Love and Sleep (31 page)

But they in the hall knew now what he was about. Loosened from the bonds of polite discourse, as the earth's bonds had been loosened in Bruno's discourse, the scholars began rising from their seats, hooting, calling out insults. Epicurean! Democritist! Schoolman!
Cheerculo! Cheercumferenchia!
He speaks Latin like a dog. Or a Dago.

Dicson could hardly hear or see. Laski had risen from the chair of honor, and had a hand cupped behind his ear. The scholars were stepping up to the dais, putting questions:

—If earth moves among the stars, and is a star, then either the earth is not corruptible, or the stars are spheres of change and corruption. Is there nowhere any perfection in your universe?

—The universe is perfect, a single, indivisible, infinite monad; and within this monad are conducted an infinite number of perfectly concluded processes of change.

—But but but. If there are no crystal spheres to carry the planets, what causes them to move in circles?

—They move in circles because they choose to. I now turn to the theses of the
doctissimus magister...

But the chair was empty. The Rector of Lincoln (expecting a riot, perhaps) had left the hall.

—Good Dr. John Underhill, said Doctor Dee, and pulled at his beard to keep from smiling at the tale. I partly know the man.

—A pig, said Bruno.

—And you, sir doctor, said the Prince Alasco, turning his big head with deferential sweetness toward John Dee at the room's other end. What do you hold, concerning the opinion of my countryman, Canon Koppernigk?

—I have studied his book, said Doctor Dee carefully. His thesis accounts for the appearances. Better than does Ptolemy, who follows Aristotle.

—You agree, then, said Bruno; he was smiling his unsettling smile, the same (Dicson thought) he had smiled at the ‘varsity men.

Doctor Dee did not immediately reply. The air grew heavy. It was just at this juncture that the crowd in Oxford had risen, unable to bear more. The men in Doctor Dee's chamber were still, waiting.

—I agree as to the motions.

—Then you must agree with me against Aristotle on substance. If Copernicus is right, the earth is a star, like the stars Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn that with the earth go around the Sun. And therefore of a like substance. Aristotle as he is understood says no. Copernicus confutes Aristotle on this.

—Copernicus himself does not say so.

—Copernicus did not understand what he wrote. He drew a new heavens. There must be a new earth too.

Sir Philip Sidney crossed his arms, and smiling spoke:

—All the poets will rebel. The stars must turn, the sun must rise and set, for poems to scan. Their rhymes will not bend either to these novelties.

—Then let them join those Oxford pedants. There is more matter for poetry in truth than in false seeming.

—Sir, said Laski. I sat for your disputation. I confess I could understand neither your arguments, nor how they pertain to substance, nor why you were shouted down.

—Copernicus (Bruno said airily) is not known in this country, sir; men here are not used to elucidating his hidden truths. And the doctors who once knew more even than he, who flourished long since at Oxford, their works are now despised, their bones are dug up and scattered. By these polishers of pebbles, these.

A huge spirit had arisen in the man: Doctor Dee could feel it, nearly extruding from his body, vibrating the air of the chamber, abashing and embarrassing the company. He said with great gentleness:

—You will be surprised, sir, that Copernicus's system is cried in the streets here.

The Italian turned to face him: and seemed for an instant to be replaced where he stood, by a sudden bright fulmination. Then he returned.

—Yes, said Dee, not stepping back, surprised but unalarmed. With the easy deliberate stride a man might use to approach a wary horse, he went to where the Italian stood and touched his arm.

—Cried in the streets, he said. In the almanac of my friend Master Leonard Digges. Will you read it? It will interest you. I have it here, I can find it in a moment. Do you read English?

Bruno's eyes shifted to the English lords, and away quickly.

—Not well. Not at all. This gentleman though might help me.

He meant Dicson, who stepped forward willingly. Bruno allowed Dee to guide the two of them to a corner of the chamber, where piles of books and
libelli
bound and unbound stood in unsteady piles on shelves and a deal table.

