Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (11 page)

“I can't talk with you in this mood—”

But he understood something suddenly. Aye, she had changed nearly beyond recognition. “What did the two of you do here, alone at night?”

He was unprepared for her reply. She started to laugh; truly, he thought, she was bewitched. “Brownie? You think that Brownie and—and I—”

“Aye, Brownie and you. Why not? Perhaps that's why you did not want to marry me. Why take a husband when you have a demon to do your every bidding?”

Alice was silent for so long that he became aware again of the rain drumming outside the house. “You're serious,” she said finally. “I will not have you make these accusations against me.”

“What do you do there, at these revels of yours? Conjuring, calling up of the devil? Is it true they make you kiss the devil's arse, as I have heard?”

Alice said nothing but went to her front door and opened it, indicating that he should leave. Too late he remembered the elixir. How was it that she was able to make him so angry, angry enough to drive every other thought out of his mind? The elixir hadn't made her yield to him, that was clear. She was still as willful as ever.

The rain had not let up. He pulled his cloak over his head and went outside.

The next day was cold and overcast, but it looked as if the rain would keep away. The booksellers in the churchyard thumbed through their almanacs and glanced at the sky and talked among themselves in groups of three or four, and at last most of them decided to stay.

When George passed Alice on the way to his stall she deliberately turned away from him. By then his anger had grown to include Anthony Drury. If Anthony's potion had worked he would not have been made to look so foolish. When the other man came back into the churchyard he would not find George as compliant as before.

The people who visited Paul's that cold day were not disposed to linger; they did their business and then went home. By midafternoon George's neighbors began to close their stalls. He had just decided to join them when he saw a man in black doublet and hose heading toward him. Could that be Anthony? Good, it was.

“Did you use the elixir?” Anthony asked him.

“Aye.”

“And what happened?”

“You know better than I what happened. I could have given her water to drink for all the good it did me. For all I know I did give her water.”

Anthony did not apologize, as George had expected. “Sometimes these things can be difficult,” he said. “We can try again, and this time we'll be more careful. It might help if you came with us. Aye, the master said once that it's time for you to meet him.”

“Nay, I've done with your tricks. Get someone else to help you.”

“Do you still want her?”

The other man's question stopped him. Did he? He didn't know. He still thought her beautiful, still enjoyed imagining her by his side. But her actions horrified and disgusted him. She would have to change utterly for him to accept her again. If she kept to her willful ways it would be best for everyone if she left the Stationers' Company. The ideas she harbored were dangerous, very dangerous.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“We'll try one more time,” Anthony said. “Come with us—I think that will help. If we don't succeed we'll trouble you no further, and you'll have lost nothing. What do you think?”

George was silent. Would they truly leave him alone if they failed this time? He thought that that might be the best bargain of all.

“And if we can't help you win her, we can aid you in other ways.”

“I don't want—”

“We can have her taken out of the Stationers' Company, for example.”

“How—How did you know?”

“We know many things. If you join us you'll know these things too.”

“I don't want to join you. I don't even know who you are.”

“Ah, but you do want to. We know that about you too.”

He must have looked surprised because Anthony smiled suddenly, a sharp smile that turned his mouth the shape of a
V
. “Think it over,” Anthony said. “I'll be back to get you. Good day.” He left before George could answer him.

Was it true that he wanted to join them? As he had told Anthony, he didn't even know who they were. He thought that they meddled in magic, and he wanted no part of that. But as if in answer he remembered Anthony saying that everything they did had a natural explanation. Was that possible? Could you make others do your bidding without damning your soul? The idea was a new one to him, and he turned it over slowly. Why stop with marrying Alice? He could improve his trade, get popular monopolies like almanacs, be wealthy. Perhaps he could even acquire a coat of arms and become a gentleman. He should not have been so quick to dismiss Anthony; dearly the other man had valuable knowledge.

He almost called after him, asking him to come back. But nay—the man would return. He had said so himself.

Alice watched as George closed up his stall. She had tried to understand his behavior of the day before but had finally given up, come to understand that it was a riddle with no answer. When he had been friendly she had responded eagerly, gladdened to see him again. She had even thought, in her happiness, that he would want to meet Brownie. But then he had become insistent in a strange, forceful way, and finally angry. She knew that he would never speak to her again, but she knew too that she did not want him to, that she had been wrong about him. He had been a friend only as long as she had needed him; when she had gotten over her grief and confusion at John's death, he had changed.

The strange thing was that she didn't miss him at all. All her sorrow went for Brownie, who had left her so unexpectedly. Never to join the faeries at their revels, never to see the queen burning in white on the grass … But when she closed her right eye she saw their light, like jewels or swords or stars. She still had that, then. He had not taken that away from her.

7

A few days later Christopher sat at the desk he had been given and looked at the confusion of papers before him. The position Robert Poley had found for him, secretary to one of the queen's courtiers, had proved to be far more tedious than he had imagined when he had first heard of it, in the darkness of the Black Boar. Spread out in front of him were letters to copy, accounts to tally, lists to be arranged into some sort of order. He wondered how Poley expected him to find the time to discover anything.

The courtier he worked for, Sir Philip Potter, was a plump, ineffectual man from the north, come to court to ask Elizabeth for some tax monopoly or other. In all the time he had been in London, according to his accounts, Sir Philip had spent enormous sums of money on gifts, on celebrations arranged for the queen, on food, on the servants he had brought to attend him. And in all that time he had yet to see Elizabeth, or any of the men close to her.

