The Alchemist's Daughter (10 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics
subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral, grave; logic and
rhetoric, able to contend.

— Francis Bacon,
On Studies

In the forenoon Alice brought another summons — for summons it was, Alice's tone made clear, and not an invitation. If Mistress Quince pleased, would she repair to the library? “Lady Mary sends her apologies,” Alice added, with a hint of self-importance, “for she has been at prayer all the morning, but now she is free, and wishes to speak with you.”

So many audiences, and I so ill-prepared
, thought Sidonie as she followed Alice nervously down the stairs and along the maze of ground-floor corridors. In the library, heavy linen curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun. Bookshelves lined the walls, and in the centre of the room stood an oak table supplied with writing materials and a pair of silver candlesticks. After a moment a servant entered, carrying a flagon of wine, two glasses and a dish of comfits on a pewter tray. Alice took the tray and set it on the table, drew up two high-backed cushioned chairs, and went out, leaving Sidonie to her own devices.

Delighting in the familiar perfume of calfskin and morocco leather, Sidonie prowled from shelf to shelf, reading the gold-tooled spines. She glanced with scant attention at the works of poetry and romance, resplendent in their red velvet bindings and jewel-ornamented silver clasps; moved on past the herbals and histories, the tomes on hunting, heraldry and hawking; and paused before a tall case filled with works of science and mathematics, many of them bound in heavy old-fashioned boards, and all of them seemingly well-read. Here were volumes in Greek and Latin, as well as translations into modern tongues: works of cosmography, mathematics, astronomy, natural history. Boethius, Galen and Copernicus shared the crowded shelves with Theon of Alexandra, Regiomontanus, the
De
re medica
of Celsus, Aristotle's
Meteorologica
, the
Origines
of Isadore of Seville. There were many works as well on alchemy — some familiar to Sidonie, others she recognized as rare volumes, almost impossible to obtain.
What my father
would give to own such treasures
, she thought.

A soft voice spoke from the doorway. “Mistress Sidonie, I see you take an interest in mathematics.”

Sidonie, who was crouching to explore a bottom shelf, got hastily to her feet and, still holding a volume of Alhazen of Basra in Latin translation, managed a curtsey. “Yes, my lady.”

The Countess, pale and regal in black silk, waved her to a chair. “You may borrow that book if you wish. I fancied myself a mathematician, once — a true daughter of Hypatia. But I confess I was no more than an amateur — it seems my talents lay elsewhere.”

Sidonie accepted a glass of wine and a comfit. “My lady, you know what Roger Bacon says. ‘Nobody can attain to proficiency in the science of mathematics unless he devotes to its study thirty or forty years . . . '”

“ . . . and that is the reason there are so few mathematicians,” Lady Mary finished for her. “And do you intend to devote as much time as that to the study, Mistress Quince?”

“If God grants me so many years,” replied Sidonie.

Lady Mary seemed to hear something more in that polite response than was intended. Her eyes gleamed with sudden tears and her voice trembled as she said, “My dear, I only pray He will.” As quickly regaining her composure, she added, “We must be thankful for what time we are given, I suppose — though sometimes it is hard to accept the fates of those we love with a good grace.” Then, as though picking up the thread of some earlier conversation, she remarked, “Master Gilbert speaks uncommonly well of you.”

“Indeed?” said Sidonie, disconcerted. “I am flattered, my lady.”

“I value his opinion. We have much in common, Master Gilbert and I. He too lost a brother who died in the service of the Queen.”

Sidonie realized, then, why Adrian's name had seemed familiar. “Of course, how foolish of me — his brother was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was shipwrecked on the Squirrel. They say he died with the words, ‘We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.'”

“A hero's death,” said Lady Mary, with a certain lack of conviction. “As Adrian will tell you, being kin to a dead hero is a matter of pride on great occasions, when you hear his praise on everyone's lips — but small enough comfort when you see his empty place at table.”

Sidonie felt a sudden weight in her chest. Though the years had dulled the shock of her mother's death, Lady Mary's words brought it back like a knife-thrust.
My mother
was a hero too
, she thought,
and there will always be an empty
place at my father's table
.

“The only comfort for me now is to carry on my brother's fight by whatever means I can,” said Lady Mary. “It is gold that will defeat Spain — gold to build more ships and arm them, gold to provision Her Majesty's Navy. If I were a man, I would go to sea, and plunder the Spanish galleons for their treasure. Or like Humphrey Gilbert I would seek a passage through the frozen seas to the gold of Cathay. But we are women, Sidonie. We cannot go to sea, nor take up the sword for England. We must find other ways to serve.”

Sidonie set down her glass. It seemed to her they were treading on familiar ground. “My lady, forgive me if I mistake your meaning — is it possible you speak of alchemy?”

“And why should you think that, Sidonie Quince?”

Sidonie met Lady Mary's level grey gaze, and to her relief saw no offence, only curiosity.

“It is just that my father has often praised your knowledge of chemistry. And I remember his saying that Dr. Dee has been a visitor to Wilton, and you to Mountlake.”

“Are all my secrets common knowledge, then?” The Countess's voice was good-humoured. “Yes, I often visited Dr. Dee at Mountlake. I confess as well to some knowledge of chemistry, and Master Gilbert — you realize, Sidonie, I am trusting you with secrets — is a student of the occult arts. Like others, we dreamed of infinite riches, unlimited power, eternal life. We had a well-equipped laboratory, and the use of Dr. Dee's library, the best in England, far surpassing what you see on these shelves. And still we failed — as so many have failed before us. The philosopher's stone eluded our grasp. So you see, once I might have spoken of alchemy, but no longer.”

