He swung his leg over the horse’s back with difficulty as his muscles had now ceased all communication with his skeleton or brain and he looped the bridle around the gatepost. With a friendly admonition to the creature not to eat the hedge for the good of its health, he pushed open the gate and walked into the world of the magus, John Dee.
The house seemed to squat in a slight dip in the ground ahead of him. The brick glowed in the last rays of the sun creeping over the hedge and reflecting in the many panes of the windows, giving the building an air of looking out from its garden with blind eyes that could see right into the onlooker’s head. Marlowe shivered, but resolutely approached the door and raised his hand to the knocker, which was shaped like a Gorgon’s head, its mouth ever-open to hold the clapper.
Before he could raise it, the door creaked inwards and a voice intoned, ‘You are here to see my master.’
Marlowe was almost speechless with shock. In the last few miles with the sun rapidly sinking, he had tried to imagine what this house and its occupant would be like and so far, nothing had been a disappointment. He licked his lips and cleared his throat before speaking. ‘Yes.’ Not exactly his usual level of witty riposte, perhaps, but it served its purpose. ‘How did you know?’ He addressed the fresh air of the entrance hall, as he had yet to see another human being in the vicinity.
A small, wizened man stepped from behind the door and looked Marlowe up and down with the air of one who didn’t much like what he saw. ‘You were about to knock on the door. It gave me a clue.’ Again the disparaging glance and then, ‘Follow me.’ He paused to light a candle from a guttering stub near the door. The candle grease had been dripping from it for so long that it had reached the floor and so the candle end was perched on top of a greasy cone. Bits of wick studded the wax and looked like insects encased in a morbid amber. The little old man turned in a doorway and spoke again.
‘This way. The Master’s time is precious and not to be wasted by the likes of you.’ The door opened and swung shut behind him, catching Marlowe, who had stepped lively, a smart one on the shoulder. Pushing open the door, he was just in time to see the candle flame disappear around a corner. He was in a corridor with no windows, curving to the left and slightly downward. The echoing steps of the manservant came back triple to him and the man’s shadow danced with grotesquely elongated legs behind him.
‘This way,’ Marlowe heard him say. ‘It doesn’t do to get lost in the Master’s house.’ The scholar felt his bowels loosen ever so slightly and wondered if, in all its wonders, Dee’s house included a privy. Then, suddenly, he was in a blaze of light. The room they had entered was twice the normal height, with a mezzanine floor clinging halfway up the wall and reached by rickety-looking ladders at intervals. The far wall was floor to ceiling windows, with pane upon pane of glass far purer than Marlowe had ever seen in a window, with just a strip down the middle etched with gold and precious dyes in the shapes of mermen, dragons and un-nameable creatures. It faced west and the red glow that flooded in seemed to be straight from Hell.
There was so much to see that Marlowe could at first see nothing; the scene was just a mass of colour and flickering shadows. But after a few seconds, shapes emerged from the chaos and he could see that on almost every surface were crowded bottles and jars in which, suspended in the death of alcohol, floated every conceivable abomination of nature: two-headed kittens; a baby with no arms; a calf with six legs. These jostled mutely with preserved body parts which made Marlowe look away, suddenly queasy. He had buried his best friend too recently to be comfortable in the company of such charnel house horrors.
From the middle of the kaleidoscope a voice spoke. This voice was not like the manservant’s, harsh and slightly mocking. This voice crept like treacle in at the ears and didn’t stop until it wound its fingers into the depths of the brain and foraged there to find what it would. ‘Welcome to my house,’ the voice said and Marlowe’s eyes were able, with the clues from his ears, to pick out the man who spoke. He had seen depictions of John Dee, of course, in the chap books sold in Cambridge marketplace. He was wearing his picadil cap and his long, sparse beard spread over his chest, as in the pictures. But his eyes were beyond the skill of any chapbook illustrator. From beneath a broad brow and finely drawn eyebrows, they gazed out as if from another world, bringing the wisdom of the ancients to bear on the follies of the now. Marlowe met his gaze for as long as he could and Dee nodded. ‘Well done, Master . . . Marley?’
‘Marlowe!’ he snapped. Could no one get his name right? Then, a tiny trickle of ice water ran down his spine. How did this man get any part of his name right? He had not given it to the manservant on the door.
Dee read his expression and smiled. ‘A parlour trick, Master Marlowe, nothing more.’ He waved a piece of paper in the air. ‘This was in your saddle roll, with a pair of what I believe must be stockings.’
Marlowe smiled. A note from his mother, whose writing, like her knitting, had never been very accurate. He was disappointed and relieved in almost equal measure. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe, at your service.’ He bowed. ‘My friends call me Kit. My enemies call me Machiavel.’
Dee stood up and walked towards Marlowe, brushing aside the paperwork which littered the floor. ‘Then I shall call you Master Marlowe, I think,’ he said. ‘Why are you here? Not many people call unexpectedly, especially at sunset.’ He put an arm round Marlowe’s shoulders and propelled him towards a door hidden in the gathering shadows under the mezzanine floor. ‘That’s when the grooms release the owls and the bats.’ He bent round to look into Marlowe’s startled eyes and laughed. ‘You must learn not to take me too seriously, Master Marlowe,’ he said, giving the scholar a friendly shake. ‘The owls and the bats come with the scenery. It is the hounds the grooms release.’ As though on cue, a baying rose outside in the grounds, followed by a nervous whicker from a horse, sounding very nearby.
‘My horse,’ Marlowe said, pulling away from Dee’s guiding arm. ‘I left him outside.’
‘Don’t worry, Master Marlowe,’ Dee said. ‘My grooms stable as well as release. Your horse is rubbed down and comfortable with a nosebag of oats by now, if I know my men. Come.’ He pulled Marlowe’s sleeve. ‘Come and meet my wife. She doesn’t see enough people and it is dull living with an old fool like me. Come.’
He led Marlowe through corridors which twisted and turned on each other, some with windows looking out on grounds which stretched away to the river, trim box hedges leading the eye to the distant bridge, others with no windows, but with enigmatic doors, their keyholes sealed with dusty cobwebs, punctuating their length. Just as Marlowe was beginning to fear that he would never see the end of this maze, Dee reached a door and, pushing it open, revealed a cosy drawing room, complete with a beautiful woman sitting at the window, looking out on to the darkening garden. At the sight of the two men, she rose gracefully to her feet and walked towards them, seeming almost to skim across the rushes on the floor. As she reached the men, she sketched a curtsy to Marlowe who replied with a deep bow. Her beauty was almost unreal, every feature perfect, her skin like alabaster under snow.
Dee watched them fondly and then reached out and put an arm tenderly around her waist. ‘Master Marlowe, I would like to introduce my wife, Helene. Helene, this is Master Christopher Marlowe, who has come to see me. I don’t yet know why.’ He smiled at Marlowe. ‘Are we to be put out of our suspense, Master Marlowe?’
Marlowe looked at Helene Dee and then at her husband. He didn’t really want to tell his sorry and rather gory story in front of this exquisite creature. Dee seemed to read his mind.