—
Of the making of books there is no end,
the doctor quoted. He rustled and rummaged among the things there; he lifted the lid of a trunk, and Bruno glimpsed manuscripts in thick blackletter; he took a book from a shelf, holding back with a hand its fellows who tried to follow it. A shabby and much-handled small book.

—
Prognostication Everlasting,
he said. To which is added a description of the heavens, by his son, Thomas, whom I have known and taught man and boy. You will see.

He laid the book upon the table, and stepped away, not however turning his back on the Italian immediately; as though (Dicson thought) he had laid a bone before a mastiff to soothe it.

Bruno opened the book. An emblem of spheres. Sun in the center.

He thought: Who is he? The English doctor had, just when Bruno's own heated spirit had been drawn out into the room, changed his image for a fountain of limpid water, his garments’ folds the falling streams, face and beard the surmounting foam and spray. Just for an instant. No one else had seen.

He read:

This ball every 24 hours by wonderfull slie and smooth motion rouleth rounde, making with his period our natural daye, whereby it seems to us that the huge infinite immoveable globe should swaye and tourne about.

Dicson labored to translate this into an Italian less certain than his Latin, moving his hand beside his mouth as though to summon words out of it,
e e e
. Bruno had already absorbed the page.

The baull of ye earth wherein we move, to the common sorte seemeth greate, and yet compared with the
Orbis magnus
wherein it is carried, it scarcely retaineth any sensible proportion, so merueilliously is that Orbe of Annuall motion greater than this little dark starre wherin we liue. But that
Orbis magnus
beinge but as a poynct in respect of the immensity of the immovable heaven, we may easily consider what little portion of gods frame, our Elementare corruptible worlde is...

—Who is he? Bruno asked, and Dicson stopped his stammering to look where Bruno looked. Doctor Dee had turned away to speak privately with the Polonian. Dicson made to speak, but then was abashed, knowing no answer he had would be the answer Bruno sought. Bruno looked down again at the little universe Master Digges had drawn.

Each of the circles around the central sun was labeled:
THE ORBE OF MARS. THE ORBE OF SATURNE.
And it
was
Copernicus's scheme. The only oddity was that the ultimate sphere was not shown as a delimiting circle, as Copernicus had it, but as a scattering of stars filling out the page. This sphere was labeled too, the words arching around over the sphere of Saturn and beneath the stars:
THE ORBE OF STARRES FIXED INFINITELY VP EXTENDETH IT SELF IN ALTITVDE SPHERICALLY, AND THEREFORE IS IMMOVABLE THE PALLACE OF FOELICITYE, GARNISHED WITH PERPETVAL SHININGE GLORIOVS LIGHTES INNVMERABLE, FARRE EXCEEDING OVR SVNNE BOTH IN QVANTITYE AND QVALITYE, THE VERYE COVRTE OF CELESTIALL ANGELLES, DEVOYD OF GREEFE AND REPLENISHED WITH PERFITE ENDLESS JOYE THE HABITACLE FOR THE ELECT.

He closed it.

—He errs.

Dicson, who had not done translating, closed his mouth.

—He errs, said Bruno, to say that the sun is the center of this infinite sphere. A sphere cannot be infinite, it must have a bound. Nor can an infinite sphere have a center.

He moved aside the almanac, gently, his eyes watchful now and his voice low, a hunter in a blind, or hunter's prey.

—What book is that?

It had been lying on the table with others, it must have been, and yet he had not seen it until this instant, as though it had worked its way to the surface meanwhile. Dicson shrugged, looking down. A small volume. A binding not of English work. He moved to take it up, but Bruno's hand was on it.

The title page was a pillared temple.

