Hastily I fold the paper and tuck it inside the waistband of my breeches at my side, under my shirt. Whatever else I may uncover tonight, this alone was worth all the risk: it is pure gold. A genealogy in Henry Howard’s own hand, denying Elizabeth’s right to reign and clearly showing his intention to marry the Queen of Scots - this is proof of Howard treason beyond anything Walsingham could have hoped for. With a bit of judicious questioning, Howard might be expected to give up further details of the invasion plan with plenty of time to prevent it.
My blood is racing with the thrill of this success, but I do not have time to lose; next I crouch to try the doors of the black cabinet, but here for the first time my luck fails. The doors are locked. I cannot see any other place in the room where books might be hidden - and if Henry Howard has forbidden occult books, as he must, where else would he hide them but in this secret chapel? I unsheathe my knife and attempt to insert its tip into the lock, but the keyhole is too small and the blade cannot penetrate far enough to make any purchase. Frustrated, and anxious too, as I note that all the candles are burning lower, I set it down and return to the shelves above the brazen head to see if there is some smaller implement among the paraphernalia there that might serve, and as my gaze ranges along the row of vials that look like reliquaries, one in particular catches my eye. An ornate glass bottle containing a single lock of bright gold hair.
I reach for it and take out the stopper. I have seen more saints’ remains in Italy than I could number - enough fingers and blood and hair to people the world with blessed saints seven times over - but usually those who sell fake relics make some effort to give their wares the semblance of antiquity. This lock of hair has none of the brittle, dusty look of those old trinkets; it appears fresh and springy, coiled behind the glass. Cecily Ashe had blonde hair, I remember, with a lurch of the stomach.
‘I see you have found the hair of Saint Agnes.’
Henry Howard’s voice, behind me, is polite, amused, as if he were not in the least surprised to find me here, in his occult chapel, rooting through the ingredients of his arts. He has appeared so silently that for one awful moment it seems the brazen head has spoken; I leap and whip round so violently at the sound that I almost drop the bottle. All I can do is stare at him, slack-jawed and shaking. In one hand he holds a candle, in the other, an ornamental sword.
‘They possess powers to protect chastity, the relics of Saint Agnes,’ he goes on, in the same breezy tone, ‘and also over the favourable cultivation of crops. But of course you know all this. I find it fascinating, don’t you? That the same force should exercise its influence over both chastity and fertility, two opposites.’
‘Opposing forces share a powerful connection,’ I say, recover ing my voice. ‘If one believes in such powers.’
‘You do not believe in the power of relics, I do not think. But as a good disciple of Hermes, you must believe that certain elements in the natural world may harness particular powers mirrored in the celestial realm?’
I only look at him and shrug, affecting a coolness I do not feel. I am aware that I am at his mercy here, and that the best course is probably to keep silent. My eye drifts to the sword, which he holds loosely at his side.
‘It’s a pity,’ he says, moving towards me and kicking the door shut with his foot. He wears a heavy crimson robe over his nightshirt. ‘It would have been interesting to discuss the Hermetic magic with you, in other circumstances. In private I am willing to concede that you have a considerable reputation in these matters, though you will not hear me praise you for it in company.’
‘I am flattered.’ I incline my head. He misses the sarcasm.
‘You certainly have more audacity than I would have credited, Bruno.’ His tone is almost admiring. ‘Your performance was entirely convincing this evening. You out-drank Douglas - that should have roused my suspicions. If I had not been so willing to let you confirm my worst prejudices about you, I might have been more wary. And I see you are extremely canny. Even Her Majesty’s pursuivants have never managed to find this room, not on all the occasions it has pleased them to search my nephew’s house.’ He paces softly across the stone flags in his velvet slippers to cast a casual eye over the papers on top of the cabinet. His foot is only inches from the bone-handled knife I left lying on the floor after my attempt to pick the lock. My muscles tense; the document beneath my shirt pricks my skin. Will he notice its absence from one glance?
