Alchemy, page 5
‘Maestro! What happened? Oh God, you have been set upon! I should never have left you – this is all my fault. Are you hurt? Did you lose your purse? I came back to the Spider and met Dr Hajek, who said you were nowhere to be found, and I was afraid the Golem had taken you—’
I suppressed a smile at the idea that my attackers might have been deterred if this skinny youth had been there to defend me.
‘Besler, please. I am fine, as you see – hardly a scratch.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Hajek said, switching to German for Besler’s sake as he rolled up his shirt sleeves and nodded me to a chair. ‘Let’s have a look at that shoulder and wrist. Take off your doublet and unlace your shirt.’ He caught my hesitation and his gaze flickered briefly to my chest. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer a little more privacy to undress. Greta – bring a basin of hot water and a jug of spiced wine. And find ice from the cold store if we still have any, and all the necessaries for swelling and bruising. You, lad,’ he ordered Besler, as if he were any other serving boy, ‘go and help her. We’ll need clean linens.’
Besler, too much in awe of Hajek’s reputation, simply nodded open-mouthed and followed Greta obediently from the room.
‘Whatever you are carrying on your person, Bruno, I will hold it to be none of my business unless you wish to share it,’ Hajek said, returning to Italian and lowering his voice. ‘But someone else clearly wants it enough to have it taken by force. And you must know that Dee has told me something of your history. So you may wish to keep your cargo more secure.’
‘Where is Dee?’ I began to undo my doublet, avoiding a direct acknowledgement of his words. Dee had trusted Hajek, whose reputation as Prague’s greatest scholar was equal to Dee’s own in England. My friend had written to me of the Czech with unequivocal warmth and admiration, but now Dee had disappeared, and he had not always proved himself the shrewdest judge of character, so I was inclined to keep an open mind about the Emperor’s physician. I was fast learning that the court of Prague was as full of factions, spies and conflicting loyalties as any other in Europe. I wondered what exactly Dee might have told him about me.
‘Ah. That is the question on everyone’s lips.’ Hajek watched, his eyes sharp, as I carefully checked the pocket sewn into the lining of my doublet before hanging it on the back of the chair. ‘Shall I fetch you a strongbox?’
‘No – thank you. I have one in our luggage. Besler will know.’
He nodded. ‘You are wise to be cautious, Dr Bruno – I would be too, in your position. I hope once we are better acquainted you will see that the trust your friend Dee placed in me was earned. He called me his “comrade in the pursuit of truth”.’
‘I know. His letters have been full of praise for you. He told me your table was as lavishly stocked as your library, and your generosity as liberal with both. He spoke especially highly of your learned treatise on Czech beer.’
Hajek rolled his eyes, laughing. ‘A lifetime devoted to the study of astronomy, medicine and alchemy, and that is the only thing anyone remembers of all my writing.’ His expression turned serious. ‘Well, I hope you will regard me as your friend in Prague. You will have need of one.’
I could not work out if this sounded threatening or reassuring. He stood behind me, easing the cloth of my shirt down over my shoulder before pressing both hands firmly around the bone and feeling along it until I yelped.
‘Tell me what you know about John, then,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘How long has he been gone?’
‘I have not seen or heard from him these three weeks. I don’t know where he is.’ He hesitated, as if weighing up how much to say. His thumb pushed into my collarbone. ‘I’ll make a poultice to bring down the bruising, but it should mend quickly.’
‘Aren’t you worried?’
‘No, no – it’s not broken.’
‘About John, I mean.’
Hajek’s hands stopped moving.
‘I assume he had good reason for making himself scarce.’
I twisted my head around to look at him. ‘What reason? It must have been something serious for him to leave without warning?’
He sighed. ‘There had been some trouble at court. Let us see the damage here.’ He moved around to the front of my chair and took my right hand gently between his, turning my palm upwards. I tried not to flinch away.
‘What manner of trouble?’
‘He was worried about his standing with the Emperor. Can you flex your fingers? There – and again?’ He felt along the tendons in my wrist as I curled my fist, nodding as if to himself. ‘John had made enemies in Prague, and they had begun to turn Rudolf against him.’
