Love and Sleep (30 page)

—Who, he asked his secretary, is this gentleman riding the white mule? I have been introduced to him?

—An Italian, said his secretary (who was himself Italian). A servant of the French Ambassador. He brought Your Grace the Ambassador's greetings, such as they were. Your Grace remembers.

—Hm.

—He is down for a disputation.

—Hm, said the Prince Palatine. He rides like a friar. I wonder.

His attention was just then drawn to the view by his host and guide, Sir Philip Sidney, who had waited for the carriage to pull abreast of his blue-caparisoned horse.

—Magnificent! said the Polonian, opening his arms to the day and the river. I am deeply moved.

It was that perfect summer day (but one in a year, and that only with luck, in this country) on which the old poets began their stories, the grass high, roses blooming and nodding, airs kindly on the face, and a
spiritus
moving feelably through it all, almost able to be heard, like a concert of winds. And the country all around, not magnificent at all but little—little it seemed to him, like the scenes in a Book of Hours: men at their work, the winding road, glimpse of a castle's tower in a cleft of hills, or a great house made in the English fashion of mud and sticks. He thought of his own country.

—Around the river's bend (said the knight, leaning down to Alasco in his coach) we will see the Queen's palace at Richmond. Her favorite of all her palaces.

—And those fields, across the river, that house?

—That is Barn Elms. The house now being built by Sir Francis Walsingham. He has caught the fever of building.

And he studied the far bank, not actually supposing he would see the Secretary's daughter, whom he would marry by summer's end.

—Then, said the Prince. The town that rises there is Mortlake.

—Yes. Mortlake, between the Queen and her Secretary.

—I have visited there. The one man in your kingdom whom I knew I must seek out. He was well known to the Queen, who graciously sent me to him.

—I know the man you mean, said Sir Philip.

—Doctor Dee. Whose fame has reached even as far as my country.

—He has traveled widely.

—I was very well received there, said the Prince (with an air almost of awe, as though surprised to have been taken in). He lives very simply. I wonder if by his own choice.

The knight said nothing.

—Not without honor, save in his own country. That was my thought.

—He has all the honor I can give him. He was my childhood tutor.

The Polonian looked up at Sir Philip with a new respect, his face full of that generous expression that said The more I learn of you the more credit you have with me. Then he turned his gaze toward the far bank again, as though he had rather have been there than here; and started slightly when his secretary tugged at his sleeve. When Laski turned, the secretary showed him with a hand, almost apologetically, the man on the white mule, who had come up beside him.

—Permit me to present to Your Grace Signor Doctor Giordano Bruno Nolano, a philosopher, my countryman.

—A philosopher, said Laski, and lifted the hat from his head an inch.

—I am proud, the man said in Latin, to claim that name which so many have soiled by wearing it.

—Philosophy is a shield time cannot tarnish, said the Duke in Latin. Then, in Italian: If now we shed our clothes and swam to that bank, we would find more philosophy in a house there than we are likely to find in this University we make such slow progress toward.

He looked to Sir Philip then, afraid he might have offended (of course the knight knew Italian, no man of any gentility was without Italian nowadays), and saw him smiling, his face full of amusement and even wonder. He was looking, not at Duke Laski, but at the new Philosopher. Alexander Dicson beside him just then unwittingly spurred his mad steed, and was nearly thrown.

On the fifteenth of that month Doctor Dee made a note in his private diary:

About 5 of the clok cam the Polonian prince, Lord Albert Lasky, down from Bissham where he had lodged the night before, being returned from Oxford, whither he had gon of purpose to see the universitye, where he was very honorably used and enterteyned. He had in his company Lord Russell, Sir Philip Sidney, and other gentlemen: he was rowed by the Queene's men, he had the barge covered with the Queene's cloth, the Queene's trumpeters, &c. He cam of purpose to do me honor, for which God be praysed!

It happened that he was standing by his water-stairs when the two broad barges came down the Thames, and one or two small wherries beside attending on them, and pavilions raised on them to keep out the sun and rain. The barges were going down to London, heading home like old nags going to their familiar stables, but they pulled up at the house in Mortlake, trumpets blowing and silken flags lifted on the chilly river airs.

