Legge was now a judge? He must be a couple of years younger than me, maybe not even thirty. We’d never spoken and there was no reason to suppose he bore ill will towards me, if ever he had. But, for the duration of this journey, I’d try to avoid him, nonetheless.
‘He’ll be on the Privy Council one day, from what I hear,’ Dudley said. ‘If he survives the trial.’
‘Why would he not?’
‘Just something I heard.’
He laughed, and I took the remark as being not too serious. Taking this opportunity to ask him where the hell he’d been while I was lying low at his house in Kew.
‘Later,’ Dudley said.
He walked away.
‘Robbie…’
Dudley stopped ten or so paces short of the first cart, looked over a shoulder and lowered his voice to a hiss.
‘Cumnor. I was at Cumnor.’
Rapidly, I caught him up.
‘Was that advisable?’
To my knowledge, until now he’d never been back to the house where Amy died since she was found. Would not have been seemly. Might have suggested he had traces to cover. On the surface, he’d behaved impeccably, only sending Thomas Blount to record the circumstances on his behalf.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why risk it, with the inquest still in process?’
‘Could be months before the inquest returns its verdict. I’m to be held in purgatory till then?’
‘And was it worth it? Did you learn anything?’
‘Too much.’
Ahead of us, I could now see Sir Christopher Legge. Would not have marked him if I hadn’t known he was here. He’d changed. Narrow features, which had been gawky when last I’d seen him, had hardened like a new-forged pike-head introduced to cold water. He was enclosed by a dozen attendants and minor attorneys but was somehow distant from them all.
‘Well?’ I said to Dudley.
Still unsure how far I trusted him.
‘I’ll tell you when there’s privacy.’
He began to walk up the riverside field towards the company of men and horses. His gypsy’s skin seemed darker under the pink-veined sky.
Of a sudden, he turned back.
‘There’s an evil here, John,’ he said.
XVII
A Sense of the Ominous
WHEN FIRST I was known as the Queen’s astrologer, my services were in big demand, mainly from ambitious people wanting my name on their child’s birthchart. In the euphoria following the coronation there were more of these requests than I could easily deal with.
But a few others – and they still come, on occasion – related to the less-easily defined aspect of my role – adviser on the Hidden. And therein lies a dilemma.
These approaches are, as you’d expect, more discreet and come from men who feel their homes or their families to be cursed by enemies or menaced by demons and ghosts. Coming to me as if I’m believed equipped to dispel a nameless evil in the name of the Queen.
Dear God. Oft-times, I’ll make an excuse and walk away, knowing there’s confusion about the nature of my profession. While I’m no sorcerer, neither am I a proper priest.
When I was made Rector of Upton-upon-Severn, during the short reign of the boy king Edward, it was a lay appointment, designed to provide a firm income so that I might pursue my studies and also eat. Later, I did take Holy Orders and during Mary’s reign could have passed as a Catholic priest – hence my time as Bonner’s chaplain. But it seemed to me no more than a formality, little better than having conveyed a quiet gift of silver to someone like the former Abbot of Wigmore.
Even my mother fails to understand this and will, on occasion, berate me for giving up an income for life. But, dear God, I dread to think how many useless blessings have been given by unholy priests invested for money. What you must needs know is that I never believed myself to have been called to it, and thus have ever refused to accept responsibility for the cure of souls. Or the redemption of unquiet spirits.
A priest’s approach to the unseen must needs be single-minded. He must deem all ghosts satanic, attacking them with a passion, assailing them with missiles of liturgy. And must never let himself become diverted from his task by tantalising and forbidden questions: What is this? Does it exist only in my mind, or has it a chemical reality? What can it tell me about the afterlife? What knowledge can it pass on about the hidden nature of things?
The questions of a natural philosopher, a man of science. Who may have a firm grounding in divinity and a full devotion to God, but should never in this world don the robes of a practising priest.
So I must have shown little enthusiasm when, as we came towards Hereford, one of the minor attorneys, a young man called Roger Vaughan, rode alongside me and asked if I were here to offer spiritual counsel.
It was the close of our third day on the road. Such a company as ours – with ten carts and sixty armed men, for heaven’s sake – would not hope to make good progress. Neither did my relations with Vaughan get off to the most promising of starts.
‘Siarad Cymreig, Dr Dee?’
I’d picked up enough of the language from my tad to know what he was asking, but best for it to stop there.
‘No,’ I said. ‘My father spoke some Welsh, but I don’t. And never having been to Wales before—’
‘Never? Oh.’
Vaughan was a solemn young man with a half-grown gingery beard and a mild Welshness in his voice. I knew his family was long-established on the border, claiming descent from princes – as, of course, did the Dees. Now he was telling me he’d been in London to study at the inns of court.
‘Indeed I was also hoping to study with you, Dr Dee, but… I was told you were away.’
‘I do spend a deal of time away. Which is one reason I’ve never had the time to visit Wales.’
Why would he want to study with me? Although qualified in the law, I’d never practised it except in my own defence. I steadied my horse before a small pond. With all the cattle drovers passing through here, you’d surely expect these roads to be among the best in England.
‘You’re also interested in mathematics, Master Vaughan? Astrology, perhaps.’
‘I suppose… to a level. But that was not what I— That is, you’re said to be better qualified than anyone in other areas of knowledge.’
The boy was almost as hesitant as I’d been at his age.
I said, ‘You mean in matters of the Hidden?’
‘Such matters,’ Vaughan said, ‘tend to provoke sneers at the inns of court. But not to someone born and bred in the Border country.’
‘Some areas of life are not so easily manipulated as the law,’ I said.
He laughed. I knew of the Vaughans through word of the Red Book of Hergest, a manuscript in the Welsh language, now nearly two hundred years old, containing the essence of the Mabinogi, the old Welsh mythology full of ancient wisdom and symbolism.
In fact, a good reason for one day learning Welsh.
‘Your family still has the Red Book?’
‘On occasion, attempts are made to have it taken deep into Wales, but we resist. The Vaughans… we’re ever concerned with our heritage. Even have, as you may have heard, our own curse – spectral hound foretelling death in the family. However, this matter – the trial, that is – affects my family not at all. Yours, however…’
‘What?’
‘Please understand I’m not trying to pry or to intrude in any way.’ Vaughan’s face was now redder than his hair. ‘I’m simply approaching you as a neighbour, your family home being but an hour’s ride from mine.’