“And you were hoping that I might be able to…what, exactly?” While his manner remained cordial, Jade sensed an underlying wariness. “Authenticate the document? Or perhaps direct you to the Dee manuscript that talks about this tomb?”
“Well, I am curious about the latter, but to be perfectly frank, the journal doesn’t much interest me. My field is pre-Columbian archaeology. The Spaniard is most definitely not pre-Columbian, so the journal isn’t really of much value to me.”
“Ah, but you thought it might be of value to me, as a Dee enthusiast?”
Jade inclined her head. This was the critical part of the plan. Would Roche accept that she was an unscrupulous trader in illicit artifacts like himself? Or would his paranoia slam the door shut?
“May I see it?” he asked.
“I don’t have it with me. It’s old parchment and hasn’t been properly restored. It shouldn’t be handled excessively. Of course, I don’t expect you to make a commitment without seeing it first. I merely wanted determine if you were someone I could do business with.”
Roche nodded slowly and sat back in his chair. “Of course, of course. You do understand that I am not merely a general collector, and this business of a Dee manuscript that talks about a lost tomb sounds rather fanciful. Almost like the sort of thing a forger might try to peddle.”
“I can assure you, the journal is real.” It’s a lump of soggy parchment, but it’s real.
“Oh, I’m not suggesting that you are a forger. However, your grave robber might very well have been taken in by a clever fake. There are quite a few occult manuscripts attributed to Dr. Dee in circulation. Perhaps this Spaniard was taken in by one.”
Jade frowned. This was not exactly going according to plan. “Well, I suppose that is something we would have to investigate before proceeding.”
“Just so. Can you tell me more about this alleged manuscript?”
Might as well go all in. “According to the journal, the Spaniard broke into Lee’s Mortlake house, while the doctor was traveling in Europe, and found a manuscript that was penned in a strange language, which I took to be angelic script. He claimed that he was able to read it with the help of a crystal ball.”
“And what did this manuscript say?”
“It described a vision that Dee had received from an angel named Orphaniel, It told of a ruin in a place called the Navel of the Moon, which is the literal meaning of the word Mexico.” Jade added a few more details, while omitting mention of what they had actually found beneath the Pyramid of the Sun.”
“Ah. Yes, that sounds very familiar.”
Jade wondered what he meant by that, but before she could phrase the question, Roche stood. “Would you like to see my collection?”
Jade was momentarily taken aback. “Very much.”
He led her into the flat, which was tastefully modern if a bit austere. Jade thought it looked like a model home, not a place where someone actually lived. Roche led her to an interior staircase which descended two flights, into a windowless room that she could only assume was below ground level. There, she found herself in what might have been a small gallery from the museum she had visited the day before.
There were dozens of display cases containing unusual objects — not merely the sort of thing Jade would expect from a man with Dee’s reputation as a conjurer, but also astrolabes, sextants, and mechanical devices that might have come from the pages of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbook. There were dozens of bookshelves with leather bound tomes in outward-facing display stands. Nowhere, however, did Jade see the legendary Shew Stone.
Roche stopped at one case which contained something that looked like a toy bird made of wood. “This is a working replica of the dove of Archytas, built by Dee in 1578. It was designed by a Greek inventor who lived in the fourth century before Christ. It runs on steam power, and can actually flap its wings.” He gestured to another case where sat a bronze bust of a man’s head. “That is a Brazen Head, a sort of automaton that speaks. It only says ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but for the sixteenth century, that’s rather remarkable, don’t you think.”
Jade nodded, not insincerely. “Dee made that?”
“Yes. All of the objects you see here were constructed by Dee, based on his own designs, or those he found while traveling abroad. He was a true Renaissance man, a polymath. During his lifetime, his enemies tried to caricaturize him as an evil magician studying witchcraft and communing with the devil. He was, in fact, a devout Christian. In the years since his death, people who imagine themselves students of the occult have only made it worse by embellishing those ludicrous charges, turning him into some kind of necromancer. Here, this one is my favorites.”
He opened a case that contained what looked like a brass dragonfly. After winding a small key, he held it out at arm’s length and released it. It leapt from his hand, wings buzzing furiously, and flew right toward Jade, who started — visions of Shelob flashing through her mind — and jumped out of the way. The clockwork insect continued flying but gradually turned in a wide circle that brought it right back to Roche’s waiting hand where it settled, its energy completely spent. Roche returned the item to its case and his hands to his pockets.
“Marvelous, don’t you think? Dee saw items like these at courts and universities in Geneva, Prague, St. Denis, and reverse engineered them in his own mind. Quite an accomplishment for a charlatan, wouldn’t you say?”
Jade wasn’t sure where any of this was going. “I never said I thought he was a charlatan. Honestly, I don’t know that much about him.”
“Obviously.” Roche smiled, but the humor was gone from his eyes. “Did you know, for example, that he never received visions? Never saw the future in a crystal ball? It’s true. He did make accurate astrological predictions, but he never could get the trick of scrying. The angelic visions were received by spirit mediums, working at his direction, and he would then record and interpret what they saw. That’s how I know this journal you are trying to foist on me is worthless.”
Alarm bells were sounding in Jade’s head. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “I’m sorry you think that,” she said slowly. “I’m only telling you what was in the journal.”
“Some of the visions were utter rubbish,” Roche continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “Dee was too trusting. Edward Kelley, a changeling, took advantage of Dee, stealing a fortune from him, stealing his wife, discrediting the man, even as he used Dee’s fame to enhance his own reputation as an alchemist.
“But some of the visions were real. I know because I also have received them, using the very tools that Dee made available to his mediums. Tools such as this.”
He removed his left hand from his pocket and held it out to reveal a clear crystal ball, less than two inches in diameter. “This is what you came for isn’t it?”
Jade swallowed nervously. When she had called to set up the meeting, she had not mentioned the Shew Stone.
“I know that you came here to steal it,” Roche continued, his voice taking on a hard edge.
“Steal it?” Jade’s voice sounded strident in her own ears. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” He raised his other hand and Jade saw that it held a compact semi-automatic pistol, pointed right at her. “Do you think you’re the first agent the changelings have sent to blind me?”
Jade raised her hands and took an involuntary step back. “You’ve got it all wrong,” she said hastily. “Yes, I did come here hoping to get a look at that. I was told that you might have it. But I don’t want to steal it.”