‘My nephew had this built as a private chapel. The Jesuit Edmund Campion said a Mass here once, you know. But after Campion was executed and the Privy Council came down harder on the secret priests, Philip lost his nerve somewhat. Can’t blame the boy - he was only young when he saw his father executed for treason and his title lost. He doesn’t want this estate attainted as well. So there were no more Masses after that and I took possession of the chapel for my private work. We never speak of it.’ His eyes drift to the altar at the far end of the room, as if remembering its more orthodox use. ‘The day they hung and quartered Campion at Tyburn - that was the moment I realised England would never be restored by priests and prayers alone. Faith would have to show itself in stronger action.’ As he says this, the muscles in his jaw twitch and his knuckles whiten around the hilt of the sword. Perhaps, I think, watching him, behind his desire for revenge and advancement lies some genuine religious feeling; or perhaps they have become one and the same. He snaps his eyes back to me, the mem ories dismissed.
‘You feign drunkenness very well, by the way,’ he remarks, as if we were casual acquaintances making small talk at some tavern. ‘Did you feed good Rhenish to my dog, is that what happened? Poor brute’s been sick all over the back stairs.’
I say nothing. For a moment we watch one another in the candlelight and I give a sudden involuntary shiver. The room seems very cold.
‘Well, Bruno.’ He looks me up and down, his tone finally asserting his mastery of the situation. ‘I do not need to ask if you recognise what you find here.’ He waves a hand that takes in the circles on the floor, the altar, the brazen head.
‘You pursue secret knowledge, even while you publicly decry it,’ I mutter. ‘Dee suspected as much.’
‘Of course he did.’ Howard’s voice betrays a touch of impatience. ‘He always knew I was a natural adept. But he had the arrogance to presume that he held the key to my progress and could simply shut me out from the higher reaches of that knowledge. He is guided by fear, you see, Bruno,’ he says, suddenly brusque. ‘The last thing Dee wants is a rival for the queen’s faith in such matters. Matters that lie on the other side of religion, in its shadows. He wishes to be recognised as her magus, and he will thwart anyone who tries to come up behind him. You will find this out for yourself eventually.’ He shakes his head and takes another step closer to me, the sword still held idly against his leg. With his face barely a foot from mine, he breaks into a grotesque smile. ‘But he lacks the one thing that would make him the preeminent magus of our age, and he cannot sleep for yearning for it. Neither can you.’
‘The lost book of Hermes.’ My voice is barely audible, but my breath rises in a plume between us in the cold air. ‘You stole it from him in Oxford, then.’
It is not meant as a question. Howard merely curves his smile wider.
‘It found its way into my hands. Oh yes, you may well hang your mouth open, Bruno. It is, I presume, what you have come here to find? You are resourceful, I’ll give you that.’ He turns sharply and crosses the room to the small altar, then turns and fixes me with those black eyes.
‘But a man in exile, Bruno, is always vulnerable. Am I not right? Little wonder he seeks powers beyond his own temporal means. You and I understand this,’ he adds, with feeling. ‘My brother Thomas lost us the greatest dukedom in England. My family name is now stained with treason. I have been threatened with prison and banishment, and I am forced to live as a lodger with my nephew and feign loyalty to the usurper Elizabeth.’ He curls his lip. ‘I am shut out of the heritage that is rightfully mine as surely as if I were banished from English soil. But I am only biding my time.’
‘And your solution is to finish what your brother started?’ I say, raising my chin.
He frowns at me for a moment, as if calculating how much I might know.
‘Why do you say that? Because of my comment at dinner about Mary’s heirs?’
‘If she was once willing to marry your brother, why not you?’
He lifts the sword and points it at me, and I feel my bowels contract; for a moment I think he might be about to run at me. But eventually he nods.
‘Very astute of you, Bruno. The Howards are descended from Edward Plantagenet, the first English king of that name. Did you know that?’ Without waiting for a reply, he continues, ‘We are of royal blood. There
should
be a Howard heir on the throne.’
‘You mean to take Mary to wife, once she is liberated and crowned by this invasion, and get an heir by her?’
He grimaces.
‘It is my duty to my lineage. I would not expect a common-born man to understand such an ideal.’
Instinctively my fists clench, as they always do when confronted with such claims of the nobility’s inborn super iority. But I keep my voice calm.
