The Detective and the Devil
Read The Detective and the Devil Online
Authors: Lloyd Shepherd
Lloyd Shepherd is a former journalist and digital producer who has worked for the
Guardian
, Channel 4, the BBC and Yahoo. He lives in South London with his family.
By the same author
The English Monster
The Poisoned Island
Savage Magic
LET THE WATERS ABOVE THE HEAVENS FALL,
AND THE EARTH WILL YIELD ITS FRUIT
THE QUATERNARY RESTING
IN THE TERNARY
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A.D. 2016
Soli Deo honor et gloria
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
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Copyright © Lloyd Shepherd, 2016
Map copyright © Neil Gower, 2016
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1988.
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Let he who does not understand either be silent, or learn
John Dee,
Propaedeumata Aphoristica
1815: CONSTABLE HORTON AT THE THEATRE
1588: JACOBUS AND THE MERCHANTS
CONSTABLE HORTON IN THE PROSPECT OF WHITBY
CONSTABLE HORTON AND THE BODIES
CONSTABLE HORTON LUNCHES WITH MR LAMB
CONSTABLE HORTON RETURNS TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY
CONSTABLE HORTON’S LAST DAYS IN LONDON
INTERVAL: ABIGAIL AND THE WHALE
1765: THE YEAR MINA BAXTER’S MOTHER DIED
THE HORTONS ARRIVE AT ST HELENA
1773: THE YEAR MINA BAXTER’S FATHER DIED
1776: THE YEAR MINA BAXTER’S SON WAS TAKEN
MRS HORTON ENCOUNTERS A MONSTER
1815: THE YEAR IN WHICH MINA’S SON RETURNED
CONSTABLE HORTON AND THE DEVIL
LONDON
The Universe is like a lyre which has been tuned by the most excellent Maker, and the strings of this lyre are separate Species of the universal whole. If you knew how to
touch these strings with skill and make them vibrate, you could bring forth astonishing harmonies. Man himself is entirely analogous to this Universal Lyre.
John Dee,
Propaedeumata Aphoristica
By the time the barge reached Mortlake he had a revolt on his hands. The ill-headed English fools were drunk when they climbed aboard at Deptford and were half-blind and
half-mad by Putney. One of them had already gone over the side into the river. Presumably he was dead by now, floating downstream of Hammersmith. The rest of them were on the point of upending the
‘whoreson Dutchman’ – as they had taken to calling him – into the river to join him.
‘Good fellows, fall to ’t yarely,’ he begged in his adopted voice, the one he thought of as ‘English theatrical’. It was good enough for a Bankside theatre, in his
view. Too good, perhaps, for these violent men had fallen to mocking it.
‘Fall to ’t
thyself
,’ said one of them, and some of the others giggled. ‘Thou art a droning flap-mouthed clot-pole.’
‘Did you hear that in a play?’ said another of them.
‘Go firk thyself,’ came the reply.
‘Do you not see it?’
He pointed dramatically upstream. The shape of a house. It might have been the necromancer’s; it might have been some poor bloody widow’s; it might have been Hampton Court itself. He
didn’t know. He didn’t much care by then.
‘We are arrived,’ he cried, praying it was true. He was by then giving serious consideration to diving off the barge and swimming back to the other boat, the one which had followed
them upstream, the one only he knew about. This lot were too stupid and too drunk to be relied upon for the task to come. His scheme was as ridiculous as his dramatic facade.
And yet the place seemed right. The tide was high up against the towpath, and the lighterman he’d paid to bring them here steered the barge alongside. Oars clattered into each other as the
drunken Englishmen tried to stow them. They’d been clattering into each other all the way upriver.
Now anxiety descended on his motley crew of ne’er-do-wells, the ale-stewed anger and defiance underworked by the outline of the house jagged in the moonlight, its roof steeply pointed into
the sky, more assertive even than the church tower next to it. The place was directly alongside the towpath, and was encrusted with the silhouettes of chimneys and outhouses, with none of the
organising principles of a noble riverside palace.
He climbed out of the barge and onto the towpath. Not one of them followed him. He looked back and they were standing in the barge, a ragtaggle gang of frightened little boys.
‘How can we be certain he’s not inside?’ said one of them.
‘He’s not inside,’ he replied.
‘But how can we be certain?’
‘He’s in Poland.’
Such was his intelligence, anyway. He had no wish to encounter a wizard this evening.
‘You go in first, Dutchman.’
‘Yes. Fall to ’t, yarely.’
A snigger from one of them lifted the mood a little. He turned towards the house.
A year in the making. A year of planning, scheming, travelling. He’d met some interesting men this past twelvemonth. Only some of them had been European.
Now he was standing on John Dee’s land, beyond the towpath, and the house looked even more odd from here than it had from the river. It was completely silent. A strange smell hung in the
air, a mixture of almonds and urine. In these outhouses, it was said, were Dee’s laboratories, where he boiled and burned the elements of the Earth with God-knew-what intent.
He had to persuade the Englishmen to go into the house. Hell’s teeth, he had to persuade
himself
to go into the house. They were against it to a man, but he’d been careful
not to pay them anything upfront. Their fee depended on their completing the job. He reminded them of this now. They looked up at the shadowy house of the wizard, and three of them left, right
there and then, just climbed out of the boat and walked away from the river, towards the silhouette of the church tower, muttering about how this place was wrong, wrong, wrong, and they
weren’t going to be possessed by the necromancer’s guardian demons just for a few shillings.
He looked at the ones who remained.
‘More for you lot, then.’
They looked at each other, and then they did as they were told.
They smashed their way in, shoving the door off its hinges. They tramped into the large central hall, its ceiling high but not, thought Jacobus, as high as the roof he’d seen from outside.
There were other rooms, in the eaves.
He saw books. They were everywhere, stacked vertically and horizontally, in wooden shelves and cases, their spines to the wall. There was some rationale to the layout, and he almost laughed when
he realised it. The books were arranged by size. Even to an unlettered man such as Jacobus Aakster, this seemed queer and unscholarly.
The men didn’t know what they were about. This was deliberate on his part. He pointed randomly at shelves, and issued commands.
Take the books out of the boxes. Put them on the floor.
Take these books from the shelves. No, not those, these ones. And these. And these
.
They removed hundreds, perhaps thousands. Some of the volumes were chained, but most were not, and those on chains were simply pulled away from the wall. He cast his net wide, walking around the
central hall pointing to whatever looked likely, ignoring theology and concentrating on natural philosophy and exploration, the stuff that might prove to be useful in the real world. Who knew?
Perhaps Dee had discovered a north-eastern passage to Cathay, and it was hidden inside one of these books. That would be worth something, but it would be as nothing against the secret he was really
here for.