Gideon's Angel (22 page)

“We seek to become better men and to understand God’s wisdom,” said Ashmole solemnly. “And these things surpass the petty politics of country and kingdoms.”

It was only then that we became aware of cries and heavy footfalls outside in the street. We watched someone flash by the front of the shop, heading east. Billy moved to the door, clearly worried about riot, and volunteered to search out the disturbance. Da Silva nodded his assent and Billy went out, disappearing from view.

“But could Cromwell even be convinced of this plot?” I said. “Who would believe such things had come to pass? He will laugh it away.”

“We count among our brethren Cromwell’s astrologer,” said Ashmole. “We can but try and warn him. But so too, we must protect your secret. You have returned here under sentence of death.”

“I need no reminder of that fact, Mister Ashmole.”

And at that moment the tapestry whipped back, revealing a young woman in a fury. A lace cap hid most of her jet black hair, pulled back tightly from her forehead, and her almond eyes were large and round, set perfectly in a face of sharp angles: chin, cheekbones, and nose. Her skin was deepest olive, almost polished bronze.

“Father, are you mad?” She had placed herself between me and the old man, her hands on her hips as if she was ready to fight us all.

Da Silva flew off in a rage, embarrassed by her eavesdropping. “Get upstairs! Now. You forget your place in this household.”

“I will not! How can you think of aiding these men? Do you really think you will help our people by harbouring Cromwell’s enemies? They will surely drive us out for this.”

Da Silva’s face flushed red and he suddenly gripped the girl by her arm, shaking her as he spoke. “Do not tell me my business, woman! My first duty is to serve God and to help those in need.”

She shook off his hand and spat out what must have been an oath in Portuguese. “We are
marranos.
And we shall always be so. Hiding and running and lying. And now you’re risking it all again.”

“Enough.” Da Silva looked away, shuffling again to the other side of the work table, shamed for his outburst and stung by her words.

She next turned on Ashmole. “How could you involve him, sir? You know our situation better than most.” Her eyes were rapidly welling up with tears. She fixed me with a look of utter pleading but did not give words to her thoughts. And I could find no words either. She gave a short cry of frustration and fled the room and we could hear her feet pounding up the staircase in the back of the house.

Da Silva exhaled loudly. “I am deeply sorry for her behaviour, gentlemen. But you must realise her upbringing... she has faced great hardship in Portugal and in Antwerp. The loss of her mother two years ago, just after we arrived here, well, that too has taken its toll.”

Ashmole and I nodded in sympathy, and I felt guilty for bringing this heavy burden into da Silva’s house.

“She is only doing her duty to look out for her father’s safety,” I told him. “Don’t chastise her for her devotion.”

A pounding on the shop door brought us around. There was Billy, breathless and wide-eyed through the glass window. He hammered upon the door until Ashmole lifted the latch lock and he fell inside, ready to explode. “Well, it’s done! The cat is among the pigeons now. Cromwell has chucked out the whole of the House. He is ruling by the Council alone. Parliament is no more.”

“It is as the demon foretold,” I said, my head swimming at the news. It was unfolding like clockwork, relentless and inevitable. “And now that he has abolished Parliament, Fludd will strike him down.”

Da Silva placed his palms down upon the table. “And so it begins.” And then he quietly said what Ashmole told me was a Hebrew prayer. “
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad
.”

I thought of the frightened girl upstairs, of all the people I was dragging into this nightmare, and my belly and bollocks tightened just as if I had entered battle. I now realised the mortal danger we all faced. I could read it plain enough in the eyes of Roderigo da Silva. He believed my tale fully—and he feared the outcome.

Chapter Fourteen

A
S A GRIZZLED
wherryman rowed us back across the Thames, we three were mostly silent, consumed by our own thoughts and dreads. Billy pulled out his pipe and tobacco and intently stuffed his bowl, grunting as if in some conversation with himself. For my part, I was glad of finding answers to the mystery but was now even more terrified of what lay ahead. Part of me wanted to let fate take its course as far as Mr. Cromwell was concerned, but I knew that was only one strand of the problem that I faced. Gideon Fludd would never cease hunting for me until one of us was dead. And our new comrade, Elias Ashmole, numerologist and astrologer, had yet to recover his rosy hue since hearing what was chasing us from out of the netherworld. He sat hunched and drawn, looking at his feet or blankly out onto the brown waters.

And my thoughts turned to Maggie. Was she now huddled below deck on some merchantman, bound for France? Or was she languishing still in Lyme Regis, awaiting d’Artagnan’s return? I felt I had killed her love for me stone dead, and I prayed that as days passed her heart would forgive me for what I had done. The incessant squeak of the oarlocks was maddening, but slowly, leafy Lambeth hove into view once again. We bumped alongside the stone stairs slick with green slime, and the old boatman grabbed at the ring that hung there and pulled up alongside. We clambered out of the wobbling boat and up the stairs, prepared for the short walk back to the museum of Mr. Tradescant.

“Will
Senor
da Silva find us some way to protect us against this demon and his servants in this great book of his?” I asked Ashmole.

“I don’t know. He says himself that he is no magician, but by God, he is a very learned man. If anyone can find some means to protect us from that evil, it’s him.”

“Christ, two days is but little time to find proof against the Devil.”

Ashmole nodded. “I cannot disagree. And I am equally despairing of convincing the Council of the danger. But I must try. At least my brothers in the Craft will believe me. Together, we may be able to get John Thurloe to take it seriously. But it’s an astounding claim and will be a difficult task.
Your
situation, sir, does not help that.”

I stopped up short. “What do you mean.”