Philip Potter had been lodged in a suite of apartments at the palace. The suite was located a fair distance away from the queen's Privy Chamber, which was, Christopher thought, a good indication of Potter's standing at court. One of Potter's servants had shown him to a room perched under a gable, quite possibly the smallest room in the palace; it contained a bed, a desk and a stool, and nothing more.

Christopher looked at the letter on the stack Potter had given him, dipped his quill in the inkhorn and began to write. “The twenty-eighth of March. My dear friend …” His hand smudged the word “friend” and he studied the page for a moment, wondering if he should start over. Nay—best to ignore it and continue as though nothing had happened.

He sighed. His friend Tom Kyd sometimes worked as a scrivener in order to survive in London; he wondered now how the man stood it.

He looked away from the task before him and glanced out the window, at the roofs and chimneys of the city below him. Directly beneath him was a hedge maze, the shrubs only now beginning to put forth leaves. Two men walked through the maze, deep in conversation.

From where he sat Christopher could see the turns leading out of the maze, but the men inside were clearly lost. As they came to the end of a path one man pointed left, but the other, shaking his head, pointed right. The first man insisted. Christopher watched as they went deeper into the maze.

The first man's bulk showed him to be Philip Potter. Christopher did not know the second man, but his fine clothes declared him to be someone very important indeed. If Potter had hoped to impress him he had taken a wrong turn, both literally and figuratively.

Watching the two men below gave Christopher a strange godlike feeling. If God existed it would have been just this way that he had watched another two in another garden. Nay, don't take that path, God would have thought, but it would have been too late, they would have already done it. And rightly, he thought. Who would want to spend all his days in a garden, however pleasant?

He set his quill down and left the room. Potter might be all day getting out of the maze, and with his employer gone he could take a while to explore the palace. Poley would be expecting a report soon.

He went down the great central flight of stairs, passing clerks, maids-of-honor, ushers, pages, musicians. Two men spoke a language he didn't recognize; he thought they might have been ambassadors.

Finally he came to a gallery overlooking a courtyard. Men and women crossed the yard, talking and laughing. He watched as two servants passed a statue, a winged representation of Mercury.

He followed the long gallery with its windows and padded benches on one side, tapestries and displays of gold and silver plate on the other. Finally he came to a door. Guards in royal red and purple tunics moved to bar his way, and he realized he had come to the Presence Chamber. He turned and traced his steps back to the stairs, then continued on in the other direction.

The gallery turned, forming a second side of the courtyard. This time when he went through a doorway no one stopped him. More apartments opened off the corridor here, whole suites of them, far richer than poor Potter's were.

He passed several doors, some wide open, some left teasingly ajar. Voices came from a few of the rooms, a man flattering a woman's hands, another man boasting about his success in hunting the day before. Someone was talking about troop strength. Here's where the real business of the court takes place, he thought; Sir Philip has no idea.

At last he came to the end of the corridor. He had seen nothing that would help him. But surely, he thought, no one would plan a crime of state where he could be overheard so easily. Not for the first time he wondered what it was that Poley expected of him.

Christopher awoke early the next day. Something had roused him, a loud burst of song, a sound that could have been a table being hit like a drum. Could Potter be entertaining guests?

The light coming through the window showed him that it was still early morning. He stood and dressed and left his room, following the noises he had heard. Someone laughed, and then voices were raised in song.

The sounds grew louder as he went. He saw that a door to one of the rooms off the corridor had been left ajar. A group of men and women inside the room sat in a circle, singing merrily. One of them looked up and motioned with his hand to come in.

He stepped inside before he could get a good look at them. Someone closed the door, laughing. The room had no windows, but a pale light continued to come from somewhere. He backed away, toward the door. “Oh, there's no need to fear
us
,” a woman said, grinning, and that set them all to laughing again.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Ah,” said a man. “Who are
you
?”

The men and women laughed as if that had been a great stroke of wit. Christopher looked at the circle, thinking that every one of them had something odd about him. The man who had waved him in, for example: his palm was as long as most men's hands. The woman who had spoken to him had a grin that nearly reached her ears. Another woman nursed a child hidden from him by its swaddling clothes; he wondered a little fearfully what the child might look like. Even sitting down these folks seemed far too short; some of them might have been four feet or less.

“I'm Sir Philip Potter's secretary,” he said.

“Aye, that too,” the woman said, disconcertingly, he thought. How much did they know?

“Are you courtiers?” he asked.

“Aye,” the man said. “We're here to—to—” His invention seemed to fail him.

“To see about our ancestral rights,” another woman said.

All around the circle men and women nodded in agreement. “Aye, our ancestral rights.” “Aye, that's it.”

“What ancestral rights?” Christopher said. “Where are you from?”

“Have a drink,” the man said, holding out a bottle shaped like a squat face.

It was far too early to drink; it had to be seven o'clock or even earlier. But before he could decide how to refuse another man snatched the bottle and drank from it, then passed it along in a graceful movement that might almost have been a dance. A pipe began to play somewhere. When the bottle came back to the beginning of the circle the man who had offered it to him held it out again.

“Have a drink,” he said.

Were they all mad? The queen would never have allowed these folks in the palace, of that he felt sure. How had they gotten past the guards? And how did they eat? He had not seen them at dinner the day before; he would certainly have remembered them if he had.

“Nay, I thank you,” he said, moving toward the door. To his relief no one stopped him. (But why relief? Surely, as the woman said, he had no reason to fear them.) He opened the door and headed back to Potter's apartments.

He had intended to wake early the next day, to listen for the voices again. But the sun shining in through the windows showed him that it was late morning, at the least. He cursed softly; he had probably missed them.