Lucinda Lyst was dry. “You invent a Gloriana for yourself, I think. There’s no evidence…”
He blushed so that skin and hair were, for one radiant moment, of the same colour. He began to uncrumple his satire. A maid came in. “A visitor, your ladyship. The Thane.”
“Good. It’s the Thane, Wheldrake. A fellow countryman.”
“Scarcely.” Wheldrake sniffed and came to join her on the window seat, lounging a little theatrically, unaware that he had exposed a scrawny knee.
Gaunt but hearty, in strode the Thane of Hermiston, in flapping philibeg and monstrous bonnet, his sporran slapping and his hands already on his hips as he jutted out his red beard and grinned down at the couple. “Ye’re a pretty pair, just fresh from yer beds, eh, like lazy kittens. Well, well, well!”
Wheldrake brandished his accomplishment. “I have been writing, sir, a poem!” His voice squeaked with passionate indignation. “It has taken me all morning!”
“Oh, has it indeed? It has taken me all morning, Master Wheldrake, to cross five worlds, just to come here to pay a call upon old friends.”
Lady Lyst clapped her hands once, then paused, startled by the sound. “And what have you brought back from those metaphysical regions?”
“Your usual rude romances?” Wheldrake was sceptical. “Tales of gods and demons, of swords and sorcery?”
The Thane of Hermiston ignored the jibes. “I thought I’d captured a beast, but when I arrived here, it was gone. I intend, later, to confer with Master Tolcharde, who invented the carriage in which I travelled to those spheres.”
“A carriage pulled by spirits, eh?” said Wheldrake. “The spirits which drugged you and made you dream.”
The Thane laughed heartily. “I like ye, Master Wheldrake, for ye’re a fine sceptic, like meself I’d brought this beast, I told you. A great reptile. A veritable dragon. ‘Tis called an aligarta.”
“Virginia has them in her southern counties,” said Master Wheldrake. “They swarm in the swamps and rivers. Huge beasts. I have seen one stuffed. Like the Tigris crockodyl.”
“But this is bigger,” said the Thane, and sulked. “Or was,” he added. “Master Tolcharde’s carriage rocked and roared so, and I’d swear its invisible attendants played tricks upon the poor mortal they escorted. I caught my head a terrible blow, having already battled two demi-gods and survived unscathed.”
“By Hermes, sir, I’ll never know if you believe it all, inspired by that foul distilled grain you drink, or if you lie because you think it entertains.”
The Thane took this well. “Neither, Master Poet-it’s simpler. I tell the truth. I had a unicorn, too, but it was eaten by the aligarta.”
“You journey through lands that are nought but mere metaphors! The sort we poets can invent daily!”
“But I’m no poet to invent such places. I visit ’em, instead. Lady Lyst, d’ye come with me to Master Tolcharde’s manufactory?”
“I’ll dress.”
“I’ll come too.” Wheldrake was jealous, though he knew the friendship was innocent. “Unless there are secrets the chosen alone may share.”
“There are no secrets, Master Wheldrake-only knowledge. It is the open knowledge men always reject, though they look everywhere for secrets.”
As they dressed, the Thane poked about the room, picking up half-written theses, abandoned by Lady Lyst, opening books of philosophy and mathematicks and history, on alchemy and astronomy, being interested by none of them. He was a man of action. He preferred to test a metaphysical guess with the point of his sword if possible. Out they came again, Lady Lyst in rumpled blue silk, Master Wheldrake in black velvet, the pleats of his ruff unstarched and hanging loose around his throat, and they followed the gaudy Thane as he marched from the apartments, through the royal corridors, up the royal staircases, along the royal galleries, until they reached an older part of the palace, the East Wing, and could detect acrid smells, as of smelting iron and cooking chemicals, took one wide, near-derelict marble staircase, two flights of granite steps, and came to a gallery hung with faded lace, with a great dusty fanlight above it, to let in the morning’s watery rays, to a tall door which, in contrast to the roof and columns of the gallery, was cast in an ancient near-barbaric mould, the pointed style, with pitted timber, brass and black iron.
Upon this the Thane of Hermiston flung a fist, so that it shook and rattled and was opened almost immediately by a bespectacled, blinking youth, one of Master Tolcharde’s many apprentices, in leather apron and shirt-sleeves, whose scowl cleared as he recognised the Thane. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning to ye, Colvin. Is your master at his business or can we enter?”
“He’s expecting you I think, sir.” Young Colvin stepped aside and they all filed in, to dusty gloom, while he closed the door carefully behind them and locked it. A little smoke drifted into the ante-chamber, almost as if brought by curiosity to spy upon the visitors. Yellowed astrological tables peeled on the walls, while below them were stacked dusty, unused boxes and books. The smell was more intense, and Wheldrake began to cough, putting a kerchief to his mouth, afraid he might choke to death, coming last as they continued through several such chambers which opened out eventually into a vault so filled with curling copper tubing that it seemed they inhabited the guts of some extinct leviathan. Through this rococo maze they could see a bench on which retorts belched and, on the far side of the bench, a small, sharp-featured man with a fixed, unnatural grin, who sat watching the retorts and saying not a word.
Master Tolcharde appeared from behind a great copper sphere on which he had been hammering. “With this machine, Hermiston, I intend to send you off through Time!”
“Not today, I hope, Master Tolcharde.”
“Not for months. There is still a great deal to do, both theoretically and mechanically. Doctor Dee is aiding me. He’s not with you?” Master Tolcharde’s fanatical and friendly eyes rolled this way and that. He exposed his broken teeth in an enquiring grin. He wiped his bald head, on which sweat gathered.
The Thane shook bonneted locks. “But who’s this?” A thumb for the little man on the other side of the bench.
“A traveller. He came here not long since, by means of a glowing pyramid which dissolved and stranded him.”
Master Wheldrake turned away, studying his own features in the gleaming copper of the globe. “So there’s an exchange between the worlds?”
“Aye,” Master Tolcharde innocently responded. “The Thane brings many back-but many are taken, too. And some come and go without help of either the Thane or myself. If you would see some of the creatures…”
Master Wheldrake raised a wing. “On another day, sir. I would not waste your time.”
“But I am always willing to instruct those whose search for Truth is genuine.”
“Instruct me later, Master Tolcharde. You were telling us about your visitor.”
“His name is Calhoun and he claims to be from the White Hall-to be a Baron, indeed. He understands much of my scientific philosophy, but little of ought else. He’s sympathetic enough, however, of the same kidney as myself. But mad, d’you see? Aha! Here comes Doctor Dee.”
In brown, with white points jutting from chin and neck, the great sage strode, greeting all with some gusto until his eye fell upon Lady Lyst and he became embarrassed. “Very pleasant…I regret I did not…?”
Lady Lyst drew her brows together. She could think of no explanation for this display. “You promised me something, Doctor Dee?”
“Oh, madam, I beg thee…” He cringed. “I beg thee!”
Lady Lyst’s great eyes grew rounder still. “I’m at a loss, sir, but if my presence is unwelcome to you, I’d be pleased to leave.”
“No, no. It is an honour to have so famous an intellect among us. Indeed, there is someone"-he looked behind him, through the curling tubes-"there he is-you must meet, if you have not already.” Doctor Dee appeared to turn purple for a few seconds. He pushed an index finger between ruff and throat. “Harumph! Your Majesty!” In the darkness a voice cried: