The Alchemist's Daughter (2 page)

“Sidonie, child, our fortune is made.” Simon Quince came to the doorway of his workroom. There was a folded paper in his hand.

“Indeed?” said Sidonie. She set down her basket of salad herbs. “And how shall this miracle be accomplished?”

“Have I not told you the story of how Queen Elizabeth herself visited Dr. Dee at his house in Mortlake, and asked to see his magic glass?”

“Several times,” said Sidonie, only half-listening. She stirred the floor-rushes with the toe of her slipper, sending up a puff of lavender-scented dust. It was past time the rushes were replaced.

“She arrived in a grand procession,” continued Simon Quince with practised eloquence, “accompanied by all her Privy Council, and sundry other lords and nobility. But when informed that the house was in mourning, Dr. Dee's wife having died only hours before, Her Majesty declined to enter, and asked instead that Dr. Dee bring out the glass, that she might examine it. Which she did forthwith, to her great contentment and delight.”

A dreadful thought occurred to Sidonie. “Father,” she said. “Surely you are not suggesting . . . ”

“That we invite Queen Elizabeth to come to Charing Cross? Nay, daughter, our house is far too humble to entertain royalty.”

Thank heavens for small mercies
, thought Sidonie. No matter how grand her father's aspirations, from time to time a modicum of common sense prevailed.

“No, daughter, we are invited to visit the Queen. I have here a letter from Lord Burleigh himself, instructing us to attend upon Her Majesty at Hampton Court.”

“This is marvellous strange, Father.”

“Marvellous indeed, but hardly strange. With this Spanish trouble brewing, the Queen needs must discover what the future holds — for herself, and for England.”

“But she has an astrologer — Dr. Dee.”

“Who as you know has gone abroad, leaving Her Majesty
with no prognosticator in which she can place her trust. Child, have I not said that I have friends in the highest circles? Friends who will drop a word in the right ear when the time is right?”

“But you have said ‘us'.”

“I will read the stars for Her Majesty. And you will look into the scrying crystal and see what secrets may be hidden there. Just think, daughter — wax candles again, instead of tallow. A pint of claret with our supper. And you, my clever girl, shall have a velvet hat, and a new gown, with farthingales and furbelows to your heart's content.”

“I have a hat,” said Sidonie. “And my old gown will do well enough, since I do not go out in society.”

“Ah, but you will, daughter,” said Simon Quince. “You will come with me to court, and all the young lords will dance attendance on you.”

“Aha,” said Sidonie, only half teasing. “Now I see which way the wind blows. This is how you will put claret on the table — by marrying me off to an earl. 'Struth, dear Father, you have studied metaphysics too long — you have lost touch with reality.”

She imagined how the two of them, dressed like poor artisans, would be received at court — she in her plain woollen kirtle, her father in his shabby russet gown. She had never cared a jot for fashion, never pined as other girls did for silk stockings and doeskin gloves. But neither did she wish to be laughed at. Was her father doomed, as he so often was, to disappointment?

In truth, she too was weary of the lean days when there
was no bacon for their pottage, when they had to make do with pease porridge and oats instead of wheaten bread. “ And if I look into the crystal? Will I see only the fate of
others, not myself?”

“In this crystal, which I have purchased from my eminent colleague Doctor Forman, you will see the fate of all of us — the future of England. And that, my daughter, is the vision that will keep us in luxury in my old age, and yours.”

“But Father — suppose the future of England is disaster and defeat? What would it benefit the Queen to hear such tidings?”

Her father had an answer for that, as indeed he had an answer for most things: “If a man knows that his house is to catch fire, he may be unable to prevent the fire, for that is preordained. But still he can try to quench the flames; or he can choose to gather up his possessions, and go with his wife and children to an inn, and so survive.”

And Sidonie argued in her turn: “But Father, suppose it is not the fire, but the man's death, and the death of his family, that is pre-ordained?” It was a conundrum that made her head hurt, for surely it had no easy answer.

She realized that her father was no longer paying attention. Quill in hand, he was composing his reply to Lord Burleigh's letter. With a sigh Sidonie picked up her Euclid, taking refuge in his reassuring certainties.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

A power I have, but of what strength and nature
I am not yet instructed.

