Gloriana Read online

  Queen Gloriana was settling herself in her padded throne of gold and marble, her outline clarified by the pure light from above, her face framed by her high collar of wired gauze, her golden velvet kirtle winking with all the tiny jewels set into it. “You’ve brought your diagrams, Doctor Dee?”

  He waved them. Lord Montfallcon rubbed rapidly at his nose and looked from Queen to magus. In common with most of his contemporaries he regarded Dee as a charlatan—his appointment as Councillor of Philosophy a woman’s folly. Montfallcon was aggressively sceptical of Dee, and Dee in turn was almost entirely amused by the Chancellor’s scepticism.

  “You promised to describe your cosmological theories in detail,” the Queen reminded Dee, “and the Countess of Scaith would hear them. Lord Montfallcon is invited in an effort of ours to broaden his mind.”

  The Lord Chancellor grunted and sighed. “I would remind Your Majesty that I have urgent duties. Poland….”

  “Of course. We’ll detain you a few moments.” She looked towards the great filigree silver clock on the distant wall facing the throne, and seemed to sway in time with the pendulum, as if mesmerised. With neat fingers, she pulled a petticoat in place, gestured for Una to seat herself in the chair at the side of the dais, enquired with an eyebrow of Lord Montfallcon if he’d take the chair on the other side, shrugged when he shook his head and smiled upon her magus. “Do you require assistance with the charts?”

  Dee wiped moisture from his brow. The room was heated from pipes below the flagstones, in the Roman manner. “A boy?”

  “Lord Ingleborough’s page is here, awaiting his master’s return.” She pointed toward a scarlet curtain half-hiding a polished door. “There.”

  The Countess of Scaith rose. “I’ll fetch him.” She crossed to the curtain, pulled open the door. “Ah, it’s Patch.”

  A sweet voice from the page. “Good morning, your ladyship.”

  “Join us please, Patch.” Una spoke warmly. There were few at Court who were not charmed by Lord Ingleborough’s boy.

  In came Patch, elegant and tiny, in a suit of dark green, with ruff and cape, all green; green cap in hand. His curls were cut short and were almost white. He bowed prettily and looked at Doctor Dee with large brown eyes that were courteous and intelligent.

  “Master Patch, please aid the Doctor.”

  “Sir?” Patch presented himself to Dee and seemed unembarrassed when the magus reached out exceptionally long fingers to pat his head.

  “Good boy, Patch.”

  Doctor Dee looked about him, sighted a sideboard, and went to place the majority of his charts upon it; he selected one and returned to the foot of the dais. “Take an end, lad. There.” Cheerfully Patch obeyed. “Move away a little. Excellent.” They unrolled the chart and stood with it between them, displaying it to the Queen, who, in concert with the Countess, bent forward, while Lord Montfallcon looked steadily and somewhat longingly at the door to the Privy Chamber.

  The Queen’s scent reached Doctor Dee’s nostrils and he felt his old knees tremble. For twelve years he had loved her, lusted after her. There had been hardly a moment, even during his most profound contemplations, when he had not desired her; but he lacked the means to tell her. For so long had he been regarded as a sage, a mentor, a metaphysician, that he had been trapped entirely in his role, did not dare leave it for fear of disappointing her. He loved her too much to risk such disappointment. O, Madam, he thought, if only I could disguise myself one night, as a devil, as a rogue, to creep into your bedchamber and bring you what you yearn for. What we both yearn for, by the gods…. He realised that she was asking a question. “Madam?”

  “These spheres?” she said. “All these circles intersecting. There are other worlds, eh?”

  He peered upon his own charts. “Yes, madam (why must she rustle so seductively?), the broad diagram—not specific, but to show the theory. The central sphere is ours, though no more central than our own in the universe we know—these others are (those brows!) representative of worlds which exist in parallel to our own (ah, and in one Dee must be the master, you the slave) and mirror our own, perhaps exactly perhaps only in approximate detail, some with continents where our seas are, or with dominant beings descended, perhaps, from apes—anything imaginable…”

  “How are these worlds reached, Doctor Dee?” Lord Montfallcon challenged. “Where have you seen them?”

