Prophecy

Chapter Fifteen

Arundel House, London

3rd October, Year of Our Lord 1583

After perhaps two hours have passed like an eternity, I sit upright and listen. The silence that has fallen over the house has an apprehensive quality, a muffled stillness that feels tense with expectation. Or perhaps this is just how it seems to me, after lying on my back in the dark for so many slowly turning minutes, ears straining for the slightest sound that would betray anyone awake or abroad in the household. But now there is nothing; only the intermittent yelping of sea birds over the river and the wail of an occasional fox. Cautiously, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and immediately kick the piss pot Philip Howard left for me; it rattles like a series of shots fired on the wooden boards as it settles and I freeze, heart pounding, but the house makes no response. I wonder how far I am from the private rooms of the family, or the servants’ quarters and who might be awake to hear me. It also occurs to me, as I rise and pad across to pull back one of the wooden shutters on the window, that they might leave the white dog to patrol the house during the night. Although the dog is probably in worse shape than me at this moment, I reflect, rubbing my temple. I have a pounding headache, but I feel wide awake, my nerves primed.

The candle and tinderbox are still safe in the pocket of my breeches. Without my boots, my feet in my underhose make no sound, though the boards are uneven and complain at every step. I open the chamber door, first a crack and then enough to slip into the passageway outside. Nothing stirs; as I feel my way back towards the staircase, I imagine I can hear the collective rise and fall of breath as the household sleeps. If anyone crosses my path before I reach my destination, I can always pretend I am still half drunk and in search of a drink of water or the close-stool.

The corridor that leads back past the dining room is deserted; though I keep my tread as light as possible, there is no one to hear. The door at the end of the corridor is closed and as I approach it the blood drums faster in my throat; if it should be locked, and I am unable to turn the lock with the blade of my knife — tucked, as always, into my waistband — then this whole performance will have been in vain.

But the door opens smoothly, so easily that I half expect to find someone inside the library waiting for me, having guessed at my intention. Instead I find myself alone in a rectangular room lined on all four sides with wooden stacks of books and manuscripts, interrupted at either end where two arched windows face one another. Pale moonlight slants through one of these, tracing faint shapes on the floor. With trembling fingers, barely able to believe that my luck will hold, I close the door as silently as I can, take out the candle and strike a flame, once, twice; on the third attempt it lights, and I move closer to the books, trying to deduce Philip Howard’s method of classification. Or perhaps the library is really Henry Howard’s; the young earl does not strike me as much of a scholar. Henry might have moved his collection of books to Arundel House when his family lost their own seat. Either way, it gives me a frisson of pleasure to be poking about in the Howards’ library without permission, just as I believe Henry Howard to have done in Dee’s house.

The circle of light quivers along the lines of books as I prowl the length of the shelves, knowing all the time that the book I hope to find will not be openly displayed, if it is here at all. But if Dee is right and it was Henry Howard who ordered the lost Hermes book to be stolen from him in Oxford all those years ago, then it is most likely to be hidden somewhere in his own library. My best hope is that I have enough time undisturbed to search for some sign of it.

Even a cursory glance at the stacks shows that most of the volumes collected here are uncontroversial; works of classical scholarship, theology and poetry such as any gentleman might be expected to be acquainted with, chosen more for the finery of their bindings, it seems, than for their content. But the long wall facing the door intrigues me; it has no windows, yet from the layout as I came in, it seems to me that this room should mark the end of the east wing of the house. Why, then, does it have no windows to the outside to increase the light, when this would clearly be an advantage in a room intended for reading? I move carefully along the length of this wall, and as I reach the furthest of the stacks, the flame of my candle gutters violently and threatens to cough itself out altogether. I hold out my other hand to feel a sharp draught, which appears to be coming from behind the wooden bookcase. This is curious, since the stacks have the appearance of being built into the wall. Bending to the floor, I can see faint curving marks scratched in the boards at one side and my chest gives a wild lurch; trying to hold the candle steady, I grope with frantic fingers up the panel that joins the stack to the corner of the room. Built into the lattice-work carving on this panel are small indentations; about halfway up I insert my fingertips into one of these and find it is cut deeper than the others. Feeling blindly, I touch metal; there seems to be some kind of latch. I probe as best I can until I think I have released it; the wooden stack shifts almost imperceptibly and with my breath held fast, I begin to pull it towards me, away from the wall. It is heavy, but moves with surprising ease and I realise that it is built on a hinge, carefully weighted; it swings out just far enough for a person to slip into the gap behind, where a small door is built into the wall, invisible when the shelf stack is in place.

My palms are sweating as I squeeze myself into the gap and try the latch of this new door. This one is locked, and does not yield easily to the coaxings of my knife blade; setting the candle down, I breathe deeply, knowing that haste and clumsy fingers will not help this operation. After some delicate manoeuvring, I feel the tip of the blade engage with the lock mechanism and very slowly, I manage to turn the bolt back, though my hand slips at the last moment and the edge of the blade catches my finger, leaving a trickle of blood running down the side of my hand. Cursing under my breath, I ease the door open.

The candle flame leaps and flutters in the sudden draught as I nudge the door wider with my foot and step through into a narrow room. It is like stepping into a mausoleum. The dank breath of cold stone wraps around my face and there is an odour of decay, of dead matter. When I hold up the light, I almost gasp aloud, but the sound freezes in my throat.