‘Zikmund Bartos, you mean?’
Hajek straightened, stretching his back.
‘I was not thinking of him. Dee and Bartos had their differences, and of course they were in fierce competition to be the first to give the Emperor his heart’s desire, but I did not suppose there to be any serious enmity between them. Dee always spoke of Bartos with a grudging respect, and vice versa, as well-matched rivals often will.’
‘But the day before Dee vanished, they had a public altercation in which Bartos accused John of stealing his life’s work. That sounds more than professional rivalry.’
Hajek raised an eyebrow. ‘You are well informed for a man who has not been in the city half a day. Who told you that?’
I shrugged. ‘I asked around in the taverns after Dee. I was told by someone who heard from a witness.’
He nodded. ‘I also heard the story second-hand, though I didn’t take it too seriously at the time. Ziggi Bartos was hot-headed and prone to think the world set against him because he was of humble birth. But he had a strong sense of shame precisely for that reason, and an acute sensitivity about the way he was viewed by others – it was most unlike him to draw attention to himself by turning a private grievance into a public spectacle. Later, after John vanished, I wondered if Bartos was being used.’
‘To slander Dee, you mean?’
‘The enemies Dee had made were considerably more dangerous and more powerful than Ziggi Bartos. Men who could easily have bought Bartos, either with coin or with promises, to accuse Dee publicly of the one thing that would end his favour with the Emperor for good.’
‘Might they have gone further, these powerful enemies? Beyond spreading slander. Did you have the sense that John was afraid?’
Hajek gave me a sharp look. ‘Afraid for his safety, you mean? Not in that sense. John’s greatest fear was that the Emperor would give credence to the lies that had begun to circulate and draw up a decree of banishment. He had asked me to intercede for him with Rudolf. Why do you ask?’
‘Because you’re talking as if you’re certain John disappeared of his own volition. But do you know that for a fact?’
‘I have no reason to think otherwise. Do you?’
I thought of Walsingham’s letter. ‘No. But we must consider the possibility, surely. Did he mention going away? What was your last conversation with him?’
He shook his head. ‘So inconsequential, I don’t even remember. John lodged here, but we could often go several days without coinciding, if we were both busy with our work. I was at the castle the night he had his altercation with Bartos, but Greta said he came home late, around midnight, and went up to his room. A short time later, he came down again. She was still in the kitchen, and called out that there was pie if he was hungry, but he said there was no time and left again. It took us another couple of days to realise that he hadn’t returned.’
‘Did she notice if he’d packed for a journey?’
‘As far as she could see, he took nothing except that old leather bag he carries with him everywhere, containing his journals. You know the ones I mean.’
I nodded. Cold spread through my insides at the thought; the notebooks in which Dee recorded all his supposed conversations with angels and spirits.
‘He even sleeps with them,’ Hajek added. ‘He lives in terror that they will fall into the wrong hands. Not without reason – they would condemn him for necromancy in a heartbeat, if the Church laid eyes on them.’
We exchanged a glance in silence, weighing the possibilities.
‘Three weeks is not such a long time, Dr Bruno,’ he said, aiming for reassurance. ‘And you know John – he is often impulsive. My guess is that he decided to lie low somewhere until the Emperor’s ire had blown over. His Majesty’s moods are notoriously capricious.’
‘So – John disappeared the night of his public argument with Ziggi Bartos,’ I said, ‘and three weeks later, Bartos is murdered. It’s a devil of a coincidence. Do you suppose the connection is these powerful enemies you mentioned?’
Hajek cracked his knuckles. ‘You are running ahead of me,’ he said, fixing me with a stern look. ‘I have concerned myself today only with the manner of Bartos’s unfortunate death. I have not had time to consider who might be responsible, or their motives. Ah, here is Greta with our supplies – I want to get that wrist of yours in ice without further delay.’
