The Showstone

by Glenn Cooper

  Sunrise came early this time of year. Cal awoke when the first light began to leak around the bedroom curtains. He took care not to disturb Jessica, brewed a coffee, and went to the living room to place a call to London, where it was just past ten. A woman answered. Cal asked to speak with Omar Rasouly. He didn’t know his exact age, but he reckoned, based on his curriculum vitae and when he had received his graduate degree from the University of Paris, that Rasouly was in his mid- to late seventies. The departmental secretary at the Institute of Archeology told him that Professor Rasouly no longer came into work on a regular basis but when Cal identified himself as a professional colleague from Harvard, she was more helpful. Cal wrangled Rasouly’s home phone number from her and rang it straight away.

  A craggy voice answered in a French accent.

  Cal started to introduce himself but Rasouly interrupted.

  ‘I used to know a Professor Donovan.’

  ‘My father. Hiram Donovan.’

  ‘Where was he? Was it Harvard or Yale?’

  ‘Harvard. I’m at Harvard too.’

  ‘I remember when he died. It was very sad.’

  ‘Professor Rasouly, you were doing the paleographic work for the dig at Rabban Hurmizd. I wanted to revisit my father’s research and perhaps pull together the excavation report that was never written.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘So, with that in mind, I was trying to find out if you had ever done any analysis on the papyrus fragments from the third season of the dig. That would have been in 1988.’

  ‘Let me think. It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? You know, I don’t believe I did any analysis. When Hiram died the funding for the project died with him.’

  ‘Where are the fragments now? Do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere at the Institute, I expect. These days I don’t go into the office much, but they haven’t locked me out yet.’

  ‘If I come to the Institute later this week, say Friday, could you let me see them? I can do the translations myself if you’re busy.’

  ‘You know Aramaic?’

  ‘Biblical Aramaic, mainly.’

  ‘What day did you say?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what was your name again?’

  ‘Calvin Donovan. I’ll ring you on Thursday when I get to London to confirm.’

  ‘Hiram Donovan was a wonderful man, you know. I do remember him.’

  Tariq Barzani was waiting when his boss arrived for work. Hamid knew from his eager expression that Barzani had something for him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The microphone I left at Donovan’s house picked this up earlier this morning.’

  He opened his laptop and played the file.

  As Hamid listened his face softened into something approaching pleasure.

  ‘Fly to London tonight,’ he said when the recording was over. ‘Find the papyrus before Donovan gets it.’

  ‘And the black mirror?’

  ‘I doubt Donovan will travel with it. He’s probably got it hidden away somewhere. Once we have the 49th Call we can turn our attention to the showstone again. I have a mind to kidnap the woman who was with him that night. He’ll trade it for her, don’t you think?’

  Barzani grinned at the prospect. ‘Tying her up again will be my pleasure.’

  SIXTEEN

  Mortlake, England, 1582

  John Dee was furiously spitting venom like a cornered serpent.

  ‘Your name is Kelley! Edward Kelley. Edward Talbot is a fiction. You have deceived me! I invited you into my house. You supped at my table!’

  Kelley’s head was bowed in a show of penitence. He stood before a seated Dee in his inner sanctum like a naughty pupil. Under the name of Edward Talbot, he had scryed for Dee for several months. The two of them had made slow but steady progress, learning the angel alphabet, symbol by symbol, and the language, word by word. They had been given a glimpse of the celestial knowledge they might receive in the future when Dee learned of the subterfuge and abruptly put an end to their association. A distraught Kelley had fled north to his family home in Worcester and it had taken half a year for Francis Walsingham to persuade him to return to London and attempt a reconciliation. Now, on a cold November night, he presented himself at the house by the Thames, prepared to do whatever it took to reestablish himself into Dee’s good graces.

  ‘It was but a trifle, Doctor Dee, but I do accept that I engaged in a deception. My reputation was sullied by false accusations and I did not wish those falsehoods to interfere with my prospects.’