No ornate plaster ceiling or linenfold panelling have been employed to make this room warmer or more inviting. There is only the naked brick of the walls, the exposed beams of the ceiling that slopes sharply down, stone flags on the floor. This room appears to be built into the very wall of the house, its two arched windows bricked up. It is as if this room does not exist.

Lifting the candle, I push the door shut and examine my surroundings. On the wall opposite, between the two blocked windows, hangs a vast painting of the heavens copied from one of the Arabic astrological charts, with concentric circles divided into the various houses of the zodiac and marked with the influence of the planets. Beneath this painting there is a cabinet of black wood, its double doors inlaid with a pattern of tiny mother-of-pearl lozenges and its top strewn with papers and discarded quills. To my left, at the far end of the room, stands a rectangular block draped in a dark purple cloth. It has the appearance of an altar, with a silver candlestick positioned at either side, but in the centre sits a polished crystal in a brass tripod, pale with a faint rosy tint under the light. It looks exactly like John Dee’s showing-stone. In Oxford I saw one such hidden chapel and I have heard that the Catholic nobles of England often have them built into their grand houses so that they may hear Mass in secret, but this looks like no place of Catholic worship. Glancing down, I see circles marked on the floor in chalk, divided into pentagrams, with astrological and occult symbols marked in each division. As I turn slowly to follow the line of the markings at my feet, a glint from the corner of the room catches my eye; I lift the candle and jump back at the sight of a human head, cast in brass and elevated on a narrow stone plinth. Its contours are eerily lifelike, though its cheeks are hollow and cadaverous, as if it has been cast from the head of a corpse. The eyes are blank and smooth, the mouth hollow, like that of the brazen head supposedly owned by the friar Roger Bacon some three hundred years ago, the head that, according to legend, would prophesy by the power of spirits. My skin prickles and the hairs on my arms rise in goose-bumps; this head is the clearest sign yet that this room is a temple to Hermetic magic. The writings of Hermes Trismegistus treat of animating statues and such devices by the power of spirits to make them prophesy; Saint Augustine condemned this as demonic magic, but the true adepts knew better. Has Henry Howard tried to make the bronze head speak, I wonder?

Above the head a set of shelves is attached to the wall, with glass vials and flasks arranged in neat rows, together with a number of what look like surgical instruments. Some of these vials are filled with liquids, others contain more curious items — what appear to be splinters of bone or fragments of hair or skin, the kind of objects you might expect to find in any Catholic reliquary or alchemist’s laboratory. Opposite the altar, against the wall, stands a speculum made of polished obsidian, the height of a man and perhaps four feet across. The outline of my own form wavers across its surface, the candle flame jumping wildly in reflection as I keep it close. The showing-stone, the black mirror, the brazen head — these are the instruments of celestial magic, of those who seek illumination from the spiritual realm. So Howard, the great denouncer of prophecy, astrology and every kind of divination, is himself attempting to contact the powers beyond the stars. Dee has already guessed as much; I can’t help a smile of triumph.

The candle is burning low, and the persistent breath of cold air continually threatens it; I dare not lose it, so I cross the room quickly and light the two candles on the altar. The new arcs of light ripple up the brickwork, pushing back the shadows a little. With every nerve alert, barely daring to breathe, I return to the cabinet and begin to sift through the papers. I can find no semblance of order among them; some appear to be complex astrological calculations involving the positions of the planets in the Great Conjunction and their movements through the calendar; others depict a series of tables showing what look like codes and ciphers. There are dozens of these; seemingly endless variations on the same table, meticulously copied, lists of letters, numbers and symbols in different configurations, multiplying over and over. Beneath these I find a rough draft of the map Henry Howard passed around the table at dinner, with the list of possible landing places and names of Catholic landowners. I lift up the sheet with the map and draw out another paper. With a jolt, I see immediately what it shows. I hastily lay it on top of the others and smooth it out to study, the flame trembling in my hand as I bend to read.

The paper shows the Tudor and Stuart family tree, from King Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, and his wife Elizabeth of York. The true line of descent — as judged by the author of this page, at least — is inked in bold and clearly shows Henry’s eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor, who married King James IV of Scotland, as the grandmother of Mary Stuart. The Tudor line of succession continues through King Henry VIII, which this genealogy shows as having married Catherine of Aragon and produced the queen Mary Tudor — Elizabeth’s half-sister, the one they call Bloody Mary — who died in 1558. Of Henry’s subsequent marriages and offspring, there is no mention. Naturally, I think — this is the Catholic view of the English succession, which does not recognise Henry’s divorce and therefore regards his first marriage as his only legitimate union and his daughter Mary Tudor as his only legitimate heir. This is why they take such pleasure in referring to Elizabeth as ‘bastard’. There are other potential Tudor successors from the line of Henry VII’s younger daughter, another Mary, but there can be no doubt as to what this version of history wishes to prove: that Mary Stuart is the eldest living legitimate heir to the crown of England.