The door had been nudged open as he spoke and now Greta entered bearing an armful of heaped cloths and clay pots, a leather pail hooked over her elbow. Behind her, Besler balanced a tray holding a steaming jug and three glasses, his face a picture of frowning concentration; I guessed he was wondering how he could best impress our host with his willingness to help, while also making clear that he was not that kind of servant. Hajek had turned away to relieve the housekeeper of her burden and our conversation appeared to be over for the present, though I watched his face closely as he lined up a series of jars; I did not believe that he had not considered a link between Dee’s vanishing and the murder of Bartos. I wanted to ask him who these powerful enemies might be, but his closed expression told me this would need to wait.
Greta plunged my hand into the pail of ice with a marked lack of gentleness and held my arm fast lest I try to escape. I clenched my jaw as the cold began to burn the torn skin on my wrist until it turned numb, the pain a reminder that I too appeared to have made enemies in Prague before I had even arrived. I wondered if they were connected with Dee’s; it seemed clear enough that my Spanish assailants had been after the letters I carried. Hajek poured me a glass of hot wine and set about preparing a salve, tipping his ingredients into a stone mortar, judging measurements with a practised eye, while Besler stood at his elbow, watching with rapt attention. Hajek noticed the boy’s expression and turned to include him. ‘Tincture of arnica,’ he said, indicating the bottle he had just corked. ‘Fallkraut, in your language, the fall herb. Works wonders for bruising – not to be taken internally, except dilute, unless you want to make your patient sick. There is an apothecary in the city who climbs the mountains every year to collect the flowers – charges a fortune for his trouble, but take note, this is one of the most useful potions a doctor of physick can have in his cabinet.’
Besler nodded avidly and his enthusiasm made me smile, though it was replaced by a grimace as Hajek began to apply his bitter-smelling ointment to my shoulder with firm circular strokes. While he worked, he asked after acquaintances at Wittenberg, and questioned Besler about his medical studies, as Greta silently cleared up and packed away the pots and jars; I had the sense that Hajek was carefully keeping his talk light in her hearing, and wondered if this was out of consideration, in order not to worry her, or because he did not entirely trust her. When he deemed my wrist had been in the bucket long enough for the ice to take effect, he lifted my arm out – I could barely move it myself by now – patted the skin dry, applied more of the arnica salve and bound the whole tightly in a stiff cloth.
‘You’ll feel the difference tomorrow, I assure you,’ he said, reaching for his wine and sinking back into a chair. ‘Still – you could have had a great deal worse. Lucky you know how to fight.’
‘You think they meant to kill me?’ I asked, trying to shrug my doublet back on with only one useful arm. Hajek gestured to Greta and gave a minute shake of his head. She stood with her back to us, still tidying away ingredients, but I thought I saw her shoulders stiffen. It occurred to me that I had given the housekeeper my name and told her where I could be found barely an hour before I was set on by those thugs. One of the first things I had learned in Walsingham’s service was never to speak of important matters in the hearing of servants; you never knew who was buying their loyalty on the side. He himself had placed agents in every Catholic house in England, watching, listening, biding their time in the shadows while they poured drinks or emptied chamber pots, because those who are used to servants often pay them no more heed than their dogs, and frequently treat them with less respect. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my fingers to my temples, reminding myself that caution was a virtue, but – as with so much else – in moderation. Hajek would surely not employ a woman he mistrusted, and her evident dislike of me was most likely prompted by her loyalty and protectiveness towards her master. I waited until she had finished bustling about and made to leave the room with her arms full; Besler held the door open with a show of gallantry that earned him a roll of the eyes from under her coif. When he had closed it behind her, I saw the alarm in his face when he looked at me.
‘Maestro? Who is trying to kill you?’
I turned to Hajek. ‘You said you didn’t think they came upon me by chance. Since we arrived in this city I have felt I was being watched. If you know who sent those Spaniards, I think you should tell me.’
The doctor walked over to the hearth and stood with a hand on the mantel, his eyes fixed on the flames.
‘Spaniards?’ Besler said, incredulous, looking from one to the other of us.
I waited. Hajek rubbed his thumbnail along his beard.
