The House of Doctor Dee (14 page)

'I hate to tell you this, Mr Palmer.' She was smiling in the most peculiar way. 'The previous owner of your house was a black magician.'

HERE IS AN old ruinated monastery by the way to Uxbridge, near St Giles-in-the-Fields, which has of recent years been employed as an alms-house and hospital for the aged: I rode there on the Saturday forenoon by way of Holborn and Broad St Giles, having received word that my father was sick unto death. It was a short journey but a pleasant one, across the Red Lion fields and along the path which leads past Southampton House; on this winter's morning the breath of the animals rose as vapour into the air, and the water-cans, piled high by the conduit at Drury, seemed about to burst their wooden bands. Everything in the world was filled to overflowing with life, and in the cold I could feel more keenly the beating of my own blood. It is of all liquors the most spiritous, and so it was with a good and fiery spirit that I sang out the ditty, 'An Old Man Is a Bag Full of Bones'.

The hospital of St Martin, once the monastery of that name (so called because it looks upon St Martin's field), is a very ancient pile, which I have no doubt was established at the time of the first Henrys. There is still a gatehouse tottering in face of the road and, as I passed beneath its arch, I smelt the odour of old stone and sensed a chill which was not like that of the winter air. A serving-man came running out to greet me. He had a buff leather jerkin, all greasy with the droppings of meat that must have fallen from his beard. 'What, sir,' says he, 'God give you good day. Are you cold enough? It looks to snow and freeze together, so come into the kitchen. Come in, sir, and warm yourself while I call my master to you.' He led me across a decayed cloister into a vaulted room where there were two hearths merrily blazing, yet I could not help but think of the roofless church a few yards distant – now so forlorn and fallen that only the Devil might say a mass there.

Soon enough the master of the alms-house, a pretty fellow by the name of Roland Holleyband, came within to greet me. 'God save you, Doctor Dee,' he said, 'you are welcome here.' He knew me well enough, since it was by courtesy of my lord Gravenar that I had despatched my father to this place; my father had been the good lord's agent for his estates by Acton, and to my great comfort and liking he had consented to provide for him in his extremity. I wished to lead my days in some quiet and comfort and, lord, to meet him at every twist and turn of my house in Clerkenwell was not to be thought of. So, the rest of my family being gone into the earth, I thought it best to procure him a chamber where he could disturb no one on his way towards death. 'Your father is very bad,' Mr Holleyband vouchsafed to me. 'He is ill at ease, and shakes like a leaf upon the tree.'

'Well, well,' I replied. 'If he goes before, then we will follow him hereafter.'

'It is a noble philosophy. But I am sorry I am not able to bring you better cheer.'

'For one pleasure, a thousand sorrows.'

'Well said again, well said. Shall I bring you to him now?' He took me back across the cloister, which still showed signs of destruction and disturbance from the recent purges, and led me up some rough stone stairs into a long room with so many thick pillars that it looked like nothing so much as a crypt. There were beds or pallets along both sides, with distressed objects lying upon them, but Mr Holleyband moved between them merrily enough with a 'God give you good morrow' and 'How do you this morning?' and 'How is it with you since yesterday's supper?'. The air within was so close and stifling that I put my handkerchief up to my face, which he observed with a smile. 'Your father is apart from the others,' he said, 'as my lord Gravenar wished.' I followed him closely until he came to a little apartment or chamber, separated from the rest by a wooden screen intricately carved; within there were plain walls of stone, and it was no doubt some form of chapel in earlier days.

My father lay upon a bed, his hands clasped upon his breast, and at once I observed spots of black or red upon him – some big and some little, as if they had been sprinkled on him with a pen. He looked up at me curiously as I stepped over to his bed.

'How does your health since I saw you last, father?'

'So so.'

'You seem to look better always.'

'How know you that?'

'By your face, which is so ruddy.'

'No, sir, no. I have had five or six fits of the ague which have much weakened me, and taken away all my stomach. I feel some fit of it yet, sir, because I have not broken my fast.'

'Well, you are a hardy man. God will give you a good and long life yet.'

He still looked upon me curiously, and now spoke in a more halting voice. 'I think to have seen you some time, sir, but I do not well remember where. Was it in London?'

