The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman

kinship with Mistress Blanche would one day prove an asset, and it was true that the Queen’s most senior gentlewoman had known Elizabeth since she was a babe. Had access, more than anyone, to the innermost sanctum.
    I said. ‘
You
think I should keep a distance.’
    My mother frowned at such disrespect, but Blanche’s expression remained constant.
Constant
was Blanche’s watchword.
    ‘I merely suggest,’ she said, ‘that it were better for the Queen if your dealings were to remain discreet. You tend to question things too much, Dr Dee.’
    ‘One of my failings.’
    ‘You must excuse my son, Mistress Blanche,’ my mother said quickly. ‘I sometimes think that John is only ever half in this world and half in some dark place of his own complicated imaginings. Not at all healthy, to my thinking.’
    I pulled up a stool, my complicated imaginings telling me that this visit was about more than books.
    ‘As you, more than anyone, would be aware, Mistress Blanche,’ I said, ‘the Queen’s a most intelligent woman, who’s been reading manuscripts in Greek since she could barely—’
    ‘And I thought
you
an intelligent
man,
Dr Dee,’ Blanche snapped, ‘who would realise that it were best that the Queen should not be seen to be inquiring too deeply into certain areas of learning.’
    I fell silent. My mother arose.
    ‘Please excuse me, Mistress Blanche. I shall prepare a warm drink before your journey back to Richmond. Also for your men.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Blanche looking up, a distant smile like a mist upon her face. ‘It has been good to see you again, Jane.’
    My mother nodding and slipping away. Me sensing a prearrangement here, as Mistress Blanche gestured me to my mother’s chair next to the river window.
    ‘I’m informed, Dr Dee, that you’re to perform a service for Sir William Cecil.’
    ‘So it would appear.’
    ‘He’s a good man, for whom the Queen’s interests are always central.’
    ‘Indeed. His constant concern for the Queen is like to an older brother’s.’
    ‘And with you to Somersetshire… also goes Lord Dudley?’
    ‘A man whose support for the Queen –’ I watched her eyes – ‘is equally beyond question.’
    ‘But whose reputation is, if anything, even worse than yours,’ my cousin said. ‘If for different reasons.’
    ‘You don’t dice your words, do you, Mistress Blanche?’
    I pushed my chair back towards the window. A tired sun hung over the river in a cradle of stringy cloud. Obviously, Dudley’s relations with Elizabeth, on whatever level, would be a source of anxiety to Blanche, even though it was said she had oft-times passed intimate letters from one to the other.
    However, as the women with whom Dudley had been intimate must by now outnumber the wherries on the Thames, his reputation was no more the reason Blanche Parry was here than to collect the books on Arthur.

     
    One thing you should know about men and women of the border – any border – is that they ever use the small and narrow roads, and it can take an endless time before their reasons are manifest. Something embedded in their nature, relating to a need for caution with strangers. Along the border of England and Wales, even quite close relatives can be strangers through many generations, and I was resigned to a lengthy and, for the most part, aimless preamble.
    ‘Even apart from his adventures with women,’ Blanche Parry said, ‘Dudley is deemed by some to be ungodly.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘For his study of the stars and similar interests. And… for his choice of friends.’
    ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You mean me. Dear God, Blanche… are we not supposed to live now in enlightened times? My studies follow on directly from the work of Pythagoras and Plato, Hermes Trismegistus… Distinguished scholars, all of them.’
    ‘And heathens.’
    ‘Oh, for—’
    ‘Wait.’ Blanche holding up a palm, small fingers spread wide. ‘Are there not Catholics who say that the Protestant Church is itself a