—Sent by the Queen, called out Sir Philip, smiling. To hurry us away from that Athens.

You are welcome, gentlemen, Doctor Dee called. Your Grace is very welcome to my humble.

He hurried down the stairs to make his obeisance to the Duke, but the Duke had already leapt nimbly off the barge and swept the hat off his head. He clasped eagerly the doctor's hand, he bent close to the doctor, his white beard almost grappling with the doctor's own.

—Believe me I could not have passed these stairs and not stopped, he said. And turning to the barge which the bargemen were tying up: You know these gentlemen.

—Certain ones, yes, very well, said the doctor. He bowed to Sir Philip Sidney. Lord Russell he had seen often at Court, one of the Queen's young champions, moved by her like a chess knight in the games of chivalry they played.

They were handed out from the barges, and the other gentlemen after them; Doctor Dee showed them the stairs upward with a bow and a warning about the loose stones, then turned to send his son Arthur and Arthur's sister (who had been peeping from behind their father's skirts) to run on ahead and tell their mother who had come.

—Tell her, the last hogshead of my Christmas claret, he whispered to Arthur. Tell her, the venison pasties. A barrel of eels too.

He hurried the boy with a pat on his shoulder. This company would expect such hospitality, whether they touched it or not. Doctor Dee mounted the stairs with them.

—I trust Your Grace was honorably used at Oxford.

—Very honorably used. Much hospitality. A gift. Of gloves, he added, and raised his eyebrows, inviting Doctor Dee to share in his mild surprise at this, an article of dress and not a book, a rarity or antiquity of some kind. There were further oddities: at All Souls College the scholars had all acted in a stiff little drama of Dido, and a banquet was put on in the middle of it, where all sat down with AEneas and Queen Dido, to hear AEneas tell the story of Troy, and then a tempest came, just as in Virgil, only the rain was rosewater, and little sweetmeats hailed down on the guests, and sugar snow fell. It had all obviously cost them a good deal of trouble, and the Prince thanked them all in his
militare Latinum
(as he said, soldier's Latin, he had never heard such neat Ciceronian periods as the Oxonians turned).

—Did you not once, sir doctor (said Sir Philip Sidney, in English, disembarking), make wonders for a show at Oxford?

—I did, said Dee, pleased to have it remembered. For Aristophanes his
Pax
, the Scarabeus flying up to Jupiter's palace, with a man and a basket of victuals on his back. There were many vain reports, by what art it was done.

—There were disputations too, said the Prince. Lectures.

He had looked forward to these, but they had been poor stuff in his opinion, as formal and rehearsed as the little play of Dido, not what Alasco meant by deep learning.

—I do not love, he said, to hear Aristotle debated.

—They love Aristotle there, said Dee. No one may graduate who has not drunk at that font. Drunk deep.

—It must flow with beer, then. Beer and not learning, for they care little there for learning.

It was the last gentleman out of the boat who said this, in Latin. John Dee turned back to see him alight and mount the stairs, lifting his scholar's gown.

—
This
gentleman, said the Prince to Dee, was not well used there. Not well used.

Doctor Dee could not tell if Laski was amused or truly scandalized at the man's ill treatment. A young Scot whom Doctor Dee knew to be in Sir Philip Sidney's service stepped to Doctor Dee's side.

—Permit me to present.

Smiling—as though they knew something which John Dee did not yet know—Sir Philip and the Prince Palatine stood aside to make room for the Doctor to bow to the Italian, and take his hand.

—I was at Oxford, Dee said. In my youth.

—They understand neither Aristotle nor anything that is not Aristotle. I call on these gentlemen to witness. And yet once it was famous for learning.

A thick-necked, stiff-backed small man, who put out his chin, perhaps to make up for its weakness. A bantam cock, expecting a fight: that's what Dee was reminded of.

—They do in some sort despise old learning there, said Dee. The learning that made the place famous. I am sorry for it.

There was more he could say. It was the Puritans at Oxford who had lately driven out the old sciences there, and decimated the libraries, pitching out any book that talked of geometry, or the heavens, or had a red letter in it, as papistical or diabolical or both. Doctor Dee had himself saved priceless things from their fires. But he would not talk of such things in this company. Sir Philip was known to lean to the Puritans; Duke Laski was newly reconverted to the Roman church; this Italian he knew nothing of. He said only:

—Come sir. All you gentlemen. Refresh yourselves. Tell me of your adventures.

