Prophecy (2011)

by S. J. Parris

  The candle and tinderbox are still safe in the pocket of my breeches. Without my boots, my feet in my underhose make no sound, though the boards are uneven and complain at every step. I open the chamber door, first a crack and then enough to slip into the passageway outside. Nothing stirs; as I feel my way back towards the staircase, I imagine I can hear the collective rise and fall of breath as the household sleeps. If anyone crosses my path before I reach my destination, I can always pretend I am still half drunk and in search of a drink of water or the close-stool.

  The corridor that leads back past the dining room is deserted; though I keep my tread as light as possible, there is no one to hear. The door at the end of the corridor is closed and as I approach it the blood drums faster in my throat; if it should be locked, and I am unable to turn the lock with the blade of my knife - tucked, as always, into my waistband - then this whole performance will have been in vain.

  But the door opens smoothly, so easily that I half expect to find someone inside the library waiting for me, having guessed at my intention. Instead I find myself alone in a rectangular room lined on all four sides with wooden stacks of books and manuscripts, interrupted at either end where two arched windows face one another. Pale moonlight slants through one of these, tracing faint shapes on the floor. With trembling fingers, barely able to believe that my luck will hold, I close the door as silently as I can, take out the candle and strike a flame, once, twice; on the third attempt it lights, and I move closer to the books, trying to deduce Philip Howard’s method of classification. Or perhaps the library is really Henry Howard’s; the young earl does not strike me as much of a scholar. Henry might have moved his collection of books to Arundel House when his family lost their own seat. Either way, it gives me a frisson of pleasure to be poking about in the Howards’ library without permission, just as I believe Henry Howard to have done in Dee’s house.

  The circle of light quivers along the lines of books as I prowl the length of the shelves, knowing all the time that the book I hope to find will not be openly displayed, if it is here at all. But if Dee is right and it was Henry Howard who ordered the lost Hermes book to be stolen from him in Oxford all those years ago, then it is most likely to be hidden somewhere in his own library. My best hope is that I have enough time undisturbed to search for some sign of it.

  Even a cursory glance at the stacks shows that most of the volumes collected here are uncontroversial; works of classical scholarship, theology and poetry such as any gentleman might be expected to be acquainted with, chosen more for the finery of their bindings, it seems, than for their content. But the long wall facing the door intrigues me; it has no windows, yet from the layout as I came in, it seems to me that this room should mark the end of the east wing of the house. Why, then, does it have no windows to the outside to increase the light, when this would clearly be an advantage in a room intended for reading? I move carefully along the length of this wall, and as I reach the furthest of the stacks, the flame of my candle gutters violently and threatens to cough itself out altogether. I hold out my other hand to feel a sharp draught, which appears to be coming from behind the wooden bookcase. This is curious, since the stacks have the appearance of being built into the wall. Bending to the floor, I can see faint curving marks scratched in the boards at one side and my chest gives a wild lurch; trying to hold the candle steady, I grope with frantic fingers up the panel that joins the stack to the corner of the room. Built into the lattice-work carving on this panel are small indentations; about halfway up I insert my fingertips into one of these and find it is cut deeper than the others. Feeling blindly, I touch metal; there seems to be some kind of latch. I probe as best I can until I think I have released it; the wooden stack shifts almost imperceptibly and with my breath held fast, I begin to pull it towards me, away from the wall. It is heavy, but moves with surprising ease and I realise that it is built on a hinge, carefully weighted; it swings out just far enough for a person to slip into the gap behind, where a small door is built into the wall, invisible when the shelf stack is in place.

  My palms are sweating as I squeeze myself into the gap and try the latch of this new door. This one is locked, and does not yield easily to the coaxings of my knife blade; setting the candle down, I breathe deeply, knowing that haste and clumsy fingers will not help this operation. After some delicate manoeuvring, I feel the tip of the blade engage with the lock mechanism and very slowly, I manage to turn the bolt back, though my hand slips at the last moment and the edge of the blade catches my finger, leaving a trickle of blood running down the side of my hand. Cursing under my breath, I ease the door open.

