Alchemy, page 13
‘And what will you be doing while I’m fetching and carrying in the kitchen?’ he asked, with an air of resentment.
‘Reading,’ I said, tucking my right hand into my left armpit to feel the outline of the letters in my pocket.
NINE
Back at the House of the Green Mound, in what had been John Dee’s room, I sat at the desk and leaned my head into my hands. My eyes ached from staring at Thomas Phelippes’s cramped letters and symbols, and I was no closer to unlocking its meaning. I should have realised that Walsingham would be too clever to send a direct substitution cipher, in case it should be intercepted. The numbers in the code I had brought from Wittenberg did not refer directly to the writing in the letter Overton had carried; instead they would relate to a third text, most likely a book, that both sender and recipient owned in common. It was a favourite method of Phelippes’s, but without knowledge of which book, the message was impenetrable.
The years of studying by candlelight were beginning to catch up with me; I had suspected for some time that I would benefit from a pair of reading lenses like Rabbi Loew’s, but vanity deterred me – as if holding the page at arm’s length and squinting made me look any less ridiculous. From the courtyard downstairs, snatches of Besler’s bright chatter drifted up to the window as he helped Greta with baskets of laundry; the image would have made me laugh, if I were not so frustrated with myself.
I blinked hard, pinching the bridge of my nose. I had once been admired for my facility with cryptography; why could I not now summon it? I had allowed it to grow rusted with lack of use. For that I had only myself to blame; after my last experiences in Walsingham’s service two years earlier, during the summer that had finally brought Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, to the block, I had chosen to retreat from political intrigue. My own life had almost been forfeit then, as well as the lives of people I cared about; the business had ended with watching six men die a brutal traitors’ death on the scaffold, disembowelled alive, as a result of my actions. I could not regret that they were caught, but their dying screams still haunted me. That, together with the pain of losing the woman I loved, had led me to seek the safety of a university cloister. Wittenberg allowed me to live quietly; I taught, I wrote my books, I attempted to avoid controversy as far as was possible for someone like me (at least the Inquisition had no jurisdiction in the German lands), and I felt my edge growing dull. It was there that I had received word, in the autumn of 1586, that my dear friend Philip Sidney, Walsingham’s son-in-law, had died of an infected wound in the Low Countries during a military campaign he had insisted on joining because he too had tired of a quiet life. He was thirty-one and never met his infant daughter. Though I had not seen him for almost two years by then, the news of his death had affected me deeply, and seemed to draw a line under that time I had spent in England, where I once hoped I might make a home. I dedicated the books I wrote in London to him, and in return he had given me volumes of his poetry, which I took out and read in my cold lodgings in Wittenberg when I wanted to indulge in melancholy. Perhaps Besler was right; I was growing old. Almost forty, no wife or family, only a shelf full of published books and a series of rented rooms to show for the days I had lived. My own father had died at fifty-six, a fact I pondered these days with increasing frequency.
I slapped my hands on the desk, making the inkpot jump, and pushed the chair back. Enough self-indulgence, Bruno; this would get me nowhere. I stretched, paced the room, cast my eyes around for some inspiration, and my gaze fell on the pile of Dee’s books that I had moved to the floor beside the desk. Thinking of Sidney and his poetry had given me an idea. I sifted through the stack and sure enough, wedged between a volume of Cornelius Agrippa’s De Magia Naturalis and Trithemius’s Stenographia, I found a slim bound manuscript similar to the one I owned: Sidney’s The Arcadia. John Dee had been Sidney’s boyhood tutor; of course Philip would have given Dee a copy of the book he had circulated privately among his writer friends – a book which was also a link to Walsingham.
