All the Queen's Spies

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Had the clouds not burned bright with an unearthly glow, as if they were set aflame?They had, hadn’t they?And yet. CHAPTER TWO Mortlake, three weeks previously, first week of September 1583And yet when John Dee is woken by someone knocking on his gate, he himself descends to answer it, for the knocking has a furtive quality he half recognizes, and he is unsurprised by what he finds: a rough-looking beggar in a coat that looks to have been buried in a field for a year or two, with lank hair over his ears, who says in a strange, soft accent, “I am Edward Kelley. Master Clerkson says you have need of a scryer?”Which is true: Dee does need a scryer to read his magic show stone; to summon the Angelic Spirits from above to appear in its glossy surface, for he lacks the gift. He cannot scry, much to his shame, and so Master Clerkson oftentimes sends him such men who can do so. Ordinarily they are quickly revealed as chancers or charlatans and are sent on their way with little or no harm done—once Roger Cooke, Dee’s assistant, has shaken them down to retrieve what has been stolen—and this Kelley, in his filthy, high-collared cloak and unwashed state, appears no different from those others. But it is soon obvious that he knows whereof he speaks, and he steals nothing, so Dee gives him a chance and sets him up in the library with a show stone that he bought—though is yet to pay for—from a man who promised it answerable only to good spirits.“Summon for me if you will,” Dee tells Kelley, “Anachor or Anilos.”Both are considered good spirits.Kelley nods and settles at the stone and begins the Action with a murmured prayer that Dee recognizes from Trithemius’s work on the art of drawing spirits into crystals. When Kelley has finished, he sits in silence, staring into the stone. Nothing seems to be happening, and the change is so slow that at first Dee does not register it, but then he does: the temperature in the library drops, as if a mist has entered the room, and Kelley’s face has become waxy. And now Dee’s heart slows, and slows, and then slows some more, and the room grows colder yet, and then the walls and floor and ceiling seem to thrum to the beats of his heart and the air becomes dense in his ears, thick and ripe, and then suddenly Kelley stirs and addresses the show stone.“In the name of the holy and undefiled Spirit, the Father, the Begotten Son, and Holy Ghost, what is your true name?”Nothing. Dee can hear nothing. But Kelley can, and hearing an answer that Dee cannot, he asks a next question: “Will you swear by the blood and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ that you are truly Uriel?”The hair on Dee’s scalp rises as Kelley listens in silence a moment, and then he confirms he has sight of the angel Uriel.Uriel! It is Uriel!Dee restrains himself, just—for anyone can just say that, can’t they?—but because every fiber of his being yearns to believe what he hears, he comes to kneel next to Kelley. Though he sees nothing in the glossy facet of the stone, through Kelley he asks some questions that, while not precisely trick, require care in the answering.“Are there any other angelic spirits that might be reached through the stone?”Kelley tells him that Michael and Raphael are there, but Michael is “first in our works.” This last phrase is telling, Dee thinks, for it is complicated and ambiguous and exactly how the angelic spirits might speak.He rises and closes the door so that what happens next will not be overheard, even by Roger Cooke, who is at work in the laboratory, and then he returns to kneeling to ask Kelley to ask if Uriel thinks the Book of Soyga to be any excellency. Only a true adept will know the answer to that.“The good angels of God revealed the Book of Soyga to Adam in Paradise,” Kelley tells him, “but only Michael can interpret it.”Hmmm, Dee thinks. Neither wrong nor right, that one.“I was told that if ever I managed to read it,” Dee then asks, “I should only live for a further two and a half years?”That is true. Someone did tell him that, though he cannot recall who. Or why.“You shall live to be a hundred-odd years,” Uriel tells Kelley to tell him.And Dee is pleased, not only for the tidings of a further lease of life, but because such an answer sounds authoritative.“Is there anything else I should know?” he then asks, which is wonderfully vague and will test Kelley if he is making this up, and then Dee becomes astonished as for the next half hour, Uriel describes—through Kelley—a triangular seal that they are to engrave with gold and wear around their necks which will serve as