The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [237]
The shining globe of Mercator was standing, ruffed with papers, on the uncarpeted floor. John Dee, sinking slowly, sat on his hunkers before it, and with his big hands began to turn it, slowly, gazing on the uneven marks as they passed. He said, ‘He explained it to you?’
‘He explained how one might use it to get something close to great circle sailing. A class with one ill-informed student. But he used it to lay a course coming home, and there were some notes taken which were rescued with my chests—these.’
He carried the packet at his belt. He withdrew it now and laid it on Dee’s desk. Dee, rising slowly took them and said, ‘I thought we should hear nothing …’
Lymond said, ‘I think they will ask you to approve the appointment of Jenkinson.’
Dee said, ‘This is not Diccon’s writing.’ He looked up. ‘It is not the comprehension of a student, either. Chancellor knew I favoured Jenkinson after himself.’
‘Yes. He told me,’ said Lymond. And as Dee went on staring at him he said, ‘I said that you clearly found lecturing tedious. Not that you were less than a brilliant teacher. On the same note of guarded ambivalence.…’
‘You are a mathematician,’ John Dee said.
‘I am a musician,’ said Lymond. ‘Or was. I believe the cast of mind is the same. Orontius opened another door, but I had never been through it, except with books, until Chancellor taught me to assemble what I knew. It doesn’t matter, except to explain that there might be some profit in conference, with yourself, Digges—anyone else who might care to know how his thought was developing. I should like to see these journeys extended, and bettered. If you like, Chancellor deserves that sort of monument.’
Dee did not answer. He stood, looking at the stained packet held tight in his hands, then turned abruptly and went out of the room, leaving Lymond alone, with the globe and the clock and the mirrors.
When he returned, he bore a pair of beakers in one capable hand, and in the other a large flask, unstoppered. ‘I wish to drink,’ said John Dee. ‘You will come back to this house and meet the men you have been told about, and we shall hear what you have to say, and question you, and in turn you will hear what is happening in our world. I wish to drink to celebrate another proof of something I hold to be true: that what is mathematical is divine, and what is divine is mathematical, and that a transfusion of both creates the flame which is known as beauty.’
He poured the wine and handed it, patches of wet standing unashamedly under his eyes. Lymond said, ‘I believe I should like prior warning of that statement, or a little more leisure. I think neither of us, in spite of the logical spirit, has displayed a great deal of percipience this morning.’
‘I do not ask,’ said Dee. ‘You note I do not ask—but I would swear, by all I have learned, that you are Scorpio.’
‘With the sting in the tail?’ Lymond said. ‘You are probably right.’
‘Then since you have given me this mark of confidence,’ said John Dee, refilling his glass, ‘I shall ask you for another. I am bidden to dinner, where I am welcome and my affairs are well known. I have been asked to bring my guest with me. The house is not far—you see it across the yard there, and the postern by which we shall enter. It belongs to the Sidneys, and the bidding is from Lady Mary. What is your answer?’
It promised interest, and it seemed, then, innocuous enough. So his answer was in the affirmative.
*
Master Dee had, it appeared, a gown of superior appearance with a velvet cap, which he placed on top of the other, collecting at the same time a number of manuscripts which he tucked under one arm before taking Lymond with the other to lead him out of the house in Threadneedle Street and across the crowded courtyard with its pump, its straw and its barrels to the gardens and the low back entrance to the Sidneys’ big gabled house in Broad Street, once part of the religious foundation of St Anthony’s.
There they were obviously expected. A pretty maid in a blue cloth gown and an apron led them through kitchen and passage