— William Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure

The scrying stone was a sphere of polished crystal that sat comfortably in the palm of Sidonie's hand. When she held it up before the fire, it blazed with reflected light.

“Hold it away from the hearth,” her father said. “Take it into the shadows and look into it by candlelight. Gaze long, and make your mind clear and empty as the summer sky.”

She stared obediently, and after a while she felt her eyelids droop, as though sleep were overtaking her. The focus of her eyes changed, her gaze narrowing till it fixed upon a single point of light within the crystal, while everything at the edge of vision blurred. Now she could see yellowish cloud-tatters swirling within the glass, and through them, as through sea-mist, a clustering of tall attenuated shapes. They might have been flagpoles, the bare trunks of winter trees, the lances of an ancient army — or a forest of masts.

In that warm room, a sudden chill seized her. She turned, held the scrying stone before the fire; saw the shapes, whatever they might be, vanish in a blaze of orange light. She set the globe down on the table, resting it carefully against a book.

“What have you seen, daughter?” Her father's voice was sharp with tension.

If you see disaster in the crystal, and you speak your vision
aloud
, Sidonie wondered,
does it then come true
? “Nothing,” she said. “I saw nothing, Father. Only light reflected in the glass.”

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Oh Goddess heavenly bright,

Mirror of grace and Majesty divine,

Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light

Like Phoebus lamp throughout the world doth shine . . .

— Edmund Spenser,
Faerie Queene

On a bright August morning Sidonie set out with her father for Hampton Court. “I have heard,” said Sidonie, “that the Queen throws her shoes — or worse still, her wine goblets — at servants who displease her.” Holding up the hem of her best skirt with both hands, she picked her way around a heap of refuse.

“And at the gentlemen of the court, as well,” said her father.

“Suppose she does not like my foretelling. I should not like the Queen to throw her shoes at me.”

“Tush, child,” said Simon Quince. “Queen Elizabeth has not sent for you to tell her fairy tales. She is by all accounts a woman of great courage and good sense, and able to look her fortune in the eye. All you must do, is tell her honestly and plainly what you see.”

They walked past Queen Eleanour's Cross and down to the river-stairs. A wherry was waiting to take them from Charing Cross upriver to Hampton Court. The boatman, who wore the Queen's scarlet livery, helped Sidonie step from the landing with as much courtesy as if she had been a lady of the court. The sky was a cloudless blue, and everywhere on the river there were flocks of swans. The incoming tide sped them upstream past Westminster Abbey, past the vast sprawl of Whitehall with its stately gardens, past Lambeth Palace on the southern bank, past the fields of Chelsea, till they came in sight of the carved red chimneys rising above the square battlements of Hampton Court.

At the water-gate another scarlet-liveried servant led them up the river-stairs, through arbours and alleys, sheltered galleries, and gardens ablaze with summer blooms. Immaculate beds of roses, sweet William and gillyflowers were edged with railings striped in the Tudor colours of white and green. Banks of rosemary scented the air, and everywhere the Queen's heraldic beasts glowered down at Sidonie from their pillars of stone.

The brick walls of Hampton Court Palace, rising before them, were deep crimson where the sunlight struck them, plum-coloured in shadow, patterned with chequered lines of burnt-black. Sidonie craned her neck this way and that, gazing at turrets and gilded pinnacles, mullioned windows, embrasured parapets. Gargoyles crouched on every gable, and wherever she looked, there were more heraldic beasts: lions, greyhounds, dragons, panthers, leopards, antelope.

They followed the Queen's man across the stone bridge over the moat, and went under the arch of a great gateway flanked by busts of Roman Emperors. Within was a courtyard, and then a second gateway — Anne Boleyn's, said Sidonie's father, pointing to that ill-fated lady's gilded coat of arms.

“Look there,” said Simon Quince, as they came into the next court. “There is a wonder to behold, daughter.” Sidonie tilted back her head to look up at the famous Astronomical Clock.

