Nicholas listens with a sense of mounting intrigue. In the Jackdaw, gossip about affairs of state flows as fast as the mad-dog and knock-down. But it’s ignorant gossip. Wild speculation. Downright untruths. To hear from informed men so close to power is intoxicating. Men such as these are not bystanders, helplessly watching the world unfold. They change its very course.
But some things, Nicholas is dismayed to discover, do not change. When Cecil asks – over a cup of the sweetest sack Nicholas has ever tasted – what new advances might soon be made in the field of physic, Lopez, still with a faint hint of his Iberian heritage in his voice, announces proudly: ‘I have been told by Dr Dee, who as you know oftentimes advises Her Majesty on matters of the occult, that soon it may be possible to study the demi-demons that cause some illnesses.’
‘How so?’ asks Nicholas, struggling to keep the scorn in his voice from showing. This is the sort of nonsense he associates with the midwife who assured him – with equal confidence – that certain holy stones, supposedly anointed with the blood of St Margaret, would help him save Eleanor and the child she was carrying.
‘Dr Dee believes these demons may be trapped in certain crystals and thus observed without danger,’ says Lopez. ‘He also showed me a mirror glass of polished obsidian, by which he claims to see the reflection of those malign spirits that cause pain in a patient’s body.’
‘And do you believe him?’ asks Francis Bacon, sniggering as he chews on a spoonful of bream.
‘I have no reason not to, Master Bacon,’ says Lopez. ‘Dr Dee is a very learned man.’
Robert Cecil stabs his knife in Nicholas’s direction as though to skewer an opinion out of him. ‘And you, Dr Shelby? Do you also believe that one day we shall carry the cure to all our ills in a crystal brooch, or see the cause of them reflected in a mirror glass?’
I’m not going to call the queen’s physician a fool to his face, if that’s what you’re inviting me to do, Nicholas thinks. Besides, Lopez is not alone in his foolishness; there are more than a few in the College of Physicians who would happily believe what Lopez has just said.
Cecil takes his silence for indecision. ‘Come now – I’m sure Dr Lopez would be interested to hear your views. If you were given the power, how would you shake physic by its ears?’
‘I’d make the physician get his hands bloody,’ Nicholas says cautiously. ‘Bring him and the surgeon together in one endeavour.’
‘You mean one man performing both roles?’ asks Lopez doubtfully. ‘But surgeons are not educated in the writings of the ancients. They are artisans – barbers.’
‘Master Paré did it in France,’ Nicholas reminds him. ‘I myself have practised surgery – in the Low Countries.’
‘But that was the necessity of the battlefield, Dr Shelby,’ Lopez objects.
‘I’m a yeoman’s son, Dr Lopez. My father drives the oxen, guides the plough and casts the seeds with his bare hands. He reaps the harvest, too. I never noticed anyone in a gown instructing him how to do it from a copy of Cato’s De Agri Cultura.’
‘God’s nails, a man of my own mind!’ cries Bacon, slapping the table and making the silver plate rattle. ‘That’s the only way for mankind to progress. The ancients may reason and deduce all they like. But a man of these times must discover things for himself. He must take nature in his hand and dissect it with his eyes and his mind. I think of this world as I think of a forest: you cannot know its true extent unless you part the branches, climb the trees, explore it. I say enough of dead men’s superstition! Are you with me, Dr Shelby?’
‘Most certainly, Master Bacon.’
Robert Cecil places a hand over his little breast in a gesture of mock capitulation. ‘There is the future, Dr Lopez – in the hands of heretics!’
Bacon grins and takes a draught of sack. ‘You see what we are up against, Nicholas? Prophets in our own land, and therefore not to be honoured.’
It is the first time in his life that Nicholas has heard his own thoughts spoken by another. Even his friend Lord Lumley, patron of the Lumleian chair of anatomy at the College of Physicians, possessor of one of the most scholarly libraries in England, has never echoed his convictions so clearly. He feels like a man who’s just convinced a hanging judge of his innocence.
‘There you have it, Nicholas, in a nutshell. It could not be clearer – to a clever fellow like you.’ As he speaks, Cecil rolls his shoulders to ease the discomfort in his twisted back.
They are in his study. Bacon and Dr Lopez are still in the dining hall, engaging in a good-natured argument over whether crystals and obsidian mirrors make a man a prognosticator or a charlatan. The rain has eased. Through the windows Nicholas can see the bushes on the terrace looking like mourners around a grave.
‘I fear the excellent food has dulled my wits, Sir Robert. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘A signpost, Nicholas. A lodestone to show you which course to steer.’
‘I didn’t know I was lost.’
‘God’s blood, Nicholas! Spare me the humility. I’ve digested enough sweetness today already. I’m speaking of your future as a physician. If you put your mind to it, you could bring some of Francis’s vision – some of your vision – to the College; shake the greybeards out of their complacency; help put men like old Lopez out to pasture. Put an end to superstition.’
‘Me?’ Nicholas hopes his brittle laugh doesn’t sound too insulting.
‘Why not?’
‘Because the College of Physicians thinks I’m a dangerous heretic.’
‘Yes, but you’re my dangerous heretic now, Nicholas. A physician who lists the Lord Treasurer’s son amongst his patients – perhaps even the Lord Treasurer himself, were I to persuade my father on the subject – would have no trouble getting his voice heard amongst the Fellows of the College. Perhaps even our sovereign lady Elizabeth might desire his counsel and his healing hand. Would you not agree?’
‘The queen already has more physicians than she needs, every one of them eminent and well trusted.’
‘Trusted, yes. All except one.’
It’s said with just enough latent provocation to have Nicholas answering before he can stop himself.
‘And who might that be, Sir Robert?’
‘Why, Dr Lopez of course.’
The study seems suddenly robbed of warmth. In Robert Cecil’s world, it seems betrayal comes served on silver plate and Flemish linen.
‘Lopez is getting old. He doesn’t walk far these days. But when he does, it’s usually on very thin ice. He intrigues with the pretender to the Portuguese throne, Don Antonio, currently a guest of Her Majesty. Yet he also communicates in secret with those who stole his kingdom from him: the Spanish. He has friends in Madrid. The Earl of Essex is convinced he’s a traitor. Whatever the truth, he dabbles in places he should stay out of. At his age, you’d think he’d be more cautious. In my humble opinion, he’s as likely to die on the scaffold as he is in his bed. Either way, I suspect it won’t be long in coming. Then there will be a vacancy.’
‘Are you saying that you and Lord Burghley would push for my appointment as his replacement?’ Nicholas asks, astonished and more than a little sickened. Suddenly the good food feels like lead in his stomach.