‘That I do not know.’ I have grown so used to deception that even when I am able to answer a question honestly, I sound implausible. ‘But I think it unlikely.’
‘Why do you say that?’
I hesitate.
‘For the sake of his wife. And because for the moment he would not want to give King Henri more reason to fear the Duke of Guise.’
‘And because he still thinks he can engineer a satisfactory outcome between all parties, no? He imagines he is controlling this enterprise - balancing one set of interests against another?’
‘Perhaps.’ I recall what Fowler had said about Castelnau trying to please too many people.
‘It is touching, his faith in diplomacy.’ Mendoza shakes his head. ‘I shall almost be sorry to see him disillusioned. But you are an astute man, Bruno. Astute enough not to yoke yourself to a monarch whose days are numbered.’
‘Do you mean Elizabeth or Henri?’
‘Either. Both. A new day is dawning. Men like you and Castelnau will need to decide where you stand. If you have any influence over him, you would counsel him well not to let his king hear what is discussed in the embassy.
Entendido
?’
He draws himself up to his full imposing height and puffs out his chest, his beard bristling. He does not intimidate me, but I am in no state at present to argue with him. I merely nod my agreement and take the opportunity to slip away backwards into the milling crowd.
‘Bruno.’
I turn in the direction of the murmur, and there, leaning against the wall between the hanging tapestries, is William Fowler, dressed in a neat suit of grey wool, with a matching cap clutched between his hands.
‘What did Howard want?’
‘To remind me again how much he hates me,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder at Howard as he and Mendoza confer, their dark heads together, while the courtiers around them press towards the queen. My head is spinning; I am not sure what to make of my brief exchange with Henry Howard. He must fear that Dee has told me something I could use against him and was warning me that he has the power to bring me and Dee down together, but I cannot escape the implication that he has been watching me closely. The thought makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle; was it Howard, then, or someone working for him, who saw me with Abigail at the Holbein Gate? Instinctively I glance over my shoulder again; for the first time since this business began, I feel a chill of real fear.
‘But has something happened?’ Fowler whispers, edging closer around the back of a couple of spectators. ‘I saw you come in looking white as a corpse. I wondered if perhaps -‘
I give a tight shake of the head, to indicate that I cannot speak of it there.
‘The queen’s advisors were coming and going half the concert too,’ Fowler persists. ‘I noticed Walsingham leave.’ There is a note of anxiety in his voice, which I recognise because I have felt it myself; it is the fear of missing some important moment, of being left out. This time it is I who know more than him, I who am in Walsingham’s confidence, and despite the circumstances, this pleases me.
‘Bruno, are you all right?’ he persists. ‘You look terrible. Does it have something to do with Howard?’
‘Meet me tomorrow,’ I hiss, through my teeth. ‘Two o’clock. Not the Mermaid - some other place.’
He thinks for a moment, then sidles even closer.
‘The Mitre, Creed Lane. The back room.’ He slips past me as he says this and melts into the crowd in that way of his, like a grey cat into the shadows.
I work my way between shoulders towards Castelnau’s party. The ambassador is still fighting for a position near the queen; Marie and Courcelles are huddled together, whispering. Courcelles is the first to notice me, with a wrinkle of his delicate nose.
‘Where have
you
been?’ he demands.
I gesture with my head towards the royal party, as if nothing is amiss.
‘Queen Elizabeth herself?’ Marie says, apparently impressed, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders with a little shiver. The wind is up over the river, carrying the first scent of frost. The boat’s lanterns sway in time with the soft ripple of the sculls in and out of the water. I think of Abigail’s killer rowing away downriver, leaving her lifeless body floating in the kitchen channel, her red hair spread out around her, waving like water weed.
‘Did you hear that, Michel?’ Marie nudges her husband and nods back to me, her eyes gleaming in the lamplight. ‘The Queen of England wants to learn Bruno’s memory system, and it was I who asked first. How very fashionable you have become, Bruno!’
Courcelles eyes me coldly.