As I pored over the pages, cross-referencing between the cipher I had carried, the letter Overton had given me and the page numbers of the book, sifting out the nulls and blanks scattered through the text to foil attempts at deciphering, I knew that my guess had been correct. It was as if a heavy mist began to lift; words took shape out of the general haze, and at length I experienced that beautiful moment, as with picking a lock, when the mechanism aligns perfectly, every part engages and you feel it begin to yield. Once this happened, in a short while I had a transcript – complete with my guessed-at punctuation – of Walsingham’s urgent words to Dee:
I mean to acquaint Her Majesty with the content of your letters. However, if what you suspect be grounded in truth, and the principal agents of this business directed as you believe, it falls to you to act swiftly. I am sending the Nolan to give you good assistance – he has ever been a faithful servant to Her Majesty and is a useful man – but there is no knowing how long the journey will take or when you might expect him. In the meantime, if this danger be imminent, you must intercept it by any means necessary, for the good of the Emperor, the Queen and all those who share our faith, but let no suspicion fall on you and take every care of your person.
In haste I commit you to God, who will forgive what is done in His Name.
Your loving friend,
FW
I stared at the page for a long time. It was infuriatingly vague, as all secret correspondence must be, and yet its substance appeared beyond doubt, confirming in its outline what Rabbi Loew had already told me. If Dee had written to England of his fears about a plot against the Emperor, Walsingham’s response read as an instruction to do whatever was necessary to prevent it. Including murder? The old spymaster’s words about God’s forgiveness could imply as much. Then was it possible that Dee had killed Ziggi Bartos after all? The facts would fit: Bartos, deep in debt, had taken money from the Catholics at court, either to concoct evidence that could see the Emperor excommunicated, or some worse deed. I thought of the note I had seen, in Bartos’s writing, wrapping the grisly casket sent to Rudolf the night before – ‘the fruit of all my labours’. An alchemist creating an elixir for a man desperately seeking immortality would have the perfect opportunity to slip him poison. By some means, Dee had found out Bartos’s intentions, and sought to save the Emperor’s throne – perhaps his very life – by killing the alchemist before he could act.
I looked down at the paper in my hand. Absurd: there were too many holes in this explanation. Dee had never received this letter, with Walsingham’s tacit approval of assassination. In any case, the form of the killing was all wrong. John Dee was a gentle soul; I could just about believe him capable of giving a man poison in the name of a greater good, but I could not picture him dealing a fatal knife wound to the heart, face to face, still less carrying out the vicious mutilation I had seen on the alchemist’s body. And the Golem connection made no sense at all: John was a friend to Rabbi Loew, he would never knowingly direct the city’s anger towards the Jews. The one thing that seemed beyond doubt was that Dee had uncovered a plot that threatened the Emperor. I scanned my deciphered copy again, committing it to memory before I held the corner to the candle flame and let the paper burn, allowing myself a brief flush of pride at Walsingham’s reference to me as ‘a useful man’.
I was watching the original letter curl to ash in the grate when there was a furious thumping at the door and Besler blustered in without waiting for an invitation, as was his habit.
‘There’s a messenger arrived from the castle,’ he said, breathless from running up the stairs. ‘You’ve been summoned.’
‘Good.’ I nodded; if I wanted to know what Dee had suspected, the answers were surely to be found at the castle. ‘You can come with me. You might want to change your jerkin. I’ll go down and see the horses saddled and on the way you can tell me how you have spent the afternoon.’
He grimaced, wiping soapsuds from his front. ‘I am only grateful none of my fellow students could see me heaving barrels of washing about like a kitchen skivvy. Give me one moment. Are we going to see the Emperor?’
‘I presume so. Wash your face as if you are – make your mother proud.’
‘Bit late for that,’ he said, laughing, ‘since I took up with you.’
‘Greta is quite interesting actually,’ he told me as we rode across the Stone Bridge. The breeze off the river had grown keener, the sky darkened with low cloud, as if winter had decided it was not yet ready to cede its ground. ‘She’s lived in Prague all her life – fifty-eight years. Her father ran a tavern in the Lesser Town, and her husband was an alchemist. He was apprentice to Hajek’s father.’