  ‘Well, sir, I know the reason,’ Dee fumed. ‘I had occasion during the month of May to speak with Barnabus Saul, who informed me of these so-called falsehoods. You are a forger. You are a thief. That is why I banished you from my employ.’

  ‘None of this is true. I beg you to see through the veil of lies to the truth. Surely you must see that Barnabus Saul is a man embittered because I displaced him.’

  ‘Yet you freely admit to using a false name! If the allegations are untrue why did you not give me your family name?’

  ‘May I sit?’ Despite his staff he was wobbling on his bad leg and Dee took pity on him. ‘Thank you. The reason is a simple one. I greatly wished to secure employment in your household and I did not want false allegations about past misdeeds to intercede.’

  ‘Once again, you make statement about false claims. Why do you suppose persons made such allegations?’

  Kelley lowered his voice. ‘The times we live in, Doctor.’

  Dee asked him what he meant by such an enigmatic assertion.

  ‘Some gentlemen with whom I was doing business – I was engaged in the export of certain goods to the Low Countries – these gentlemen sought to seize advantage by having false charges brought against me. I was held in an unhealthful prison for weeks and when my time came to answer these charges they whispered to the judge that I was a papist. My judgment came swiftly without any due consideration for the facts of the matter, and a harsh physical punishment was meted out. You can see the results inflicted upon my poor body with your own eyes.’

  Dee listened in rapt attention, his visage losing some of its sharp edge. ‘Is it true? Are you a Catholic?’

  The man winced. ‘Am I to be judged harshly again for my beliefs?’

  Dee rose to pour two cups of watered wine. He offered one to Kelley.

  ‘My past is known to many but perhaps not to you,’ Dee said, sitting back down. ‘I am a loyal subject of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen. Her realm is Protestant and this is a Protestant household. However, I was not always a Protestant, a common fact for men and women of my age. I was born a Catholic under a Catholic king. Beyond that fact of birth, as a young man I elected to become a priest and took Holy Orders.’

  Kelley pretended he did not know. ‘You, sir, a priest?’

  ‘It is an indelible part of my history. However, as we are painfully aware, the circumstances in England changed. King Henry was the architect of these changes. He made the country Protestant. Young King Edward perpetuated the faith. With his untimely death, Queen Mary did reverse course and we were once again a Catholic land. Then, a few short years later, Queen Elizabeth did restore her father’s religion. And all the while, Protestants and Catholics caught on the wrong side of history did suffer and burn. As for me, I renounced Holy Orders and my vow of celibacy and here I am, a devotee of the Queen’s religion, a husband, and a father. But despite my devotion to the Crown and all my good work and services thereunder, my Catholic past has been an impediment toward my attaining royal patronage and remuneration. So, I say this to you, Master – Kelley, it is easy for me to believe that you might have been persecuted by unscrupulous men on account of your religion.’

  Kelley broke down in tears which seemed to make the unsentimental Dee uncomfortable. He bade him to drink down his wine.

  ‘Your kind words do touch me, Doctor Dee.’ When his eyes were dry he looked up from his cup and as
ked, ‘May I ask you something? When born a Catholic can one truly leave the old religion behind? Does it not bubble up in one’s soul like a spring of fresh water?’

  Dee looked at him through hooded eyes and answered cautiously, ‘Is your soul bathed by this spring?’

  Kelley whispered his reply, as if they were in a crowded tavern. It had been a while since he had spoken the truth about his life and this was the truth. ‘I wear a Protestant cloak, but my flesh is Catholic. May I ask of your belief?’

  Dee considered his reply and then said, ‘I endeavor not to look back. I am a natural philosopher, a seeker of knowledge, and therefore I am inclined to look forward. I am also a practical man. If today the Queen tells me to wear black, I will wear black. If tomorrow she tells me to wear yellow, then yellow will be my color.’

  Outside the window the daylight was gone and if it were not for the candles Dee had lit earlier, the room would have been dark. He asked Kelley if he was of a mind to stay the night and undertake a spiritual action.