  The candle flame leaps and flutters in the sudden draught as I nudge the door wider with my foot and step through into a narrow room. It is like stepping into a mausoleum. The dank breath of cold stone wraps around my face and there is an odour of decay, of dead matter. When I hold up the light, I almost gasp aloud, but the sound freezes in my throat.

  No ornate plaster ceiling or linenfold panelling have been employed to make this room warmer or more inviting. There is only the naked brick of the walls, the exposed beams of the ceiling that slopes sharply down, stone flags on the floor. This room appears to be built into the very wall of the house, its two arched windows bricked up. It is as if this room does not exist.

  Lifting the candle, I push the door shut and examine my surroundings. On the wall opposite, between the two blocked windows, hangs a vast painting of the heavens copied from one of the Arabic astrological charts, with concentric circles divided into the various houses of the zodiac and marked with the influence of the planets. Beneath this painting there is a cabinet of black wood, its double doors inlaid with a pattern of tiny mother-of-pearl lozenges and its top strewn with papers and discarded quills. To my left, at the far end of the room, stands a rectangular block draped in a dark purple cloth. It has the appearance of an altar, with a silver candlestick positioned at either side, but in the centre sits a polished crystal in a brass tripod, pale with a faint rosy tint under the light. It looks exactly like John Dee’s showing-stone. In Oxford I saw one such hidden chapel and I have heard that the Catholic nobles of England often have them built into their grand houses so that they may hear Mass in secret, but this looks like no place of Catholic worship. Glancing down, I see circles marked on the floor in chalk, divided into pentagrams, with astrological and occult symbols marked in each division. As I turn slowly to follow the line of the markings at my feet, a glint from the corner of the room catches my eye; I lift the candle and jump back at the sight of a human head, cast in brass and elevated on a narrow stone plinth. Its contours are eerily lifelike, though its cheeks are hollow and cadaverous, as if it has been cast from the head of a corpse. The eyes are blank and smooth, the mouth hollow, like that of the brazen head supposedly owned by the friar Roger Bacon some three hundred years ago, the head that, according to legend, would prophesy by the power of spirits. My skin prickles and the hairs on my arms rise in goose-bumps; this head is the clearest sign yet that this room is a temple to Hermetic magic. The writings of Hermes Trismegistus treat of animating statues and such devices by the power of spirits to make them prophesy; Saint Augustine condemned this as demonic magic, but the true adepts knew better. Has Henry Howard tried to make the bronze head speak, I wonder?

  Above the head a set of shelves is attached to the wall, with glass vials and flasks arranged in neat rows, together with a number of what look like surgical instruments. Some of these vials are filled with liquids, others contain more curious items - what appear to be splinters of bone or fragments of hair or skin, the kind of objects you might expect to find in any Catholic reliquary or alchemist’s laboratory. Opposite the altar, against the wall, stands a speculum made of polished obsidian, the height of a man and perhaps four feet across. The outline of my own form wavers across its surface, the candle flame jumping wildly in reflection as I keep it close. The showing-stone, the black mirror, the brazen head - these are the instruments of celesti
al magic, of those who seek illumination from the spiritual realm. So Howard, the great denouncer of prophecy, astrology and every kind of divination, is himself attempting to contact the powers beyond the stars. Dee has already guessed as much; I can’t help a smile of triumph.

  The candle is burning low, and the persistent breath of cold air continually threatens it; I dare not lose it, so I cross the room quickly and light the two candles on the altar. The new arcs of light ripple up the brickwork, pushing back the shadows a little. With every nerve alert, barely daring to breathe, I return to the cabinet and begin to sift through the papers. I can find no semblance of order among them; some appear to be complex astrological calculations involving the positions of the planets in the Great Conjunction and their movements through the calendar; others depict a series of tables showing what look like codes and ciphers. There are dozens of these; seemingly endless variations on the same table, meticulously copied, lists of letters, numbers and symbols in different configurations, multiplying over and over. Beneath these I find a rough draft of the map Henry Howard passed around the table at dinner, with the list of possible landing places and names of Catholic landowners. I lift up the sheet with the map and draw out another paper. With a jolt, I see immediately what it shows. I hastily lay it on top of the others and smooth it out to study, the flame trembling in my hand as I bend to read.

