by David Walton
"No! You can." Despite his suspicions, Matthew was starting to like this man. A big limitation to their study was that they could only do their experiments on Horizon. Matthew had created a box that blocked quintessence fields, to mimic conditions back home, but it wasn't perfect. If they could communicate with men in England and suggest experiments to try, think about how much they could learn!
"Take something organic," Matthew said. "A stick, a bone, anything. Break it in half, and throw one piece in the void before it closes. Better yet, do it with a few different things, in case you lose one or it doesn't work. Because you're right—once that void closes, we'll never be able to open a new connection between us."
There was a flurry of sound from the other side as Tavera and his friends presumably did as he suggested.
"Have them burn something," Blanca said.
Matthew raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"
"Burn something. Or light a pipe, or something that will make a strong smell. To see if we can smell it."
Matthew grinned and squeezed her arm. "Perfect," he said. He explained to the men on the other end what he wanted them to do, and soon the smell of burning tobacco filled their nostrils.
"It works," he said. "The smell from the pipe actually transmits across the quintessence thread, just like the sound of our voices does."
"More than that," Blanca said. "Look."
She held her hand behind the piece of wood. By the contrast of her pale skin, Matthew could see faint wisps of gray smoke drifting into the air.
THE FOLLOWING day, Barrosa was required at the palace to wait on the king, but since neither Philip nor Mary had sent for astrologers, Ramos and Dee were free to experiment, only now with a lot more knowledge. After seeing the pipe smoke appear, Matthew Marcheford had spoken to them of quintessence threads, and of the invisible world behind the world, where the threads stretched and intertwined. Ramos knew this was the same space he and Barrosa had talked about in the field where he had fought the king's soldiers, a space behind and separate from the material world.
Ramos and Dee spent the day in heady discovery. With the shekinah worm nearby to provide the quintessence field, they recreated a series of thread connections like the one through which they had talked to Matthew. First they broke a stick in half—just an ordinary elm branch they found outside—and put the pieces in different rooms. Then they used a drop of vitriol on each piece to open a void, and found they could talk to each other through the connection, even at a whisper.
They broke a second stick in half and tossed one half into one of the voids, and did the same with a third stick at the other void. Ramos had discovered that with his fingers covered with wax—the same wax that prevented the compass beetles from escaping—he could keep a void from growing too large and close it when he wished. When he clapped the voids closed, the connections remained. As long as they stayed within the quintessence field of the shekinah flatworm—which barely covered the house—they could speak from stick to stick and be heard, even after the voids had been closed.
In the evening, Ramos sat outside with Antonia. They sat quietly together, Antonia sometimes babbling under her breath, but blessedly not falling into one of her fits. There was a small patch of garden between the street and the river, and across the street, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin stood, a solid building of multicolored stone with ivy climbing the walls.
Ramos's faith had once been as strong as that building, built to last, proof against storm or flood. Now it wavered, undermined by contradictory truths. It wasn't just that he didn't know what was true. He didn't even know the ultimate source of truth. Was it the pope? The king? Holy Scripture? What he could see and hear with his senses? The conclusions of his logical mind? Where these things were in agreement, there was no question about truth, but where they disagreed, he didn't know whom or what to believe.
He put his hand over Antonia's. The pope called her a demon-worshipper. Dee said her mind was caught up in the stars. And what did Ramos himself believe? He could no longer say that he believed the pope implicitly. It was just that the implications of that lack of belief undermined everything he had given his life to: the priestly ministry, the spread of the Church, the worship of God.
He didn't think he was an atheist. If the world truly was composed of tiny atoms and invisible quintessence threads, then surely those things were created by God as well. If the world was governed by the movement of tiny particles; if it was a machine with gears that meshed and turned by predetermined rules, then God had created the cogs and gears.
But no, he wasn't satisfied with that, either. That approach pushed God farther and farther out of relevance with life. It treated God simply as a means to explain what was unexplained. The more they learned and understood, the smaller God's sphere of involvement would be. Soon he would be thinking of God as merely the architect of the world, an initiator only, remote and distant from the lives of men. That could not be. Though he couldn't have it both ways, could he? Either the workings of the world were governed by natural laws, or they were governed directly by God.
His musings were interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats. Mortlake was a quiet place, characterized by birdsong and the running of the river. This sounded like a company of riders. They rounded the bend and came into view on the road; four soldiers bearing the queen's colors. Ramos's first thought was that they had come for Antonia. He stood to hurry her inside, but the riders were there before he could lift her to her feet. They jumped to the ground and tossed the reins to the one of their company. The other three approached.
"Where is the astrologer John Dee?"
"What do you need of him?"
"He is under arrest, by order of their royal majesties, King Philip and Queen Mary, on charges of calculating and conspiring with the enemies of the crown."
RAMOS found Barrosa at Richmond Palace and dragged him into an empty side room.
"How much does the king know?"
"Are you mad? Know about what?"
"About Dee. About us. About sneaking his treasures out of the palace from under his nose in collusion with the Princess Elizabeth."
Barrosa was open-mouthed. "Nothing, that I know of."
