The Alchemist's Door

by Lisa Goldstein

  Spinòla bowed them into a long, richly-furnished room and then left them. The walls here were covered in red leather stamped with a coat of arms. Colorful eastern rugs decorated the tables and benches. Then Dee saw the man sitting on an elevated chair at the end of the room, and all his surroundings faded into the background. The man looked familiar—the full lips, the pouches under the eyes, the pendulous cheeks—

  “You’re the gardener,” Dee said, shocked into English. “The man I saw when I crossed the moat. You had a rake—”

  “Speak German, please,” Rudolf said, showing no sign he had noticed Dee’s confusion, or that he had recognized him. He was dressed less showily than Queen Elizabeth, Dee saw; his clothes were a drab black, almost Spanish in their austerity. But his collar, folded in the Spanish manner called gorguera, was made of the finest linen, and his chain of office was the purest gold, and his hat was adorned with buttons of ruby and gold. Two men in uniform stood behind him.

  “Yes. Yes, Your Majesty. I thought I saw you—” Stop, Dee thought. Rudolf is playing his own game here. Or he has a double, or he is possessed—No. Don’t think about that. Especially now.

  The king had a copy of Dee’s book Monas Hieroglyphica on a chest to one side of him. Dee had dedicated that book to Rudolf’s father, the Emperor Maximilian II. He was pleased to see it, pleased that Rudolf had taken the time to retrieve it from his library. They spoke politely for a while about the book and its philosophy, though Rudolf admitted it had been “too hard for his capacity” to understand.

  “You are the man who can speak to angels, are you not?” Rudolf asked.

  “My associate, Edward Kelley, is the one who speaks to them. I merely ask the questions.”

  “Good. I would ask the angels some questions now.”

  “Of course. May we use this chest, Your Majesty?”

  Rudolf nodded.

  There was a landscape on top of the chest, made of inlays of jasper and onyx and chalcedony. Dee moved his book out of the way, then lifted a heavy bronze statue of a horse off the top and looked around for a place to put it. Finally he placed it on the floor, glancing at Rudolf for permission. Rudolf said nothing.

  Dee motioned Kelley forward. Kelley opened the gray bag, took out the cloth and the wax tablets and the scrying glass, and set them in their proper places.

  “We must pray first,” Dee said.

  Rudolf nodded absently.

  Dee bent his head. This would be the first time he had used the glass since Poland. If the demon had followed them—but he had no choice. He had promised Rudolf he could show him wonders. A long time ago, this was, when he had written to the king saying that he might some day come to Prague. And—he hated to think it—he was running out of money. Rudolf’s patronage would be very welcome.

  Please, he prayed to Someone or Something. Please, let the demon be gone.

  He looked up. “What are your questions, Your Majesty?”

  “Will my Empire remain at peace?” Rudolf asked.

  Kelley looked into the glass. Dee’s heart was pounding hard.

  “The angel Uriel comes to me,” Kelley said finally. He looked at Rudolf, then back at the glass. “Yes. The angel tells me that you will usher the Empire into a new age, a golden age filled with peace and prosperity.”

  Rudolf nodded. Dee began to relax. Uriel was one of the most powerful angels. If they were under his protection then all would go well.

  “And what of my brother?” Rudolf asked. “Will he continue to trouble me?”

  “I don’t—I don’t see—”

  “My brother Matthias,” Rudolf said impatiently. “Matthias, who thwarts me at every turn. Who spends his days and nights scheming to take my throne.”

  “Matthias, yes. Uriel tells me that you will triumph over Matthias.”

  Rudolf’s lips quirked upward. Perhaps, Dee thought, he was smiling. “When will—”

  “But you must take care,” Kelley said, interrupting him. “You will defeat your brother only if you mend your sinful ways.”

  “What?” Rudolf said.

  “Mend your sinful ways!” Kelley said. He was shouting now, like a preacher. “If you will hear me, and believe me, you shall triumph.”

  “What insolence is this?”

  “No insolence. I repeat only what the angels say.”

