But there are men of wisdom among them. My new friend, John Dee, invited me to his home again this evening. A dinner in my honor at his house in London. A meal mostly of vegetables and fruit tart, intended to avoid any contradiction with our laws. He even obtained a pomegranate, which is rare on this island. The generosity was noble of him. Some of the conversation was conducted in English far too rapid for me to follow, though I have improved in their language.
8.
MONTHS BEFORE, SARUCA had sat in front of the house, pulling feathers from a chicken. She spread her legs wide and laid a cloth across her lap. The child picked feathers up and dropped them one at a time over the wall above the hillside. The breeze would occasionally capture a feather and set it in a long flight the full length of the hill, all the way to the sea. The woman wiped the back of her hand across her exposed forehead, and a little of the chicken’s blood marked her skin there.
His appetite for her was almost like the appetite for food. He stepped closer to her and made his presence known. She looked up, startled. “My husband is not at home, sir.”
Cafer bin Ibrahim feigned a mild disappointment. “A pity. I have some news for him about our departure for England. But may I sit and rest a moment before I return to my day?”
A man of middle size, middle intelligence, and middle talent, Cafer bin Ibrahim did have the supremely well-developed survival instincts of an old jackal. He had been dispatched to England as chief adviser to the ambassador for good reason. Not only could he speak English, but he had, far more than the gentle ambassador, a clear eye for weakness and strength, for softness and indecision, and for (an English trait, the sultan knew) incompetence and ignorance disguised as haughty indifference.
In the Palace of Felicity, bin Ibrahim was one of many the sultan trusted to sniff out plot and conspiracy without becoming attracted to its scent. The sultan recognized a man to whom the logic of life as it really was came as naturally as breath. The sultan knew that Cafer’s self-interest would identically match the interests of the sultan in his negotiations with the queen of the English. Cafer was the sort of man the sultan allowed to rise to a certain height of glory and then carefully and regularly examined for signs of toxic ambition, much as Dr. Ezzedine insisted on examining the sultan twice yearly for any small incursions of some subtle disease upon his skin, within his sputum, or in the bubbled currents of his passed water.
* * *
—
“DR. DEE SHOWED you herbs,” bin Ibrahim repeated Ezzedine’s last words back to him, then called for more drink for them both.
“And demonstrated their properties, in some cases.” Ezzedine was aware of using language that might dazzle bin Ibrahim a bit. “Their natural properties and inherent philosophical value.”
“Explain.”
Ezzedine attempted to explain, though bin Ibrahim’s eyes were closed, and, if Ezzedine were candid about the question, the man wasn’t intelligent enough to understand a fraction of what was involved in physic. “Nothing troubling. Merely the medical or magical properties of certain herbs and grasses that appear in this island and not in our country. Their ability to harm or heal. I rather thought”—and here Ezzedine congratulated himself for being clever, expecting to win Cafer’s praise—“that I was doing the task you set us. I am bringing secrets of this country back home for the good of the sultan and our people.”
“Excellent, Doctor. Now tell me of all those present, in order, around the table.” Ezzedine strained to recall, not having the skill some men had to create a picture in the mind of faces, and many of the English resembled one another so closely that he had, more than once, called one by another’s name. There had been a great deal of drink, which he had been assured was not liquor but which, he must admit, may have clouded his mind nevertheless. “Tell me of the talk, please, Doctor. Do they support their queen? Or conspire? Do they want a king upon the throne, as would be natural? One of themselves? Will they abide by their agreements with us? Which of them seems the poorest? Did you speak of the true religion? Would any of them consider, do you think, making private reports to you in exchange for gold?”
This was a task for which Ezzedine was ill-suited. To recall what every man at a long meal said? Some had likely spoken of France and Spain, this or that about King James of Scotland and Elizabeth. But most of the talk was of horses—whose was fastest, handsomest, boldest. They threatened to fight on these last questions, and peace was made with difficulty but always before actual combat.
Ezzedine had left the table at Dr. Dee’s invitation to examine his library. Dee had a book in Arabic and wanted Ezzedine to read a passage to him. It was Averroes. There was some conversation, as they returned to the table, of Ezzedine, in the time remaining of the embassy’s stay in England, teaching Dee how to read and write a bit of Arabic.
“You agreed to instruct him?” asked bin Ibrahim.
Ezzedine answered cautiously, fearing something in the man’s voice, fearing that he had stepped over a bound. “I said I would consider it.” This lie sounded implausible even as he spoke.
“I think it an excellent notion,” said Cafer, who seemed nearly asleep. “To be in regular close conference with the queen’s trusted wizard. Cleverly done. And when you returned to the company at the table?”
Ezzedine was doubly relieved: The Arabic lessons, which he had already begun out of enthusiastic delight, were permissible; and he had another clear recollection of table talk he could now deliver to bin Ibrahim. He felt almost gratified to be able to give the man what he wanted. “A young man—a poet, I believe—was boasting, trying to impress all the older men with his talk. Like a naughty child.”
“On what subject?”
It now returned clearly to Ezzedine. “He said the Christian holy book was false. That the Jewish books, too, are false. That they are mere stories with no truth, tales of tricksters and filthy men. He said these words: ‘filthy men.’ ”
Bin Ibrahim opened an eye with interest. “Was there agreement with him among the company?”
Some. Some heads shook in disapproval. Some of the conversation became too rapid for Ezzedine to follow. There were some—knights and lords—who laughed and urged the poet on in his flights of words. “ ‘Moses was a juggler,’ he said, and another man, a large man I have seen at court, laughed loudly at this.”
“And your host? The master Dee?”
“A man interested in all things, prepared to listen to all things, whether he agrees or not. He acknowledges our own physicians as his masters, as in mathematics and astronomy.” Ezzedine paused to recall what had pleased him in the evening, and he described it with unthinking candor. “They are men who, I suspect, wonder at the blindness of their fellow Christians. They are, perhaps, men who would see the superiority of our ways. But in the meantime, they dance, it seems to me, near other ideas. They are accused by some of atheism, though I do not think they truly—”