  The paper shows the Tudor and Stuart family tree, from King Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, and his wife Elizabeth of York. The true line of descent - as judged by the author of this page, at least - is inked in bold and clearly shows Henry’s eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor, who married King James IV of Scotland, as the grandmother of Mary Stuart. The Tudor line of succession continues through King Henry VIII, which this genealogy shows as having married Catherine of Aragon and produced the queen Mary Tudor - Elizabeth’s half-sister, the one they call Bloody Mary - who died in 1558. Of Henry’s subsequent marriages and offspring, there is no mention. Naturally, I think - this is the Catholic view of the English succession, which does not recognise Henry’s divorce and therefore regards his first marriage as his only legitimate union and his daughter Mary Tudor as his only legitimate heir. This is why they take such pleasure in referring to Elizabeth as ‘bastard’. There are other potential Tudor successors from the line of Henry VII’s younger daughter, another Mary, but there can be no doubt as to what this version of history wishes to prove: that Mary Stuart is the eldest living legitimate heir to the crown of England.

  To possess a copy of such a genealogy is treason under English law, punishable by death. But this is not even the best of it, for beside the name of Mary Stuart is written that of her deceased husband, Lord Darnley (himself also descended from Margaret Tudor), and beneath them a line showing the fruit of that union, the present King James VI of Scotland. Next to it, in the faintest ink but unmistakably in the same hand is a line conjoined to Mary that simply reads ‘H’. From it leads a line of descent, as if to denote a prospective offspring, but the space where the name of the child should be remains blank. I run a tongue around my dry lips as I hold the paper closer to my eyes, as if doing so might confirm the audacity of what is written here. There is no doubt that this is the same hand as the writing on the list of safe havens passed around the supper table earlier, that I had studied so intently - the loops and crosses are distinctive - and must surely be Henry Howard’s. So my suspicions were right from the beginning: his ultimate plan is to become Mary’s husband, to sit beside her on the throne of England and - most daring of all - he dreams of putting a son of his own into the line of succession. I find I am shaking my head, partly in disbelief but partly in admiration at the reach of the man’s ambition. Of course, he has kept this from his co-conspirators. Marie and Courcelles are working for the Duke of Guise, who must intend a stake in the new Catholic kingdom for himself; perhaps, as Mary’s cousin, he may feel he already has a family entitlement. Douglas I have always assumed to be an opportunist; does he guess he is working for the advancement of the Howard family, and would he care, as long as he came out of it well? I wonder if even Philip Howard, with his mealy mouthed pleas for limited bloodshed, has guessed at his uncle’s ultimate plan.

  Hastily I fold the paper and tuck it inside the waistband of my breeches at my side, under my shirt. Whatever else I may uncover tonight, this alone was worth all the risk: it is pure gold. A genealogy in Henry Howard’s own hand, denying Elizabeth’s right to reign and clearly showing his intention to marry the Queen of Scots - this is proof of Howard treason beyond anything Walsingham could have hoped for. With a bit of judicious questioning, Howard might be expected to give up further details of the invasion plan with plenty of time to prevent it.

  My blood is racing with the thrill of this success, but I do not have time to lose; next I crouch to try the doors of the black cabinet, but here for the first time my luck fails. The doors are locked. I cannot see any other place in the room where books might be hidden - and if Henry Howard has forbidden occult books, as he must, where else would he hide them but in this secret chapel? I unsheathe my knife and attempt to insert its tip into the lock, but the keyhole is too small and the blade cannot penetrate far enough to make any purchase. Frustrated, and anxious too, as I note that all the candles are burning lower, I set it down and return to the shelves above the brazen head to see if there is some smaller implement among the paraphernalia there that might serve, and as my gaze ranges along the row of vials that look like reliquaries, one in particular catches my eye. An ornate glass bottle containing a single lock of bright gold hair.