‘I don’t know for certain,’ he said eventually. ‘But Dee has spoken about you to the Emperor. Bragged, I should say. Of your books, naturally, and your prodigious memory, but also of your other talents.’
A shiver ran through me, as if my bowels had been plunged into an ice bucket. ‘Such as?’
‘He told Rudolf how greatly you were valued by Elizabeth of England for your ability to uncover treachery and corruption, and that you could find out a killer faster than a pig after truffles.’
‘A flattering image.’ I flinched as sensation returned to my bandaged hand in a thousand burning needles. ‘Alas, he exaggerates. She did not value me enough to give me a stipend.’ I could not keep a note of bitterness from my voice; after two years, it still rankled. In spite of the work I had done for the Queen, she had not found a way to allow me to stay in her realm, though it would have been no hardship to her; I knew how to live modestly. Walsingham said it was because I was more use to her elsewhere, but the truth he did not need to voice was that, for all my service to England, I was the worst of all worlds: a Catholic in the eyes of her Protestant ministers, and a heretic to her Catholic enemies in France, Spain and Rome, whom she could not afford to provoke any further.
‘Dee has a tendency to speak too much, and without due care,’ Hajek said, poking a log, which shifted and resettled in a bloom of sparks. ‘I’m sure he thought he was doing you a favour, building up your reputation for the Emperor. He may not have considered who else might be listening.’
I drew closer to the fire, intent on the dance of the flames, not meeting his eye.
‘Who do you mean?’
He sighed, seeming reluctant to voice his suspicions.
‘Who do you think, Bruno? Who is it always, casting her long shadow?’ He looked at me with a trace of impatience. ‘Rome. You of all people should know. The Catholic Church. Those for whom it is not enough to have faith of their own – they must eliminate or forcibly convert anyone whose beliefs veer even slightly from their dogma.’ He spoke with such controlled anger that I understood he must have been targeted by the zealots, as I had.
‘But I had thought that here, in Prague—’
‘What? That His Majesty had created a promised land of tolerance and equality, where a man may worship God according to his conscience, where Jews and Catholics and Protestants break bread together and astronomers strive to expand the limits of the cosmos, unhindered by petty bigotry and fear?’
‘Well – yes. So I had been led to believe.’
‘That was the dream.’ His voice was tart with disappointment. ‘That is why scholars and artists flock to Prague from all corners of Europe – they have been promised a city where unorthodoxy and a hunger for knowledge are positive virtues. But Rudolf forgets sometimes that his title is Holy Roman Emperor – or else he has too little regard for what that means. His role is to hold the Eastern half of Christendom for the Catholic Church – at least according to his uncle and the Pope. And if he will not apply himself to that task, it is quite possible that they would seek to replace him with someone who will.’
‘His uncle.’ I grimaced. ‘King Philip of Spain.’ The man who dreamed of returning a purged and united Europe to the rule of Rome, with all heresy and dissent persecuted into extinction for good, no matter if it took a century of bloodshed and destruction. Even in Wittenberg, I had picked up rumours that he was building an Armada designed to rain fire on England until Elizabeth Tudor surrendered. ‘I can imagine how Philip regards the idea of his nephew’s domains being famed as the home of religious collaboration.’
‘Exactly.’ Hajek’s expression mirrored my own. ‘And you must understand that the Emperor is a contemplative man, given to frequent bouts of melancholy and introspection. He would have been better suited to the life of a scholar than a ruler, but for the accident of his birth. He would rather spend days on end in the Powder Tower with his alchemists, or in his library, than dealing with affairs of state, and often he does. Daily, the Spanish ambassador and the papal nuncio send dispatches home questioning his state of mind and his fitness for the office God has ordained, while they sweet-talk his younger brother Matthias, who waits in the wings with the Inquisition like hungry wolves at his shoulder …’ He allowed the thought to fall away. ‘I’m sorry, Bruno. I wish I could paint a prettier picture of my city, but the truth is that the Emperor’s throne balances on a razor’s edge.’