‘Really?’ That at least explained Greta’s willingness to keep house for the doctor. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He blew himself up,’ Besler said cheerfully. ‘It was fifteen years ago. He was experimenting with the manufacture of gunpowder and – BOOM.’ He took his hands off the reins to mime an explosion, in case I had failed to picture it. The horse jerked back in alarm, its ears twitching. ‘Anyway, Hajek took her in after she was widowed. Apparently he felt guilty.’
We passed under the tower on the north side of the bridge, watched by laconic guards lolling at their posts. I returned their scrutiny as we rode by, wondering if any of them had been on duty the night Ziggi Bartos was hung from the parapet, and how much might persuade them to talk.
‘Why?’ I asked, turning my attention back to Besler’s story as we began the ascent up the cobbled street to the castle. ‘How was Hajek responsible?’
‘She didn’t say. But the husband had no money, so she would have been destitute if Hajek hadn’t invited her to work for him. Her father left her nothing because he disapproved of the marriage. Her sister and brother-in-law run the tavern now.’
‘And her religion?’
‘Her family was Utraquist, she said. I have no idea what that is.’
‘Moderate Protestants,’ I told him. ‘Descended from the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus. Like your lot, but less puritanical.’ This revelation was a flaw in my theory about Greta; if she was a Protestant, she would hardly be spying for the Catholics at court.
‘I’m not a Puritan,’ Besler objected. ‘I’m the one who wants to see the Emperor’s door knocker, aren’t I?’
‘Who knows, perhaps your wish is about to be granted,’ I said, smiling, though I was still thinking about Greta. If Dee had been right to suspect her of looking through his papers, who could she be working for?
I put this question aside as we dismounted at the castle gatehouse and I announced myself. A boy took our horses while the guards on the gate conferred in low voices, checking a list. One of them snapped something in Czech and Besler turned to me apologetically.
‘He says he has to search us. No weapons inside the castle grounds.’
I thought about protesting that this had not been demanded of me the night before, but then I remembered that I had been with Hajek and that visit was hardly orthodox, so I held out my arms obediently while the soldier patted me down and removed my knife.
‘He says you can collect it when you leave,’ Besler informed me.
From the Lesser Town below a series of church bells struck the hour of three as we stamped and shivered at the entrance. I tucked my hands inside my riding cloak and asked Besler to explain again that the Emperor had specifically sent a messenger for me and would be angry if I kept him waiting; the guards looked confused at this, discussed it some more in murmurs and told us to wait before one of them trotted away to fetch someone, or so I hoped.
After a quarter hour had passed, I turned to Besler. ‘This messenger – did he actually say he came from the Emperor?’
He looked at me blankly. ‘I can’t remember. I think he just said you were wanted at the castle. But who else would be summoning you?’
I was about to remonstrate with him on the importance of details, when a servant dressed head to foot in black arrived, nodded in acknowledgement and gestured to us to follow him.
Instead of leading us towards the Kunstkammer or the Emperor’s private apartments, the man took us through the first and second courtyards, past the great Gothic basilica of St Vitus, to a smaller, less imposing church behind it, built of white stone in the Romanesque style. He pushed open a small door set into the main entrance and I saw Besler hopefully scanning the knocker as we passed through.
‘They’re not going to put it on the church, are they?’ I said.
‘You never know with the Catholics,’ he whispered back, grinning, and I laughed softly, glad of the distraction as the door slammed hard behind us, because I had begun to feel distinctly uneasy. We found ourselves at the end of the nave, looking towards the apse. The basilica’s interior appeared ancient and austere; round-arched windows set high in the walls let in little light. Shadows stretched down the length of both side aisles; the air was chilly and smelled of old incense and damp stone. Our breath clouded around our faces. After the bustle of the courtyards outside, the place appeared abandoned and unnaturally silent, the only sound the click of our boot heels on the worn flagstones.
The servant led us halfway along the nave, where a stone staircase curved around on the right and left sides, leading to a kind of viewing platform above an archway barred by an iron gate. He lifted the latch, issued a curt instruction in Czech and slipped away.
‘He said we should go in,’ Besler translated, glancing around uncertainly; I could see his initial wonder giving way to nerves.
