The Secrets of Life and Death (15 page)

‘He is a pederast and a coward.’ This said smiling, while dipping his head to a passing lady. ‘He defies nature even as he studies it.’ The sweeping judgement almost took my breath away. I must have let something of my surprise show, because his smile broadened. ‘Are you shocked that I judge my emperor so?’

Dee shook his head. ‘No, Reichsritter von Schönborn. My surprise is equating the sin of unnatural practices with the study of science. Surely, further enjoying the intricacy and wonder of God’s handiwork cannot be seen in the same light as deviance?’

Konrad bowed, his mouth in a crooked smile. ‘If that was what science was doing – appreciating God’s creations – I would support it. But you, Master Dee, and your fellow scientists, seek to interfere in nature. You meddle with incantations to change the natural course of God’s design. That is the definition of sorcery.’

Dee’s face had reddened above his beard. ‘Man has been enlightened by angels throughout history. God does not intend us to ignore the messages He sends us.’

‘Is not the Bible sufficient?’ asked Konrad, waving at a man carrying a tray of goblets. ‘Try this wine, my friends. It is a Hungarian wine, grown on the slopes of the Carpathians since the time of the Romans.’ He took a deep draught. ‘It reminds me of my youth, as a student in Vienna.’

It was a heady, scented wine, which smelled earthy, like the forest. We were ushered by servants towards the long table. Konrad was seated closer to the king and opposite Dee. I noticed, at Istvan’s right hand, the black lion that was Nádasdy. The king’s brother Lord Miklós sat to his left. The three conversed for the first part of the meal, while I struggled in German to speak to a flirty lady-in-waiting, and to eat my meats. I noticed a constant stream of interruptions for the king: a soldier in Polish uniform, a quiet man in a green suit, a servant carrying papers, one of his own guards. As the evening wore on, more lamps and candles were lit, filling the atmosphere with smoke that created a haze that softened my view of the table. But I noticed the slow increase in the king’s guard. A half-dozen men leaning against the end wall of the dining chamber at the beginning of the meal had somehow become twenty, then thirty, breastplates picking up the flickering light under jerkins. Most had a hand on their swords. I scanned the other walls, lined with shields with the coats of arms of the many rulers of this disputed land. Above the shields, a narrow walkway was peopled with two, then four archers, each with a bolt loosely fitted in a crossbow, facing the double doors at the end of the chamber. I glanced around the company. Many such as Dee and the inquisitor could not have such a view of the gallery. I braced myself to dive under the table if needed, which ruined my appetite for a pastry full of pears.

Anxiety made my senses sharper. I noticed a black-clad form that walked in the side door, and bowed low to the king. Then he – a priest with a mud-flecked cloak and filthy boots – proceeded down the table towards Konrad. Conversations faded as he passed. He knelt and presented a leather pouch to the inquisitor, who drew out a vellum package with a huge red seal. With great ceremony, the priest still bowed at his knee, he slit the seal with a flourished knife, and a cracking sound echoed around the room. He pushed aside his food, and spread the sheets onto the table. Finally, he nodded dismissal to the priest and stood.

‘Your gracious Majesty.’ He bowed low. ‘I have but now received an urgent missive from His Holiness Xystus Quintus. He sends greetings and heartfelt blessings for your health, and your mission. He respectfully commands that you assist the Holy Inquisition in arresting a known and dangerous heretic.’ He bowed again, and I noticed the guards had moved forward to secure the doors. ‘His Holiness has sent a small escort to bring the accused heretic to Rome, so that he may argue his innocence or confess his guilt and receive the eternal forgiveness of the Lord.’

I knew such a man would be tested by torture, and looked up and down the table for signs that the guards were coming to get the unfortunate accused.

The king did not speak for a full minute, and I think I was not the only person there who held their breath. Most of the nobles down the table were Protestant.

‘The Holy Father does not have sovereignty in the court of an anointed king.’ Istvan’s voice was stern.

Konrad nodded. ‘Indeed. Your sovereignty over your own peoples is sacrosanct.’ The truth started to grow inside me, a bubble of terror. ‘But Il Papa asks your support in returning to him a subject of a heretic queen of a godless land, whose people are denied the solace of Rome.’