To possess a copy of such a genealogy is treason under English law, punishable by death. But this is not even the best of it, for beside the name of Mary Stuart is written that of her deceased husband, Lord Darnley (himself also descended from Margaret Tudor), and beneath them a line showing the fruit of that union, the present King James VI of Scotland. Next to it, in the faintest ink but unmistakably in the same hand is a line conjoined to Mary that simply reads ‘H’. From it leads a line of descent, as if to denote a prospective offspring, but the space where the name of the child should be remains blank. I run a tongue around my dry lips as I hold the paper closer to my eyes, as if doing so might confirm the audacity of what is written here. There is no doubt that this is the same hand as the writing on the list of safe havens passed around the supper table earlier, that I had studied so intently — the loops and crosses are distinctive — and must surely be Henry Howard’s. So my suspicions were right from the beginning: his ultimate plan is to become Mary’s husband, to sit beside her on the throne of England and — most daring of all — he dreams of putting a son of his own into the line of succession. I find I am shaking my head, partly in disbelief but partly in admiration at the reach of the man’s ambition. Of course, he has kept this from his co-conspirators. Marie and Courcelles are working for the Duke of Guise, who must intend a stake in the new Catholic kingdom for himself; perhaps, as Mary’s cousin, he may feel he already has a family entitlement. Douglas I have always assumed to be an opportunist; does he guess he is working for the advancement of the Howard family, and would he care, as long as he came out of it well? I wonder if even Philip Howard, with his mealy mouthed pleas for limited bloodshed, has guessed at his uncle’s ultimate plan.

Hastily I fold the paper and tuck it inside the waistband of my breeches at my side, under my shirt. Whatever else I may uncover tonight, this alone was worth all the risk: it is pure gold. A genealogy in Henry Howard’s own hand, denying Elizabeth’s right to reign and clearly showing his intention to marry the Queen of Scots — this is proof of Howard treason beyond anything Walsingham could have hoped for. With a bit of judicious questioning, Howard might be expected to give up further details of the invasion plan with plenty of time to prevent it.

My blood is racing with the thrill of this success, but I do not have time to lose; next I crouch to try the doors of the black cabinet, but here for the first time my luck fails. The doors are locked. I cannot see any other place in the room where books might be hidden — and if Henry Howard has forbidden occult books, as he must, where else would he hide them but in this secret chapel? I unsheathe my knife and attempt to insert its tip into the lock, but the keyhole is too small and the blade cannot penetrate far enough to make any purchase. Frustrated, and anxious too, as I note that all the candles are burning lower, I set it down and return to the shelves above the brazen head to see if there is some smaller implement among the paraphernalia there that might serve, and as my gaze ranges along the row of vials that look like reliquaries, one in particular catches my eye. An ornate glass bottle containing a single lock of bright gold hair.

I reach for it and take out the stopper. I have seen more saints’ remains in Italy than I could number — enough fingers and blood and hair to people the world with blessed saints seven times over — but usually those who sell fake relics make some effort to give their wares the semblance of antiquity. This lock of hair has none of the brittle, dusty look of those old trinkets; it appears fresh and springy, coiled behind the glass. Cecily Ashe had blonde hair, I remember, with a lurch of the stomach.

‘I see you have found the hair of Saint Agnes.’

Henry Howard’s voice, behind me, is polite, amused, as if he were not in the least surprised to find me here, in his occult chapel, rooting through the ingredients of his arts. He has appeared so silently that for one awful moment it seems the brazen head has spoken; I leap and whip round so violently at the sound that I almost drop the bottle. All I can do is stare at him, slack-jawed and shaking. In one hand he holds a candle, in the other, an ornamental sword.

‘They possess powers to protect chastity, the relics of Saint Agnes,’ he goes on, in the same breezy tone, ‘and also over the favourable cultivation of crops. But of course you know all this. I find it fascinating, don’t you? That the same force should exercise its influence over both chastity and fertility, two opposites.’

‘Opposing forces share a powerful connection,’ I say, recover ing my voice. ‘If one believes in such powers.’

‘You do not believe in the power of relics, I do not think. But as a good disciple of Hermes, you must believe that certain elements in the natural world may harness particular powers mirrored in the celestial realm?’

I only look at him and shrug, affecting a coolness I do not feel. I am aware that I am at his mercy here, and that the best course is probably to keep silent. My eye drifts to the sword, which he holds loosely at his side.

‘It’s a pity,’ he says, moving towards me and kicking the door shut with his foot. He wears a heavy crimson robe over his nightshirt. ‘It would have been interesting to discuss the Hermetic magic with you, in other circumstances. In private I am willing to concede that you have a considerable reputation in these matters, though you will not hear me praise you for it in company.’

‘I am flattered.’ I incline my head. He misses the sarcasm.

‘You certainly have more audacity than I would have credited, Bruno.’ His tone is almost admiring. ‘Your performance was entirely convincing this evening. You out-drank Douglas — that should have roused my suspicions. If I had not been so willing to let you confirm my worst prejudices about you, I might have been more wary. And I see you are extremely canny. Even Her Majesty’s pursuivants have never managed to find this room, not on all the occasions it has pleased them to search my nephew’s house.’ He paces softly across the stone flags in his velvet slippers to cast a casual eye over the papers on top of the cabinet. His foot is only inches from the bone-handled knife I left lying on the floor after my attempt to pick the lock. My muscles tense; the document beneath my shirt pricks my skin. Will he notice its absence from one glance?