  “I have not seen them, my lord.”

  “You know travellers who have? Mariners?”

  “Not mariners, but perhaps—yes, travellers…”

  “They came by ship?”

  “Most did not, my lord.”

  “By land?” Lord Montfallcon threw back his shoulders, prepared for further conflict.

  Queen Gloriana laughed. “Hush, Lord Montfallcon.” She was delighting in this unusual pettiness on the part of her greatest minister. “You are a bad scholar, sir!”

  “I wish to know, madam"—heavily, turning to her—"for it is my business to protect your Realm. Therefore I must be wary of all possibilities of attack.”

  John Dee smiled. “I think there’s little chance these worlds threaten our security, my lord.”

  “In no way at all, Doctor Dee?” Lord Montfallcon glanced significantly at the magus.

  “I can think of none.” Innocently.

  “You waste your own time and ours, my lord.” Gloriana became gently impatient. “These are but the Doctor’s theories.”

  “Based on certain evidence, however, Your Majesty,” muttered Dee.

  “Of course…” She picked up her sceptre.

  “How do these travellers reach our shores?” Lord Montfallcon became more stubborn as the smiles around him broadened.

  “The spheres, I believe, occasionally intersect. When that occurs, they come willy-nilly, through no intention of their own. At least, most of them do. Others, by the practice of certain arts unknown to us, come deliberately, perhaps. But, sir, we move too far from what I present as a pure idea, nought else. Plato himself suggests—”

  Lord Montfallcon let a breath loose from between his teeth. He put a hand to his belt. “I am not obtuse, I think. I have studied the classics. I have a reputation, moreover, for subtlety, yet I still do not understand!”

  “You do not will it so, that’s all. (Oh, this dolt knows what I am feeling! He is aware that the only knowledge I truly desire is the knowledge of her high-strung flesh….) I suggest, Your Majesty, that we pursue this discussion at another time.”

  “No, no, no. On with it, Doctor Dee.” Gloriana tapped with the royal baton.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. (On with it, aye. On to your warm bones with mine….) I have another plan, more detailed, of a section of our cosmos.” He moved towards Patch, rolling the chart as he approached, plucked the end from the boy’s soft hand, strode to the sideboard and, selecting another chart, returned. Again the boy and the man moved, as if in a dance, to display the next chart. “Here are familiar constellations, marked in red. Behind these are the same constellations, but at a different angle, in blue—then the constellations again, in black—and again, and again, in these yellows and greens. The constellation in red is the one we observed with the naked eye. The constellations in other colours are those which might exist, but which are separated from our ordinary perception by some means—layers of ether, perhaps, hiding one from the next. (Oh, those fingers! Her hands! Would that they tickled my manhood now….) I have not, Lord Montfallcon, observed such constellations through telescopes. They are theoretical constellations. There have been reports, of course. I am even now, alchemically, devising a means of crossing from one world to another, but so far I have had poor success.”

  “You have no need to defend yourself from Lord Montfallcon’s ignorance, Doctor Dee.” Queen Gloriana reached out towards her Chancellor, placating him with a gesture as she placated her Philosopher with a word. “You seem distracted, Doctor Dee.”

  He looked up, controlling the fires which sprang behind his eyes. He ignore
d the enquiry. “Certain persons have been brought to me in the course of the years, gracious Majesty who have seemed mad. These men and women have all claimed to originate upon other worlds. I have found them logical and consistent—sane, save for their single, central delusion, that this world is not their own. I have had them draw their spheres for me. They are all, in basic, the same as our own. The names for nations and continents are sometimes different. The societies described are often alien and barbaric.” He rolled the second chart, moved to the sideboard, came back with a third. “This is one, for instance. Similar to ours, yet not entirely the same.” Patch took the left, Dee the right, to display the detailed map of the globe. “See. The names are not at all like ours, though a few correspondences exist. I had this from a poor lunatic who claimed to have been a king over all the German states, some Emperor Charlemagne, though with considerable magical powers—”

  “With designs on Albion?” The grey voice.

  Pedantic Lord Montfallcon was ignored. Una, Countess of Scaith, looked with great interest at the map. It was almost as if it was familiar to her. “It is very good.”