'Yes, truly, I am of London though I was born elsewhere.'

'Shall I be so bold as to ask your name?'

For a moment it seemed that he played with me, but there was such a look of perplexity on his face that I refrained from biting back at him. 'I believe it is known to you.'

'Truly? How do men call you?'

'They call me many things, but my name is Doctor Dee.' I walked away from his bedside, and saw Mr Holleyband still attending our discourse with much interest and pleasure; but at my look he bowed and departed. Then, oh God, what was it dimly shadowed upon the wall behind him that I suddenly took notice of? In my bewilderment it seemed to me the face of some monstrous thing rearing up from the floor. But then at a second glance I knew it to be a tree of life, painted long since (no doubt by the monks of this place) and now as much part of the stone as the stone itself, with ancient crumbling leaves and animals all striated with the dust and decay of time.

My father was whispering something even as my back was turned. 'I have gold, sir – ' He broke off, making a noise with his mouth as of the clinking and counting of coins. At this my ears pricked up, for I remembered that my lord Gravenar had presented him with twenty angels of gold at the end of his service; what had become of them, truly I did not know. 'I have white money, sir, as well as gold.' He beckoned me over to him, and then whispered in my ear. 'I placed them in a bag. I tied the strings with a strong double knot, for fear they might untie themselves. I put the bag at the bottom of a wall, an old crumbling wall amidst the roots of thorns. Look how they have torn my fingers.'

'Your sentence is confused, in respect of the place. Where might I find this wall of which you speak?'

'It has a name – ' He motioned with his hand, plucking at the coverlet on his bed. Upon which I asked him if he needed pen, ink and paper; but at that he shook his head. Then I asked him if I should write such words as he was to speak, but he gave no certain answer. 'Make haste, sir,' he said a moment after. 'Bring me some water to wash my hands. I will have no river water because it is troubled. Give me well or fountain water. Make haste.' I went behind the wooden screen, and in a corner was a basin and ewer which I caught up without any ceremony: I was in mortal fear that he would lose the thread of his discourse, and leave me in the dark. I poured the water upon his trembling hands, although in truth it was brackish enough; the drops ran down his meagre wrists as he held them up to the light, and then he put out his palms to me as he spoke again. 'Shall I wash my mouth also, sir?'

'So be it.'

But he only licked the water from his wrists, and spat it into the basin before whispering once more to me. 'Walk on till you come to a high elm tree, then make twenty paces forward and turn at the left hand for fifteen paces before you take another five to the right. It is very bright there, sir, the brightness puts out my eyes. Take this taffeta to hold before your face, and it will keep you from the sun.'

He was close to rambling again, and so I cut him short. 'I am afraid that I am out of your way. I do not know this place.'

'It is very damp there, sir, but gold cannot rust.'

'So it is taught. Is there more to be known?'

'They call it the De La Pry wall, yet I understand not why.' And then I saw it very clearly, as it were in my mind's eye: it was the remains of some old hermitage, long since decayed among the Acton fields. As a boy I had rambled upon the ruins, dreaming of time long gone and contemplating the very wrack of mortality. My father was looking at me curiously all this while, and now at once his countenance changed. 'Away with you, Doctor Dee! Away with you! Cease your praying, and your prying. I am nothing near the earth, not yet. And would you have all my inheritance even before I am laid in the tomb?' He sat bolt upright in his bed, with so fierce a look that I turned away in wonder at his alteration and gazed upon the tree of life.

'I came here to comfort you, sir,' I replied.

'You came to cheat me. You are no better than the cutpurse who hides among the lanes, or the mountebank who makes riddles at Bartholomew Fair.'

'I came out of reverence, father.'

'What? What reverence is this? From a son who came close to ruining my household with his demands for money, but who then avoided and neglected us in the hour of our keen distress?' I said nothing. 'Did you come when your brothers caught sick of the falling evil, and died? Did you comfort me on the death of your mother, my dear wife? Did you assist me in my old age? No, you went your own way. With the Devil leading you.'

'I have my work, father –'

'Your work! No more than tricks and japes: if it be something else, then it is the work of hell itself. I placed you above my other sons and did what I could to teach you, endeavouring every day to assist you with your learning. But I am rewarded with pride and greed such as have never before been seen.'