‘But the queen did not know you would be attending the concert. It seems strange that her people should have been awaiting you with such alacrity.’
‘She has heard of me through Sir Philip Sidney,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘He knows something of my work and has apparently mentioned it to Her Majesty.’
He continues to regard me with that same sceptical expression. I am conscious that to insist too much on my story will only compound his suspicions. I care little what Courcelles thinks for himself, but I cannot have him dripping doubt into Castelnau’s ear, now that my place at Salisbury Court has become so essential to Walsingham.
‘Did you have the sense that something was going on tonight, though?’ Courcelles persists, addressing his question to the whole group. ‘All those guards. And the queen’s advisors running in and out. The Earl of Leicester whispering in her ear. It was odd - as if something was amiss but they were trying to pretend all was as normal.’
Castelnau looks perturbed. ‘I noticed nothing amiss.’
‘Nor I,’ I say, hastily.
‘You were not there,’ Courcelles points out.
‘It is a shame they made you miss the whole concert, though,’ Castelnau says thoughtfully, in a manner that suggests he is not wholly persuaded by my story. ‘I have not heard its like. They must have had a great many questions to ask you, eh?’
‘The queen is enthusiastic about my art of memory, it seems, but her advisers had heard some unfortunate rumours regarding my methods.’
‘That it’s black magic by any other name?’ Courcelles says, one eyebrow arched. ‘All of Europe has heard those rumours.’
‘Something of the sort.’ I shoot him a withering smile, but it is lost in the dark. ‘In any case, they wanted to put their minds at ease that I was not a danger to the royal person or to the reputation of her court.’
‘It is a marvellous opportunity,’ Castelnau says thoughtfully. ‘They do seem to like you, these English. I suppose it is your reputation as a rebel against the pope.’ His eyes drift to the middle distance and I wonder if he is still questioning my excuse, or calculating how my favour at court might work to bolster his own standing with the queen.
‘Perhaps, my lord.’ I begin to fear that I may eventually trip myself up with my cat’s cradle of lies.
‘Well, the queen will have to wait her turn,’ says Marie, leaning forward with a disarming smile. ‘I requested that you tutor me before she did, and I stake a prior claim.’ She lays a hand on my arm. ‘We shall begin tomorrow morning, while Katherine is with her tutor. No - I shall hear no excuses, Bruno.’ She turns to her husband, her eyes eager, her hand in its green silk glove still resting lightly just above my wrist. ‘Won’t that be something for this tedious English court to talk about, Michel - that the wife of King Henri’s envoy shares a teacher with the Queen of England!’
‘I thought you disapproved of the Queen of England?’ Castelnau says mildly.
‘
I
thought you disapproved of Bruno,’ Courcelles adds, with a pointed look.
I return his glance with equanimity, but his words offer a useful warning. I do not know Marie de Castelnau. I do not know her intentions with regard to me, nor the root of her interest in my work; I know only that she is fiercely committed to the Catholic cause of Mary Stuart and the Duke of Guise. For so many reasons, I must not let her catch me off-guard even for a moment. I hope briefly that the ambassador might forbid it, on grounds of propriety.
Castelnau appears to be thinking, then allows the beam of his patriarchal smile to sweep slowly across me and his wife. ‘If it would interest you to learn, my dear, I’m sure Bruno would see it as a service. Heaven knows we could all do with a better memory.’
This appears to be the last word on the matter. Marie gives my wrist a little squeeze before settling back among the cushions, lamplight playing over the satisfied curve of her mouth as the oars continue to splash their steady rhythm through the black river. From under the fine curtain of his hair, Courcelles continues to study me with his fox eyes, just waiting for one false move. I watch the water part over the blades in silver rivulets and picture again the marble-cold face of Abigail Morley, who died tonight partly because of me.
