“Still, the Spanish won’t believe it,” said Cooke. “Not after your last expedition. Also, you have the Queen’s affection, and she’s known to be worried by the tumult stirred up by Allen’s sneaking Jesuit spies. What more natural than she’d welcome a plan to let the Papists go without persecution? It will be understood that she has secretly told Walsingham to secretly advise Peckham and Gerrard and others to support you.” He sighed gustily. “This worries me. Association with Papists might harm my business.” He eyed me, suddenly stern. “Any money I give must be in secret, between us three.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Doctor Dee.
“So do I,” I said, “and I thank you, and so will the Queen.” And I reflected in the fire again. “Though she doesn’t want me to go. She wants me to stay close in England.”
“She never wants to let anyone go.” Cooke shrugged ponderously. “She’s like a broody hen with no brood but the whole nation.”
“You insult her!” I protested. “She is our Crown!”
“Your loyalty is what your friends like about you, if not your discretion,” observed Dee acidly. “Cooke speaks sense, you want his money, but you rebuke him. Sir Humfrey, your last expedition still hangs over you, and Cooke here is trying to help!”
“Oh, nothing!” Cooke slapped his knee in good humour. “I’m a base man of money, Sir Humfrey is keen on high dreams. I understand!”
I breathed very deeply.
“I must hold to what I believe, or I’ll get nowhere!”
“You’ll get to America,” Dee repeated. He stared into the sparkling wine-streaked cave of his glass. I ignored the chill I felt.
“I apologise,” I said to Cooke, “But tell me: if you think that Walsingham spoke secretly to Peckham and Gerrard, did he also speak to Doctor Dee and yourself to make both of you support me?”
Cooke shrugged, and said nothing, and drank.
“There was no need.” Dee’s voice was sardonic. “I always wanted a land of my own, a British land, preferably barren and empty, so that in my old age I can sit on it without fear of a warm wife bringing me supper, or friends coming to visit from universities in Europe, or what-have-you. And if I tire of the solitude, well… I’ll summon friends and we’ll play, there on the rock and ice beneath the midnight sun.” He looked up briefly, his smile pale, before his gaze returned into the glass. “How should we need Walsingham’s persuasion?”
“You’ll get very squeezed by the converging lines of longitude at the Pole,” I joked uncomfortably with him, “and you may find yourself more magnetised than you care for.”
Cooke farted loudly. I suppose it was meant as-comment.
“Yes,” mused Dee, “I’ve been thinking about longitude again…”
“You have?” I asked, and he nodded abstractedly, impressively.
“Yes. By spherical trigonometry I think I can find a formula to convert known longitude of departure into difference of longi…”
“Spherical what?” Cooke was grinning, but suspicious.
“…of course, even with such a formula,” Dee continued in the same distant voice, “accurate measure of ship-speed and distance sailed will be required, which cannot be done until someone makes an accurate seagoing clock… which will come… in time… along with many other things beyond our present understanding and reach of mind”
“No spirits!” Cooke repeated unhappily. “Please!”
“I think too much to raise spirits,” said Dee remotely, “but when I’m tipsy I can see reflections in the bottom of beautiful goblets like this one… I can see a flag made of England and Wales and Scotland together, flying in many lands, heralding an empire that’ll rise and endure and decay… and I see other shadows too.”
“I want not this influence!” Cooke insisted.
“It is but common sense distilled in wine and my fancy,” Dee soothed him, tilting the glass in his hand. He looked at me. “For example, with my imagination set free like this, I can see that the work being done by your namesake William Gilbert will lead to great changes. He has coined a word, “electricity,” for a natural power that he has isolated in his tests with magnets, and has also told me of the Orbis Virtutis, or field of power round the magnet, which I think is the power used by our wise druid ancestors, and those before them, who knew how to draw it out of the earth for use in healing and increase of wisdom. For Gilbert says that the whole earth is a magnet, and all matter magnetic, attractive and repulsive, which is why the moon goes round the earth, and the earth round the sun, and men and women round each other. It is why Darkness and Light do not exist without each other, being continually repelled in war but at the same time attracted in marriage of opposites. There is no Life without Death, no Purpose without Purposelessness! Male and female must marry magnetically to make the Divine Third without which there is no creative progression!—the Child, the Stone, the Elixir!—which is why I try to consort with Angels, to mate with Eternity and learn more.”