"Well, they didn't arrest him for the length of his beard!"
"Arrest who? Ramos, what are you talking about?"
It was Ramos's turn to look surprised. "Dee was just arrested. Four soldiers just rode up to the house and dragged him away in chains. You're the king's secretary; you must have seen the papers."
"I saw nothing. He was arrested?"
"At sundown. I've been up all night clearing out our things and moving Antonia to other quarters before they commandeer the house."
"The arrest wasn't at the king's command. He spent the day with his council hearing reports from the wars and dictating letters to his commanders."
Ramos rubbed his chin. "Maybe one of the lords took it upon himself."
"No. Not with someone of Dee's stature. The queen . . ."
Their eyes met. "The queen," Ramos said.
Barrosa nodded. "She must have discovered something, some inkling of what we're doing."
"But how? She hardly takes any interest in politics any more. All she thinks about is her pregnancy. She wouldn't be setting spies on us."
"She's playing some different game. Dee read her horoscope before you did, you know. He said her baby would die."
"Which was true, before the king brought quintessence into the mix."
"Even so, she may hold it against him. Or fear he will perform some sorcery to kill her baby and make his prediction true. He's widely thought of as a magician, you know. What was the actual charge?"
"'Calculating and conspiring with the enemies of the Crown.'"
Barrosa started pacing. "'Calculating'? What kind of charge is that? You and Dee calculate all the time. It's your job."
"It's one thing to calculate inside the lines. It's quite another thing to pursue knowledge wherever it leads you. Then what hap
pens when what you find disagrees with what those in charge tell you to believe? I think 'calculating' is exactly the right charge." Ramos fingered the black box at his throat. "I also think the queen knows about Dee's involvement with Elizabeth."
"That seems likely," Barrosa said.
"What do you think she'll do?"
Barrosa shook his head. He cracked the door and looked out—no one there—and then beckoned Ramos over to the window. "Mary hates Elizabeth," he whispered. "Loves her and hates her at the same time. I was here, in England, when Elizabeth was born." Barrosa had been the son of one of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Katerina, and had grown up in England.
"That must have been a frightening time," Ramos said. Mary's father, Henry VIII, had thrown the Holy Church out of England, and Mary's mother out of the palace, so he could marry Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn.
"The worst," Barrosa said. "Mary was seventeen years old. There she was, stripped of her titles, forced to acknowledge—after twenty-four years—that her parents had never been truly married. Her father forced her to leave her mother and live in Hatfield House with beautiful little Princess Elizabeth, and to act as her servant. She had to watch her father and his lover—and the whole court, really—fuss and praise and lavish every possible rich gift on Elizabeth while she stood by."
"And through all that, she remained faithful to the Church," Ramos said.
"That's just it. If not for this baby son, Elizabeth would be next in line for the throne, and she's a Protestant. At some level, Mary loves Elizabeth as a sister, but at the same time, she's fiercely jealous of her, and she fears England slipping back into the heresy that took her father away from her. Just by being alive, Elizabeth is a threat to Mary's son. If Mary sees this as treachery, then both Dee and Elizabeth are in grave danger."
Ramos unlatched the window and swung it open. He was finding it hard to breathe. They were on the third floor looking down, so no one from outside would overhear them. "She's going to execute Dee, isn't she?"
"It's quite possible. This may even be the final straw that tips her over into executing Elizabeth. Most of her council advises her to do it. She's refused so far, out of loyalty to family and a respect for what she considers royal blood, but if it looks like Elizabeth is complicit in a plot to kill her baby . . ."
"And what about us? The soldiers came looking for Dee, and found me sitting on the front step. If they didn't know of a connection between us before, they do now."
"We work for the king, though. We're not under the queen's authority."
"If the king finds out we were telling his secrets—"
"Why should he find out? The queen doesn't care about quintessence or know anything about it. Besides, we're useful to the king. We make discoveries that will be useful to his war effort."
"That's true," Ramos said. He thought of the king's veiled threat against Antonia. "He wants us submissive, but still working."
"So what do we do?" Barrosa said.
"We stay in Richmond and act like good king's men. Stand with his courtiers, attend functions, write his letters, tell him what the stars portend. Give him no reason to be displeased with us."
"And Dee?"
"We watch for our chance," Ramos said. "Speak on his behalf, if we can. Find out how much the king knows, and how much he suspects."
THE PRINCESS Elizabeth was called to a hearing before the queen, the king, the Lord Chancellor, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and sentenced to death by beheading if she would not recant and confess her crimes. After they brought her back to her cell in the Tower, Ramos visited her. She sat on the floor in a corner, away from the window, looking small and helpless.
"I know I am mortal," she said. She sat very still, and her voice was quiet. "I cannot live forever. I should be ready for death, whensoever God pleases to send it."
"Will you not recant?" Ramos said. "Mary would give you your life, if you would convert. Is it not better to work within the Church to reform it, rather than set yourself against it?"
Elizabeth shook her head, and her voice took on a little more of the steel he was used to. "I will never be constrained by violence to do anything I would not do of my own free will. If the threat of harm could make me bend, what kind of queen would I be?"