  “Fanciful, you mean, my lady?” asked Dee.

  “If you like.”

  “I believe it to be a true representation. This is the only full one I have made. My informant, as it happened, was obsessed with maps. I have yet, gracious Majesty, to map the geography of any other spheres.” He let Patch roll up this last map and take it to place it with the others. “However, from reports brought to me I can produce a scheme—a broad plan of the positions of these spheres and how they might relate to our own. We are at the centre (again for argument’s purpose) of a pool. Our activities produce ripples and eddies throughout this pool. We are for the most part unaware of these movements, save when, by fluke, a backwash, a momentary current, brings us evidence. This evidence was feared by our ancestors. Devils, angels, poltergeists, pixies, elves, gods and their works were held to be the cause of these disruptions to our ordered world. Why, there are those who still call that noble musician Lord Caudolon a demon, because he came so suddenly to our sphere, speaking of strange lands and works and wondering of everything he found (Lady, I would your lips would touch this pounding prick), yet soon he calmed and judged himself recovered from our enchantments—or a dream. As I said, some spheres are not dissimmilar. Their histories, even, have resemblances—there are other Glorianas, other Dees, other Lords Chancellors, no doubt—shadows, sometimes faint, sometimes distorted, of our own selves.”

  Gloriana eyed the distance. “Doctor Dee, think you we shall one day travel between these spheres?”

  “I work, intermittently, upon that very problem, madam (your lips and then your legs shall part for me), and hope one day to effect the means of moving freely from sphere to sphere, as a pike crosses beneath the surface of his pond.”

  “Sorcery!” grunted Lord Montfallcon. “Is this not always where your mathematick leads? Now you see, great Majesty, why I’d abolish such studies—though I blame not the misguided scholar.” A sidelong glance of malice. Doctor Dee shrugged it back.

  “It is our wish,” murmured the Queen, “that all arts shall be studied at our Court.”

  “Then let the Queen look to the security of her Realm, lest she find it torn asunder by warring demons admitted to our sphere by Doctor Dee’s experiments.” Lord Montfallcon spoke without a great deal of conviction.

  “My sovereign,” a wincing bow from Dee, “the Science of Cabalism…”

  Her foot moved. “You think this diversion likely, Doctor Dee?”

  He bowed again, sucked in a breath or two. (Blood of Zeus! These pantaloons will make a eunuch of me yet!) “I fear not, my sovereign. Devils are the name we give to beings whose origins are obscure to us. Those few travellers who have passed between the spheres are men and women like ourselves. Sometimes they think they are reincarnated, in past or future; sometimes they find our sphere Heaven, sometimes Hell. Doubtless, if we visited them unwillingly, we should think of their worlds in a similar way (I swear it—your breasts shall bloom to the heat of my tongue)”.’

  “Look to your soul, madam!” The Chancellor’s words were actually addressed to his rival. A warning. “The Pit lies, inevitably, at the end of Doctor Dee’s dark road.”

  Dee was evidently astonished by this expression of a previous century’s superstition—words which might have come from Montfallcon’s famous witch-seeking grandfather. He decided diplomacy: “The Universe, madam, is not our concern, perhaps. (To have her arse in love and pain!) This planet and its facets, its shadows, is complex enough, without our needing to discourse on the question of rival spheres. (Oh, she is the universe, mother of galaxies—I would grasp her tits until she gave voice to the Last Trump!) If my lord the Chancellor cautions discretion…”

  “It is my duty to protect the whole Realm—including you, Doctor Dee—as best I can.” Frowning, Montfallcon drew a fold or two of heavy cloth about him.

  “I respect your sincerity, my lord.” Dee’s tone showed puzzlement. “However, you seem unusually disturbed by what is, after all, no more than a discussion of possibilities.”

  Montfallcon snorted. “My business is with possibilities. I have many to consider at this moment.”

  “You are agitated, my lord, because we keep you from your Duty.” Gloriana became placatory, impressed by Montfallcon’s manner, at last. “You may go to it.”

  “I am grateful, madam.” A bow, a swift, disapproving glance at Dee, and Montfallcon fled for his mysterious rooms.