Salisbury Court, London
1st October, Year of Our Lord 1583
As if waiting for its cue, October blows in on gusts of a bitter east wind. The cornflower-blue skies over the city now churn with bruised, angry-looking clouds and the dead leaves scratch the paths and window panes. A fire has been lit in the small parlour where Marie wishes to conduct our first lesson; I have had no choice but to agree, though I am itching to get to Mortlake in pursuit of Ned Kelley. Last night I slept badly, the image of Abigail’s soaked and mutilated body laid out in my dreams and my waking thoughts, my conscience tormented by the thought that I should have done more to protect her. If I had gone to Walsingham sooner, instead of being so determined to prove myself alone, would she have been safer? Such questions are fruitless, yet they prodded at my mind all night, sharp and insistent, like devils in woodcuts of hell prodding with their pitchforks at the souls of sinners.
Marie stands by the window, her hair bound up, no doubt aware that her figure appears to advantage silhouetted against the grey light. As I close the door behind me, she leaps forward, eyes gleaming, and clutches at my sleeve.
‘Another girl was killed at the palace last night, Bruno, did you hear?’ There is relish in her voice.
‘That - that is terrible. Where did you hear of this?’ It takes every ounce of my skill to bend my face to the appropriate expression.
She shrugs. ‘One of the servants. Went out to the market this morning and all of London is abuzz with it, apparently. Another of the queen’s maids, they said, killed just like the first, with astrologer’s marks cut into her.’
Gently, I remove her hand from my arm and take my place on a settle by the hearth, stretching my hands out towards the dancing flames. I cannot picture Marie rising early to gossip with the servants, but it is not impossible. If she is telling the truth, it means the news has travelled surprisingly quickly, defying all Walsingham’s and Burghley’s efforts to contain it.
If.
‘I thought they had apprehended the killer?’
‘I know!’ Her eyes widen, excited. ‘It seems they have the wrong man, or else there is another murderer. To think it must have happened while we were all listening to the music - isn’t that horrible?’ She produces a theatrical shiver. ‘It’s funny, you know, because I noticed a fuss - some of the queen’s advisors coming and going, I thought it odd that they should disturb the concert. Then the Earl of Leicester came in looking very agitated and sat with the queen - I suppose they must have discovered the body then? It must have been exactly the time you were out being quizzed about your memory system, I suppose? Did you hear nothing?’
I think I catch a deliberate edge to her voice when she says this, and look up sharply, but she merely returns my gaze and folds her hands together demurely in front of her.
‘I noticed the palace guard going to and fro with some haste, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I was taken to a private office and questioned about my work. Whatever else was happening, it must have been in another part of the palace.’ I shrug, as if to say I am not much interested.
‘Who questioned you?’ Her voice is light, but her eyes fix hard on mine, so that to look away would immediately make me seem shifty.
‘Lord Burghley.’
‘Ah.’ She nods and smiles, then moves to sit beside me on the settle, arranging and smoothing her skirts carefully until she is satisfied. She runs a forefinger along my wrist. ‘You would not lie to me, would you, Bruno?’
My skin shivers and tightens to goosebumps at her touch. ‘Why would I want to lie?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps you have a woman you are hiding from us?’ She glances up sidelong with a mischievous smile.
‘At the court?’ I force myself to smile. ‘I’m afraid not. There is no woman. My life is far less exciting than you imagine, madame. It is mainly spent in libraries among dusty manuscripts.’
She smiles, cat-like, and arranges her hands in her lap. I breathe out slowly; it seems that, for now, the questioning is over.
‘Well, then - let us see if we can liven it up. Come, Bruno. You are the master and I your acolyte. I am in your hands. Mould me as you will.’
Her expression is all sweetness; only the dangerous glitter in her eyes betrays a mischief I prefer not to dwell on. The only way through this is for me to appear as naive and as literal as possible, to keep all conversation on the surface and pretend to be so block-headed as to miss any implied double meanings on her part.
