“The height and the time,” Dee reminds him. “And yes, I’d stake my life on it.”
“I hope there is no need for that,” the dean says.
Nervous laughter. Queen Mary has only been dead fifteen years or so, and the reality of death at the stake still lingers like smoke in the air.
“Imagine the advantage it might confer on any nation who possessed such foresight!” Dee rolls on. “Even apart from its scientific use, it has mercantile, exploratory, and of course, military applications that… well… These are dark times for this country, as is well known. Imagine if the Spanish possessed such a benefit.”
The dean murmurs agreement, but the other Dry Sticks are on the master’s side, and they remain unmoved even when Dee concludes his pitch, and the dean stands to thank him.
“Dr. Dee,” he starts, “we all know there is hardly a man alive more gifted than yourself in the field of applied mathematics, nor one so well connected to men of great learning across the sea.”
He nods at Mercator’s globe.
“And we all know that having you enhance our fellows’ table would be a garland, as well as provide much needed rigor…”
Dee has felt the “but” coming from the moment the dean opened his mouth.
“But?” he asks.
There is an uncomfortable moment. The dean defers to the master, who hauls himself to his feet. He is bulky, gray bristle chopped, with a mouth downturned at each end.
“But look at yourself, Dr. Dee,” he says. “You appear hardly fit to muck out the pigs, let alone teach some of our country’s finest young minds.”
“Mere hazards of the road”—Dee waves away his objection—“such as might befall any man coming from Mortlake.”
He places a hand on his breast, in part to suggest sincerity, in the other part to cover a wine stain.
“Besides, I do not wish to teach, so much as to learn, and to pursue knowledge through the intertraffic of minds.”
The master’s sneer remains fixed.
“But there remains your reputation to consider,” he goes on, and Dee feels ice cold and boiling hot at once. It was going so well, or not too badly, and now this.
“My reputation?”
“Such as it is.”
“Meaning?”
“Dr. Dee, were you, or were you not, imprisoned in the Tower in London on charges of sorcery and treason?”
“The charges were brought maliciously and were dropped by order of the Queen herself, may God keep her.”
“Yes, but she then banished you from court!”
“Over a simple misunderstanding.”
“You punched the Queen’s Privy councillor Earl of Leicester in the face. You call that a simple misunderstanding?”
“He dishonored Her Majesty.”
“Nevertheless.”
Dee wishes to punch the master, just as he once did punch the Earl of Leicester, but the dean intervenes.
“Dr. Dee,” he says. “Sir! No one admires your intelligence as much as we, nor your passion for learning and teaching, but—”
“But?”
“But it is our judgment that your name is now blackened beyond reclaim!” the master interrupts in return. “And we cannot risk the reputation of this university by having the two yoked once more as one.”
Dee has heard it all before, expressed more clearly: he is a companion of hellhounds, and a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits, yes, yes. He does not thank them for their time, or wait for an apology, or bid them farewell. He simply turns, collects his orb and his globe, and walks out of the chamber, and the house, into the quadrangle beyond.
Four days’ travel and an hour’s humiliation and for what?
God damn it! He needed that job. And he feels bad about his friend Pewlit, who had persuaded the dean to at least interview him in the first place.
And so what now?
Sell some books?
He already has nine hundred and twelve books, and they fill his house in Mortlake so he had to build them another room, but he needs each, and many more, to finish his work.
Dee empties his purse into his palm: five shillings and thruppence.
Home in meager comfort, or an afternoon at the Swan with Two Necks?
The Swan with Two Necks it is.
* * *
Dee sits at a table behind a pie of various meats and he has ordered only his second jug of ale when two men enter the inn towing a square dog on a short lead. Every man there recognizes them, if not specifically, then generally. Some as potential friends, but most as men whose eye you do not wish to catch.
Dr. Dee sighs.
He knows how it will go.
Sure enough, it takes only a moment before they identify him and make their way over. This is more proof of his theory that every object in the universe—perhaps a human most of all—emanates a force that influences all other objects—perhaps other humans most of all—without physically touching them. He has developed this theory from watching his lodestone, which can both attract and repel other objects without touching them. He, it turns out, has attracted these two men, all the way from Mortlake.
“John Dee,” the bullish one begins. “You are under arrest for debts owed to his Grace the Bishop of Bath and Wells amounting to the sum of five marks, eight shillings, and sixpence.”
That seems far too much.
“May I at least finish my pie?” he asks. “It has swan in it, I am sure, which I have had before, only once, many years ago.”
It is a memory, nothing more.
The bull—who is called Bill, it turns out—agrees. He summons another jug of ale for himself and the narrow-set man, who tells Dee his name is Robert Trunk.
“I shall call you Bob,” Dee tells him. “It is more pleasing that way, don’t you see? Bill and Bob. Bob and Bill. What about that?”
He laughs.
The ale comes, and they sit and watch Dee set about the rest of his pie in silence.
This could be awkward, Dee thinks, but a bottle of what the landlord swears is French brandy later, and they are firm friends.
“Do you know what?” he tells them. “Do you know what? They claim—the master, those bastards, all of them—they claim to be… to be men of learning. They probably speak Greek while they are swiving their bumboys. I don’t know. I don’t care. What a man does, you know, is up to him. And his God. That is me. I am like that. But don’t talk to me about learning. About mathematics. About… about. Things. When you have your arse greased like a… like a beaver… and it is stuck in the air for… for a turd in a loaf such as… such as I don’t know what. The Earl of Leicester. And don’t you ever, ever talk to me about reputation!”
Three hours after this, getting on toward sunset, the bull sleeps with the polished head on the board while the other is leering about the place, hopelessly confused, while the dog is licking his own testicles.
“Do you have transport?” Dee asks, suddenly sober.
“Huh?”
“A cart? A carriage even? Surely you are not proposing we walk back to London? They will want me in the Guildhall looking my best, won’t they?”
They don’t have a cart, or horses, but once the men are roused enough to buy one more bottle of brandy to take with them—“against the cold”—and have settled the reckoning, they find a sumpterman with space enough to take all three as far as Bishop’s Stortford for a price Bill fumbles in his purse to pay. Dee sits up front while Bob and Bill sleep in the jouncing bed of the cart behind, wrapped in each other’s arms. The sumpterman is silent, but Dee has a nice light baritone and while the cart rolls on into the evening, he sings the songs he learned in Leuven, in Flanders, until the sumpterman asks him to stop. The dog they’ve forgotten in Cambridge.