‘My nephew had this built as a private chapel. The Jesuit Edmund Campion said a Mass here once, you know. But after Campion was executed and the Privy Council came down harder on the secret priests, Philip lost his nerve somewhat. Can’t blame the boy — he was only young when he saw his father executed for treason and his title lost. He doesn’t want this estate attainted as well. So there were no more Masses after that and I took possession of the chapel for my private work. We never speak of it.’ His eyes drift to the altar at the far end of the room, as if remembering its more orthodox use. ‘The day they hung and quartered Campion at Tyburn — that was the moment I realised England would never be restored by priests and prayers alone. Faith would have to show itself in stronger action.’ As he says this, the muscles in his jaw twitch and his knuckles whiten around the hilt of the sword. Perhaps, I think, watching him, behind his desire for revenge and advancement lies some genuine religious feeling; or perhaps they have become one and the same. He snaps his eyes back to me, the mem ories dismissed.

‘You feign drunkenness very well, by the way,’ he remarks, as if we were casual acquaintances making small talk at some tavern. ‘Did you feed good Rhenish to my dog, is that what happened? Poor brute’s been sick all over the back stairs.’

I say nothing. For a moment we watch one another in the candlelight and I give a sudden involuntary shiver. The room seems very cold.

‘Well, Bruno.’ He looks me up and down, his tone finally asserting his mastery of the situation. ‘I do not need to ask if you recognise what you find here.’ He waves a hand that takes in the circles on the floor, the altar, the brazen head.

‘You pursue secret knowledge, even while you publicly decry it,’ I mutter. ‘Dee suspected as much.’

‘Of course he did.’ Howard’s voice betrays a touch of impatience. ‘He always knew I was a natural adept. But he had the arrogance to presume that he held the key to my progress and could simply shut me out from the higher reaches of that knowledge. He is guided by fear, you see, Bruno,’ he says, suddenly brusque. ‘The last thing Dee wants is a rival for the queen’s faith in such matters. Matters that lie on the other side of religion, in its shadows. He wishes to be recognised as her magus, and he will thwart anyone who tries to come up behind him. You will find this out for yourself eventually.’ He shakes his head and takes another step closer to me, the sword still held idly against his leg. With his face barely a foot from mine, he breaks into a grotesque smile. ‘But he lacks the one thing that would make him the preeminent magus of our age, and he cannot sleep for yearning for it. Neither can you.’

‘The lost book of Hermes.’ My voice is barely audible, but my breath rises in a plume between us in the cold air. ‘You stole it from him in Oxford, then.’

It is not meant as a question. Howard merely curves his smile wider.

‘It found its way into my hands. Oh yes, you may well hang your mouth open, Bruno. It is, I presume, what you have come here to find? You are resourceful, I’ll give you that.’ He turns sharply and crosses the room to the small altar, then turns and fixes me with those black eyes.

‘But a man in exile, Bruno, is always vulnerable. Am I not right? Little wonder he seeks powers beyond his own temporal means. You and I understand this,’ he adds, with feeling. ‘My brother Thomas lost us the greatest dukedom in England. My family name is now stained with treason. I have been threatened with prison and banishment, and I am forced to live as a lodger with my nephew and feign loyalty to the usurper Elizabeth.’ He curls his lip. ‘I am shut out of the heritage that is rightfully mine as surely as if I were banished from English soil. But I am only biding my time.’

‘And your solution is to finish what your brother started?’ I say, raising my chin.

He frowns at me for a moment, as if calculating how much I might know.

‘Why do you say that? Because of my comment at dinner about Mary’s heirs?’

‘If she was once willing to marry your brother, why not you?’

He lifts the sword and points it at me, and I feel my bowels contract; for a moment I think he might be about to run at me. But eventually he nods.

‘Very astute of you, Bruno. The Howards are descended from Edward Plantagenet, the first English king of that name. Did you know that?’ Without waiting for a reply, he continues, ‘We are of royal blood. There should be a Howard heir on the throne.’

‘You mean to take Mary to wife, once she is liberated and crowned by this invasion, and get an heir by her?’

He grimaces.

‘It is my duty to my lineage. I would not expect a common-born man to understand such an ideal.’

Instinctively my fists clench, as they always do when confronted with such claims of the nobility’s inborn super iority. But I keep my voice calm.

‘Douglas is right, though. Mary Stuart already has an heir with an impeccable royal pedigree and he is king of Scotland.’

‘Young men are not immortal, Bruno,’ Howard says, with a low laugh. ‘And James has yet to breed.’

I look at him, and realise I have not even begun to understand the scale of his hopes. Howard’s plans reach far beyond this invasion, far beyond the restoration of the Roman faith that the others envision; his scheming stretches into a future in which he is king of a Catholic England, his own son the heir and the young King James somehow the victim of an unfortunate accident, like his father. I understand now why Howard keeps Archibald Douglas so close; if Douglas could kill the father so efficiently, why not recruit him to kill the son? For the right price, I have no doubt that Douglas would oblige. But the real fear clawing at my insides comes because I realise the only reason Henry Howard would have confided such an incredible — some might say insane — plot to me is because he feels confident I will not have the chance to repeat it. My right hand itches instinctively to reach for my knife, though it is not there, and I force myself to keep still. If Howard thinks I am armed he may search me and then he would find the genealogy. I look down at the glass bottle I had almost forgotten I was holding. Saint Agnes, he says. This hair belonged to someone more recent. But I cannot begin to understand how the murders at court fit into Howard’s elaborate long-term plan.

‘But enough of that,’ he says, unexpectedly light-hearted. ‘I was going to show you something to make you tremble, was I not? Come closer, Bruno.’

To my great relief, he lays the sword on the altar, though he keeps his hand within easy reach as he lifts the purple cloth that covers it. The stone beneath shows a carved bas-relief of figures, their faces so worn by time that only a blurred outline of their humanity remains. It appears cen turies old.

