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‘How many new worlds have you discovered, Bruno?’

I start from my reverie and wheel around to see Sidney leaning against a wall, a glass of wine in his hand. Guiltily, I glance about me to see if Castelnau is nearby, but there is no sign of him.

‘Infinite numbers,’ I say, feeling my shoulders relax.

‘Where is God to be found, then, if there is no sphere of fixed stars?’ He speaks in a whisper. ‘Beyond where the universe ends?’

‘An infinite universe by definition does not end, you dullard,’ I point out with a grin.

‘Then where? Beyond the stars?’

‘Or in them, perhaps. In the stars and the planets and the rain and these stones under our feet, and in us. Or perhaps nowhere.’

‘Well, you had better keep ideas like that out of your book,’ he says, ‘because Her Majesty is anxious to read it.’

‘What?’

He laughs. ‘That is your reward, my friend. Walsingham told her you were writing a book about the heavens. She asks that you have a copy bound and present it to her in person at court when it is finished.’ He slaps me on the shoulder and offers me his glass. ‘Her Majesty is a woman of prodigious intellect, it is well known, but I wish her luck trying to grapple with your theories.’ He looks up again to the tracery of milky vapour overhead. ‘If I try for one minute to imagine a universe that never ends, I fear that my brain will overheat and explode.’

‘Then don’t risk it.’ I take a drink and hand the glass back to him. ‘Please pass on my thanks. I am honoured.’

‘You should be. A royal endorsement will make this book the talk of every academy. Just try not to write anything too inflammatory.’

‘You know me, Philip.’

‘Yes, I do. Hence the warning. She won’t give her patronage to any writer who implies there is no God, no matter how many times you save her life.’

I acknowledge this with a nod, and for a long while we stand there, looking up at the vast unknown reaches above us.

‘I was sorry to hear of Dee’s departure,’ he remarks, eventually. ‘I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. I shall miss the old conjuror.’

‘And I,’ I say, with feeling. ‘It seems hard, since he had done nothing wrong except be taken for a fool. The scryer Kelley had no connection with the murders, in the end. I read into that what I wanted to be true. Some things are just coincidence, though.’

‘But people gripped by fears of planets and prophecies will not believe that. Dee was too inflammatory a figure to be tolerated at court, even before this dreadful business.’ Sidney sighs and pushes a hand through his hair. ‘His hunger for hidden matters will be his undoing, I fear. As it will yours, amico mio.’

He turns to me and squeezes my shoulder briefly. For a moment we regard the sky again in silence.

‘Wouldn’t you give anything to rise up through the spheres, Philip, to travel beyond the reaches of the heavens and understand what is out there?’

‘Anything except my soul,’ he says, emphatically. ‘You have not given up, then. You still believe this book of Howard’s will teach you the means to do that?’

‘Howard believes it will make him immortal.’

‘It may be too late for him to test that, if he’s charged with treason. Where is the book now?’

‘I don’t know. Only Howard can tell us that. Or perhaps his nephew.’

He turns to look at me. The fireworks are almost ended now, and only the torches in brackets around the courtyard give any light. His face is patched with shifting shadows.

‘You already have it in your head to search for it, don’t you?’ When I do not reply, he claps a hand to his forehead and steps back. ‘Christ’s blood, Bruno — let it go, will you? You have the queen and her senior ministers in your debt, you have an income and the leisure to write a book that will send waves through Europe, like Copernicus before you. This is everything you wanted, isn’t it?’

I acknowledge the truth of it with a dip of my head.

‘Well, then! Don’t throw it away chasing will o’ the wisps. Howard’s already tried to kill you and Dee for that book, and I can’t keep watch over you all the time.’

‘You’re right, I know.’

‘Promise me you will let the Hermes book go? Henry Howard cannot touch it where he is, and the Earl of Arundel is too pious and cowardly to look into it himself, if he has it. It is out of harm’s way. So leave it alone.’

I hesitate. Sidney points a finger in my face, assuming the expression of a schoolmaster.

‘Very well then.’

‘Good man. Now I suppose I had better find my wife. Still no sign of an heir, you know,’ he adds, as if he can’t understand why someone doesn’t sort this out. ‘Not for want of trying, neither. Here, you finish this, I’ve had enough.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say, as he hands me the glass. ‘Still, you’ve only been married two months.’

‘Huh. That ought to be plenty of time for the Sidney seed to do its work.’

I grimace, and he laughs, clapping me soundly on the arm again, then walks backwards a few steps. ‘Don’t forget what I told you,’ he calls. ‘I have your solemn oath.’

In the emptying courtyard I stand very still and look up again, my head as far back as I can stretch so that I am almost bent backwards, and I imagine the whole of the heavens spinning around as if on a wheel with me as the fulcrum. I have promised nothing, and as I watch a shooting star fire its trail across a constellation and wink into blackness, I recall the sensation of that leather binding, the stiff ancient pages, the coded truths in a hidden book that might one day show me what lies beyond the visible world, out there, among the mysteries of infinity. As I stare upwards, a final burst of fireworks pierces the dark with crimson light, scattering sparks like a shower of bright rain so that, for an instant, the sky is illuminated, stained the colour of blood.

About the Author

S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of Stephanie Merritt. Since graduating from Cambridge she has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian, and is the author of fi ve books and one son.

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