Alchemy (7 page)

I picked up the box with the monkey’s skull.

‘If my lady will allow me. How like this is to a man’s skull in little.’

At that the door was thrust violently open and an old stout man strode in. At once he came up to me and seized the glass box from my hand. He turned and bowed to the countess.

‘Forgive me madam but this clumsy boy might have let it drop.’

‘This is my new page Amyntas Boston, Dr Gilbert, who helps me with my work at Ramsbury.’

‘Where are you from boy?’

‘From Salisbury sir.’

‘I knew a Boston in Salisbury, he that was sometime mayor of St Edmunds and thought himself a great laborant in the chemical arts.’

‘He was my father sir.’

‘Many times I have bid him come to my service,’ the countess said, ‘and he would not but now I have his child.’

‘He was a puffer madam and not worthy of your service, a mere mechanical.’

‘My father was not a mere puffer sir as you are pleased to say but a physician and philosopher.’ Something more of what my father had told me concerning this Gilbert had returned to me, that he had dabbled in necromancy with Dr John Dee and been the instrument of his own brother, Sir Humphrey his death on his return voyage from Atlantis which was as my father told me two years before my birth. And had my father been with them, as well he might have as physician to the fleet, I had never entered this world.

‘I say again madam this insolent boy’s father was a mere mechanical and he is unfit for your service. I will try him with some questions and then you shall see.’

‘Will you be tried Amyntas?’ my lady asked, seating herself in the chair from which she was used to oversee the work.

‘I will do my best to answer to anything madam, as long as you do not take my answers for mere impertinence.’

‘Have at you both then,’ she said and let fall her fine lawn handkerchief as at a joust, a sign that we should begin.

‘Under what sign should
Amara dulcis
be gathered and against what diseases is it sovereign?’

‘There are those who say that it is a mercurial plant and should therefore be gathered under that sign on Tuesday in the month of July, and that it is a remedy against witchcraft if hung about the neck. But the true use of woody nightshade, as it is known to the country people in these parts, is as an infusion in white wine to open obstructions of the liver and spleen and therefore against yellow or black jaundice and the dropsy.’

‘Do you not believe then that diseases vary by the operation of the stars and are to be cured by herbs whose planet is contrary to that of the disease or in some cases in sympathy with it, as the herbs of Venus cure diseases of the loins and generation?’

‘Sir my father taught me that the efficacy of which herbs are sovereign against which diseases is a matter of experience and experiment.’

‘So that if my lady, the countess, were sick you would not seek out the cause but only apply some remedy of your own approving?’

‘I would seek out the cause in nature and the body sir, not in the stars.’

‘Then you have no guiding principle but would make the body of your lady a laboratory for experiment, trying first this remedy, then that? You reject the wisdom of the great Paracelsus or perhaps you do not know it in your rustic learning.’

‘My father and I often read together in Paracelsus, his writing. But there was much that my father did not accept.’

‘As…?’

‘As that doctrine that sees man as the microcosmos of the whole world, and his
tria prima.
But of his saying that some minerals may be efficacious as remedies or of the value of experiment then my father held that these might be followed but always with extreme care.’

‘And for the cure of witchcraft?’

‘My father believed that witchcraft lies in the minds of those that hold themselves bewitched as a delusion or fancy, and so too in the minds of those that deem themselves to have power as witches.’

‘Do you not believe in the power of Satan?’

‘My father said that such questions were the domain of priests not physicians.’

And angels and demons that they may be conjured up and converse with men?’

My father had indeed told me of this conjuring by means of a crystal ball or polished mirror in which some men called skryers professed to descry such visions which for reward they would describe to others who saw nothing of themselves, and that the famous Dr Dee was so cozened for many years by divers rogues until men thought he was mad or a necromancer, who was in truth merely deceived.

‘I do not see sir why angels and demons who may have the freedom of the heavens should allow themselves to be confined in a glass or sphere for the benefit of one person.’

‘Do you not believe in good and evil?’