‘Comes from one of the Sussex abbeys torn down in the Dissolution,’ he remarks, as if he reads my thoughts. ‘My brother bought it secretly and kept it in his own chapel. We had it brought here after he died. You cannot imagine the work it takes to move a thing like that. Illegal to possess it, of course.’

His voice grows muffled as he turns his back to me and crouches in front of the altar. Set into the stone near the base is a narrow recess; Howard reaches in and draws out a wooden casket, its lid inlaid with an intricate pattern stamped in gold. He takes a key from somewhere inside his robe and unlocks the box. I take a tentative step nearer, my palms prickling with sweat; I am anxious to stay out of the range of that sword. As I pass the black cabinet I gently kick my discarded knife out of sight, just underneath it, while his back is turned.

‘You won’t see properly from there,’ he says, standing and turning. ‘Come.’

He holds it out to me, an object wrapped in a layer of protective linen. As I move closer, he unwraps the coverings to reveal a book bound in faded leather. I experience a sudden weakness in my limbs, as if my body had been flushed with cold water, as my heart gives an impossible lurch and I rush forward, almost forgetting the sword.

Could this really be the book I had chased from Venice to Paris to Oxford, the fifteenth book of the writings of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, brought to Cosimo de’ Medici out of the ruins of Byzantium, given to the great neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino to translate and hidden by him when he recognised the awful power of what it contained? The book that, according to an old Venetian I had known in Paris, Ficino gave into the safekeeping of the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, whose apprentice mistakenly sold it on to an English collector; the book that had lain unrecognised in an Oxford college library until a wily librarian saved it from the Royal Commission’s purges; the book that an unscrupulous dealer named Rowland Jenkes had sold to Dee for a fortune, and which Dee held in his hands for barely a day before it was stolen from him at Henry Howard’s command? By all that was sacred — could it be that I was finally in the presence of the book that was believed to hold the secret of man’s divine origin, of how to recover that divinity? I hardly dared breathe.

‘Open it, if you want.’ Howard’s smile grows wolfish. His eyes glitter; he looks like a child flaunting a marzipan figure, determined that you should fully appreciate the wonder of it, secure in the knowledge that you shall never take it from him. He nods, encouraging. I reach out, my hand visibly trembling, and lift the book from the casket. In the moment of opening the cover, it is as if the world ceases turning; I can hear my own heartbeat as if it came from somewhere outside. The bound manuscript pages are old and stiff, the Greek characters so faint in places as to be almost illegible, but as I begin to read, there is no doubt in my mind that this book is authentic.

Howard nods again as I turn the pages, my eyes hungrily scanning the lines, thinking what I would offer for the chance to spend a day with this book, to study it, copy it, drink it in. Eventually he grows impatient.

‘Read on, Bruno. Skip the prologue and the early chapters. Turn to the middle section.’

Surprised, I obey, and as the book falls open towards the middle, I understand his slightly hysterical look of triumph. I read the Greek lines, then read them again. As my frown deepens, Howard begins to laugh.

‘You see, Bruno? You see?’

I experience a disorientating sense of falling, just as Howard himself must have done when he first opened the book. I look down at the page, then back to Howard, shaking my head in disbelief.

‘Encoded.’

‘Exactly! The meat of the book, its most secret and sacred wisdom, is so inflammatory that the scribe didn’t dare write it without a cipher. In the prologue Hermes mentions the Great Key, the Clavis Magna. But this must exist separately, and I do not have it.’ His eyes burn with a frenzied energy. ‘Fourteen years! Fourteen years I have attempted to break the code. I have tried every system of cryptography I have ever read about, but I cannot. I cannot make it yield.’

I watch him, the book limp in my hands, my mouth open. Fourteen years of trying to decipher the book you believe will yield the secret of immortality. I almost pity him; small wonder his plans seem touched by madness. It is a wonder he has held on to his mind at all.

‘But Ficino must have had it,’ I wonder, aloud. ‘The Great Key. Ficino read the whole book, according to the story I heard, else how would he have been so afraid to translate it?’

‘It exists somewhere, or it can be deduced,’ Howard says, and I hear the years of weariness in his voice. ‘But how to find it, Bruno? Where to begin?’

‘Dee has a great many treatises on cryptography in his library,’ I reply, holding his gaze. ‘But then you know that.’

He merely raises an eyebrow.

‘Ask Dee for help? And confess that I have the book he was nearly killed for? Naturally, over the years I have made attempts to discover whether Dee holds anything among his papers that he may not know to be the key of which Hermes speaks. I have sent servants and associates to his house to pose as travelling scholars. And, yes, I have taken the opportunity to search there myself if I knew he was absent. In all this time I have barely touched the surface of Dee’s library.’ His face hardens and he looks at me as if he has only just remembered who I am. ‘But Dee is close to being ruined. Elizabeth will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to his practices. And when he is — even if his life is spared, his goods will be forfeit. I will have his library somehow.’ The cold determination in his voice belies the wild light in his eyes; if his sanity is doubtful, it has not affected his ruthlessness. But his reference to Dee’s impending ruin is almost a confession.

‘Is Ned Kelley one of these associates you send out to do your work?’

He rubs his pointed beard as if trying to recall where he has heard the name.

‘Kelley. A crook, of course, but with a remarkable imagination and a curious ability to win the affection of strangers, though I must say it has never worked on me.’