Ashmole turned and faced me. “What am I to answer when I’m asked about who brings this incredible news of a conspiracy? Say that the news was fetched by a Cavalier running about London with a death warrant hanging over his head? A man who is claiming that demons are here to murder the Lord General and the Council of State? Cromwell will think you’re mad or just looking for a pardon. And he’ll think me a fool.”

Ashmole’s hand rubbed at his temple, his eyes shut tightly. “I have to think about this, and think hard. The worst is that they will believe nothing of it and swoop down upon you before you can get out of the country.”

“I would go straight to Cromwell myself and tell him with my own words, if that is what it would take.”

Ashmole looked up at me and smiled weakly. “What is it, sir, that makes you think you have such a duty to your old enemy?”

“A life for a life, Mister Ashmole,” I said. “My honour demands it.”

Ashmole nodded. “Ah, now
that
makes sense. So it was Cromwell himself who commuted your sentence of death to one of exile, was it?”

I watched as Ashmole’s large green eyes suddenly widened a bit as some new idea flew into his mind. He wagged a finger at me. “Yes, it might do. It might do very well indeed. You are, after all, a gentleman of good character.”

I looked over to Billy who shrugged his shoulders in response. Ashmole beckoned with his arm and resumed his pace back towards the house. “Come along, now! There is little time to be wasted.”

“What is it that you propose?” I asked, catching him up. “Some means we can convince the Council quickly?”

“No sir, but what I propose will safeguard
you
at least and gain the trust of some influential friends. A Freemason must strive to protect his fellows in the Craft, to give them aid and to accept their word as oath. If I am to confide the existence of this conspiracy to the brotherhood—and your existence as well—then it is obvious that you must become an Accepted Freemason too.”

“But I know nothing of this secret society, sir. Nor whether I want to join or even that your friends would tolerate it.”

“Don’t worry about that. I can instruct you in the history of the Craft straight away. The difficulty will be in gathering the Lodge for tomorrow. We need at least half a dozen of the brotherhood.” And, his pace quickening, he forged ahead. “There will be little sleep for us tonight, Mister Falkenhayn! Much to be done.”

I
SENT BILLY
back to Southwark to procure us a room on London Bridge, giving him a handful of silver. I told him I would return in the evening and instructed that he leave word of the new lodgings he procured at the Bear so I could find the place later.

He mounted up and took up the slack on his reins. “Are you sure we’re settled on the right course, Mister Eff? We don’t know nothing about these men. We don’t know their fucking secret society, and we don’t know that we won’t both end up in irons tomorrow.” His face was particularly grim and pinched, even for Billy, and I was worried.

“Come now, Billy Chard. Are you thinking of running out on me now? After all we’ve been through?”

“No sir,” he said, staring me in the eye. “I reckon I’ve got my own answers to find in all of this. If I’ve seen some wondrous bad things then it stands to reason there must be wondrous good too. I need to know that to make sense of this. Can you argufy against that, Mister Eff?”

“I cannot, Billy. I will see you after nightfall. Have a care back there at the bridge.”

As he set off, I felt sad in my heart for him. He was a hard worn soldier who had become convinced that there was no such thing as evil in the world, only God’s goodness. But now he had seen with his own eyes an evil that few men are faced with in their entire lives. As for me, I had no such doubts. My only question was why God seemed so uninterested in it all. If poor Billy had ridden off there and then for the west, I could not have held it against him.

Elias Ashmole was waiting for me in the chamber of curiosities, an open bottle of da Silva’s Malmsey and two glasses on the table at the centre.

“Here. If you feel as I, you could use a drop or two.” He pushed a glass over to me. I took a long gulp, palming the dainty vessel with both hands. It was difficult to keep my eyes from the stuffed crocodile suspended over Ashmole’s head.

“Tell me more about this Craft you would have me join,” I said.

“I can tell you some of the history but not all. The rest will have to wait until you are initiated. God willing, that will be tomorrow assuming I can get letters out by messengers this afternoon.”

“Then tell me what you can if I’m to join this society in order to save my life.”

Ashmole sipped at his wine and then began. “It is an old brotherhood, founded when the pyramids were but hazy dreams in the minds of the ancients. It is a guild of stone masons to be sure, those architects of immutable monuments, but it is much, much more. The Craft teaches us how to live as men and to serve the Greatest Architect—God Himself. And that is why there are fellows of the Craft that have never hewn stone themselves. They follow the allegorical wisdom of the Craft, aiming to discover the hidden truths of the world.”

Ashmole held up a finger and dashed off to return in a moment with a black leather bound book. He opened the cover and spun the volume around upon the table so that I could see the frontispiece. “Look here. It is the best example I can give you of the deeper meanings of symbols. Remember, there is always more than meets the eye.”

I looked upon the engraving and quickly noticed that it was a book he himself had written:
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum
. “Is this a book of alchemy? A spellbook?”

Ashmole laughed and smoothed his sparse and trim little moustache. “Heavens no, sir. It is a book on occult philosophy.”

I shook my head in ignorance.

“It
is
an alchemical text but in essence is about finding truth through mathematics and Hermetic science.” He pursed his lips as he took in my blank look. “Don’t concern yourself with the subject. What I am trying to point out is this example of
symbolism
. Do you see the intersecting mason’s square and compass here at the bottom of the page?”

I saw a jumble of various objects engraved along the borders of the title page. Helms, armour, musical instruments, sun, moon, clouds, and a Greek goddess bearing a book at the centre of the page. But there, along the bottom, was the compass and square.

Ashmole looked at me and crossed the extended thumb and forefinger of his left hand over those of his right. “Compass and square, sir. The greatest symbols of our fraternity. The compass allows us to circumscribe all and to raise our expectations as to what can be attained through wisdom. The square, the measure of the right angle, reminds us to be honest and true in our dealings with our fellow men.”