  ‘That would please me more than anything, Doctor Dee,’ the young man gushed.

  ‘Then I will go outside to use the privy and then we will get to our work to be followed by a late supper.’

  Once alone, Kelley went limp like a rag doll, breathing hard in relief. He rapidly composed himself, seizing the opportunity, his actions guided by Walsingham’s unseen hand. There was a pile of correspondence on Dee’s desk and he began to rifle through it. One particular letter set his already fluttering heart beating even faster.

  Dee found his wife in the kitchen plucking a chicken. His young son, Arthur, was crawling on the floorboards, chasing a bug.

  She looked up from her task and simply asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘I did speak with him about his deceit,’ he answered.

  ‘I did not see him leave,’ she said.

  ‘He is still here. We will conduct a spiritual action and then we will eat. He will stay the night.’

  Jane pursed her lips and said nothing. Dee imagined she was wordlessly counting to prevent an eruption.

  ‘Do not hesitate to speak, Jane,’ he said.

  ‘Then I would ask you to explain yourself, husband.’

  ‘When I put to him what I learned from Barnabus, he freely admitted the transgression. He told me he did not wish to lose the opportunity for employment. He maintains his good name was sullied by disreputable business partners who did influence a judge to rule in their favor by invoking his Catholic beliefs.’

  ‘And you believed this?’

  ‘I found him persuasive. He is not the only one in this country who has been cruelly persecuted for his faith.’

  Her plucking became fiercer. Feathers fell like snowflakes. The toddler turned his attention to the shower and began gathering them up in his tiny hands.

  ‘Husband, I applaud you for your Christian charity, but I shudder with the knowledge that this man remains under our roof. I will have no more to say on the matter.’

  The two men fell back into their routine as if their last scrying session had only just taken place. Dee set up his holy furniture and his companion’s black showstone, invoked a prayer, and watched Edward Kelley’s face for the flicker of recognition that would signal an angelic presence.

  Would it be Raphael? It had been Raphael who, until their sessions came to a halt, had been painstakingly teaching Dee the angel language. The basis for the language was twenty-one regular characters and an additional aspirated one, pronounced not with a hard sound but with a strong burst of air. Each of the characters bore a name and, as in Hebrew, when strung together to form words, they were read from right to left. Likewise, when the words formed the pages in revealed texts, the books were read back to front. There the comparison ended because angel language bore no other relationship to Hebrew or any other known tongue. To Dee, learning angel-speak was not the academic exercise of mastering a dead form. He considered it to be very much a living language that humanity had lost and would now reclaim. As he saw it, the knowledge would set him on a course toward the ultimate wisdom, to the long-awaited rediscovery of the Book of Nature, establishing the lost links between Adam and the angels and God Himself.

  But the task was arduous. Although Dee was a linguistic scholar, this divine language did not conform to any known rules of grammar, syntax, or pronunciation and the angels had warned him that even the smallest error would have profound significance in obscuring the results. Dee spent a great deal of energy trying to master the way it was spoken so he could form his speech just like the angels to elevate it from the mortal to the immortal. The process was made even more difficult and complex by the very nature of the instruction. Everything had to pass through the eyes and mouth of his scryer who was the only one who could see and hear the angels within the showstone. For these lessons, it was Raphael who appeared in Kelley’s black mirror standing on a table covered in the angelic letters, pointing with the tip of a long rod, spelling out long passages of text, letter by letter. Not surprisingly, some of the angelic sessions lasted for seven hours or longer, leaving Dee and Kelley exhausted. In frustration, Dee had asked whether there was some way to make the process go faster, but Raphael had scolded him for his presumption and demanded that he learn the language on God’s terms, not his. If he persisted, divine wisdom would be his. The angels had told him that the divine language played the pivotal role in the creation of the world. The word of God, spoken in the angel tongue, created the cosmos and the first human, Adam, and the language was, as the angels put it, the ‘plasmating’ force for the Book of Nature that gave coherence to the universe.