‘Nor me.’

‘The servant Johanna brought him to me — she found him at some fair, cheating at card tricks. She thought he might prove useful to me. But no one could have foreseen how Dee would take Kelley to his bosom, and how easily Kelley would work on him.’ He smirks. A sudden rage rises in my chest and I grip the book tighter.

‘You paid Kelley to lure Dee into conjuring spirits so that he could be publicly disgraced and punished,’ I say, through my teeth. Howard permits himself an indulgent chuckle.

‘I knew if Dee believed he could truly communicate with celestial beings he wouldn’t be able to resist telling the queen. She is still drawn to the idea of knowledge beyond mortal means, but that would be a step too far for those advocates of reason in her council. Walsingham, Burghley. Myself, natur ally.’ He smiles, patting his breast. ‘Dee will be cut down faster than a cankered apple tree, you shall see. And I no longer need live in fear of his exposing the secrets of my past.’ He folds his arms across his chest and tilts his head back to appraise me down the length of his nose. ‘Which brings me to you, Bruno.’

‘And the girls,’ I blurt, ignoring him, a flush of rage spreading across my face, ‘they died for this? To lend credibility to Kelley’s violent prophecies? To implicate Dee in murder, just to make sure you finished his reputation for good?’

Howard is too much of a courtier to allow his polished mask to slip for long, but I had thought the accusation might prompt some admission of guilt in his expression, however fleeting. What I see instead is confusion, then outrage.

‘Girls? Good God, Bruno — you don’t think I had anything to do with that?’ He looks genuinely stricken — but I must not forget that he is a politician and an expert dissembler. ‘That would be insanity — murders that draw attention to threats against the queen at the very time we are trying to organise an invasion which depends on surprise? Why on earth would I jeopardise the plans on which I have staked my whole future?’

‘Ned Kelley’s prophecy foretold the death of Abigail Morley in almost every particular,’ I say, lowering my voice. ‘How else could he have known?’

He shakes his head impatiently.

‘Kelley was a fool — he allowed his imagination to be coloured too far by the lurid reports he read in pamphlets. So when the killer repeats himself, it looks as if Kelley foresaw the event. No — these murders could have been catastrophic for our invasion plans. Increased raids on Catholics, increased questioning, more guards around the court, and they’ll be watching Mary more closely, just at a time when I have Throckmorton riding around the country trying to stir the Catholic nobles into a spirit of war — you think I would purposefully bring all this down upon our heads? By the cross — it would be madness!’ His eyes flash. ‘No. If Dee is implicated in murder as a result, some good will have come of it, but I assure you, Bruno, I am furious about the timing of these murders. Besides,’ he adds, with a little preening gesture, ‘I would never engage in such a vulgar display. Death is occasionally necessary, but it ought to be discreet. That sort of grotesque spectacle is the work of a man whose vanity outweighs his sense of purpose.’

I look at him and the thrill of my earlier certainty shrivels to a point and disappears. Despite the self-satisfied twitch of his smile, I think he is speaking the truth. Wanting to persuade myself that he was behind the murders, I have tried to make the facts fit, but I have never found a plausible explanation for the way the murders so overtly tried to imply a Catholic threat. And now that I know the extent of Howard’s regal and dynastic ambitions, I can see that the assassination of Elizabeth would clearly work against his interests, so the theory that he set up Cecily Ashe to poison the queen also crumbles. But if Howard is not the killer, then who?

‘You had better return my book now, Bruno,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to crack the cipher while my back was turned.’

Slowly, I step forward, my arm leaden as I reach out and let him take the book. The rough grain of the leather slides beneath my fingertips as he pulls it from my grasp; I watch him tuck it back into its casket with a sense of desolation, as if I had found a lover only to lose her again in the same moment. Except that I have pursued this book across a continent and a sea with greater devotion than I have shown to any woman; to have held it in my hands and have it snatched away is almost worse than to have gone on blindly seeking it, never knowing if it even existed. Nor can I escape the insistent voice of my own vanity: that, given time, Dee and I between us could surely break the cipher that has defeated Henry Howard for fourteen years. My eyes follow it longingly as Howard locks the casket and clasps it to his chest. My chances of ever touching that book again look remote.

The sword glitters on the altar under the candle flames. If I were to lunge for it now, while Howard busies himself with the casket, I might just be able to grab it before he has a chance to react, though he is nearer. As if he senses my eyes on it, without looking up he reaches out and lays a proprietorial hand on the hilt.

‘You leave me with a dilemma, Bruno,’ he says, as he tucks the casket under his left arm. ‘All of this —‘ he gestures around the chapel, taking in the chart, the brazen head, the altar — ‘you should not have seen. My greatest secret. If it were made known, it would be the final nail in the coffin of my family’s reputation, and would certainly see me in the Tower. You were never a man I wholly trusted, even before this night. So what am I to do with you, now that you have found me out?’ His thumb lightly strokes the hilt of his sword, though he doesn’t yet pick it up.

A coldness ripples along my spine and through my gut; my throat clenches. I had half-expected this, but stubbornly I still hope I might reason with him.

‘Dee has guessed at your secret, and not divulged it — why do you think I would not do the same?’

He must catch the fear in my voice, because he laughs, without humour.

‘Dee has no proof of anything. And he has a healthy respect for the reach of my influence, whereas you, Bruno, appear to have no respect at all.’ He rests his left hand on his hip and shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I have ever witnessed such a cocksure swagger in a man of low birth.’

