Raleigh's Page (5 page)

10

A
NOTHER
T
EST

Andrew had been at Durham House a week when he was summoned from the garden. Mr. Raleigh told him to go to a geographer he knew to borrow a map.

“Take in the man,” Mr. Raleigh said. “Doctor Dee draws maps according to his angels.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “He draws according to angels?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Raleigh, nodding. “He will tell you he speaks with angels through his magic glass—a ball of smoky crystal made in the Orient long ago.

“Men come upon strangeness traveling in dreams,” he continued. “Doctor Dee is a dream traveler.”

Angels? Dream travelers? Is the man joking with me?
Andrew wondered.

Mr. Raleigh’s face was serious as he went on. “A remarkable thing about his maps is what he leaves off. Most maps show the rumored islands of the ancients. The doctor strips away to what is known.

“Yesterday,” Mr. Raleigh continued, “one of the Queen’s agents came to me with a new map taken at Lisbon. There was a strange island marked in waters I know well.

“‘What’s this?’ I asked the spy.

“He told me he’d asked the same of the man who’d drawn it.

“The drawer told him it was called Wife’s Island because, while he drew the map, his wife sitting by asked him to put in a dot of land for her so that she, in imagination, might have an island of her own.”

Mr. Raleigh paused to study Andrew’s face. Andrew’s eyes were fixed on his.

“I need to see the doctor’s new map,” Mr. Raleigh said, narrowing his eyes. “No Wife’s Island on it, I think.”

He leaned close.

“In our work we must be able to persuade others to do our will even if it is not theirs. If you ask him right, he may lend it.

“They have told you about the page you replaced?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You understand there are ways of asking?”

Andrew nodded.

“Good. The doctor is the Queen’s fortune-teller. She pays him little to keep him hungry. She reckons a fat astrologer would sleep; she wants her man gnawed by hunger as he tracks her future.

“He knows medicines and poisons,” Mr. Raleigh went on as he paced the turret. “He’s given me things that kill in an instant, things that kill in a week, rings with points to carry venom, tainted salts and balms, a liquid to induce stupor. Above all, he’s our best mapmaker.

“I want to see his new chart, but he’s a quarrelsome man. If I asked he would put me off, saying he needed time to make it more perfect. I need it now.

“You will go first thing tomorrow in your country clothes.”

Andrew was to tell no one who had sent him. If stopped for any reason, he was to swallow the message he carried, a bit of paper smaller than his hand sealed with a clot of red wax. The boy gagged at the thought of eating it.

Mr. Raleigh instructed him carefully: “Catch your boat at London Bridge and return there,” he said. “Do not use my gate. The river men study everything. For a while at least I’d like to keep them unsure of our connection.”

He gave Andrew a fourpence coin, a groat.

“Twopence up, twopence down, with tips in the bargain, so don’t let the first charge you more or the second complain.”

The next morning, a ferryman rowed Andrew up the river to Mortlake, where the doctor lived. From the boy’s halting answers, the ferryman took him for a bumpkin seeking a relation.

Riding on water made Andrew queasy. He was sorry he’d eaten breakfast. He’d heard from William it was the same with Mr. Raleigh: to save his stomach he’d go down to London Bridge to cross the river rather than go by water.

At the Mortlake landing, he handed the ferryman his coin. The ferryman pocketed it.

“My change, please, sir,” Andrew said.

“Change? Fourpence is the fare, boy.”

“No, sir. Twopence is the fare from London Bridge, and that includes my thank-you.”

A man had come up behind. “My change, please, sir,” Andrew said again loudly so the man behind him could hear. “I gave you a groat. The fare from London Bridge is twopence, including my thank-you. The change due me is twopence.”

With a grumble the ferryman gave him his change.

Although the day was cool, Andrew was in a sweat as he walked to the doctor’s.

