Prophecy - Страница 57

‘But enough of that,’ he says, unexpectedly light-hearted. ‘I was going to show you something to make you tremble, was I not? Come closer, Bruno.’

To my great relief, he lays the sword on the altar, though he keeps his hand within easy reach as he lifts the purple cloth that covers it. The stone beneath shows a carved bas-relief of figures, their faces so worn by time that only a blurred outline of their humanity remains. It appears cen turies old.

‘Comes from one of the Sussex abbeys torn down in the Dissolution,’ he remarks, as if he reads my thoughts. ‘My brother bought it secretly and kept it in his own chapel. We had it brought here after he died. You cannot imagine the work it takes to move a thing like that. Illegal to possess it, of course.’

His voice grows muffled as he turns his back to me and crouches in front of the altar. Set into the stone near the base is a narrow recess; Howard reaches in and draws out a wooden casket, its lid inlaid with an intricate pattern stamped in gold. He takes a key from somewhere inside his robe and unlocks the box. I take a tentative step nearer, my palms prickling with sweat; I am anxious to stay out of the range of that sword. As I pass the black cabinet I gently kick my discarded knife out of sight, just underneath it, while his back is turned.

‘You won’t see properly from there,’ he says, standing and turning. ‘Come.’

He holds it out to me, an object wrapped in a layer of protective linen. As I move closer, he unwraps the coverings to reveal a book bound in faded leather. I experience a sudden weakness in my limbs, as if my body had been flushed with cold water, as my heart gives an impossible lurch and I rush forward, almost forgetting the sword.

Could this really be the book I had chased from Venice to Paris to Oxford, the fifteenth book of the writings of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, brought to Cosimo de’ Medici out of the ruins of Byzantium, given to the great neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino to translate and hidden by him when he recognised the awful power of what it contained? The book that, according to an old Venetian I had known in Paris, Ficino gave into the safekeeping of the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, whose apprentice mistakenly sold it on to an English collector; the book that had lain unrecognised in an Oxford college library until a wily librarian saved it from the Royal Commission’s purges; the book that an unscrupulous dealer named Rowland Jenkes had sold to Dee for a fortune, and which Dee held in his hands for barely a day before it was stolen from him at Henry Howard’s command? By all that was sacred — could it be that I was finally in the presence of the book that was believed to hold the secret of man’s divine origin, of how to recover that divinity? I hardly dared breathe.

‘Open it, if you want.’ Howard’s smile grows wolfish. His eyes glitter; he looks like a child flaunting a marzipan figure, determined that you should fully appreciate the wonder of it, secure in the knowledge that you shall never take it from him. He nods, encouraging. I reach out, my hand visibly trembling, and lift the book from the casket. In the moment of opening the cover, it is as if the world ceases turning; I can hear my own heartbeat as if it came from somewhere outside. The bound manuscript pages are old and stiff, the Greek characters so faint in places as to be almost illegible, but as I begin to read, there is no doubt in my mind that this book is authentic.

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.’