  And furthermore, the angels presented Dee with a carrot on a stick. If he followed their path diligently and mastered the language then great hidden texts such as the Holy Book of Loagaeth, the Speech from God, would be revealed to him. And beyond that were secret angelic calls that would allow him to communicate with ever-higher heavenly realms, bringing him closer and closer to the bosom of God Himself.

  On this night as Dee waited for divine contact to occur, he dipped his quill and dated his notebook, 1582, Novembris 15, then wrote, Post reconciliationem Kellianam – after the reconciliation with Kelley. Before the ink was dry, Kelley leaned forward, his gaze fixed hard on the stone.

  ‘It is the angel Uriel!’ Kelley exclaimed. Then he allowed himself a smile and whispered across the holy table, ‘It is good to be scrying with you again, dear Doctor.’

  Kelley scryed with Dee for several days in Mortlake before excusing himself to attend to personal business. That business was to report to the stately residence of Francis Walsingham at Seething Lane in London, uncomfortably close to the Tower of London. Walsingham had a fever and bade his secretary to send Kelley to his drafty bedchamber. The day was fair, but one might not have known it. Heavy curtains blotted out the light. The paneling was dark, the floorboards were dark, the tapestries were dark, the candles were few and scattered about on dark furniture. Walsingham was propped on pillows and covered in dark-colored brocaded bedclothes and was visible only from the shoulders up. To his visitor, the tableau had the hallmarks of a nightmare. Even in a state of infirmity, the dour visage of the Secretary of State pierced Kelley’s breast with fear.

  ‘Throw more logs onto the fire,’ Walsingham commanded, but when Kelley turned to look for the basket of wood, Walsingham shouted, ‘Not you, man! Are you dimwitted? My servant!’

  The manservant who had been lurking in the shadows hopped to it while Kelley apologized and drew closer, unsure, where to sit or where to stand.

  Walsingham lashed out again in a feverish pique and shouted at the scryer to take the chair nearest the bed.

  ‘Give me your report, man. Don’t dawdle.’

  There was no small talk to be had with this man and Kelley was grateful for that. The sooner done, the sooner away.

  ‘I returned to Mortlake as you ordered, my lord. Doctor Dee received me harshly, but I was able to persuade him that my deception was an innocent affair to conce
al an identity that had suffered wrongful slander. I told him that my accusers influenced my judge to my detriment by claiming that I was sympathetic to Catholic causes.’

  ‘There is cleverness in that tack,’ Walsingham said. ‘Unless—’

  ‘Unless what, my lord?’

  ‘Unless it is true.’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ Kelley said, his lie almost levitating him off the chair. ‘I am a good and faithful Protestant! My family are of solid Protestant stock. Of this, there is no doubt.’

  ‘Very well,’ Walsingham replied wearily. ‘What next occurred?’

  ‘The Doctor’s position did soften.’

  ‘Did he confess to similar Catholic sympathies?’

  ‘He did not. He merely said that he too was persecuted for his Catholic past despite having abandoned his old oaths and becoming a loyal member of Her Majesty’s Church.’

  ‘Pity. Tell me more.’

  ‘He invited me to return to his employ so that we might resume our spiritual actions.’

  ‘And did you commence these?’

  ‘We did, deep into the night. The angel Uriel did introduce us to various kings of heavenly realms, though they did seem minor personages. The tedious work of imparting unto us the language of the angels appears to be done. Our lessons progress in other ways.’

  ‘Were there any signs of black arts or the conjuration of unwholesome spirits?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Then I am disappointed.’

  ‘You should not be, my lord.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘When he was gone from his study, I had occasion to peruse his correspondence. There was an interesting letter.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Bernardino de Mendoza.’

  Walsingham clucked in delight. ‘The Spanish ambassador. His master, King Philip, is the arch-enemy of our good lady. Did this letter speak of plottings, perchance?’

  ‘To my untrained eye, the Spaniard wrote in admiration of Doctor Dee’s prowess as a mapmaker and navigator. He inquired whether he might one day inspect his collection of maps, globes, and navigational instruments.’