  “And in what ways do I sin? Tell me.” Rudolf’s voice had gone dangerously soft.

  “No.” Kelley stared boldly at the king. “Those sins should not be spoken of here.”

  “You don’t know, in other words. And why not? Because there are no sins. You are nothing but a fraud, a charlatan after my gold. You must be mad if you think I reward displays like this.”

  “I did not come to you because of your riches,” Kelley said implacably. “I was sent to you by God.”

  “Leave me,” Rudolf said.

  “The angel Uriel—”

  “Leave me! Now! Or I will have both of you arrested.” He motioned to his men-at-arms.

  “Come, Master Kelley,” Dee said, stuffing his things back in the velvet bag. His mind was whirling. Had they truly been visited by the angel Uriel? Did Kelley think that he could say such things to a king? Or had the demon come to wreak havoc on their lives once again? Kelley’s voice had changed a little, there at the end. They were no longer welcome at Prague Castle, that much was certain.

  Kelley continued to look at the king. Dee clutched him by the sleeve and pulled him out the door.

  Rabbi Loew was still waiting patiently. “How is the emperor?” Loew asked. “What is his mood?”

  “Choleric. I’m afraid we angered him.”

  “Oh, dear,” Loew said. He stood and headed toward his audience with Rudolf.

  GONE WRONG, ALL, ALL WRONG, DEE THOUGHT. HE HAD dragged his family across Europe to this place, he had insulted one of the most powerful monarchs on earth, he had come to the notice of a potent and malign entity … .

  A terrible longing rose within him to return to England. Jane too, he knew, wanted to go home, wanted to stop their endless voyaging. But he could not afford to uproot his brood and send them traveling again, especially now that Laski had withdrawn his patronage.

  And there was another reason, though he shied away from thinking about it as much as he could. The demon had come to them in England; it knew where they lived. It was still possible that it had not yet found them in Prague.

  He stopped going out. He sat in his room in Doctor Hageck’s house and observed his household—the children’s arguments, the stenches coming from Kelley’s experiments. He continued to write in his diary but now he left out and changed a good deal. In his version it was the Lord Chamberlain who led them to King Rudolf; the servant did not make an appearance. He did not think about the reason for these changes, though he knew obscurely that they gratified his vanity.

  And underneath everything the fear ate at him, gnawing like a rat at his vitals.

  He studied his daughter closely. She seemed fine, a happy and carefree three-year-old. He worried about her nonetheless. If the demon possessed her again he would be powerless to stop it, just as he was powerless in most things.

  She was too young to question, but he asked Arthur, who was four-and-a-half, if they were unhappy or worried about anything. Arthur looked impatient with the questions, and puzzled as well. “We’re fine,” Arthur said. He shifted from one foot to the other. “May Katherine and I go play now?”

  “If anything is worrying you—”

  “I know how to speak Czech,” he said. “Listen.” He said something quickly: it sounded like gibberish to Dee. “Can you say that?”

  “No. Listen—”

  “Go on. Say it.”

  “I can’t. Does Katherine—”

  “Yes you can. Come on.”

  “Arthur!” Dee said, his fear erupting into anger. The hurt look on Arthur’s face penetrated to his heart, and he repented his outburst immediately. “Go outside and play. I’m busy here.” Arthur turned and
ran from the room.

  A good deal of the time Jane fussed around him, cooking and cleaning and taking care of the children. “Go outside,” she told him more than once. “You’re underfoot here. I can’t get anything done with you around.”

  Finally he took her advice. He soon found, though, that the city no longer pleased him the way it once did. His steps were uncertain, like a sick man’s, and he rarely left his side of the river.

  One day he heard the sound of a crowd shouting. He turned a corner and saw that three or four men had backed a boy against a wall. One of the men pummeled him with a club and the others laughed loudly. Another kicked him roughly in the stomach. The boy fell to the ground.

  “Here!” Dee called, running forward. “Stop that! I’ll call the watch!”

  The men looked up. He had no idea how to summon the watch, he realized. And he had spoken in English; they could not possibly have understood him.