And now his eyes caught me more strongly:
“Also it is why, Sir Humfrey, I cannot share your taste for your own sex. To match North with North or South with South brings chaos, not vision of God. So far as I see it can create nothing positive, but leads only to Via Dolorosa.”
I was taken aback. “I’ll wave my wand where I want!” I replied angrily. “What harm’s in it? I’m a man, not an angel; there is variation in me just as in a compass! What life could there be if everything related perfectly to its opposite all the time? And by your own argument applied at another level, why therefore do you work not with women, but with male scryers?”
“I meant no personal criticism,” said the Doctor. “I state only the principle of polarity that governs creation and progression. I take your points. We are all fools in some degree.”
Then Cooke slapped his knee and started bellowing with laughter. I gazed at him in astonishment and some indignation. His red round face was a-beam at the new-fangled ceiling.
“I’m glad to be a fool!” he boomed. “I count my shit every morning and my pennies every night, and such idiocy has brought me the great pleasure of listening to wise fools like yourselves, Doctor John and Sir Humphrey. I understand not a word of this stuff!—principles and purposes and polarities!—and I suspect—his head dropped, he scanned us shrewdly—“that your high language is just my low language in disguise. I think despite these fine words you are really talking about God the Pound, God the Shilling, and God the Holy Pence. And as for our bodily tastes,” he went on, giving me a broad grin to deflate my indignation at his scurrilous talk of the Almighty—“well! Our tastes are as diverse as Nature allows: why should differences stop us making money together? I’m a merchant, a gross man, I admit it, and in a good mood tonight, having seen Lord Strange’s Players this afternoon, and being entertained tonight by the—excuse me—comedy of your shit-stained arrival. Now I’m full of good food and drink and at last the Doctor has said something I can understand: that we are all fools in some degree. So, Sir Humfrey, I pledge you fifty pounds towards your venture!” He raised his tankard. “I expect no return, mind you, for you’re one sort of fool, and I’m another, and the Doctor’s a third. But what should I do with my wealth but take some chances with it?”
I was shocked by his attitude, but gratified too, his pledge being generous. So we drank to it, and I thanked the man, and thanked God too, and soon afterwards the Doctor and I took our leave in our clean dry clothes. I stopped in Chelsea for a night of it at Madam Hotbun’s stew, spending a shilling for a girl and boy together, as I felt expansive and energetic. The Doctor went on home to Mortlake, to his wife and the madman Kelly, and where’s the odds?
Twenty-one months later I set sail for Newfoundland.
10. Sir Humfrey Meets the Power Not of Christ
Why am I scared even to write of it?
On the day I was taken, sailing the plunging Squirrel through the awful storm, I shouted each time we neared the Hind: “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!�
� I was ready to die, not out of morbid motive, but because my course had led me into circumstance I would not deny. I believed as I wrote, in the words that ended my Discourse, that: “He is not worthy to live at all, that for fear, or danger of death, shunneth his country’s service, and his own honour: seeing death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal. Wherefore in this behalf, Multare vel timere sperno”
Who wrote that? Why am I so fearful?
June the eleventh of 1583 was a glorious day, fresh and fair, with a good steady wind, and by sunrise there were many small boats from Plymouth and roundabout, all come to give my fleet of five ships a good send-off from Cawsand Bay. Everything was ready, and once the business of family farewells and last-minute provisioning was done, I was on the Delightas quick as I could. Again I felt that anticipation mixed with apprehension. This time I would take Newfoundland. Yes! But what might yet go wrong? All was ready. Signals were exchanged. I gave the order. The roar of cannon boomed across the Bay, and as our ships weighed anchor and started out there was a great cheer from the many who’d gathered, and a crackling of small arms to speed us on our way. So we left England. And all that day, until land was lost to sight behind us and darkness came descending with rougher weather, I stayed on the fo’c’s’le of the Delight, gazing west, refusing to look behind. And the truth is this was as much through fear of being ordered back at the last minute as it was through anticipation of winning my lifelong goal.