He’d expected to meet a stooped and musty old onion-eating scholar with gravy on his shirt and tallow in his beard. The man he met was tall and slender in a long blue velvet robe and black skullcap. He had a tapering white beard and shining dark eyes. His face was bright.

As the boy handed him Mr. Raleigh’s note, the doctor gave him a halfpenny for his pains. If this was what Mr. Raleigh called quarrelsome, Andrew liked his quarrel.

The doctor came and stood so close the boy could feel his heat. His breath was sweet. He stared into Andrew’s eyes. His look went deep. The boy struggled not to step back, blink, or look away. His eyes began to tear.

“How old are you?” the doctor asked at last.

“Eleven years, sir.”

“Your eyes are older. You have taking-in eyes.”

Doctor Dee studied Mr. Raleigh’s note. “I am to give you a lesson in the new geography. Are you interested in that?”

“Yes! I’d like that!”

The doctor led Andrew into his study. He worked and slept in a large room crammed with apparatus, skulls, globes, books, and papers, separate from his family so no moment would be lost if one of his angels came to him suddenly. At any moment, he could begin where he’d left off. The north-facing wall had large windows to catch the best light.

As he showed Andrew his collection of instruments and ancient maps, he talked about exploring, measuring distances at sea, the mathematics of surveying and making charts.

The boy followed as best he could, but it was too much. The long showing and explaining left him drowsy. He was struggling to keep from yawning when the doctor said, “And this is my newest chart,” as he unrolled the map Mr. Raleigh wanted.

Suddenly Andrew was all awake. The doctor’s map was different from any map he had ever seen: coastlines changed according to the latest surveys, fabled islands gone, new things marked.

“Only what we know for sure,” the doctor said. “Only what the sea captains confirm.”

Andrew wanted to ask for it, but something checked him; it was not yet the moment.

“Will you take dinner with me?” the doctor asked.

“Thank you. Please,” Andrew answered. He was tense but hungry too.

The doctor rang his bell. A few moments later he pushed aside maps and instruments to clear places as his man brought pork pies steaming fresh from the oven, mugs of dark ale, and fragrant quarters of Spanish oranges.

As they began to eat, the doctor asked, “What is your plan of life?”

The friendly way the man asked made Andrew relax a little. “I want to go to America,” he replied.

The doctor studied his face. “Yes,” he said. “I saw that in your eyes. You see over the water. You have strong ambition.

“What will you do there?”

“Make a farm and trade, sir.”

The doctor nodded. “My father was a merchant. A merchant must be nimble as a flea to keep fed.

“And later, if you become rich, will you come back to England?”

“I’m for America. I’ll make my place there.”

“Oh, but when you’re rich you can buy a place here,” the doctor said.

“I want to make my own, sir. A place for Catholics too.”

The doctor looked up sharply.

Andrew blushed. He’d said too much.

The doctor nodded as he looked away.

“I understand,” he said. “A few years ago the Queen gave her charter to a man who planned to establish a Catholic colony in America at Newfoundland. ‘Put them away but keep them loyal’ was what he proposed.

“He got swallowed up by the sea. Mr. Raleigh has his charter now. The man who drowned was his half brother.

“I helped him,” the doctor said softly. “I drew his maps.”

For a while they ate in silence. Then the doctor asked, “Does your horoscope show you becoming a planter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has anyone cast it?”

“My father had a woman do it when I was born. He wanted to know if I would live. Each of the three before me died before he could get named in church.”

“Do you know your date and time of birth?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll see what you’re to be.”

He studied the marks in Andrew’s fingernails and the lines in his hands. Then he brought out a large bronze disk he called an astrolabe.

“With this,” he said, “I can figure the position of the planets and the stars at any moment of the year. Navigators use it to locate their positions east and west at sea.”

The thing was heavy, with a hoop for hanging at the top. It bore strange markings. At the center there was a silver bar on a pin. He hung it on a hook over his desk, set the needle, and got out his zodiac book.

“What do the marks mean?” Andrew asked.