Then there is the matter of my memory system, and how much I should impart. The rumours that chased me from the Parisian court were all true, of course; my
ars memoria
is so much more than a useful tool for orators or those who wish to improve their powers of recall. It is an art of deep magic, refined over years of study, worked on through all my long months as a fugitive in Italy and later in the libraries and archives of Geneva, Toulouse and Paris. It is, though I say so myself, a profound achievement, though few will have the capacity to comprehend it fully; my system is the first of its kind to marry the classical art of memory with the system taught by Thomas Aquinas and passed down in the teachings of my former order, the Dominicans, but to add to these the most powerful ingredient of all, the ancient Egyptian wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus. Without this element of magic, my work would have held no interest for King Henri of France, a man who hungers after esoteric knowledge with an enthusiasm that almost makes up for his lack of talent. Marie de Castelnau was a confidante of King Henri’s wife; how much, then, might she already know? Again, the sense that this is some kind of trick hangs over me, setting my teeth on edge.
Even so, we must start somewhere. I hold out to her a large sheet of paper on which I have drawn a diagram, and sit back with some satisfaction while she takes it and reads, turning it this way and that as she narrows her eyes to make out the tiny inscriptions.
‘In God’s name, Bruno,’ she says, at last, having turned the paper in a full revolution. ‘How is anyone supposed to make sense of this?’
‘It is not for all to understand.’
She appears to like this.
‘That I can see. It is only for adepts, so King Henri says. I want to become an adept.’ She flicks the paper with a finger, then crosses her ankles and rests her chin on her hand. ‘Where do we begin?’
Where indeed? For a moment I am tempted to laugh. My system is infinitely complex; I have not fully penetrated its mysteries myself. The diagram, laid out according to the rules I explained in my book
On the Shadows of Ideas
, published in Paris shortly before I left (and one of the principal reasons for my flight), shows a series of concentric wheels, divided according to the twelve signs of the zodiac, separated further into subdivisions, which can be arranged in seemingly limitless configurations to embrace the sum of human knowledge. On these wheels are represented the properties of elements in the natural world - plants, animals, minerals; on a higher plane come the inventions of men, the spectrum of all the arts and sciences; beyond these, the images of the mansions of the moon, the planets, the constellations and the houses of the zodiac. Finally, and most powerful of all, there are the names and images of the thirty-six decans of the zodiac, which no man before me has dared invoke; it was this element that had the learned doctors of the Sorbonne and the ecclesiastical authorities in Paris muttering against me for sorcery, because they lacked the light of true understanding. My system, correctly understood, becomes a means of connecting all that is contained in the universe, in one golden chain of ascent from the lowest substance through the imagination of man and up to the gods of time, who inhabit the infinite space beyond the spheres of the planets, who move and influence everything we know as the heavens and the Earth. And the man who can fully embrace the knowledge contained in this system therefore holds the entirety of the known universe within his own mind, and can rediscover his own divine nature, that part of himself that once communicated freely with the Divine Mind and with the gods of time, before that knowledge was lost to us. He would become more than an adept - he would become like God.
This is what Dee and I mean when we speak of entering the Mind of God, though we disagree about the nature of the decans. He, afraid to stray too far from the conventional forms of the Christian religion, calls these spirits ‘angels’; it is these he seeks to speak to through his misguided faith in Ned Kelley’s scrying. But I know that the likes of Kelley will never find a means to reach the decans. Before the great civilisation of Egypt crumbled and so much of its wisdom was lost, priests and Magi knew the secret of communicating with the gods of time and of harnessing their powers. These secrets were closely guarded in the temple archives, and when the last priests fled, they carried the scrolls that preserved their knowledge with them to far corners of the known world. One of these priests was Hermes Trismegistus - who some believe was the deity Thoth, scribe of the gods. So the names of the decans have been passed down to us through the writings of Hermes, though his precise instructions for communication and ascent are still lost to us, contained - I believe - in the missing fifteenth book of his writings, the book Dee believes could be in the possession of Henry Howard. My memory system is the closest approximation I can devise without the great key described in that book. Even so, it is sufficiently steeped in ancient knowledge to see me burned, as King Henri and I both knew.
Marie is still looking at me. Firelight softens the right side of her face, licking a warm glow along her cheek and collar bone. The room is too dim, or the day is; there is something too intimate about the shadows, the amber light. I lean across, pointing to the outermost wheel of the diagram, uncomfortably aware of her intense gaze in the stillness.