‘I believe in good men and evil men.’

‘Are you then an atheist Master Boston?’

‘My lady knows otherwise for I join her in the reading of her psalms and in her daily prayers in chapel, in private or in public devotion.’

‘But it may be that at such times your thoughts stray elsewhere.’

‘As all men’s do at times but that is not a hanging matter or who should escape the gallows.’

‘Then perhaps you are a papist in disguise.’

‘My allegiance is to the queen’s majesty and the church she is head of.’

‘And God and his son.’

‘He is the creator of heaven and earth and his son our teacher of the way we should follow.’

‘Is this what your father taught you?’

‘These are my own thoughts sir from reading in the scriptures.’

‘And does it not speak there of angels and devils and of the witch of Endor?’

‘Indeed. But many things in the scriptures are to be understood not word for word but as an image or symbol as Our Lord used his parables for instruction.’

‘And divination, the foretelling of future matters? Our fate in the stars?’

‘Our fate may indeed be there sir but it is not to be found out by divination for then we might seek to change it and no man can change the courses of the stars.’

‘Then you are a traitor to her majesty for did she not ask Dr Dee to cast her horoscope and that of the Queen of Scots when first she came to the throne and he foretold the fate of them both exactly as it came about. Was her majesty then deceived?’

‘Her majesty in her wisdom left nothing undone that might be judged by some to be efficacious. But had Dr Dee foreseen the opposite fates for her majesty and the Queen of Scots would he have dared to name them? Therefore I think he spoke as a courtier not as one who can see truly into the future.’

And your father, the puffer, did he not foretell the future and seek the tincture of immortality and of transformation in the
soot and smoke of the furnace? Did you blow the bellows for him boy?’

Here I had to pause before I could answer for it was indeed true that my father sought the philosopher’s stone and the tincture of immortality but not for riches or that he and I might live for ever, flouting God’s commandment that all things and men must die, but to understand better the nature of creation, for he saw transmutation as a natural effect not of alchemy or magic. And although he rejected Paracelsus, his idea of the microcosmos that man is a world in little but saw him as closer to the beasts, of the same blood and breath and appetites with them, yet he laboured to find cures for body and mind wherever he could, that sickness might be transmuted into health.

‘I did not,’ I was able to answer truthfully, ‘for my father thought me too tender for any such work even if he undertook it himself, which I never saw, although certainly he used fire to make the white star of antimony which is a sovereign cure for many ills if taken with care and according to instruction.’

‘Come Dr Gilbert,’ the countess said then, ‘you have run through your whole armoury of shots and Amyntas has suffered them all and turned them back.’

‘I have others madam he shall not find so easy.’

‘Then you must try them another day. The game no longer amuses me.’

Gilbert bowed and left us.

‘Did your father not seek after those things Amyntas? Tell me truly,’ she asked when he had gone.

‘He did madam but not in my presence and not for gain but for knowledge. He laboured ceaselessly and it brought him early to his death as I see it but he never allowed me to observe him at that work.’

‘A pity. We might have continued with it. I should like to be first to find that which so many have lusted after. Did your
father believe with Copernicus that the earth and the planets circle the sun?’

‘He did madam. He said that it was only pride that had led us into that error that the sun revolved about the earth and made man the centre of all things, and that Copernicus his theory was not contrary to scripture, for the Bible says only that God created the sun, stars and moon and set them in the sky as lights to divide day from night, and to govern the length of days and years and the seasons, but nothing of which should circle the other. And that all is to be understood as in a picture which shows on a small flat plane that which in life has depth and magnitude so that a whole landscape of trees and meadows may fit into a work by Hilliard or Oliver less than the size of a child’s palm.’

‘Some say that the matter cannot be resolved, for the same calculations in astronomy are agreeable to both theories and satisfy the same phenomena. Therefore it is wise to accept both indifferently until the philosophers agree with each other or some astronomer finds a way to settle the question. Now how shall we amuse ourselves in these twelve days of Christmas? Shall we make an actor of you Master Boston?’

