Traitor

Chapter 7

AT THE AGE of sixty-seven, John Dee was still a man of impressive bearing. His hand emerged from the wide, open sleeve of his richly embroidered artist’s gown and clasped Shakespeare’s right hand in a firm grip.

‘Mr Shakespeare, I am pleased to meet you.’

‘And I am glad to find you well, Dr Dee.’

The room was large with two leaded windows looking out across the battlements to the park and furnished with a table and stool, and a wooden crate of books. On the table Dr Dee had quills, ink, a crystal stone and a volume in which he had been writing when Cole brought in Shakespeare.

As Cole departed, Shakespeare began to explain his presence to Dr Dee and of Cecil’s fears for his safety.

Dee looked puzzled. ‘I cannot imagine anyone would wish me harm. I am but a poor sciencer. More than poor – impoverished.’

‘And a deviser of engines.’ Shakespeare lowered his voice. ‘In particular, the perspective glass.’

Dee smiled. Above his long beard, his eyes shone and creased into the handsome face of his distant youth. ‘Ah, my spying glass. So that is what this is about. Do they wish me to make another? I would require a great deal of money.’

‘No, but Sir Robert is concerned that the one you have made is in peril. You must know that it is in the keeping of a man known as the Eye. There has been an attempt on his life.’

Dee’s smile vanished. ‘By God’s heavenly angels, what happened, sir?’

Shakespeare told him of the events in Portsmouth.

‘This has made Sir Robert most anxious about your own safety. He fears that our enemies might try to abduct you or your collaborator Mr Digges and somehow attempt to coerce the secret from you.’

‘Mr Shakespeare, you do me a disservice! I would never reveal the secrets of this realm to a foreign power.’

‘I am pleased to hear that, Dr Dee. But you can surely understand why Sir Robert is concerned to look out for your welfare.’

‘Yes, Mr Shakespeare, I suppose I do. But how do you propose to protect me? Surely, I am safe here at Lathom House?’

‘I am to take you to the home of Mr Digges at Chevening in Kent. There you will be assigned to the keeping of my associate Francis Mills and his men. In the meantime, until we are there, you will have two men with you at all times. They will sleep outside your chamber and accompany you wherever you go. I will be billeted here, with you, inside this room.’

‘So we are not leaving immediately?’ Dee seemed relieved.

‘Soon. But until we go, be circumspect, Dr Dee. Do not put yourself in danger. Consult me before you consider going anywhere.’

‘Mr Shakespeare, I am a busy man. I must go to Manchester for a day or two, to the collegiate church of St Mary, and there are other matters—’

‘Other matters?’

‘Well, there is the honour I owe to my lord of Derby. I cannot leave while he ails, for that would seem most ill-mannered. But be straight with me, Mr Shakespeare. I may look old and befuddled to you, but there is more to this, is there not? There is something you keep from me.’

‘No,’ Shakespeare lied. ‘I am being straight with you. There is nothing more than your safety.’

He could not tell this venerable man that Cecil doubted him, feared even that he might sell his secrets to Spain. Shakespeare changed the subject.

‘But there is this new matter of my lord, the Earl of Derby. His illness worries me greatly in the light of the Hesketh affair.’

Dee sighed. ‘It is most unfortunate. I can well understand why you might imagine some link between his illness and the unfortunate events of last year.’

‘Can you explain it? Did you consort with Hesketh in Prague?’

‘No. I had left Bohemia before he arrived. But, of course, I heard tell of his attempt to recruit his lordship for treason against the Queen.’

‘So you knew nothing of him?’

‘No, not at that time. I knew him before, of course. We were friends for a time in the early eighties.’

‘You shared an interest in alchemy. Yes, I have read the reports.’

‘Indeed. But we lost touch after that.’

‘But you knew those in Prague with whom he would have dealt during his exile?’

‘Some of them, yes. Mr Edward Kelley, for one. And the Jesuit, Father Stephenson, for another.’

‘Stephenson?’

‘Thomas Stephenson, a good man. He was at the College of the Clementinum, a Jesuit college in Prague. He was sent there by either Cardinal Allen or Father Persons, I believe.’

‘Were they behind the letter that Hesketh brought back to England for Derby?’

Dee shrugged his shoulders. ‘It would not surprise me, but I had also heard it testifed that Hesketh was given the letter in London. Is that not so?’

‘That is what he said. He insisted he was approached by a boy and given the sealed paper at the White Lion in Islington. But you are a man of wit, Dr Dee. Explain to me why he was at the White Lion and why someone just happened to be there with a letter for him to deliver unless it had all been pre-arranged.’

Dr Dee thought for a moment, but just as he opened his mouth to make reply, he was stopped short by a scream from elsewhere in the house. It was a cry of piercing volume and intensity that seemed to well up from the depths of the earth and ring through the ancient halls of Lathom House, an unholy howl of terror and pain and despair.