Quintessence Sky (30 page)

He lifted the wood close to his mouth. "Can
anyone hear me?"

The response was immediate. "This is Ramos de
Tavera."

Matthew's skink tears had long since worn
off, but he had no trouble believing that the thread from the piece
of wood in his hand stretched all the way back to the spot where
the void had closed, where the second floor of the Quintessence
Society building used to be. He'd seen often enough the peculiar
ways that quintessence threads could stretch and follow an object
wherever it traveled, yet without getting tangled with the
thousands of other threads stretching through space. The incredible
thing was that this thread, apparently trapped and held by the
edges of the closing void, seemed to operate as an extension of the
thread connecting the old bell-box to England. Like tying together
two strings to make one, he was now somehow talking through a piece
of wood, connected with a hole in reality, connected to one half of
a bell-box on the other side of the world.

"What do you want?" Matthew asked.

Ramos spoke in a deep, accented voice. "Am I
speaking with the Horizon colony?"

"You could say that." What did the man want?
His gunships had already taken over the harbor. Was he demanding
their surrender?

"This is a warning," Ramos said. "There are
five ships, galleons of war filled with soldiers and guns, coming
to attack you. Their orders are to kill you and plunder your gold
and shekinah worms and quintessence pearls. Do you understand?"

"Is this a joke? Don’t think this is over.
You might think you understand this island, but you have some
surprises waiting for you."

"No. What? I make no joke. King Philip sent
the ships months ago. He—"

"Do you really not know?"

"Know what?"

"The ships are here. They're in our harbor.
We were forced to flee into the mountains." Matthew didn't mention
that this was mostly because he had burned down the settlement.

A pause. "Then I am too late."

"I'd say so. Now you answer some questions
for me. Are you telling me the
San Salvador
made it back to
England? Are Francis Vaughan and the others alive?"

"No one is alive from that ship. Many died on
the way; the rest died shortly after. Only one shekinah flatworm
and five pearls remain of what the ship carried when she set sail.
A few animals as well, and a few artifacts like this amazing box
with its bell and bones. We have been investigating these things.
They are quite wonderful."

Despite himself, Matthew felt a flush of
pride at the compliment, but he remained suspicious. "Who is 'we'?
Are you an agent of the king? You must be, if you're in the
palace."

A pause, longer this time. "I am not in the
palace now. There are three of us here: myself, Juan Barrosa, and
John Dee. We . . . are operating outside of the king's authority.
He would not have wanted us to warn you about the ships."

"How do I know you're telling the truth? You
could have waited until the ships arrived, and then pretended to
warn me to gain my trust. If you could make contact, why did you
wait until now to do it?"

"We do not know as much as you. It took many
tries to make the void and speak with you."

Matthew's jaw dropped. "You figured that out?
To make a void on your end?"

"Now the box is destroyed, though. Once this
void is gone, I fear we will be unable to speak again."

"No! You can." Despite his suspicions,
Matthew was starting to like this man. A big limitation to their
study was that they could only do their experiments on Horizon.
Matthew had created a box that blocked quintessence fields, to
mimic conditions back home, but it wasn't perfect. If they could
communicate with men in England and suggest experiments to try,
think about how much they could learn!

"Take something organic," Matthew said. "A
stick, a bone, anything. Break it in half, and throw one piece in
the void before it closes. Better yet, do it with a few different
things, in case you lose one or it doesn't work. Because you're
right—once that void closes, we'll never be able to open a new
connection between us."

There was a flurry of sound from the other
side as Tavera and his friends presumably did as he suggested.

"Have them burn something," Blanca said.

Matthew raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"Burn something. Or light a pipe, or
something that will make a strong smell. To see if we can smell
it."

Matthew grinned and squeezed her arm.
"Perfect," he said. He explained to the men on the other end what
he wanted them to do, and soon the smell of burning tobacco filled
their nostrils.

"It works," he said. "The smell from the pipe
actually transmits across the quintessence thread, just like the
sound of our voices does."

"More than that," Blanca said. "Look."

She held her hand behind the piece of wood.
By the contrast of her pale skin, Matthew could see faint wisps of
gray smoke drifting into the air.

THE FOLLOWING day, Barrosa was required at
the palace to wait on the king, but since neither Philip nor Mary
had sent for astrologers, Ramos and Dee were free to experiment,
only now with a lot more knowledge. After seeing the pipe smoke
appear, Matthew Marcheford had spoken to them of quintessence
threads, and of the invisible world behind the world, where the
threads stretched and intertwined. Ramos knew this was the same
space he and Barrosa had talked about in the field where he had
fought the king's soldiers, a space behind and separate from the
material world.

Ramos and Dee spent the day in heady
discovery. With the shekinah worm nearby to provide the
quintessence field, they recreated a series of thread connections
like the one through which they had talked to Matthew. First they
broke a stick in half—just an ordinary elm branch they found
outside—and put the pieces in different rooms. Then they used a
drop of vitriol on each piece to open a void, and found they could
talk to each other through the connection, even at a whisper.