It seemed amazing, to have won free after all the years of trial. I stood, braced by the wind and by the spray that pearled in my hair and beard, hardly believing I truly breathed the ocean air again! After all the disappointments! Hah! That to Mendoza! That to the Muscovy wolves! Despite their every enemy effort I’d got the money and support I needed, though the Privy Council had made me take a ridiculous oath that I wouldn’t go pirating. A Company of Adventurers had been formed of those who’d bought an interest in the profit of the venture: these included Lord Burghley, the Earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Sussex, Sir Henry Sidney, Philip Sidney, Doctor Dee, and others, including Sir George Peckham, who’d been most helpful even though the Catholic scheme had been dropped. Also Walsingham, who’d given fifty pounds of his own, had persuaded merchants of Southampton to support me in return for my grant to them of a monopoly on future supply of necessities from England to my colony. In all, I’d built more than five hundred and fifty pounds, a large sum, to equip my fleet. Most important, I’d received the Queen’s leave to go.
I walked with her for the last time in the gardens at Hampton Court nearly twenty-eight years after I’d walked with her in the gardens of Hatfield. Her face was drawn. I know she was in great pain with toothache, and other complaints, but she was more a Queen now than ever I’d known her, and I told her this.
“Humfrey, your flattery always sounds awkward.” Her smile was tight. “So, you’re leaving me. Will you be back? I doubt it. I doubt you love me enough!”
“Your Majesty, I…”
She waved me aside.
“Thank your brother Raleigh. He’s a rogue in some ways, I think less sincere than you, but it seems I cannot say nay to him. It’s his persuasion that sets you off, not my pleasure. And I hear he gives you a new bark he designed himself. Two hundred tons. Considerable. He must love you well, Humfrey—as I do. You will promise now to leave me with a picture of you before you go.”
“My Queen, with the greatest…”
“But what’s this about the Swallow? Can you control those men? I hear they were jailed for pirating French in the Channel. Of course they agree to go with you for a pardon. But will they obey you and serve England when they reach the other side of the world? Who have you to captain over them? A good man?”
“Maurice Browne,” I said. “He has considerable exper…”
“Yes, but I hear his hand is not so hard. Watch those ruffians, Humfrey.” Her eye flashed on me. “And watch your own temper and discretion. Be impartial. Allow no favourites. Be not hot and hasty in command. Take no stupid risks to prove your courage where all good men already know and admire it. Now tell me: what are your other men and ships and captains? Tell me all about it.”
I told her, that I was going as General in our Admiral-ship, the Delight, of a hundred and twenty tons, with William Winter, Captain, and Richard Clarke, Master. The Bark Raleigh had Mr. Butler for Captain and Robert Davis of Bristol, Master. I did not dare ask her to let Walter accompany us, I knew what her reply would be. There was my little Squirrel, eight tons, which alone survived from my former expedition. It started with William Andrews as Captain and a man called Cade the Master. The Swallow with its pirates was forty tons, and so was the Golden Hind (not Drake’s ship), captained by its owner, Edward Hayes of Liverpool, with Cox of Limehouse for Master.
“I hear Hayes is a good man,” she said, “but strange, is it not, that none who sailed with you before will sail with you again?”
I hurried over this and spoke glowingly to her of other strength, of our two hundred and sixty fine strong men; of our carpenters, shipwrights, masons, smiths, mineral men, and refiners; of the flags and course and watchwords and fleet orders I’d organised; of the music and toys and petty haberdashery wares we’d take to excite and win over the savage people peacefully.