  The attackers left the boy and advanced toward him. The man in the lead grinned savagely and raised his club.

  Dee spoke a few words, hoping to stop them, to take control of the club. Nothing happened; his magic was not strong enough.

  Suddenly he heard more shouting; it sounded a long distance away. Three men hurried toward them, their daggers out. The thugs ran. The watch, Dee thought. He had summoned them, and like Kelley’s angels they had come.

  The man at the head of the watch said something to him in Czech. Dee shook his head. The man shrugged, attempted something in gestures which Dee did not understand, and then led the others away.

  “Wait!” Dee said. “What about him? He’s hurt!”

  The men did not stop. Dee bent over the boy. He was older than Dee had first thought, eighteen or nineteen, with long, unkempt sandy-colored hair. An ugly rash had broken out on his face, and he looked terribly thin, almost malnourished.

  “Are you all right?” Dee asked in German.

  The boy said nothing. Another Czech speaker, Dee thought. But then the boy picked himself up, gingerly testing every limb as he went. “No, of course I’m not all right,” he said in German. Speaking aggravated the cut on his lip, and he winced.

  “Where’s your home?” Dee asked.

  “I don’t have a home.”

  “Where do you live, then?”

  The boy said nothing. He headed down the street. Dee hesitated and then followed him.

  After a time they came to the walled city Dee had seen earlier. The boy went through the open gates. Should he go on? Who were these people, anyway?

  Rabbi Judah Loew came to the gateway to greet the boy. Where had he come from? What was happening here? It was like a dream, people and places from the past all blending together, none of it making any sense.

  Loew stopped when he saw Dee. The boy brushed past him rudely. “What are you doing here?” Loew asked.

  “I—the boy is hurt.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “I thought I’d help,” Dee said. He had not remembered the man being so prickly. “And what about you? What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” Loew laughed. “Don’t look so confused. This is the Jewish Quarter.”

  “Oh,” Dee said stupidly. He understood a good many things now. Why the boy had been attacked, for one thing, and why the watch had not stopped for him. Jews were probably not welcome outside the walls of the Quarter.

  His curiosity, never far from the surface, rose within him. “Who is the boy?” Dee asked. “Why is he so angry?”

  “His name is Izak,” Loew said. “He’s none of your concern.”

  “Very well,” Dee said stiffly. It was no wonder the Jews huddled together in their own town, he thought; if they were all as clannish and impolite as this no one would want to associate with them anyway. He turned to go.

  “Wait,” Loew said. “I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt. I need your help in something.”

  “What?” Dee said. His voice sounded more curt than he had meant it to be.

  “Please. Come with me.”

  He hesitated. It was his curiosity that finally made the decision for him; he had never seen a Jewish Quarter before. With a shock he realized that he had never seen a Jew either, until he had met Rabbi Loew. They had all been banished from England by someone, some king, centuries ago.

  He took a breath and stepped through the gate.

  The houses here were packed in together beyond what Dee thought would be possible, each one jostling up against its neighbor. Great crowds of people thronged the streets. Loew led him through crooked little lanes, past crooked little houses with overhanging eaves. Someone somewhere was singing in a minor key. From somewhere else came a strange smell, a delicious smell. Geese squawked. Everything seemed different, exotic, as though he had arrived not in another city but another continent.

  They went through a square, and there Dee saw the most curious thing yet. He stopped.

  “What is it?” Loew asked.

  “The clock,” Dee said. “It’s—”

  Loew looked at him, clearly puzzled.

  “It runs backwards,” Dee said.

  Loew laughed. “Does it? Perhaps it is your clocks that run backwards. Have you ever seen written Hebrew?”

  Of course. Hebrew ran from right to left. Now he saw that the clock bore Hebrew letters instead of numbers. “I studied Hebrew at Cambridge, actually,” Dee said. “Along with Greek and Latin. All the classical languages.”

  Loew said nothing, but for the first time Dee thought he looked impressed.

  They left the square and continued along the twisted cobblestoned streets. It was as though the clock had given him a clue, had shown him a way of translating the entire town. Everything here was the same, really, only backwards, as if seen in a mirror. It was not as exotic as he had thought.