At Oxford Dicson had found room to sleep with an acquaintance, Matthew Gwynne; room to stay anyway, they had slept little, sat up long in the mess of Gwynne's room amid the books and maps and piled dishes and overturned cups whereon candles melted; and late, late, they had crept out on the town like tom-cats, and collided with the watch, and had to run.

With the dawn, the creatures of night sacred to Pluto retreat into their dens, the toad, the basilisk, the owl, and the witch; but the creatures of the light come forth to greet the rising, the cock, the ram, the phoenix, the lynx, eagle, lion; the lupine and the heliotrope open their cups, and turn their faces on him.

Late in the morning Dicson leapt up as though stung, thirsty and anxious. The Italian debated today.

The subject was Aristotle on Substance, and Bruno stood against the Rector of Lincoln College. A good crowd had filled the hall, Laski in the center front and Sidney beside him; Dicson crept in and stood by the wall, his spirit prepared (he hoped) to receive what was said, which was to be impressed truth by truth on the places he had inwardly made ready.

Something went quickly amiss. The Rector was a careful and soft-spoken man; he spent a good deal of time silent between sentences, while the Italian squirmed and sighed in his chair, groaning once aloud, which did not hasten the Rector: then leapt out of his chair when his opponent retired, a boxer leaping into the ring, pushing up his sleeves and talking almost before he stood before them. What he had to say seemed at first to have nothing to do with substance, or with Aristotle. It was about how the heavens are ordered.

In the center of the universe, he told them, the midpoint, equidistant from every point upon the outermost and ultimate sphere (beyond which is God alone), is the Earth. A great dungball, wherein are collected all the dims, smuts, uncleannesses, heavinesses, stones, and other corporealities of all the universe: for what is heavy falls naturally to the center, and what is not heavy stays aloft, and rises to the perimeter.

There was laughter, and a rustling of academic gowns. What was the man up to? He had an odd grin fixed on his face, and his arms wove circles as he spoke.

Around this ball Earth, this insignificant fAEcal mote, this
dot
, are seven or eight or nine truly gigantic spheres of some sort of crystal such as we have no experience of, spheres whose walls are thick as mountains, wherein or on the sun, moon, and planets are variously implanted, impressed, plastered, knotted, glued, sculptured, or painted. Outsidemost of all is the sphere of the stars, holding in all the rest and the earth too: around which in a natural spherical perfectly regular and unceasing motion it spins with incomprehensible speed, a good million miles or more in a minute. It could not be less.

The murmurings were louder now, and there were guffaws. Was he mocking them? There were cries of
Ad rem, ad rem
! The man had not yet taken up and answered a single one of the Rector's theses.

—Now (said Bruno, apparently unconscious as yet of the stir) what is the first conclusion we may come to, as to this picture or image or description of the universe, which is, with many additions and qualifications, the one we are presented with by Aristotle, and on which all his physics is considered to depend?

Some unintelligible jesting answers from the hearers, which the Italian ignored.

—Come, sirs. Come. The first and most evident conclusion. Is it not that this picture of the universe is wholly and thoroughly contradictory to common reason, and could not be the universe that God in His infinite greatness and goodness made? Is it not?

Flinging out a hand, as though to show them the
mappamundi
that he had drawn there in the air:

—If the universe has a center, then the universe has a circumference. If the world has a circumference, it is finite, no it is infinitesimal, no it is in fact nothing at all compared to the incalculable, inexpressible infinity and infinite creativity of God. Aquinas knew this, though he hid it. No universe will be sufficient to the infinite creativity of God that is not itself infinite.

He folded his arms and faced them, speaking louder.

—No circumference, then. And if no circumference, no center. Is this heavy foul stationary torpid impure midden the Earth not the center? No. Neither in nature is it stable nor in logic is it immobile, as witness Copernicus, who has perfectly demonstrated it, though it is not he who first conceived it. Therefore. No circumference, no center; or since its center is no different from its circumference, we may say that the universe is all center, or that the center of the universe is everywhere and the circumference nowhere...