‘Douglas is right, though. Mary Stuart already has an heir with an impeccable royal pedigree and he is king of Scotland.’
‘Young men are not immortal, Bruno,’ Howard says, with a low laugh. ‘And James has yet to breed.’
I look at him, and realise I have not even begun to understand the scale of his hopes. Howard’s plans reach far beyond this invasion, far beyond the restoration of the Roman faith that the others envision; his scheming stretches into a future in which he is king of a Catholic England, his own son the heir and the young King James somehow the victim of an unfortunate accident, like his father. I understand now why Howard keeps Archibald Douglas so close; if Douglas could kill the father so efficiently, why not recruit him to kill the son? For the right price, I have no doubt that Douglas would oblige. But the real fear clawing at my insides comes because I realise the only reason Henry Howard would have confided such an incredible - some might say insane - plot to me is because he feels confident I will not have the chance to repeat it. My right hand itches instinctively to reach for my knife, though it is not there, and I force myself to keep still. If Howard thinks I am armed he may search me and then he would find the genealogy. I look down at the glass bottle I had almost forgotten I was holding. Saint Agnes, he says. This hair belonged to someone more recent. But I cannot begin to understand how the murders at court fit into Howard’s elaborate long-term plan.
‘But enough of that,’ he says, unexpectedly light-hearted. ‘I was going to show you something to make you tremble, was I not? Come closer, Bruno.’
To my great relief, he lays the sword on the altar, though he keeps his hand within easy reach as he lifts the purple cloth that covers it. The stone beneath shows a carved bas-relief of figures, their faces so worn by time that only a blurred outline of their humanity remains. It appears cen turies old.
‘Comes from one of the Sussex abbeys torn down in the Dissolution,’ he remarks, as if he reads my thoughts. ‘My brother bought it secretly and kept it in his own chapel. We had it brought here after he died. You cannot imagine the work it takes to move a thing like that. Illegal to possess it, of course.’
His voice grows muffled as he turns his back to me and crouches in front of the altar. Set into the stone near the base is a narrow recess; Howard reaches in and draws out a wooden casket, its lid inlaid with an intricate pattern stamped in gold. He takes a key from somewhere inside his robe and unlocks the box. I take a tentative step nearer, my palms prickling with sweat; I am anxious to stay out of the range of that sword. As I pass the black cabinet I gently kick my discarded knife out of sight, just underneath it, while his back is turned.
‘You won’t see properly from there,’ he says, standing and turning. ‘Come.’
He holds it out to me, an object wrapped in a layer of protective linen. As I move closer, he unwraps the coverings to reveal a book bound in faded leather. I experience a sudden weakness in my limbs, as if my body had been flushed with cold water, as my heart gives an impossible lurch and I rush forward, almost forgetting the sword.
Could this really be the book I had chased from Venice to Paris to Oxford, the fifteenth book of the writings of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, brought to Cosimo de’ Medici out of the ruins of Byzantium, given to the great neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino to translate and hidden by him when he recognised the awful power of what it contained? The book that, according to an old Venetian I had known in Paris, Ficino gave into the safekeeping of the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, whose apprentice mistakenly sold it on to an English collector; the book that had lain unrecognised in an Oxford college library until a wily librarian saved it from the Royal Commission’s purges; the book that an unscrupulous dealer named Rowland Jenkes had sold to Dee for a fortune, and which Dee held in his hands for barely a day before it was stolen from him at Henry Howard’s command? By all that was sacred - could it be that I was finally in the presence of the book that was believed to hold the secret of man’s divine origin, of how to recover that divinity? I hardly dared breathe.
‘Open it, if you want.’ Howard’s smile grows wolfish. His eyes glitter; he looks like a child flaunting a marzipan figure, determined that you should fully appreciate the wonder of it, secure in the knowledge that you shall never take it from him. He nods, encouraging. I reach out, my hand visibly trembling, and lift the book from the casket. In the moment of opening the cover, it is as if the world ceases turning; I can hear my own heartbeat as if it came from somewhere outside. The bound manuscript pages are old and stiff, the Greek characters so faint in places as to be almost illegible, but as I begin to read, there is no doubt in my mind that this book is authentic.