Ramos took a step closer and kneeled next to her. The stones were hard and cold. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, but he knew she would never allow it. She was a royal personage, her body sacred. "This is stubbornness," he said. "Even a queen must compromise. The greatest commander must sound the retreat when the battle is lost."
She raised her eyes to look at him around a lock of red hair, a hint of a smile playing about her lips. "Do you care for me, then, Ramos de Tavera?"
He was taken aback. "Of course I do, your Grace."
"Then listen: There is more at stake than my life or my pride. Do you not understand this? I care not about the divisions and quarrels of Christendom. There is only one Christ Jesus, one faith. All else is a dispute over trifles."
"Then why take this stand? Swear your allegiance to Rome, and live another day."
She held his gaze. "Because it is truth that hangs in the balance. Not the truth of a single doctrine or fact of history, but Truth itself, the very meaning of the word. There are those who believe only what makes them feel good or important or worthwhile. They cling to it, lest they see themselves for the petty and immoral people they are. Truth does not hide or cover up. It stares at the ugliness without shrinking back. It asks not, what would I like to be true, but what actually is?"
Her gaze drifted to the window. "To love Truth is to risk everything. There are many who seek to suppress it at all costs, because it would reveal them. To others, and especially to themselves. But I have to believe that Truth is worth the risk, and that, even if I die, it will win in the end."
She spoke with a quiet ferocity, and Ramos didn't answer at first. He knew she wasn't talking about him, not directly, but she had drawn a line in the sand, and he wasn't certain which side of it he stood on. Did he have the courage to seek out truth at any cost? Or did he prefer to tell himself those lies which made his place in the world easy and secure?
"What would you do if you took the throne?" he said. "If Mary died today, and you were freed from this tower and crowned queen?"
She gave a deep sigh, as if all her strength was gone. "I have thought all my life that God had called me to rule. I have prepared for it, considered the glory and the cost, and been in constant danger of my life from those who wish me ill. I have learned how to play this game of thrones."
She sat up straighter, tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking out into the distance. "If I were queen, I would chart England her own course, free from Rome and all the nations who wish to turn her sails. She would be my consort, and I her bride. We would allow no lies in our presence, no deceit, no flattery. We would surround ourselves with men who loved truth above greatness, and honesty above power. Who loved God more than Protestantism, and England more than their own political gain."
She leaned back against the wall. "But now, Mary will have a son, and if God wills it, I will die. Perhaps I was never destined for the throne, after all."
"Do not lose heart, your Grace," Ramos said. "If anyone was destined to rule, it is you."
It was out of his mouth before he realized what it meant. He had already been sneaking around behind his king's back, doing secret experiments, and questioning the actions of the Inquisition. But this was something more. Treason. He owed allegiance to Spain, not England, and to the Roman Church, not the English one. But Elizabeth spoke of a Truth that transcended religious and political lines, and he was loyal to that truth above all.
He realized he had crossed the line. He had seen the differences between Philip and Elizabeth, and he knew whom he would rather serve. What was the Church, if it tortured the innocent? What was Spain, if it was ruled by a selfish despot? He wanted Rome and Spain brought to the truth, but it was the truth he was loyal
to above all.
Ramos remembered the horoscope he had cast for himself on the floor of the Spanish prison. There had been figures for treason and heresy, for the love of a woman, for the crossing of an ocean. Those predictions, so bizarre at the time, seemed much more likely now.
He had told Barrosa that they should lie low and not call attention to themselves, but now he had no intention of taking that advice himself. He had crossed the line, and there was no going back. He knew what he had to do. It didn't matter that Elizabeth was English and a Protestant. He wasn't going to let her die.
CHAPTER 20
BY THE NEXT nightfall, the colonists reached the caves. It had been another long day, mostly traveling uphill, and everyone was exhausted. Even so, there was work to be done, gathering wood for fires, making sleeping arrangements, digging a pit in the woods for a latrine. Quintessence could make these jobs faster and easier, but many of them were spent from their journey, and almost all of the salt had been lost to the miasma.
Ferguson was the only one who didn't seem tired. He walked from group to group, listening to complaints about the size of their sleeping area or how much of the remaining food ration they were receiving. Matthew knew his father should stand up and make an encouraging speech of some kind, but he also knew he wouldn't do it. His father was a preacher, able to rouse passions when he put his mind to it, but he wasn't connected to how the people around him felt.
These caves were the same ones Catherine and her father and others from the Quintessence Society had hidden in to escape Diego de Tavera after the first Spanish ship had come. Tavera had found them then, and he had no doubt the new Spanish arrivals would find them again, in time. For tonight, however, they should be safe enough.
The caves were complex and jagged, full of twisting fissures that concealed deeper passages. Some of the openings were large enough to march an army through; some too small for a child. No one knew how far back they led. The sound of running water suggested the existence of an underground river, but if one existed, it was out of reach. There weren't many comfortable spots to sleep on the rocky floor, but the night was dry, and there was plenty of room outside under the stars.