  “I had no intention…” began Dee, biting his lip a little, his white beard flat against his chest.

  “Lord Montfallcon is distracted. Matters of State, as you know. I am to blame. It was capricious of me. You’ll need finance for further experiments, I take it, Doctor Dee?”

  “Madam, I did not come—”

  “Neither did I. But you’ll need gold. It will have to be extracted from the Privy Purse, I think, for the Council will never agree—why should it?—to patronise your Science. I shall speak to Sir Amadis and you shall tell him of your needs.”

  “I thank thee, madam. (Needs, needs! Ah, if she knew!) If I could find two people, for instance, from the mad houses, who independently raved the same logic, then I could test them. The Thane of Hermiston has offered his help.”

  “But all believe him a clownish boaster!” The Countess of Scaith stroked the velvet of her chair’s arm. “These claims of adventurings in fairy realms! Isn’t he, at best, a mediocre poet and a poor liar?”

  “I think not, your ladyship. There are his prisoners. His trophies.”

  “We have had them at Court. Mindless savages. Lunatics. Nothing more.” She smiled. “They make bad sport. He is vulgar, the Thane, in guessing his victims will amuse the Queen.”

  Doctor Dee thought he detected more than mere scepticism in the Countess of Scaith’s voice. It was almost as if she tested him.

  “There was the magus who came and went,” said Dee carefully, his voice soft, “called Cagliostro. He appeared suddenly, vanished as quickly. He was one who controlled his own journeys through the spheres. I conversed with him. I learned from him. There was the woman, Montez—”

  “She was not at all coherent, Doctor Dee,” said Queen Gloriana. “We interviewed her. The poor creature was completely deranged. And those clothes! The work of some addlepated designer of masques who had escaped the same hospital!”

  “I did not disbelieve her, Your Majesty, though I would agree she seemed very ordinarily crazed. Her claims and notions were familiar delusions.”

  “Where is she now?” asked the Countess of Scaith.

  “She joined a travelling mummer’s show, I think, but died near Lincoln.”

  Una leaned her face in her palm.

  “And this German Emperor of yours?” Queen Gloriana signed for Patch to seat himself on the steps of the dais. “Is he still with us?”

  “Adolphus Hiddler, Your Majesty? A suicide. I liked him the best. A splen
did barbarian, much interested in alchemy, as well as geography. Apparently his alchemical experiments brought him here. A scholar, in his own way, he claimed to have conquered the world.”

  Queen Gloriana put a finger to smiling lips. “Hush, Doctor Dee, lest Lord Montfallcon hear. You’ll keep us informed of your experiments?”

  “I shall, madam (Ah, the pressure! There is only one experiment I must perform before I die! One instrument to play. I’ll make

  you sing like Orphues’ harp…), and I thank you for your interest.”

  “We are always interested in investigations which can increase our knowledge of the natural world, but you must be careful, Doctor Dee. There could be truth in Lord Montfallcon’s warnings. A demon could be summoned from one of these other worlds whom we could not control.”

  “Do not venture too far into fairyland without letting us know where you go, sir,” added the Countess of Scaith with a friendly smile, “and do not trust yourself too readily to the Thane of Hermiston’s ramshackle contraptions.”

  “Or the mechanical dragons of his friend Master Tolcharde!” Gloriana was laughing. “Poor Tolcharde! He works so hard on his toys. I have had to devote several rooms to their storage. And he makes more and more! You saw the telescope, did you not, Doctor Dee, that Tolcharde made for studying the inhabitants of the Moon? Their behavior was extraordinary and, I’ll admit, entertaining for a while, but such things pall all too quickly. Since then, I’ve heard he plans to make a ship which will carry him there.”

  “To be fair to Master Tolcharde,” said Dee, “he has been of help to me in certain matters. He has considerable skill as a craftsman and can make almost anything I need.”

  “He lives only to make more and more fantastical devices.” Una laughed in concert. “He cares not if they are used. The Queen accepts the gifts, admires them, sends them off to be incarcerated. He is content to make her others. There must be a score of mechanical birds and beasts, at least—each increasingly elaborate!”