“There in the centre is the earth, and on the large pointer is the sun. With those three copper dials the clock indicates the hour, the sign of zodiac, the month, the day of the month, the number of days since the year began, and towards the centre the phases of the moon, so you can predict the tides.”

“But,” said Sidonie, hoping to forestall what threatened to become a lecture, “according to Copernicus, the earth is not at the centre, the sun is. The earth goes round the sun, not the sun round the earth.”

“But the clock was made before Copernicus's time,” her father said, in a tone that discouraged further discussion.

The servant led them up a flight of stone steps into the Great Hall, where they were met by a gentleman of the court in black velvet and a gold chain of office. Sidonie trailed behind the others, lingering to examine the curious assortment of furniture and objects in the room — royal portraits, paintings of battles, a history of Christ's passion carved in mother-of-pearl; and tapestries portraying blackskinned folk on elephants in what Sidonie thought must be the Land of Barbarie. There were, besides, an array of elaborate looking-glasses; musical instruments of various sorts; and royal beds, piled high with gold and silver cushions and ermine-lined counterpanes. In these beds, the courtier told them, kings had been born and queens had died.

They proceeded through more corridors and galleries, till they came to a chamber that was all a-dazzle with light and colour, like a vision of heaven. Sidonie's nervous glance took in, all in a rush, the gilded and painted ceiling; the walls, panelled in gold and silver and hung with silken tapestries; and the royal arms emblazoned on a crimson hanging, with an enormous diamond glittering at their centre.

In the chair of state beneath a canopy studded with pearls and precious stones sat Elizabeth herself — looking, thought Sidonie in the first thrill of recognition, more like a gorgeous icon than any woman of flesh and blood. The Queen's gown was white taffeta lined with crimson silk, and covered with rubies and pearls. Over it she wore a silver shawl, loose-woven and delicate as gossamer, that hung to the hem of her skirt. Beneath her jewel-ornamented red wig her high smooth brow and delicate oval face were white as alabaster — their flawless pallor preserved, so Sidonie had heard, with a lotion of egg white and alum and white poppy seeds. Still, it was the face of a woman in her fifties, and in that unforgiving blaze of light, a fine tracery of wrinkles showed beneath the alabaster mask. The eyes, for all their fierce intelligence, looked tired and a little sunken, as though the Queen had not slept well.

Fire and quicksilver
, thought Sidonie, gazing at the garments of snow and crimson, the pearls and rubies, the moon-white face beneath its crown of dark-red hair. Sidonie was her father's daughter, and she knew the language of alchemy well.
Rubedo
and
albedo
. Lion and unicorn. The mystical union of male and female, spirit and soul.

I must remember everything
, thought Sidonie.
I must fix
every detail in my mind — the jewels, the tapestries, the damascene
carpets, the harp of glass and unicorn's horn and all the rare and
curious objects that stand about the room — so one day I can tell
my children how I met the greatest lady in Christendom
. But there was too much dazzle, too much glitter. She felt light headed with the splendour of it all.

“Your Majesty,” she murmured, sinking into a much-rehearsed curtsy. She was barely conscious of her father's presence as he made his own obeisance. The Queen's gaze, piercing as a hawk's, was intent on Sidonie; it was as though they were alone in the room.

“They call this chamber ‘Paradise' said the Queen without preamble. “It seemed to me that it was a good place for prognostication. It has a certain magic about it, does it not — what say you, Sidonie Quince?”

“Indeed it does, Your Majesty.” To her dismay, Sidonie felt herself wobbling a little as she stood up.

“You're a good deal younger than John Dee,” observed the Queen. “And safe to say, a good deal prettier. But can you scry as well as he?”

“I will do my best, Your Majesty.”

“Show me.”

Sidonie took the crystal from its velvet pouch, removed its muslin wrapping. Cradled in her palm, it seemed to gather into itself all the radiance of the jewelled and gilded room. Sidonie let her breath slow, willed her pounding heart to a quieter rhythm.
The Queen needs must discover what
the future holds
, her father had said.
For England — and for
herself.
There were no shadows in this room to obscure the vision in the glass; the images of clustered spars sprang forth as vivid and as detailed as figures on a tapestry.