  Now that he was paying more attention he saw that the people’s clothes were shabbier than those he had seen outside, and that everyone wore the same yellow circle as Rabbi Loew. So that was what it meant. And he noticed that on every street someone would stop and stare or point at him. You would think, Dee thought in annoyance, that they had never seen a Christian before.

  “Did you get your audience with Emperor Rudolf?” Dee asked.

  “Yes. It was not as bad as I feared it would be. He wanted to discuss Kabbalah.” Loew looked troubled. “But it’s dangerous to come to the attention of kings. Now that he’s talked to me he’ll probably invite me back.”

  “Why is that dangerous?”

  But Loew was turning in at one of the houses. As they stepped inside a woman came out to greet them. “Judah,” she said. “Did you find Izak? Is he hurt?”

  “Yes and yes,” Loew said. “Unfortunately. And he still wants nothing to do with me, with any of us.”

  “Poor child,” the woman said. She came farther into the room and saw Dee. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes showed the same mixture of curiosity and distrust he had seen from the townspeople. She turned quickly away.

  “I brought a guest,” Loew said. “This is Doctor John Dee, from England. And this is my wife Pearl.”

  “England,” Pearl said, wonderingly, as though it were a place out of legend.

  “He’s going to help me with my studies,” Loew said.

  They headed back into the small, cramped house. Loew ushered him into a dark room smelling strongly of leather, then opened the windows. As Dee’s eyes adjusted to the light he saw the source of the smell: bookshelves lined three walls, holding thick squat books, their titles etched on the spines in gold. Unfamiliar objects crowded the small room: branching candelabra, parchment covered in Hebrew letters, scroll-coverings made of threadbare dark velvet embroidered in silver and gold.

  Loew sat at his desk. “Choose a book,” he said.

  “What?” Dee asked.

  “Choose a book. Any book, any of the ones in my library.”

  Dee reached out at random and pulled a book down from the shelves. It was the Sefer Yetsira, the
Book of Creation, with a commentary. He had never seen this book before, though he had heard of it, and he looked at it with real curiosity.

  “Open it,” Loew said.

  Dee opened it.

  “What page are you on?” Loew asked.

  “Thirty-six,” Dee said.

  “Ah,” Loew said. “You see?”

  “See what?”

  “Thirty-six. Whatever book I open, whatever I choose to study, that number is always there. I wondered if this held true for other people who use my books. Apparently it does.”

  “A coincidence, surely?”

  “Is it? Open another book.”

  This time Dee found he had chosen a volume of the Talmud. He opened it near the end.

  “What page?” Loew asked.

  Dee looked at the number. “Thirty-six,” he said with surprise. Of course—Hebrew books were backwards, like the clock. He had actually opened it near the beginning. “Let me try again.”

  He took down another book and opened it. “Page eighty-five,” he said, a note of triumph in his voice.

  Loew looked over his shoulder. “A commentary on Exodus. The thirty-sixth chapter, thirty-sixth verse.”

  Dee read the Hebrew and saw that Loew was right. “Very well, I believe you. But why—”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have asked you here.”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea.”

  “Do you know any reason why this number might be significant?”

  “Only what I told you when we met.” Dee hesitated. Given this man’s clannishness, he thought, it was astonishing that he was asking a Gentile for help. Something must be worrying him a great deal. “Why ask me? Surely someone more familiar with Kabbalah might know.”

  “I’ve asked everyone I can think of. I brought you here because—well, because I thought I heard your voice once. It came to me out of nowhere. You were saying something about coming to Prague.”

  “I was?”

  “It appears we’ are fated to meet for some reason.” Loew sighed. “There is a Jewish tradition—but I was hoping it wasn’t that, I was hoping there might be another explanation.”

  “What is the tradition?” Dee asked.

  “That the world rests on the shoulders of thirty-six righteous men. And if something happens to any one of these men, if they die before their time or leave the path of righteousness, the world will come to an end. They are called the la’med vavniks, from the Hebrew letters that correspond to—”