Prophecy (2011) (33 page)
Howard nods again as I turn the pages, my eyes hungrily scanning the lines, thinking what I would offer for the chance to spend a day with this book, to study it, copy it, drink it in. Eventually he grows impatient.
‘Read on, Bruno. Skip the prologue and the early chapters. Turn to the middle section.’
Surprised, I obey, and as the book falls open towards the middle, I understand his slightly hysterical look of triumph. I read the Greek lines, then read them again. As my frown deepens, Howard begins to laugh.
‘You see, Bruno? You see?’
I experience a disorientating sense of falling, just as Howard himself must have done when he first opened the book. I look down at the page, then back to Howard, shaking my head in disbelief.
‘Encoded.’
‘Exactly! The meat of the book, its most secret and sacred wisdom, is so inflammatory that the scribe didn’t dare write it without a cipher. In the prologue Hermes mentions the Great Key, the Clavis Magna. But this must exist separately, and I do not have it.’ His eyes burn with a frenzied energy. ‘Fourteen years! Fourteen years I have attempted to break the code. I have tried every system of cryptography I have ever read about, but I cannot. I cannot make it yield.’
I watch him, the book limp in my hands, my mouth open. Fourteen years of trying to decipher the book you believe will yield the secret of immortality. I almost pity him; small wonder his plans seem touched by madness. It is a wonder he has held on to his mind at all.
‘But Ficino must have had it,’ I wonder, aloud. ‘The Great Key. Ficino read the whole book, according to the story I heard, else how would he have been so afraid to translate it?’
‘It exists somewhere, or it can be deduced,’ Howard says, and I hear the years of weariness in his voice. ‘But how to find it, Bruno? Where to begin?’
‘Dee has a great many treatises on cryptography in his library,’ I reply, holding his gaze. ‘But then you know that.’
He merely raises an eyebrow.
‘Ask Dee for help? And confess that I have the book he was nearly killed for? Naturally, over the years I have made attempts to discover whether Dee holds anything among his papers that he may not know to be the key of which Hermes speaks. I have sent servants and associates to his house to pose as travelling scholars. And, yes, I have taken the opportunity to search there myself if I knew he was absent. In all this time I have barely touched the surface of Dee’s library.’ His face hardens and he looks at me as if he has only just remembered who I am. ‘But Dee is close to being ruined. Elizabeth will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to his practices. And when he is - even if his life is spared, his goods will be forfeit. I will have his library somehow.’ The cold determination in his voice belies the wild light in his eyes; if his sanity is doubtful, it has not affected his ruthlessness. But his reference to Dee’s impending ruin is almost a confession.
‘Is Ned Kelley one of these associates you send out to do your work?’
He rubs his pointed beard as if trying to recall where he has heard the name.
‘Kelley. A crook, of course, but with a remarkable imagination and a curious ability to win the affection of strangers, though I must say it has never worked on me.’
‘Nor me.’
‘The servant Johanna brought him to me - she found him at some fair, cheating at card tricks. She thought he might prove useful to me. But no one could have foreseen how Dee would take Kelley to his bosom, and how easily Kelley would work on him.’ He smirks. A sudden rage rises in my chest and I grip the book tighter.
‘You paid Kelley to lure Dee into conjuring spirits so that he could be publicly disgraced and punished,’ I say, through my teeth. Howard permits himself an indulgent chuckle.
‘I knew if Dee believed he could truly communicate with celestial beings he wouldn’t be able to resist telling the queen. She is still drawn to the idea of knowledge beyond mortal means, but that would be a step too far for those advocates of reason in her council. Walsingham, Burghley. Myself, natur ally.’ He smiles, patting his breast. ‘Dee will be cut down faster than a cankered apple tree, you shall see. And I no longer need live in fear of his exposing the secrets of my past.’ He folds his arms across his chest and tilts his head back to appraise me down the length of his nose. ‘Which brings me to you, Bruno.’
‘And the girls,’ I blurt, ignoring him, a flush of rage spreading across my face, ‘they died for this? To lend credibility to Kelley’s violent prophecies? To implicate Dee in murder, just to make sure you finished his reputation for good?’
Howard is too much of a courtier to allow his polished mask to slip for long, but I had thought the accusation might prompt some admission of guilt in his expression, however fleeting. What I see instead is confusion, then outrage.
