• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3050 0

shut the door. ‘Because Courtenay is dead,’ he replied. ‘Or does the merchants’ business come first? I may not taint Master Dimmock’s house, as perhaps you have gathered, since the recent unpleasantness. I have been acquitted of treason and absolved, with reluctance, from the charges of heresy: they sent poor Philpot through to examine me, and he became quite upset. Master Dee, you are too young in divinity to teach me in the matter of my faith, though ye be more learned in other things. You are right. I lack intellectual humility. A good thing to be without. But Cheke is broken and Eden dismissed and the Merchant Adventurers being scanned, one by one, for their faith. If I am to pursue my work I must do it quietly, living on horoscopes for frightened men and avaricious women. And my advice to the Muscovy Company is not publicly proffered. They mean to send out another adventure?’

‘They have four ships fitting, and the cargo already half gathered. We need charts. Better ones, including what was learned on this voyage.’

‘We?’ John Dee said. He lifted some books and revealed a stool, on which Lymond sat himself. ‘You are sailing with them to Russia? Scotland offered you no blandishments?’

‘I am sailing to Russia,’ Lymond said. ‘Even if the Queen of England changes her religion and dissolves her marriage tomorrow.’

‘Or dies?’ said John Dee.

‘Or dies. You have been gathering information for one purpose, I for another. We began to correspond because we appear to use the same sources. That is all.’

‘It is more than that,’ Dee said. ‘You helped me pass letters between Madam Elizabeth and Edward Courtenay. She is entitled to think of you as not unsympathetic. She hoped you would be more.’

Lymond said, ‘I thought they had purged her household. Are you still able to exchange messages?’

‘My cousin Blanche is still there. They don’t know the relationship with James Parry either. My good lady Elizabeth’s grace knows you are here. When Buckland and Best first arrived in London she was at Somerset Place with a lavish retinue of two hundred in red and black velvet, much admired by the populace. The business was to offer her marriage with Philip’s cousin, the Duke of Savoy, any heir to be educated and brought up in England, while the Duke and his wife live abroad. With Philip returning, the Queen’s anxiety to see her sister abroad is quite intense.’

‘And King Philip?’ Lymond said.

‘Would further the marriage. After all,’ John Dee said, ‘he is not likely to stay in England long. He has a war to pursue. And Brussels is a gay court, with King Ruy Gomez reigning. However, the Duke of Savoy was refused, which upset the Queen considerably. It is said she was hardly dissuaded from calling parliament and debarring the lady Elizabeth from the succession formally as a bastard. She certainly turned her out of London forthwith and back to Hatfield.’

‘An over-vehement refusal perhaps?’ Lymond said.

‘My lady Elizabeth? You haven’t met her, have you?’ said Dee. ‘She informed her sister that her afflictions were such as to rid her of any wish for a husband, but rather to induce her to desire nothing but death. I am told the Queen wept at the time, but not afterwards. The Privy Council don’t want the Queen’s sister abroad, and neither do the people. With no heir as yet, and the conflict over religion and over King Philip’s demands, the Queen dare not go too far against public opinion. As she always does, my lady had judged it exactly.’

‘You have great hopes of her,’ Lymond said quietly.

Dee sat at his desk, an hour glass turning and turning between his big palms. ‘I have great hopes of this nation and someone must lead it. I look to whatever will serve. You cannot be unaware that that is why I have been writing to you. What in Russia can compare with the prospects which lie before England? You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance. You have thought of all that.’

‘Obviously,’ Lymond said.

‘Therefore there are other considerations.…’ John Dee broke off, exasperation