is what God speaks with heavenly beings, and it is that language which I hope to discover. And the way to it must be through Hebrew, through Greek and through Persian.’ He broke off for a moment. ‘You don’t speak or read Persian, do you? Or any of the Arab tongues?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘No matter,’ he replied. ‘You shall come every morning and read with me for an hour and we shall make great progress.’
‘If Lord Robert says I may,’ I temporised.
Mr Dee smiled at me. ‘Young lady, you are going to help me to understand nothing less than the meaning of all things. There is a key to the universe and we are just beginning to grasp at it. There are rules, unchangeable rules, which command the courses of the planets, the tides of the sea, and the affairs of men, and I know, I absolutely know, that all these things are interlinked: the sea, the planets, and the history of man. With God’s grace and with the skill we can muster we will discover these laws and when we know them …’ He paused. ‘We will know everything.’
I was allowed to go home to my father in April and I took him my wages for the quarter. I went in my old boy’s clothes that he had bought me when we first came to England and found that my wrists poked out at the sleeves and I could not get my growing feet into the shoes. I had to cut out the heels and go slipshod through the city.
‘They will have to put you in gowns soon,’ my father remarked. ‘You are half a woman already. What news of the court?’
‘None,’ I said. ‘Everyone says that the king is growing stronger with the warmer weather.’ I did not add that everyone was speaking a lie.
‘God bless him and keep him,’ my father said piously. He looked at me, as if he would know more. ‘And Lord Robert. Do you see him?’
I felt myself colour. ‘Now and then.’ I could have told him to the very hour and the minute when I had last seen Lord Robert. He had not spoken to me, perhaps he had not even seen me. He had been mounted on his horse, about to go hawking for herons along the mudflats of the river shore. He was wearing a black cape and a black hat with a dark feather pinned to the ribbon with a jet brooch. He had a beautiful hooded falcon on his wrist and he rode with one hand outstretched to keep the bird steady and his other hand holding the curvetting horse, which was pawing the ground in its eagerness. He looked like a prince in a story book, he was laughing. I had watched him as I might have watched a seagull riding the wind blowing up the Thames: as a thing so beautiful that it illuminated my day. I watched him, not a woman desiring a man; but a girl worshipping an icon, something far beyond reach but perfection in every way.
‘There is to be a great wedding,’ I said to fill the pause. ‘Lord Robert’s father has arranged it.’
‘Who is to marry?’ my father asked with a gossip’s curiosity.
I ticked off the three couples on my fingers. ‘Lady Katherine Dudley is to marry Lord Henry Hastings, and the two Grey sisters are to marry Lord Guilford Dudley and Lord Henry Herbert.’
‘And you know them all!’ my father boasted, proud as any parent.
I shook my head. ‘Only the Dudleys,’ I said. ‘And not one of them would know me out of livery. I am a very lowly servant at court, Father.’
He cut a slice of bread for me and one for himself. It was stale bread, yesterday’s loaf. He had a small piece of cheese on one plate. On the other side of the room was a piece of meat, which we would eat later, in defiance of the English way of doing things which was to set all of the dinner, meats, breads, puddings as well, on the table at the same time. I thought however much we might pretend, anyone who strolled into the room now would see that we were trying to eat the right way: dairy and meat separate. Anyone looking at my father’s vellum skin and my dark eyes would know us for Jews. We might say that we were converted, we might attend church as enthusiastically as Lady Elizabeth herself was loudly praised for doing, but anyone would know us for Jews, and if they wanted an excuse to rob or denounce us, they would have it to their hand.
‘Do you not know the Grey sisters?’
‘Hardly at all,’ I said. ‘They are the king’s cousins. They say that Lady Jane does not want to marry, she lives only to study her books. But her mother and her father have beaten her till she agreed.’
My father nodded, the forcible ordering of a daughter was no surprise. ‘And what else?’ he asked. ‘What of Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland?’
‘He’s very much disliked.’ I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘But he is like a king himself. He goes in and out of the king’s bedroom and says that this or that is the king’s own wish. What can anyone do against him?’
‘They took up our neighbour the portrait painter only last week,’ my father remarked. ‘Mr Tuller. They said he was a Catholic and a heretic. Took him off for questioning, and he has not come back. He had copied a picture of Our Lady some years ago, and someone searched a house and found it hidden, with his name signed at the foot.’ My father shook his head. ‘It makes no sense in law,’ he complained. ‘Whatever their conviction, it makes no sense. When he painted the picture it was allowed. Now it is heresy. When he painted the picture it was a work of art. Now it is a crime. The picture has not changed, it is the law which has changed and they apply the law to the years when it did not exist, before it was written. These people are barbarians. They lack all reason.’
We both glanced towards the door. The street was quiet, the door locked.
‘D’you think we should leave?’ I asked, very low. I realised for the first time that now I wanted to stay.
He chewed his bread, thinking. ‘Not yet,’ he said cautiously. ‘Besides, where could we go that was safe? I’d rather be in Protestant England than Catholic France. We are good reformed Christians now. You go to church, don’t you?’
‘Twice, sometimes three times a day,’ I assured him. ‘It’s a very observant court.’
‘I make sure I am seen to go. And I give to charity, and I pay my parish dues. We can do nothing more. We’ve both been baptised. What can any man say against us?’
I said nothing. We both knew that anyone could say anything against anyone. In the countries that had turned the ritual of the church into a burning matter no-one could be sure that they would not offend by the way they prayed, even by which direction they faced when they prayed.
‘If the king falls ill and dies,’ my father whispered, ‘then Lady Mary takes the throne, and she is a Roman Catholic. Will she make the whole country become Roman Catholic again?’
‘Who knows what will happen?’ I asked, thinking of my naming the next heir as ‘Jane’ and Robert Dudley’s lack of surprise. ‘I wouldn’t put a groat wager on Lady Mary coming to the throne. There are bigger players in this game than you and I, Father. And I don’t know what they are planning.’
‘If Lady Mary inherits and the country becomes Roman Catholic again then there are some books I shall have to be
