The Heresy of Dr Dee by Phil Rickman Page B

didn’t believe him a rooker. Not entirely. Envied him, I’d have to admit, for
his standing at the French court and the monetary favours that came his way. The way he was venerated and left to experiment unmolested by Church or Crown.
    ‘We’re both reaching for the same things,’ I said. ‘Though my own feeling is that his prophecies are a little too… poetic. Not the best poetry, either.’
    ‘And shaped to the French cause.’ Dudley was yet nursing the globe. ‘This clever stone…
does
Nostradamus have one?’
    ‘Don’t know. He claims he’s a natural scryer who needs only to look into a glass of water to connect himself to channels of prophecy. But I’m a scientist and must needs
have proof. Scrying stones have been around throughout history, but only now do we have the means and the knowledge to subject them to proper scientific study.’
    ‘What are we seeking here, John?’
    We?
I sought a careful answer.
    ‘Knowledge of the hidden engines that power the world? The workings of the mind of God?’
    Jesu
, that wasn’t careful at all, was it?
    ‘The mind of God
, John?’
    Dudley took breath in a kind of shudder, and I endeavoured to back away.
    ‘I just don’t believe we can do anything of significance alone. All great art comes through divine inspiration. Advances in science… the same.’
    Told him what I’d gleaned from Bishop Bonner about the former Abbot of Wigmore, John Smart.
    ‘Bonner? You consulted
Bonner
? And the fat bastard’s going to keep his mouth stitched?’
    ‘I believe he will.’
    ‘You’re an innocent, John.’ Dudley shaking his head in feigned wonder. ‘All right, tell me about the mysteries of divine inspiration.’
    I told him that while we could hardly aspire, either side of the grave, to a direct approach to God, there were… intermediaries.
    ‘Angels. Archangels – Gabriel, Michael?’
    ‘Just names, Robbie. Just names for whatever moves the celestial forces which make us what we are. Just names for the controlling—’
    ‘Good enough for me, John. How much does this man want for his stone?’
    ‘Probably more than I have in the world.’
    I looked away in sudden apprehension, heard Dudley stand up.
    ‘But not, presumably,’ he said, ‘more than
I
have.’
    Oh God help me…
Shutting my eyes in dismay. Had this been what I’d been hoping for all along? Was this, in truth, why I’d writ the letter to him in Bonner’s
cell?
    ‘All right, we’ll both go,’ Dudley said. ‘You and I. We’ll make a good bargain with this man, in the noble cause of expanding the Queen’s vision.’
    We?
The way
we
brought back the bones of Arthur?
    ‘Her stone,’ Dudley said. ‘Dedicated to the Queen’s majesty. But as you’re the only one who knows how to make it speak, you can keep it here and study it and caress
it in your bed, whatever it takes, and bring it regularly to Bess at Richmond or Windsor. Present to her whatever you see within it. Or consider it
advisable
to see.’
    What?
I drew back across the chamber, hard against the door to the library, something twisted like a knife in my chest. I began to panic.
    ‘Robbie, we don’t know he still has it.’
    ‘We don’t? I thought you were of the opinion that the scryer had deliberately conveyed to your apothecary friend just enough information to tempt the infamous Dr Dee.’
    ‘What if it’s a rook?’
    ‘Then we have the abbot brought back and thrown in the Fleet.
Jesu
, John, I have to do something. I’m sick to my gut of confinement at Kew, everyone regarding me with
half-veiled suspicion… barred from court for the sake of appearances. What’s the matter with you? Suddenly you don’t think yourself worthy to know the mind of God? Listen to
me…’
    It felt as if the surging of his energy was taking away the air, and I found it hard to breathe. A half moon, ridged by cheap glass, shone behind the owl, and Dudley’s voice rose in the
darkness as if from the hollows of a dream. Talking