‘Come on then.’ I squeezed his shoulder to offer encouragement. ‘Don’t worry – the Emperor is a man like any other, only shorter.’
A shallow flight of steps led down into a vault lit by candles in wall brackets. It appeared empty, but I progressed with caution, knowing how Rudolf liked to conceal himself in the shadows. As I approached what looked like an altar at the far end, I sensed a figure standing motionless to my right. I turned, and could not help crying out at the sight: a decaying corpse rendered in blackened bronze, sightless sockets fixed on me, its flayed torso gaping open to reveal a coiled serpent in the cavity of the belly. Besler collided with me as I leaned one hand against a pillar to catch my breath, berating myself for being so easily startled. Behind us, the iron gate clanged shut, the sound reverberating through the crypt, and I heard a soft laugh at my back.
‘Qué belleza de mujer, verdad? Her name is Brigita. A local legend. Her lover was an Italian sculptor. He murdered her and thereafter he was cursed – whatever image he tried to create, the only thing he could carve was her rotting flesh. The moral, I think, is that Italians must be very careful who they upset in this city.’
I faced the man who had addressed me in such a refined Castillian accent. He was tall and athletic-looking, his close-cropped hair and beard black with threads of silver, though the deep-set lines on his face put him closer to fifty than forty. He had a sallow complexion and searching eyes that assessed me with one practised glance. The half-smile on his lips suggested he was reserving judgement.
I had walked into a trap, and my best recourse was to say nothing. I hoped Besler would follow my example.
‘Dr Giordano Bruno,’ said the Spaniard, with a curt bow. He wore a leather doublet and a short cape with sable trim, which he drew around himself, keeping his hands out of sight. ‘Forgive the cloak-and-dagger nature of this invitation, but we were not sure you would come willingly. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.’
I kept my head raised; damned if I was going to bow to him.
‘Don Guillén de San Clemente, I presume?’
‘Correct.’ He stepped forward and, to my surprise, grasped my shoulders to greet me with a brisk kiss on both cheeks. ‘Ambassador to the Emperor from His Catholic Majesty King Philip of Spain. Tell me, how do you like Golden Prague?’
‘I have hardly been here long enough to form an opinion,’ I said, keeping my expression neutral.
He nodded to my bandaged wrist. ‘But you are injured. I hope you have not come to serious harm in the short time you have been here.’
I touched the dressing. ‘No harm done. Not everyone was so eager to welcome me. A couple of your compatriots, as it happens.’
‘How unfortunate,’ he murmured. ‘I’m afraid this city attracts brigands and thieves from all over. The streets can be dangerous after dark – your friend John Dee should have warned you. But I hear you’ve had a warmer reception from the Jews.’ He raised one carefully plucked eyebrow.
‘You’re well informed,’ I said, recalling Rabbi Loew’s confession that there were paid spies in his own community.
San Clemente fetched up a thin smile. ‘You can hardly expect the arrival of a man such as you to go unnoticed, Dr Bruno,’ he said. ‘It’s a small city, after all. And who is this young gentleman?’ He turned his keen gaze on Besler, who was hopping from foot to foot at my side as if he needed to relieve himself; I realised belatedly that it was because he spoke no Spanish and was terrified of missing out.
‘My assistant, Hieronymus Besler, from Nuremberg,’ I said. The Spaniard looked him up and down and spoke to him in German.
‘Your father is a member of the town council there, is that right, boy?’
Besler nodded, surprised.
‘What does he think of you attaching yourself to a notorious heretic?’
Besler glanced at me. ‘Well, my father would consider you a worse heretic, sir,’ he said politely. ‘At least Dr Bruno has been excommunicated by the harlot Rome, so there is some hope for him.’
There was a long silence, before San Clemente let out a burst of laughter.
‘An honest reply,’ he said. ‘I see you have not yet taught the boy your talent for dissembling.’
‘Hm. I dissemble, you practise diplomacy,’ I said.