'I have done nothing. I have done no harm.'

'Deny what you have done. Deny that you used me and abandoned me, forgetting all the laws of nature in your pursuit of wealth and fame. If you cannot deny it, John Dee, then confess all and cry that you have done great wrong.'

If he was aiming to cut my heart-strings, then he was using left-handed shears; nevertheless I humoured him with a stale device of the sinner. 'If I have offended, I beg pardon.' Then I went on with more matter. 'But I acquired knowledge not for my own sake, but for the sake of truth itself. My life is not held in my own hands.'

He laughed at that. 'How poor is the power you boast of! You have forgotten your own knowledge, and are become of vanity and ambition blind. Such a beginning, such an end. You have become a deceit, comprehending the image of falsehood. Well, well, be it unto you according to your disposition.' He tried to rise from his bed but he was too enfeebled, and sank down again upon the bolster. 'Now be packing hence. Go.'

I was content to take my leave of him with a few murmured words. 'At least, grave and reverend sire, I shall not be made contemptible and in my last days become a laughing-stock.' I put my hand upon his mouth, and spat upon it. 'How do you?'

And at that a change came over him, as once more he shrank back into his bed. 'Leonard,' says he, 'are the chestnuts roasted? I pray you cut that cheese.' He rambled I know not whither, until he looked up at me again. 'Pray do not listen to him, sir. He will deceive you.' Then with his hand earnestly smiting his breast he continued with, 'I think that two speak, or else this voice gives an echo. What was it you said, sir?' He had become once more an infirm, piteous old man, and I could scarcely bear to look upon him: what was I now to do with him, this thing upon the bed, or he with me? What does death signify, if it is not my own death? By what necessity was I here, contemplating the agony of this old man? He was muttering something again, and I put my ear up to his lips. 'I feel a thing about my head, sir, as if it clawed with hawk's claws.' He tried to take up my hand for comfort, but I pulled it from him and walked further away. 'Look not near me now,' he said, 'for he seems to be telling money behind my bed.'

I kept my back turned. 'Who may that be, father?'

'Does his music make you merry, sir? Sir, what is your name?'

I laughed at this and left him, walking down the avenue of sickness while the rest of them groaned upon their pallets. Mr Holleyband was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, and smiled as I came down towards him. 'How did you find him, my good doctor?'

'He is a man of sharp wit.'

'Yes, a very merry and ingenious gentleman.' He was still smiling as we walked together into the cloister. 'But, as all of us, inclined to stray.'

'I would talk further with you on this matter, Mr Holleyband, but now I utterly lack the leisure...' Indeed I was in haste to be gone, having conceived a sudden fear that he had overheard my father's whisperings about hidden gold. 'I have a journey to make before the sun goes down.'

'Have you so great haste, Doctor Dee? Let us warm us first, and then perhaps we may ride out together. You are returning to your house, I suppose, and to your necessary labours?'

I understood him to mean, like the dog do you fall to your old vomit? So I cut him short. 'No. I am riding on a little, and I am afraid that I will not return by daylight.' I walked quickly towards the gatehouse, as he followed me. 'Soon I shall recompense you for your courtesy,' I continued. 'But now, where is my horse?'

It was saddled by the greasy servant, and then I rode away, sniffing up the cold air to remove the noisome stink of that place from my nostrils. I took my path to Acton without forethought, as it was along the lanes I had known since my childhood – across the gravel pits of Kensington, through Notting Wood, and then past the new enclosed fields of Shepperds Bush. I did not know what I would find concealed beneath the De La Pry wall, yet now in imagination I saw myself bending down over the cloth bag, untying its strings, and pouring over my hands some Edward shillings, some Harry sovereigns and some Elizabeth angels. I could be heir to nothing besides, for there never came a penny to me from my father (even when want and discredit grew more and more upon me) and it was certain that no revenue or inheritance would fall into my pocket after his death. So why should I not take now what rightfully belonged to me? In his rambling humour he accused me of stealing and embezzling from him, yet in my early years I never asked one farthing off him even though there were times when I feared the extreme pinch of all manner of want.