MONAS HIEROGLYPHICA

IONNIS DEE, LONDINENSIS

AD

MAXIMILIANVM, DEI GRATIAE

ROMANORVM, BOHEMIAE ET HVNGARICAE

REGEM SAPIENTISSIMVM

And inscribed above all, like a finger to the lips:

QVI NON INTELLEGIT, AVT TACEAT, AVT DISCAT

In the center of the page, surrounded by scrolling banners bearing words, by symbols of sun and moon both weeping, by pillars labeled with the names of the four elements, was drawn an egg-shaped cartouche; and in the egg, like the bones of a bird growing in there and not yet ready to be born, was drawn this sign:

How did it come to be here? Had this English shape-shifter (who did not, it may be, even know he was a shape-shifter) carved it himself, or had someone taught it him?

—A hieroglyph, said Dicson. Hieroglyph of the monad.

The priests of AEgypt had known how to draw down from their proper realms the airy powers, by incising in the Nile mud or cutting in stone the sign of commandment, the word
Come
in the language that was before the languages of men.

Had this sign brought him out of the South and into this cold island where he would be insulted and scorned?

He asked it: Why have you brought me here?

But it answered only: If you do not understand, be silent, or learn.

—
Doctissime
, said Adelbert Laski into Doctor Dee's ear. Is it possible, do you think, that we may have some further congress with. I speak of those, those. Whom you and I and Master, Master...

—Kelley.

—Kelley. Those whom I was privileged to have conversation with when last I came here. Do you think...

—The company is too great, said Doctor Dee in a low voice. We will not have the quiet or the privacy necessary for the work.

—I will send them all away.

When the Polonian prince had first come to Mortlake, accompanied only by a servant and a guard, John Dee had taken him into the far chamber, and Kelley had besought the blessed spirits for some helpful word for the wanderer, and Laski had been troubled and amazed and fired by what he had been told. Secret enemies. Homecoming. Great victories. Blood. A crown. Through the whole tedium of his Oxford journey he had thought of little else.

—And where is Master Kelley?

Doctor Dee pulled at his beard, and looked to the window. Day was late.

—Gone fishing, he said.

For some time he had been watching a frog on a floating log, who was himself patiently angling. His great sightless-seeming eyes were open, though ever and again a kind of curtain slid over them and away again. He fished with a length of tongue as quick as the rest of him was cold and slow: a sort of spasm would shake him, and—though you had not seen it caught—he would be swallowing a long-legged fly. This often took a horrid length of time, the frog impassively ingesting while a beating wing or leg hung still outside the great mouth.

Kelley felt a tug on his line, but when he drew it toward him, it soon slackened. A fish softly broke the water, showing Kelley his backside. Taken his lobworm too.

It was Doctor Dee who had first urged this angling on his skryer, as a distraction; melancholy needs distraction, seeks it restlessly, never satisfied long with any occupation; melancholy wants at once to be engaged and to be doing nothing. Fishing is both, in some sort. But there was no medicine for his melancholy but one.

Edward Kelley had with him—he slept with it beneath his pillow, it never left his person—a stone jar stoppered with wax, within which was a minute quantity of a reddish powder, which a spirit had given him in exchange for his soul. He had told Doctor Dee that he had found the powder and the book of its use, written in unreadable characters, in a monk's grave in Glastonbury, and over time he had come to believe it himself: even though a mute dog-faced thing, the demon who had first tempted him with it, who had found the book for him, had accompanied him for years. He sat even now beside Kelley on the bank, bored and restless. Kelley even knew his name.

He had ceased angling. His eyes were open but he no longer saw. He was the fisher frog; he was the caught fly, too. When on such a day as this he sat by a slow backwater with his pole and creel, it often happened that he would sit thus for hours, a kind of curtain drawn over and drawn back from his eyes by turns; until evening came, surprising him with its cool darkness, and returning him to the river's bank.

The young knights (with all due deference) suggested returning to London. Laski bid them adieu: he and his friend had much to say to one another, but the gentlemen should not think they must stay; let them return, he would find his own way back; he would not be swept out to sea, and the Queen hold them responsible for losing him; go, go.