My eyes flick again to the sword.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Bruno, I’m not planning to run you through, unless you try anything stupid. That would take some explaining to the ambassador.’ He tilts his head to one side again and smiles dangerously. ‘Fortunately, your little charade this evening gives me the perfect opportunity. It’s very common, apparently, for a man who over-indulges in drink to choke to death on his own vomit in the night.’

‘Let me go back to the embassy,’ I plead, my voice emerging as a croak. ‘I will say nothing to anyone.’

‘Nothing?’ His lips trace a faint smile, which vanishes as he picks up the sword decisively. ‘Even when you see Dee imprisoned for sorcery, you would still guard my secret? I suspect not.’ He points the tip at my chest; instinctively, I step back. ‘The maidservant will find you in the morning, stone cold and covered with vomit. God knows that hound’s produced enough to spare. It will be an embarrassment to the French embassy, of course, but between us Castelnau and I will do our best to cover up the scandal. And in the great tumult of what is about to happen in this country, no one will remember the little Italian monk who couldn’t hold his Rhenish.’

He ushers me with the point of the sword towards the far end of the room with the obsidian speculum. The casket with the Hermes book is tucked tightly under his arm.

‘I’ll have to leave you here while I rouse the earl’s trusted servants. I don’t intend to get my own hands messy. You can amuse yourself, I trust. I suppose it doesn’t much matter now what you find here.’

He backs towards the door, the sword still levelled at my chest. For a fleeting moment I consider the possibility of running at him, attempting to wrest it from his grasp, but he is a big man, considerably taller than I, and he would be upon me the moment I moved. The sword may be ornamental, but even in the dying light I can see its edge is vicious.

At the door he pauses, one hand on the latch.

‘I read your book on memory, you know,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I can confess this now — I considered it the work of an exceptional mind. I am almost sorry things have to end in this way, but a man must look to his own survival in these times. And my destiny is greater than yours. Goodbye, Giordano Bruno.’ He gives me a long look, then backs out of the door. I hear the sound of a key turning, and the unmistakable scrape of the bookcase sliding back into place. I push my hands through my hair, take a deep breath, and try to examine the room with a clear head, though my blood is racing and I feel faintly nauseous.

The candles have burned almost down to their holders, but still their flames dance and weave in currents of cold air. The atmosphere in the hidden chapel is chill enough that I can see my own breath cloud in front of me as I try to slow it down. By my reckoning, this chapel has been created by partitioning the room that is now the library, closing off the furthest wall, meaning that we are at the very end of one wing. The bricked-up windows on the wall opposite the door bear this out. But this constant draught must mean that there is another opening somewhere, and the only possibility is behind the speculum. Snatching one of the candles from the altar, my theory is confirmed as I approach the edge of the speculum and its flame is almost snuffed out.

I have very little time. The thick sheet of polished obsidian is broad and taller than a man — a man from Naples, at any rate — and is set into a solid block of wood at the base to keep it upright and give it balance. I put my shoulder against it and push with all my weight. It shifts a fraction of an inch and there is no doubt that the cold air is coming through the gap between the speculum and the wall. I wedge my foot behind the wooden base and attempt to push it outwards, leaning my back against the wall, keeping one eye constantly on the door that leads to the library, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of a key turning.

Straining every muscle, I push the base of the speculum with both legs until I have shunted it far enough away from the wall to reveal a fireplace, boarded up with wooden planks. My heart sinks, but when I hold the candle close, shielding its flame with my hand, I see that the nails are only loosely hammered in; it would be little work to prise them free, if only I had time. I scrabble for the knife that I kicked under the black cabinet, easing it towards me with my fingertips. Setting the candle out of the direct draught, I force the blade behind the nail of the topmost board and it comes loose easily; I am able to work my fingers in behind and pull the whole board away from the fireplace. I repeat this with the second, my hands shaking with the need for haste and my fingertips bleeding from the splinters. In a few minutes, I have removed three of the boards, leaving a space big enough to fold myself into and climb through into the fireplace. I have no idea how wide the chimney breast will prove to be, or if it is even possible to climb it, but I have no other choice. I sheathe the knife and bend myself double to fit through the gap, reluctantly leaving the candle behind and thanking Fortune that I have the physique of a Neapolitan; one of these tall, broad Englishmen like Howard or Sidney would not stand a chance.

Inside the chimney breast the darkness is complete and wraps around me heavy as broadcloth, the smell of soot and must thick in my nostrils. I feel the rising panic in my chest that always comes when I find myself in tight spaces, the furious quickening of my heart and breath, the slick of sweat on my palms, the blind terror of being enclosed. Willing myself to stay calm, I feel the brickwork above my head, patting methodically all around until I encounter what I hoped to find — a metal bracket set into the inside of the chimney, to aid the children when they climb to sweep it clean. No one has been up this chimney for years, I think, as I brace myself with one foot against the back of the fireplace and grip the bracket to pull myself up into the narrow flue, groping blindly above my head for the next one. Cobwebs cling to my mouth and nose; I try to bend my mind to some memory exercises to distract me from the sensation that the walls around me are growing narrower as I climb, feeling for footholds where I can as loose bricks crumble and scatter to the ground below. Soon I can feel the sides pressing against my shoulders; I take a mouthful of sooty air, and it tastes sharper, colder, with the crisp metallic edge of autumn. I can only pray that there is no ornate pot on the top of this chimney, closing me in. The climb has been shorter than I anticipated; I can feel night air on the top of my head, which helps to damp down the fear that rises as my shoulders become wedged for a moment where the flue tapers. With some judicious wriggling, I manage to raise one arm above my head and feel for the top of the chimney; half-squeezing, half-dragging myself, I emerge through the opening, rubbing filth from my eyes as the wind off the river slaps against my face, its perfume of Thames mud and sewage never more welcome.