‘Silence!’ The roar of the king came in a huge wave of anger as he pushed back his chair and stood. The sound of thirty swords, hissing from their scabbards filled the room. Their steel gleamed in the lamplight. ‘You will remember that you are also an invited guest at my court.’

Konrad bowed low. ‘I ask pardon for any offence caused. My duty is to pass on His Holiness’s wishes. And this. A message in his own hand, for his beloved brother, His Majesty King Istvan Báthory of Poland, King and Duke of Lithuania, King and Voivode of Transylvania, Prince of Hungary. I am to place it into your own hand.’

I could see conflicting emotions chasing across the heavy features of the king. After a long pause, he waved his guards aside to allow the priest to approach.

Konrad knelt and presented the note, wrapped in scarlet ribbons and sealed with an ornate black seal.

Istvan accepted the missive, then waved him away. Konrad gracefully rose and stepped back, his head bowed, lips moving in prayer as Istvan broke the seal. The king read slowly, squinting a little, a servant holding a candle near to assist. He refolded the letter and handed it to one of his servants. Konrad continued his prayer, then crossed himself, so Istvan was forced to wait.

‘I should throw you into the cells for this rudeness.’

Konrad nodded. ‘If I have offended, I grieve for it. If I have overstepped my authority, place me in your dungeons. The Lord will be with me there. But I am a servant of the papacy, and His Holiness. My duty, and my conscience, is to him.’

Istvan turned to the nobles, many of whom were standing beside their women, with hands on swords.

‘I am commanded to place our visitors Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley into the custody of the Vatican escort, and allow them to be taken to Rome for questioning. This contravenes every custom of hospitality my peoples hold in common: that a guest under our roof is to be treated like a brother. I will consider His Holiness’s … request, and deliver my judgement in the morning.’

I already knew what the answer would be. No Catholic king would defy the Pope, especially not one with as tenuous a claim as Istvan to the crowns of Lithuania and Poland. On the morrow, I would start the journey towards hell on earth. As an Englishman and a Protestant, only death could relieve me.

Jack peered at street names as she drove through the town. She hated leaving Sadie chained up in the priest hole, but was worried someone might hear her shouting from the living room if they came to the door. She turned into the road Felix had directed her to, wondering why she had agreed to go to his house. Information, she told herself, knowing it was more than that.

‘Jack.’ He was waiting at the door even as she locked the car, which she had parked on the long drive. A quick look up at three floors of Victorian prosperity in sand-coloured brick, then she followed him into the hallway. ‘Thank you for coming.’ He reached his hands out, and she slid out of her coat. ‘I think your mysterious woman may have come to the university. She was trying to find out about the letters and medals.’

‘Why do you think that?’ Jack looked around at the hall, with an original tiled floor in patterned mosaic, overlaid by patches of colour from stained glass in the door.

‘Rose – my assistant – said she asked about them. You say a strange woman was in the back of your car?’ He showed her into a room at the front of the house, lined with books and dominated by a large oak desk, and waved her to an armchair.

Jack looked at him more closely; he didn’t look as if he was still under the effects of a mesmer spell. ‘Yes. If it’s the same person. What did your visitor look like?’ She scanned the books on his shelves.

He sat down in an office chair, its cracked and buttoned leather looked as old as the house. ‘Well, there’s a question. I’m not sure what she looked like. I just caught a glimpse of her in the car park.’

‘What did you see?’ She turned to look at him, as his face tensed into a frown.

‘To be honest, I’m not sure what I saw.’ He reached for a leather satchel and withdrew a stack of papers. He handed her one of the sheets. ‘But I think this is what she was really after. It’s what this McNamara wants, as well.’

‘It’s one of those ratty old papers Maggie sold.’ She could read more words now they were magnified on the printout. ‘I could never decipher them completely, but they were a lot more interesting than Dee’s lists and numbers.’ She reached for another. ‘They can’t be forgeries. I remember looking at these when I was just a teenager. Maggie inherited them from her grandmother.’

‘Did you read any of them?’

Jack shrugged. ‘The bits that were in “ye olde English”. I managed some, some of it read like an adventure story. Were they written by Dee himself?’