“This was made in Baghdad a long time ago,” the doctor said. “The characters are Arabic numbers, degree marks, and names of the heavenly bodies.”

Andrew thought about Mr. Harriot’s brass tube for looking at a distance: here was the second instrument he’d seen since coming to London that had something of the Arab about it.

The doctor then brought out what he called his magic eye, the crystal ball Mr. Raleigh had mentioned. He pored over it for a long time.

“I see travel and trading,” he said at last. “You will get an honest sufficiency but not more.”

He looked up. “More than sufficiency brings greater grief than less. Keep your conscience clean, and your teeth. Teeth are the guardians to health. Riches cannot buy a clean conscience or good health.”

He unhooked the disk and put his glass away. Andrew wanted to know more about his future, but the doctor was on to something else.

“What have you noticed about Mr. Raleigh?” he asked.

“Nothing—I mean, everything, sir! I mean, I have just begun his service,” Andrew stammered.

“Yes,” said the doctor gently, “but what have you found most remarkable?”

Andrew stood bewildered. “What he knows about maps and plants, medicines, ships…”

The doctor was shaking his head.

“His scent?” Andrew asked at last.

“Yes, that,” the doctor said. “It is sweet, yet he wears no perfume. What else?”

Andrew shook his head.

“He is like the kept dog in the Aesop fable,” the doctor replied at last. “Do you know that story?”

“No, sir.”

“One winter day at dusk a wolf came into a farmer’s yard, drawn by the scent of roasting meat. The wolf was gaunt and ragged. As he approached the door, he was greeted by the farmer’s dog. The dog was sleek. There was no getting past him, so the wolf stopped and bowed politely.

“‘You are handsome, my friend,’ said the wolf. ‘How is it you feed so well?’

“The dog swelled his chest. ‘I guard the farmer against robbers. For this he gives me all the food I want and a house by his door.’

“‘Ah,’ said the wolf. ‘Do you think I might join you in this work?’

“‘You have good teeth and claws to fight with,’” the dog said, studying the wolf. ‘Perhaps he could use you.’

“Just then a flea annoyed the dog. He shook his ruff. There was a rattle of chain.

“‘What’s that around your neck?’ the wolf asked.

“‘The collar I wear to stay in place,’ the dog replied.

“‘Oh,’ said the wolf. ‘Then I think I’ll be off. I’d rather be hungry and free than fed and not.’

“You see,” the doctor continued, “the Queen feeds and houses Mr. Raleigh, but his leash is too short for him to sail to America. If his exploring captains give a good report and the expedition goes, he won’t be along. The Queen keeps him tied to Court.”

“Why?” Andrew asked.

“She cannot risk his loss. He is one of the few she can tell her mind to.”

Doctor Dee grew silent. He looked at Andrew and nodded.

“You have a good plan. Your sign is friendly to adventure. Merchants are heirs to adventure, but your fortune will hang on winds—a fair breeze may bring your fortune, a storm sink it. Men will live better for your risks; your failures will cost them nothing. That’s the way it is with merchants. London gets more intelligence from her traders than from all her scholars.”

He paused.

“Avoid the trade in human flesh. Mr. Raleigh’s sea dog friends Francis Drake and his kinsman John Hawkins do well by slaves, but it is an evil business. What one handles one becomes.”

It was now late afternoon. The doctor had given Andrew dinner and the lesson Mr. Raleigh had requested, and he’d told the boy his future. It was time to leave, but Andrew didn’t have the map.

He took a deep breath.

“Sir, your new map…”

“Yes?”

“It’s like nothing we have,” Andrew whispered.

The doctor looked at him steadily, saying nothing.

“We need it.”

“He sent you for it?”

“Yes.”

Doctor Dee nodded. He said nothing as he rolled up the map, tied it, and wrote a note to Mr. Raleigh. He didn’t seal his note.

“Be careful when you make your copy,” he said. “I have no other. Return it tomorrow.”

“I will, sir. Thank you.”