‘Girls? Good God, Bruno - you don’t think I had anything to do with that?’ He looks genuinely stricken - but I must not forget that he is a politician and an expert dissembler. ‘That would be insanity - murders that draw attention to threats against the queen at the very time we are trying to organise an invasion which depends on surprise? Why on earth would I jeopardise the plans on which I have staked my whole future?’
‘Ned Kelley’s prophecy foretold the death of Abigail Morley in almost every particular,’ I say, lowering my voice. ‘How else could he have known?’
He shakes his head impatiently.
‘Kelley was a fool - he allowed his imagination to be coloured too far by the lurid reports he read in pamphlets. So when the killer repeats himself, it looks as if Kelley foresaw the event. No - these murders could have been catastrophic for our invasion plans. Increased raids on Catholics, increased questioning, more guards around the court, and they’ll be watching Mary more closely, just at a time when I have Throckmorton riding around the country trying to stir the Catholic nobles into a spirit of war - you think I would purposefully bring all this down upon our heads? By the cross - it would be madness!’ His eyes flash. ‘No. If Dee is implicated in murder as a result, some good will have come of it, but I assure you, Bruno, I am furious about the timing of these murders. Besides,’ he adds, with a little preening gesture, ‘I would never engage in such a vulgar display. Death is occasionally necessary, but it ought to be discreet. That sort of grotesque spectacle is the work of a man whose vanity outweighs his sense of purpose.’
I look at him and the thrill of my earlier certainty shrivels to a point and disappears. Despite the self-satisfied twitch of his smile, I think he is speaking the truth. Wanting to persuade myself that he was behind the murders, I have tried to make the facts fit, but I have never found a plausible explanation for the way the murders so overtly tried to imply a Catholic threat. And now that I know the extent of Howard’s regal and dynastic ambitions, I can see that the assassination of Elizabeth would clearly work against his interests, so the theory that he set up Cecily Ashe to poison the queen also crumbles. But if Howard is not the killer, then who?
‘You had better return my book now, Bruno,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to crack the cipher while my back was turned.’
Slowly, I step forward, my arm leaden as I reach out and let him take the book. The rough grain of the leather slides beneath my fingertips as he pulls it from my grasp; I watch him tuck it back into its casket with a sense of desolation, as if I had found a lover only to lose her again in the same moment. Except that I have pursued this book across a continent and a sea with greater devotion than I have shown to any woman; to have held it in my hands and have it snatched away is almost worse than to have gone on blindly seeking it, never knowing if it even existed. Nor can I escape the insistent voice of my own vanity: that, given time, Dee and I between us could surely break the cipher that has defeated Henry Howard for fourteen years. My eyes follow it longingly as Howard locks the casket and clasps it to his chest. My chances of ever touching that book again look remote.
The sword glitters on the altar under the candle flames. If I were to lunge for it now, while Howard busies himself with the casket, I might just be able to grab it before he has a chance to react, though he is nearer. As if he senses my eyes on it, without looking up he reaches out and lays a proprietorial hand on the hilt.
‘You leave me with a dilemma, Bruno,’ he says, as he tucks the casket under his left arm. ‘All of this -‘ he gestures around the chapel, taking in the chart, the brazen head, the altar - ‘you should not have seen. My greatest secret. If it were made known, it would be the final nail in the coffin of my family’s reputation, and would certainly see me in the Tower. You were never a man I wholly trusted, even before this night. So what am I to do with you, now that you have found me out?’ His thumb lightly strokes the hilt of his sword, though he doesn’t yet pick it up.
A coldness ripples along my spine and through my gut; my throat clenches. I had half-expected this, but stubbornly I still hope I might reason with him.
‘Dee has guessed at your secret, and not divulged it - why do you think I would not do the same?’
He must catch the fear in my voice, because he laughs, without humour.
‘Dee has no proof of anything. And he has a healthy respect for the reach of my influence, whereas you, Bruno, appear to have no respect at all.’ He rests his left hand on his hip and shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I have ever witnessed such a cocksure swagger in a man of low birth.’