‘I cannot say madam.’

‘Bring me the new little book of pieces, Mr Davison’s
Poetical Rapsodie
my son has sent, hoping to soften my heart. It is beside my bed. And call my ladies.’

I went on my errand through the long dark passages of the house and up the stairs, taking a lantern with me whose flame leapt and flickered in the draught, for the short day had closed on us already.

‘Your mistress bids you attend her in the great hall.’ They had been gossiping of lovers past, present or to come, I thought, for their chatter had stilled as soon as I entered the room. Some were playing cards while one picked out a new song by Dowland brought over from Flushing by my lady’s brother Sir Robert.
The lutenist was a papist forced to seek employment overseas in Denmark since the queen would not let him come home although she kept the papist Byrd as her organist in the Chapel Royal.

‘I saw my lady weep,’ the girl sang.

The duenna clapped her hands. ‘You will all weep, if you do not put by your cards and attend her at once.’

Going through into the bedchamber I picked up the book. Her bed was still tousled as if she had just risen from it and I put my hand between the sheets almost expecting them to be warm. I thought I could smell the now familiar fragrance of her perfume. Picking up her nightshift of fine white linen embroidered with black silk and with panels of delicate lace as also at the neck and wrists, I held it to my cheek and drew in her scent. Then I was forced to hurry behind the ladies as they clattered down the stairs.

In the great hall the sconces had all been lit, the fire burned bright and the countess had caused a little dais to be brought in with a Turkey carpet over it on which she sat in a great chair as if enthroned. I thought no queen could have looked more regal and that truly this was a court in little so that I bowed as I presented her the book.

‘This is the dialogue of
Astrea
I wrote for the visit of the queen’s majesty that was suddenly cancelled. But she need not be present for it to be played in her honour and the country invited to see it. You Amyntas shall play Piers. Now I need someone for Thenot who be old.’

‘Not I my lady,’ said the duenna. ‘I am too old to keep words in my head. And besides it is not womanly. I could not dress myself in breeches at my age.’

‘Then we shall have to try you Mistress Griffiths how you shall look in a grey beard. You may hide your legs under a long gown like an alderman or beneath a shepherd’s smock.’

‘I do not care about the legs madam but the grey beard I hate.’

‘Then Secretary Samford must do it. He will need no addition to his grey hairs. One of you fetch him.’

‘He has been confined to his chamber with a rheum madam ever since we arrived here.’

‘See if he is well enough to attend us.’ When he came, for of course he darst not refuse, she said, ‘We shall have an entertainment for twelfth night that shall be my dialogue of “Astrea” made for the queen’s majesty.’

‘Why did her majesty not come madam when all was prepared for her?’ I asked.

‘It was a bad year, rain fell all through August, and her advisers thought it might injure her health. They said of course that it would be injurious to her people to wait on her in such weather which they knew was the argument she would best heed.’

‘Madam I have never acted before,’ Secretary Samford said.

I myself had never yet even seen a play except for the Salisbury street mummers at festival time enacting some old story of Robin Hood.

‘You remember Mr Samford,’ the countess went on, ‘that in my husband the late earl’s time we had our own troupe of players when four years after the coming of the Spanish ships the plague closed the London theatres and sent them out on the road where they were forced to sell their very play books and attire. Yet my lord had them to play in Shrewsbury and Ludlow and other places of his patronage. My brother Sidney writes that the lords are every day at plays in London when they are not at court, and even there the players come to perform after at the queen’s bidding. Now take the book between you and read the verses to us.’

So we began with our theatricals and although we stumbled at first because the words were new to us, the countess was pleased to say that we should do very well with practice and that we should quickly get our lines by heart.

‘We shall need rustic music to bring you in,’ she said, ‘and after it is over there shall be country dances. Then there must be shepherds’ weeds for the actors, and for my ladies they shall be dressed as shepherdesses and dance a hey. That should make us some sport.’