Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [193]
“William,” I said to him, “let your hair grow down over your ears: it’s becoming.” I had a plan (to take his place?).
Can one live in hatred of this Spear-shaker, who in reality is oneself? That sweet thief which sourly robs from me. “Calm down, Kelley,” Dee says to me. “To grow in the shadows is the privilege of those who prepare to conquer the world. Keepe a Lowe Profyle. William will be one of our covers.” And he informed me—oh, only in part—of the Cosmic Plot. The secret of the Templars. “And the stakes?” I asked.
“Ye Globe.”
For a long time I went to bed early, but one evening at midnight I rummaged in Dee’s private strongbox and discovered some formulas and tried summoning angels as he does on nights of full moon. Dee found me sprawled, in the center of the circle of the Macrocosm, as if struck by a lash. On my brow, the Pentacle of Solomon. Now I must pull my cap even farther down, half over my eyes.
“You don’t know how to do it yet,” Dee said to me. “Watch yourself, or I’ll have your nose cut off, too. I will show you fear in a handful of dust...”
He raised a bony hand and uttered the terrible word: Garamond! I felt myself burn with an inner flame. I fled (into the night).
It was a year before Dee forgave me and dedicated to me his Fourth Book of Mysteries, “post reconciliationem kellianam.”
That summer I was seized by abstract rages. Dee summoned me to Mortlake. There were William and I, Spenser, and a young aristocrat with shifty eyes, Francis Bacon. He had a delicate, lively, hazel Eie.
Dr. Dee said it was the Eie of a Viper. Dee told us more about the Cosmic Plot. It was a matter of meeting the Prankish wing of the Templars in Paris and putting together two parts of the same map. Dee and Spenser were to go, accompanied by Pedro Nunes. To me and Bacon he entrusted some documents, which we swore to open only in the event that they failed to return.
They did return, exchanging floods of insults. “It’s not possible,” Dee said. “The Plan is mathematical; it has the astral perfection of my Monas Hieroglyphica. We were supposed to meet the Franks on Saint John’s Eve.”
Innocently I asked: “Saint John’s Eve by their reckoning or by ours?”
Dee slapped himself on the brow, spewing out horrible curses. “O,” he said, “from what power hast thou this powerful might?” The pale William made a note of the sentence, the cowardly plagiarist. Dee feverishly consulted lunar tables and almanacs. “ ‘Sblood! ‘Swounds! How could I have been such a dolt?” He insulted Nunes and Spenser. “Do I have to think of everything? Cosmographer, my foot!” he screamed at Nunes. And then: “Amanasiel Zorobabel!” And Nunes was struck in the stomach as if by an invisible ram; he blanched, drew back a few steps, and slumped to the ground.
“Fool,” Dee said to him.
Spenser was pale. He said, with some effort: “We can cast sortie bait. I am finishing a poem. An allegory about the queen of the fairies. What if I put in a knight of the Red Cross? The real Templars will recognize themselves, will understand that we know, will get in touch with us...”
“I know you,” Dee said. “Before you finish your poem and people find out about it, a lustrum will pass, maybe more. Still, the bait idea isn’t bad.”
“Why not communicate with them through your angels, Doctor?” I asked.
“Fool,” he said to me. “Haven’t you read Trithemius? The angels of the addressee intervene only to clarify a message if one is received. My angels are not couriers on horseback. The French are lost. But I have a plan. I know’ how to find some of the German line. I must go to Prague.”
We heard a noise, a heavy damask curtain was raised, we glimpsed a diaphanous hand, then She appeared, the Haughty Virgin.
“Your Majesty,” we said, kneeling.
“Dee,” she said. “I know everything. Do not think my ancestors saved the knights in order to grant them dominion over the world. I demand, you hear me, I demand that the secret be the property of the Crown only.”
“Your Majesty, I