My eyes flick again to the sword.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Bruno, I’m not planning to run you through, unless you try anything stupid. That would take some explaining to the ambassador.’ He tilts his head to one side again and smiles dangerously. ‘Fortunately, your little charade this evening gives me the perfect opportunity. It’s very common, apparently, for a man who over-indulges in drink to choke to death on his own vomit in the night.’
‘Let me go back to the embassy,’ I plead, my voice emerging as a croak. ‘I will say nothing to anyone.’
‘Nothing?’ His lips trace a faint smile, which vanishes as he picks up the sword decisively. ‘Even when you see Dee imprisoned for sorcery, you would still guard my secret? I suspect not.’ He points the tip at my chest; instinctively, I step back. ‘The maidservant will find you in the morning, stone cold and covered with vomit. God knows that hound’s produced enough to spare. It will be an embarrassment to the French embassy, of course, but between us Castelnau and I will do our best to cover up the scandal. And in the great tumult of what is about to happen in this country, no one will remember the little Italian monk who couldn’t hold his Rhenish.’
He ushers me with the point of the sword towards the far end of the room with the obsidian speculum. The casket with the Hermes book is tucked tightly under his arm.
‘I’ll have to leave you here while I rouse the earl’s trusted servants. I don’t intend to get my own hands messy. You can amuse yourself, I trust. I suppose it doesn’t much matter now what you find here.’
He backs towards the door, the sword still levelled at my chest. For a fleeting moment I consider the possibility of running at him, attempting to wrest it from his grasp, but he is a big man, considerably taller than I, and he would be upon me the moment I moved. The sword may be ornamental, but even in the dying light I can see its edge is vicious.
At the door he pauses, one hand on the latch.
‘I read your book on memory, you know,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I can confess this now - I considered it the work of an exceptional mind. I am almost sorry things have to end in this way, but a man must look to his own survival in these times. And my destiny is greater than yours. Goodbye, Giordano Bruno.’ He gives me a long look, then backs out of the door. I hear the sound of a key turning, and the unmistakable scrape of the bookcase sliding back into place. I push my hands through my hair, take a deep breath, and try to examine the room with a clear head, though my blood is racing and I feel faintly nauseous.
The candles have burned almost down to their holders, but still their flames dance and weave in currents of cold air. The atmosphere in the hidden chapel is chill enough that I can see my own breath cloud in front of me as I try to slow it down. By my reckoning, this chapel has been created by partitioning the room that is now the library, closing off the furthest wall, meaning that we are at the very end of one wing. The bricked-up windows on the wall opposite the door bear this out. But this constant draught must mean that there is another opening somewhere, and the only possibility is behind the speculum. Snatching one of the candles from the altar, my theory is confirmed as I approach the edge of the speculum and its flame is almost snuffed out.
I have very little time. The thick sheet of polished obsidian is broad and taller than a man - a man from Naples, at any rate - and is set into a solid block of wood at the base to keep it upright and give it balance. I put my shoulder against it and push with all my weight. It shifts a fraction of an inch and there is no doubt that the cold air is coming through the gap between the speculum and the wall. I wedge my foot behind the wooden base and attempt to push it outwards, leaning my back against the wall, keeping one eye constantly on the door that leads to the library, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of a key turning.
Straining every muscle, I push the base of the speculum with both legs until I have shunted it far enough away from the wall to reveal a fireplace, boarded up with wooden planks. My heart sinks, but when I hold the candle close, shielding its flame with my hand, I see that the nails are only loosely hammered in; it would be little work to prise them free, if only I had time. I scrabble for the knife that I kicked under the black cabinet, easing it towards me with my fingertips. Setting the candle out of the direct draught, I force the blade behind the nail of the topmost board and it comes loose easily; I am able to work my fingers in behind and pull the whole board away from the fireplace. I repeat this with the second, my hands shaking with the need for haste and my fingertips bleeding from the splinters. In a few minutes, I have removed three of the boards, leaving a space big enough to fold myself into and climb through into the fireplace. I have no idea how wide the chimney breast will prove to be, or if it is even possible to climb it, but I have no other choice. I sheathe the knife and bend myself double to fit through the gap, reluctantly leaving the candle behind and thanking Fortune that I have the physique of a Neapolitan; one of these tall, broad Englishmen like Howard or Sidney would not stand a chance.