At that moment it was on the edge of Sidonie's tongue to share her own secret, to tell the Countess of the red powder that could turn all the seas to molten gold. But something — discretion, uncertainty — made her hold back. Suppose she were wrong after all, and the red elixir was no more than it seemed — a handful of common dirt. If she appeared a fool to the rest of the world, it scarcely mattered. But she could not abide the thought of losing Mary Herbert's good opinion.

“The only alchemy I practise now,” said Lady Mary, “is the alchemy of words. But you, Sidonie — can you be persuaded to use
your
talent to serve the Queen?”

Sidonie started, almost spilling her wine.

“My lady, I am no alchemist.”

Lady Mary held up a long, pale hand. “No, hear me out, Sidonie. I speak not of alchemy, but of your gift for seeing what is hidden.”

“You speak of hidden gold, my lady?”

“Just so. When King Henry turned the monks out of Glastonbury and seized the treasures of the Abbey, there was much that was never accounted for.”

Sidonie gazed at the Countess in sudden comprehension, and no little dismay. “We keep our secrets,” the old monk had said. “I will take those secrets to the grave.”

Lady Mary continued, “In earlier times Adrian was often at Mountlake, and he knows what secrets can be revealed by a clever scryer. But who can we trust? Occultists on the whole are a dubious lot — one need only think of the Venetian charlatan Giovanni Agnello, who found a bit of fool's gold in a lump of rock, and persuaded all London that King Solomon's mine had been discovered in Cathay.”

Sidonie laughed. Everyone knew that story. Her mother had oftentimes reminded Simon Quince of it, when he became too immoderate in his aspirations. “And Martin Frobisher set out with fifteen ships to bring back ore from the New World, and all of it ended up as paving stones.”

“But you, Sidonie Quince — I think you honest, and a loyal subject of the Queen.”

Lady Mary rose to her feet, a frail, slender, imperious presence. Her eyes were large and pleading in her pretty, grief-worn face. “There is a prophecy, that when the Glastonbury treasure is found, peace will be assured for England. Methinks it was not mere happenchance that brought you here, Sidonie Quince, Methinks it were the hand of God.”

And then, as Sidonie struggled to find a response, the Countess said, “But finish your wine, my dear, and we will speak more of this later. The weather is so fine that I think we will dine in the summerhouse this eve. Who knows how many more chances there will be, before the autumn rains come? Just a simple meal with friends, and we will make our own entertainment after.”

The summer house stood amid banks of lilies, lavender and rosemary in a walled garden that still held the lingering warmth of afternoon. Within were cushioned benches, drawn up to a long oak table laid with a damask cloth. Somewhere nearby a lutenist played a sprightly air.

Some twenty guests had gathered. Most were resplendent in jewel-coloured silks, tissue of gold and silver lace, though a few wore sober gowns befitting their greater age and dignity. Sidonie, in a lace ruff and a borrowed silk gown the colour of carnations, found a place and sat down, with Kit on her left, and on her right a quiet young man in brown velvet.

So enthralled was Sidonie with the glint of torchlight on silver plate and Venetian glass, the mingled scents of herbs and flowers, the gorgeous apparel of the dinner guests, that she almost forgot to eat. She had scarcely tasted her petal-strewn salad of borage and endive, when a seemingly endless succession of hot dishes arrived.

“A simple meal, sitting down with friends,” Lady Mary had said. Sidonie thought wryly of her own sparse table, as she was offered venison in sour cream, ox tongue in saffron, boiled crab and lobster, several varieties of fish in numerous sorts of exotic sauces, and other delicacies she had yet to identify.

Kit had told Sidonie that the cleverest minds in England — chemists, astrologers, physicians, botanists, historians — sat down together at Lady Mary's table. However, it seemed that tonight it was art, not science, holding sway. The thin, pale gentleman visiting from Dublin had been introduced as Master Edmund Spenser, author of the famous
Shepherd's Calendar
. Sir John Davies, the musician, was there, and Michael Drayton, who was a poet — soon to be a published one, he declared. He had brought along his friend Will — the young man on Sidonie's right — who was also a poet, and a Warwickshire man like himself.
Speak to
me of angles and hypotenuses
, thought Sidonie,
and I will acquit
myself well enough
. Alas, tonight the talk was all of versification.

The conversation was held captive for a while by a young man in an elaborately slashed and embroidered doublet, and a beard dyed straw-yellow to match his costume. He was, he explained, composing an epic romance in verse, telling of marvels he had seen when travelling in the Isles of Spice. There, he swore, he had witnessed such sights as few men live to tell about: houses built of ambergris and pearl, parrots who played chess and discoursed in philosophy, dancing geese and children born from eggs. In those enchanted isles lived dogs with the hands and feet of men, and three-headed flying serpents, and men with no heads at all who wore their eyes in the middle of their breasts.

“Dragons there are in Ethiopia, ten fathoms long,” quoted Sidonie to Kit, behind her hand. “If one is unable to invent new tales, one really ought to steal from obscure authors.” Kit laughed. He too recognized Pliny's
Natural
History
: he and Sidonie had pored over its pages, when they first learned to read.

“Still, a good tale is always worth the retelling,” observed Michael Drayton's Warwickshire friend, who clearly had overheard her remark. She turned to him in some embarrassment. He gave her an encouraging smile. “There are, after all, a finite number of stories to be told.”

“And you, sir, are you a storyteller?”

“Like Master Drayton, I dabble in sonneteering,” he replied with a gallant pretence at modesty.

Sidonie had no great interest in romantic verse, and was feeling all at sea. Kit was no help: he was now deep in herbal lore with a botanist across the table. Casting about for a reply, she remembered that Sir Philip Sidney was a famous poet as well as a great hero. “And Lady Mary's brother — he too wrote sonnets,” she ventured.