Clouds chivvy one another across the sky, a bright moon hides its face briefly before reappearing from their blue-grey shadows. There is enough light to see and be seen as I heave myself out of the chimney stack and on to the roof tiles. Here at the back of the house, the building is a jumble of extensions and rooms added on to the main structure. The room that contains the library and Howard’s secret chapel appears to have been built on to the end of the wing as an adjunct; it is only one storey and its roof slopes sharply downwards to the left of the chimney breast I have just climbed. Though the tiles are treacherous from the earlier drizzle, if I can ease myself down slowly it would be a simple matter to drop the distance to the ground from where the roof ends; it cannot be more than fifteen feet. Checking that I still have the papers and my knife secure in my waistband, I hold on to the edge of the chimney breast and begin the slide down the roof on my backside. I have no way of knowing whether Henry Howard has returned yet with his servants and found me gone, nor do I have much idea of which way to run once I reach the ground, but at this point I can only keep moving forward; hesitation serves no purpose now.

In the event, I have no choice; the roof is so slippery that I cannot control the speed of my descent and I first slither and then fall the distance to the ground, landing awkwardly on my left side as I try to soften the impact by rolling. I have barely picked myself up and checked that I can still move my arm when a volley of furious barks splits the night air only a stone’s throw from where I stand. Panicked, I begin to run guided only by instinct away from the noise; from the vigour of the barking I guess this is not the dog I plied with wine earlier, but some other hound kept in the grounds as a guard dog. I should have anticipated that, I think, as my legs carry me surprisingly fast across the open stretch of lawn that slopes down towards the river. Without turning, I feel the dog gaining on me, its ragged breath and the sound of its protest growing alarmingly near at my back. At the foot of the garden an ornate boathouse is built around an inlet from the river where the boats are moored; if I can only reach them and get myself out to open water, the journey back to Salisbury Court is a short one and I might stand a chance of making it before anyone could catch me.

But the door to the boathouse is locked, and I can see the dog now, a tall loping shadow with long legs, barking fit to wake the dead; my body seems to act of its own accord, darting instead across the grass to the iron gate set into the boundary wall where we had entered from the water stairs the previous evening — though it now feels like days ago. The gate is locked too, but fired by the blood pounding through my limbs, I scale it quicker than I have climbed anything, saving perhaps the boundary wall of San Domenico Maggiore, the night I fled from the Inquisition. Hooking my leg over the top of the brick archway, I half-scramble, half-drop to the top of the slimy steps on the other side, where I almost slip into the water. By now I can hear voices from the direction of the house and a flickering point of light that can only be a torch appears out of the darkness. I glance behind me at the ink-black river; even in the fractured moonlight I can see how fast the tide is flowing. But I must not hesitate even for an instant; the torchlight is approaching as the dog hurls itself repeatedly against the bars of the gate, forcing its snout through, lips curled back, demented in its frustration at not reaching me. I look down; the water sounds unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night. From the steps it is only a short distance along the boundary wall to the river entrance where the boats are moored, but the current is strong — if I should miss it and be carried downriver …

Closing my eyes, I jump; the shock of the cold water knocks the breath out of my body and the black water closes over my head so fast that for what seems like an eternity I am submerged, fighting the burning in my lungs as I flail my way to the surface. As my head breaks through and I snatch a mouthful of air, I begin to struggle with all the strength left in my limbs against the force of the flow, which has already dragged me almost past the edge of the archway leading into the boathouse. As a boy I was a strong swimmer, though these past years in northern lands have muted my enthusiasm for the sport; now determination and fear combine to overcome the stiffness already setting into my limbs and I force my way through the current until I can grasp at the edge of the boundary wall and propel myself into the calmer waters of the boathouse channel. The men’s voices carry through the windows and the light of their torch casts shadows on the arched ceiling of the boathouse, but it seems from the angry tone of their exchange and their violent rattling of the door handle that they do not have the key to the boathouse either. My hands are so frozen I can barely bend them to grip the sides of the nearest boat, but I will myself to heave my weight over the edge and sit for a moment, gathering my breath.

I am shaking so violently from the cold that the chattering of my teeth echoes around the walls; attempting to untie the rope that secures the wherry to an iron ring in the wall is almost beyond my numb fingers, but perhaps fortune is smiling on me, because I stumble back into the boat as it finally comes loose, and with shaking arms I shunt myself back along the wall with one of the oars until I emerge again into the choppy waters of the Thames. From the shadows behind me, a man’s protests join with the relentless barking of the dog in a chorus of anger, which fades as I set my face into the wind and bend the last of my strength to holding this little craft steady along the north bank, hoping that I can see enough to recognise the landing place at Water Lane and the garden wall of Salisbury Court. As the prow of the wherry catches a large wave head-on, the spray drenching me again with icy water, and a sharp pain arrows through my left shoulder as I try to wrench myself back on course, the prospect of the embassy walls has never seemed more enticing.