They broke a second stick in half and tossed
one half into one of the voids, and did the same with a third stick
at the other void. Ramos had discovered that with his fingers
covered with wax—the same wax that prevented the compass beetles
from escaping—he could keep a void from growing too large and close
it when he wished. When he clapped the voids closed, the
connections remained. As long as they stayed within the
quintessence field of the shekinah flatworm—which barely covered
the house—they could speak from stick to stick and be heard, even
after the voids had been closed.

In the evening, Ramos sat outside with
Antonia. They sat quietly together, Antonia sometimes babbling
under her breath, but blessedly not falling into one of her fits.
There was a small patch of garden between the street and the river,
and across the street, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin stood, a
solid building of multicolored stone with ivy climbing the
walls.

Ramos's faith had once been as strong as that
building, built to last, proof against storm or flood. Now it
wavered, undermined by contradictory truths. It wasn't just that he
didn't know what was true. He didn't even know the ultimate source
of truth. Was it the pope? The king? Holy Scripture? What he could
see and hear with his senses? The conclusions of his logical mind?
Where these things were in agreement, there was no question about
truth, but where they disagreed, he didn't know whom or what to
believe.

He put his hand over Antonia's. The pope
called her a demon-worshipper. Dee said her mind was caught up in
the stars. And what did Ramos himself believe? He could no longer
say that he believed the pope implicitly. It was just that the
implications of that lack of belief undermined everything he had
given his life to: the priestly ministry, the spread of the Church,
the worship of God.

He didn't think he was an atheist. If the
world truly was composed of tiny atoms and invisible quintessence
threads, then surely those things were created by God as well. If
the world was governed by the movement of tiny particles; if it was
a machine with gears that meshed and turned by predetermined rules,
then God had created the cogs and gears.

But no, he wasn't satisfied with that,
either. That approach pushed God farther and farther out of
relevance with life. It treated God simply as a means to explain
what was unexplained. The more they learned and understood, the
smaller God's sphere of involvement would be. Soon he would be
thinking of God as merely the architect of the world, an initiator
only, remote and distant from the lives of men. That could not be.
Though he couldn't have it both ways, could he? Either the workings
of the world were governed by natural laws, or they were governed
directly by God.

His musings were interrupted by the sound of
hoofbeats. Mortlake was a quiet place, characterized by birdsong
and the running of the river. This sounded like a company of
riders. They rounded the bend and came into view on the road; four
soldiers bearing the queen's colors. Ramos's first thought was that
they had come for Antonia. He stood to hurry her inside, but the
riders were there before he could lift her to her feet. They jumped
to the ground and tossed the reins to the one of their company. The
other three approached.

"Where is the astrologer John Dee?"

"What do you need of him?"

"He is under arrest, by order of their royal
majesties, King Philip and Queen Mary, on charges of calculating
and conspiring with the enemies of the crown."

RAMOS found Barrosa at Richmond Palace and
dragged him into an empty side room.

"How much does the king know?"

"Are you mad? Know about what?"

"About Dee. About us. About sneaking his
treasures out of the palace from under his nose in collusion with
the Princess Elizabeth."

Barrosa was open-mouthed. "Nothing, that I
know of."

"Well, they didn't arrest him for the length
of his beard!"

"Arrest who? Ramos, what are you talking
about?"

It was Ramos's turn to look surprised. "Dee
was just arrested. Four soldiers just rode up to the house and
dragged him away in chains. You're the king's secretary; you must
have seen the papers."

"I saw nothing. He was arrested?"

"At sundown. I've been up all night clearing
out our things and moving Antonia to other quarters before they
commandeer the house."

"The arrest wasn't at the king's command. He
spent the day with his council hearing reports from the wars and
dictating letters to his commanders."

Ramos rubbed his chin. "Maybe one of the
lords took it upon himself."

"No. Not with someone of Dee's stature. The
queen . . ."

Their eyes met. "The queen," Ramos said.

Barrosa nodded. "She must have discovered
something, some inkling of what we're doing."

"But how? She hardly takes any interest in
politics any more. All she thinks about is her pregnancy. She
wouldn't be setting spies on us."

"She's playing some different game. Dee read
her horoscope before you did, you know. He said her baby would
die."

"Which was true, before the king brought
quintessence into the mix."

"Even so, she may hold it against him. Or
fear he will perform some sorcery to kill her baby and make his
prediction true. He's widely thought of as a magician, you know.
What was the actual charge?"

"'Calculating and conspiring with the enemies
of the Crown.'"

Barrosa started pacing. "'Calculating'? What
kind of charge is that? You and Dee calculate all the time. It's
your job."

"It's one thing to calculate inside the
lines. It's quite another thing to pursue knowledge wherever it
leads you. Then what happens when what you find disagrees with what
those in charge tell you to believe? I think 'calculating' is
exactly the right charge." Ramos fingered the black box at his
throat. "I also think the queen knows about Dee's involvement with
Elizabeth."