  I reach for it and take out the stopper. I have seen more saints’ remains in Italy than I could number - enough fingers and blood and hair to people the world with blessed saints seven times over - but usually those who sell fake relics make some effort to give their wares the semblance of antiquity. This lock of hair has none of the brittle, dusty look of those old trinkets; it appears fresh and springy, coiled behind the glass. Cecily Ashe had blonde hair, I remember, with a lurch of the stomach.

  ‘I see you have found the hair of Saint Agnes.’

  Henry Howard’s voice, behind me, is polite, amused, as if he were not in the least surprised to find me here, in his occult chapel, rooting through the ingredients of his arts. He has appeared so silently that for one awful moment it seems the brazen head has spoken; I leap and whip round so violently at the sound that I almost drop the bottle. All I can do is stare at him, slack-jawed and shaking. In one hand he holds a candle, in the other, an ornamental sword.

  ‘They possess powers to protect chastity, the relics of Saint Agnes,’ he goes on, in the same breezy tone, ‘and also over the favourable cultivation of crops. But of course you know all this. I find it fascinating, don’t you? That the same force should exercise its influence over both chastity and fertility, two opposites.’

  ‘Opposing forces share a powerful connection,’ I say, recover ing my voice. ‘If one believes in such powers.’

  ‘You do not believe in the power of relics, I do not think. But as a good disciple of Hermes, you must believe that certain elements in the natural world may harness particular powers mirrored in the celestial realm?’

  I only look at him and shrug, affecting a coolness I do not feel. I am aware that I am at his mercy here, and that the best course is probably to keep silent. My eye drifts to the sword, which he holds loosely at his side.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he says, moving towards me and kicking the door shut with his foot. He wears a heavy crimson robe over his nightshirt. ‘It would have been interesting to discuss the Hermetic magic with you, in other circumstances. In private I am willing to concede that you have a considerable reputation in these matters, though you will not hear me praise you for it in company.’

  ‘I am flattered.’ I incline my head. He misses the sarcasm.

  ‘You certainly have more audacity than I would have credited, Bruno.’ His tone is almost admiring. ‘Your performance was entirely convi
ncing this evening. You out-drank Douglas - that should have roused my suspicions. If I had not been so willing to let you confirm my worst prejudices about you, I might have been more wary. And I see you are extremely canny. Even Her Majesty’s pursuivants have never managed to find this room, not on all the occasions it has pleased them to search my nephew’s house.’ He paces softly across the stone flags in his velvet slippers to cast a casual eye over the papers on top of the cabinet. His foot is only inches from the bone-handled knife I left lying on the floor after my attempt to pick the lock. My muscles tense; the document beneath my shirt pricks my skin. Will he notice its absence from one glance?

  ‘My nephew had this built as a private chapel. The Jesuit Edmund Campion said a Mass here once, you know. But after Campion was executed and the Privy Council came down harder on the secret priests, Philip lost his nerve somewhat. Can’t blame the boy - he was only young when he saw his father executed for treason and his title lost. He doesn’t want this estate attainted as well. So there were no more Masses after that and I took possession of the chapel for my private work. We never speak of it.’ His eyes drift to the altar at the far end of the room, as if remembering its more orthodox use. ‘The day they hung and quartered Campion at Tyburn - that was the moment I realised England would never be restored by priests and prayers alone. Faith would have to show itself in stronger action.’ As he says this, the muscles in his jaw twitch and his knuckles whiten around the hilt of the sword. Perhaps, I think, watching him, behind his desire for revenge and advancement lies some genuine religious feeling; or perhaps they have become one and the same. He snaps his eyes back to me, the mem ories dismissed.