He tapped the pile of papers still in his hand. ‘They were written by his collaborator, Edward Kelley. Some say he became more of a sorcerer than Dee, certainly in his later years. This is a journal he wrote while travelling in Europe in 1585, when he was still Dee’s assistant.’

Jack sat in the armchair opposite Felix, and looked at him. ‘So, this is what everyone is after?’

He ran a finger along a line of text on the photocopy. ‘I think Dee and Kelley were in Poland looking for some ritual, some spell perhaps, to preserve life. These pages of Kelley’s are notes on what they did. The medals record the final research, the circles of symbols.’ He leaned back in the chair. ‘Listen to this. “We observed the lady, unclothed against her modesty, adorned with divers burns and scratches such as may have been made with a knife. The … something … sigils, burned with dressings of caustic lye.” Sigils, symbols, inscribed into her skin. He was trying to treat someone, who must have been seriously ill.’ He looked up at her. ‘This case I’ve been investigating had sigils drawn on the skin of a drug addict.’

‘The girl who died on the train.’

‘Right. I’ve wondered whether they were somehow there to keep her safe, maybe heal her in some way.’ He tapped the paper with one finger. Jack watched his forehead crease with concentration as he squinted at the pages. ‘These symbols were associated with a ritual called binding.’

Jack took the page he had read from. ‘What else does it say?’

He looked up at her. ‘Up until the fifteen hundreds, people explained everything they could see through religion. Dee and Kelley were trying to use science to explain the world around them instead of belief.’

Jack turned the paper around, trying to follow a line of text. ‘Why?’

‘Their world was being torn apart by religious dissent, and Dee thought that if he could find the true nature of God, people could stop fighting wars over it.’

‘But you said this wasn’t written by Dee.’ A line of Latin caught her eye, and it reminded her of something the woman had said. ‘Have you ever heard the words “
morturi masticantes
”?’

‘Have you looked it up on the Internet?’ He looked at her, his green eyes dark in the fading light.

She shrugged. ‘I haven’t got around to it, no.’ She didn’t like to say that she had no idea how to do that, nor how to use a computer. She had only mastered a mobile phone when it became necessary for business.

He opened the laptop on the desk and it whirred into life. ‘Why do you want to know? Is it in the Kelley paper?’

‘No. No, it’s something … that woman said, the one in my car. She used the words.’

He tapped on the keyboard, his face lit up by the screen. ‘It’s … Hungarian. No, Latin, used in Hungary. Something to do with – revenants.’

She leaned forward, running her eyes over the unfamiliar words. She noticed Felix touching a finger to his lower lip and caught her breath. She sat back in the chair. ‘Look, this woman—’

‘Middle-aged, slim, well dressed, very friendly, calls herself Bachmeier. That was my assistant’s first impression. You?’

‘Right. My
first
impression.’ She studied her hands, trying to describe the memory without sounding insane. ‘She was a lot less friendly when I didn’t do what she wanted.’

‘But she was compelling, at first. You were compliant. How persuasive was she?’ His voice was soft, and she looked up to find him leaning forward.

‘It was as if I was hypnotised. I drove eighteen miles because she told me to. I felt like a rabbit, fascinated by a stoat. I was terrified, but I just wanted to do whatever she asked.’

‘She had Rose try to show her my private files on my office computer. Rose would never do that, normally. No one can use hypnosis to influence people against their will, but there are techniques … methods connected with Dee’s belief system.’ He hesitated, his lips curving into a smile that tugged at something in Jack.

Shadows gathered in the room, the light greying as the moments passed. ‘You’re talking about Dee’s sorcery?’

He hesitated for a moment, and his lips creased into a lopsided smile. ‘You’re going to laugh at me, but hear me out. I spent a lot of time in Benin, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, while I was doing research for my PhD. Belief in witchcraft is common in large areas of rural Africa.’ He fumbled in one pocket, then another, drawing out a dark carving and putting it on the desk between them. ‘Sorcerers there have a way of making people … susceptible, obedient.’

Jack took the carving, immediately feeling something dark and powerful in the wood that made it feel heavier and warmer than she expected. The figure, which she at first thought was a monkey, was in fact a big-headed, ugly caricature of a man. It had faces on both sides of its head, and massive genitals. She realised she had picked it up by its penis, and blushed faintly, putting it back gently.