hajek raised an eyebrow but Strada shook his head. ‘He wishes to tell you of it himself. I hope that you can allay his fears, God knows I have had no success.’
‘Is anyone with him now? Your sister?’
‘Not tonight. I stayed with him myself a little while at first, but he wants no one except you, Thaddeus. And your visitor, apparently.’ He glanced at me with a degree of reserve; I couldn’t tell if he resented my presence, despite his effusive words earlier. ‘I offered to fetch the Lord Chamberlain, but His Majesty insisted on being left alone until you arrived. Go quickly now – I don’t like to think of him being in there unattended with – that.’
‘With what?’ Hajek asked with evident alarm, but Strada only knocked on the far door of the chamber and opened it for us.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the space we entered, but as the door clicked shut behind me and I realised where we were, I exclaimed aloud. A vast, vaulted gallery stretched out before us, tall glass cabinets lining the walls on either side and smaller ones displayed down the centre of the room. Much of it was sunk in shadow; only one wavering bank of candles on each side provided light, most of those already burned down to stumps, but it was enough to discern sculptures, coins, enamelled bowls, exotic musical instruments, astrolabes and stuffed animals, curiously embellished daggers with jewelled hilts and curving blades, shining reliquaries, bright feathers and corals, glowing lumps of amber showing dragonflies preserved perfectly within, bezoars, stones with runic carvings and a row of skulls of all shapes and sizes, animal and human. I snatched up a candle from the nearest rack and held it out to take in this cavern of wonders, the original purpose of our visit almost forgotten.
Like Besler, I had heard reports of the Emperor Rudolf’s Kunstkammer, his extraordinary collection of artistic, scientific and natural curiosities, said to be the greatest in Christendom; unlike my assistant, I counted myself well-travelled and had stepped into the heart of the grandest courts in Europe, so I had not expected to be so quickly rendered speechless by the variety of treasures on display. It reminded me of the chambers of Catherine de Medici, dowager queen of France, though on a much larger scale. I progressed slowly, shielding the flickering light, trying to absorb the extent of the riches amassed here.