‘Any memory system is based on symbolic pictures, since our minds are better suited to recalling images,’ I begin, not quite meeting her eye. ‘These images here are classified according to their common properties. So, for example, in this circle you see arranged the stones and minerals associated with the planet Mars -‘
‘There was much talk of your knowledge in Paris, you know,’ she interrupts, twisting a stray curl around her finger. ‘They said you were teaching King Henri to call down demons, so that he could side with the heretic Elizabeth against the pope.’
‘Well, the ignorant have to fill their time somehow. Now, these wheels can be turned to create different series of connections -‘
‘It was one of the things the Duke of Guise used to stir up unrest against the king,’ she interrupts again. ‘He said you were manipulating Henri by sorcery, converting him to your heresies so that he would protect you from the Inquisition. That was one of the reasons King Henri banished you from court. Did you know that?’
‘King Henri didn’t
banish
me,’ I say, needled. ‘I wanted to visit England. The idea was mine.’
She laughs, mocking.
‘If that’s what you want to believe. Henri was afraid of the Duke of Guise. The French people do not want a weak king, Henri knows this. They want a sovereign who will defend the Catholic faith, not one who humours Protestants and dabbles in witchcraft. Oh, yes, there was much talk about you in Paris, Bruno, even after you left. Some said you killed a man in Rome.’ She tilts her chin and raises an eyebrow, as if daring me to confess.
‘Do I look like a murderer to you, madame?’ I smile, but my palms are prickling with sweat. Philip Sidney had made a joking reference to this once, but he had heard the story in Italy; I had not thought it had pursued me through Europe and across the sea.
She laughs again, this time with more warmth.
‘No. But then you do not look like I imagine a sorcerer either, nor a heretic, nor a monk.’
‘Because I am none of those things, madame.’
‘Oh, do stop the
madame
. It makes me feel a hundred years old. I am Marie. Just Marie.’ She studies her fingernails for a moment, then raises her eyes to meet mine again, a curious half smile playing about her lips. ‘Who
are
you, Bruno? No one knew in Paris. No one knows at Salisbury Court. Everyone wants you at their supper table, for your wit and your daring ideas, and all the women try to catch your eye, but you keep your distance from everyone, you will not let anyone close enough to see you truly. So stories grow to fill the spaces in our knowledge.’
‘I am only the man you see before you,’ I say, spreading my arms and holding out my hands as if to prove that I have nothing concealed. ‘No mystery.’
She looks at me for a long time, as if trying to read something encrypted in my eyes. Determined not to seem suspicious, I hold her gaze. There is only the sound of the logs crackling in the hearth and the rise and fall of our breathing. I realise afresh how very beautiful she is, how confined she seems here and how dissatisfied with her lot: her ageing husband, preoccupied with affairs of state, and her young daughter. I remembered how brittle her movements had seemed when I saw her with her child, how forced, as if she were performing the role of mother unwillingly. For a moment I consider the path set out for a young woman of noble birth: how briefly she is allowed to shine, to be publicly paraded and admired among her own kind, for precisely as long as it takes to find her a suitable husband. Her wedding day is the zenith of her short flowering; after that she is expected to fade again into the background, to cover her hair and content herself with the reflected glory of her husband and children. For a woman like Marie, such self-effacement must fit like a hairshirt.
This game she is playing with me - the flirtatious comments, the touches, the knowing way she parcels out her attentions between me and Courcelles - is all a means of creating some drama for herself, now that she is no longer centre stage. Briefly I pity her, until I remember how callously she had talked of holy war at the dinner table, and how she wears the Duke of Guise’s emblem as a badge of honour - the same emblem that was found with both the dead maids. Whether she knows it or not, Marie is somehow connected to the murders. But perhaps even this enthusiasm for the Franco-Spanish invasion is for her just another way to feel she is acting on the world, instead of hearing about it through the muffled walls of her tapestried rooms.