“And the scholar Parmenius from Hungary accompanies us,” I went on. “He has been so excited by the work he has composed to celebrate this voyage that he insists on coming, to compose on return a great work that’ll resound the glory of English Discovery! This can bring nothing but good to Your Majesty!”
“Yes,” she said drily, “I have read some of it, Humfrey, and if your sailing proves as elegant as his Latin, then you’ll return to us with cause for great celebration, and I’ll not have cause to mourn the loss of another old friend.”
So you can see why I feared recall, and did not look back, but only ahead, hoping misfortune was all behind.
It was not.
The first day was fair, but the first night there was fierce gale, and on the third night we were struck by a terrible blow. The Bark Raleigh, having signalled sickness on board, deserted us and turned precipitously back to England. I raged, accusing my enemies of it, of planning the desertion. There was never proof, but I still believe it. Such a blow! To lose our best and biggest ship, and so many men, and so much provision! It severely harmed us at the outset. Yet my rage was useless: we had to go on. And on we went. And the weather turned against us. As usual in my hurry I’d left too late. In April and May, with better winds, the voyage to Newfoundland often took no more than twenty-two days. It took us more than twice that.
To start with, thirteen days of fog and heavy winds drove us far south of our intended course, to the forty-first parallel, where I’d hoped to keep to the forty-sixth. Next, when we came about, we were driven too far north, to the fifty-first parallel, the mists persisting and causing us such confusion that on the twentieth of July we in the Delight and Golden Hind lost touch with the other two. We did not meet them again until we reached Newfoundland two weeks later, where we found that the rogues of the Swallow had already turned the fishermen of St. John against us.
The journey was long and incredibly tedious. Every night there was dice and cards and music and drink, and Parmenius with his Latin hexameters. The man simply could not keep quiet once he’d drunk a pot or two of English ale. Verses spilled out of him like piss out of anyone else, full of vision and prophecy of empire: fine stuff, in its way, but all in Latin, which I could understand, but few others. Still, he kept us diverted, and we needed every diversion we had.
On Saturday the twenty-seventh of July I saw from the fo’c’s’le the castles of ice that Pysgie once told me of, and not long after we came out of the last of the fogs and over the Grand Banks where the fishermen go. We had about thirty fathom of water, and incredible numbers of gulls and other birds wheeling above and about, seeking and darting on the offal of fish thrown out by the fishermen. And it was three days later that we had firs
t sight of the bare high Labrador coast.
I was glad indeed to see it. Hope began to outweigh my anxiety, I admitted to myself at last I’d been worrying about the cunning man. But now, surely, I was come to America, and triumph must be near, for now, with my own eyes, I had looked on America, and knew with my own reason where formerly I’d had to rely on others: America did exist.
So we started trending south, and the weather was fair and clear as we passed the isle called Penguin, which had French hunters on it. And thus at last we came to the Newfoundland. With utmost eagerness I scanned those beautiful forested hills and their every evidence of fertile wealth. And soon in the bay called Conception we found the Swallow again, but the meeting was not happy, for we learned that the rogues had robbed a Newlander, torturing its crew by tightening rope about their heads to get gear and provision from them. I was greatly angered, for thus my oath against piracy was broken, and it was little pleasure to learn that some had got their just desserts, being drowned on return to the Swallow, their cockboat overwhelmed in a heavy sea. Others, I was amazed to hear, had been rescued by the very men they’d just tortured and robbed. It seemed most foolishly Christian mercy.
“God has saved them!” I snapped. “Now we must curb them!”
“Then they’ll mutiny and desert,” Browne muttered wearily.
So I did nothing. As to the poor Newlander, I do not know what happened. We continued south along the rugged grand coast, I wondering how to control the villains, and somewhat morose, but soon we had cause for new excitement, for outside the magnificent harbour of St. John we found the Squirrel at anchor, and Captain Andrews came aboard.
“They woan’t let uz in!” he complained. “‘Arbour Admiral’s English all right but calls us rogues cuz o’ what the Swallow done! There be thirty-six sail in there an’ all agreed against uz!”
“They’ll change their tune!” I said. “We enter now!”
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