Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [172]
One became used to this. ‘But not comely enough,’ Philippa said, ‘or else too wise, to become the King’s mistress. I hope your gout has improved?’
‘It is too early in the day to be put in my place,’ the little man said, ‘—pray be seated—but I shall answer you. It is slightly improved. If you consider me a quack and an empirick, why do you visit me? You do not require a love potion. You may require a cure for your sad attack of the rheum.’
Philippa began to feel brighter. She said, ‘You remember our chat in Saint-Germain?’
‘About Béatris, the daughter of Camille de Doubtance. I do. You did not, I hope, take the whooping-cough?’
‘Not unless I have it now,’ Philippa said. She laid on the table the little basket Célie had carried from the Hôtel de Guise for her. ‘These are some trifles. It would give me great pleasure if you would accept them.’
Inside the basket were three flasks of wine, a packet of sugar, some cloves, some pepper, some nutmeg and a silk knitted purse with ten pounds in it in double ducats. She sat down while he unpacked it, tucking his beard out of the way. At the end he took out one of the wine flasks and filling from it one of a pair of handsome glass goblets gave her one, observing, ‘I am deeply flattered. And for what, Madame la comtesse, am I being bribed?’
Philippa opened her satchel and laid on the same table the heaviest object within it. ‘To find,’ she said, ‘the house in France of which that is the doorkey.’
*
She had been right in thinking the parlour too decorous a room for Master Nostradamus’s purposes. The chamber in which she found herself ten minutes later, having climbed a winding wooden stair of no great solidity, was sufficiently like the workrooms of both John Dee in London and the Dame de Doubtance in Lyon to leave no doubts about what it was used for. Running her congested eye over the scales, spheres, astrolabes, flagons, books, crucible, athanor, alambic, altar, fountain, skull and perfuming pan, Philippa said finally, ‘I thought they burned that forty years ago. That’s the Idol of Isis from the church of Saint-Germain.’
‘Allez a l’idole de St Germain et vous trouverez ce qu’avez perdu. I acquired it from the person who rescued it,’ the astrologer said. ‘Why should it worry you more than the sweat of St Anne, or the crystal pipe with the milk of the Virgin, or the leg of one of the holy innocents murdered by Herod, or the bones of the eleven thousand virgins? Isis and Ammon are wise. There is much we can learn from the Egyptians.’
The room reeked of castor-oil, mint pastilles and onions, the symbol sacred to Isis. Philippa, her eyes brimming, thought of a certain Egyptian sarcophagus she had seen in the house of the English astrologer she had once befriended and had her thought divined, disconcertingly, by the little man.
‘… Or because I do not have so many mirrors, do you consider me less potent than Master Dee? I do not draw up charts of navigation, it is true, but he in turn cannot claim the prophetic gifts of a child of the lost tribe of Issachar. These are Hebrew inscriptions on the walls and floor but you need not be afraid: my family have long since become Christian. And do you still desire a divorce?’
Philippa jumped. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In fact, it is arranged for two weeks after Easter.’
‘But you have no intention of retiring thereafter, I judge, to a convent for the Mal’Maritate.’ He threw something else on the burner, dragged a bronze tripod into the middle of the room and picking up a metal bowl, carried it over and held it under the fountain. He continued placidly. ‘And for whom burns then, this white fire which lives without fuel? Bring me a lock of his hair and I will make you a poculum amatorium ad venerem so powerful that, once it is placed in the mouth, he will die frenzied if he cannot either spit it out or master you instantly.’
It was better to show amusement than nausea. ‘Would you?’ said Philippa with interest. ‘Come to think of it, I can tell you the eight people at court you’ve already sold it to. What’s that for?’
He did not seem to be offended.