Fyche in my head from that first afternoon on the tor.
… with no men’s talk to distract him, he hears only the voices of angels. Thus, as you may imagine, his moral and spiritual judgement is… much valued.
Brother Michael blinked and, without ceremony, snatched up one of the candlesticks from the altar and held it aloft, to the right of me.
Then nodded solemnly.
‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘When we met upon the tor, your host seemed to think he had no duty to introduce us.’
He made no reply.
His age? Yes, that would be about right. Around my mother’s age, nearing sixty. The way his felt hat was pulled down suggestive of baldness.
‘I should have realised,’ I said, ‘that you’d be here. Obviously, much to interest you. Not least in the remains of the finest library outside London. Or even Paris.’
Continuing to speak in French, for I wasn’t aware that he knew English. As good a reason as any for someone in his position to be introduced as deaf and dumb.
‘And more than this,’ I said. ‘Far more. I’ve read of your interest in old monuments and Druidical remains. Which here are, I’d guess, more numerous and more impressive than in France. One of the advantages of being an island.’
He still held his candlestick… and his peace.
‘One of the disadvantages, of course,’ I said, ‘is that more people here are superstitious and less open to progressive learning. One good reason for your presence to be concealed – although some of us would welcome it. All the hours we might spend in discussion of astrology, alchemical texts, the Cabala…’
It occurred to me then that he thought my questions speculative, posed to draw him out, establish final proof of his identity, and he was holding out. In truth, I was burning up. Time to lay down my cards.
‘I didn’t, at first, think that you’d have been at Montpellier College at the same time at Matthew Borrow – you being most of a decade older than him. And then I remembered, from my documents, that you were there as a mature student of medicine – in your thirtieth year?’
I’d watched his eyes move for the first time at the mention of Matthew Borrow.
‘I’ve been reading some of the letters you’d sent him. Not easy. How the hell did the apothecaries decipher your instructions? You could’ve poisoned someone.’
Neither of the two letters I’d stolen from Borrow’s surgery had been signed, but handwriting’s been one of my more recreational studies. I’ve ever enjoyed the analysis of styles and the development of divers approaches to lettering.
‘Your writing’s even worse now than in the early manuscripts on my shelves,’ I said.
He might have smiled. I don’t know, for that was the moment when he chose at last to lower the candlestick.
‘I heard you were building a library,’ he said.
‘Early days.’
Absurdly flattered that he’d heard of my library. Or even of me. Gratified that he’d spoken at last.
‘The day we were on the tor,’ I said. ‘Were you aware then… of who I was?’
I watched him pondering the question, as if it might contain some hidden snare. As indeed it might.
‘Not then,’ he said, ‘no.’
‘Maybe later, though?’ What was to be lost? ‘Maybe after Fyche’s crazed son had extracted the information from my colleague’s groom? Before finding it necessary to kill him?’
No reply, and I could no longer see his eyes, but I kept on, the wild lights back inside me, and now they were dancing.
‘Whose idea was it to have the dead man taken to the abbey and then dress up this murder of expediency as a ritual killing? I only ask because – as the assize court would have been told, had the trial of Eleanor Borrow ever taken place – the mutilation of the body seemed to call for a certain surgical skill. The kind of skill for which a younger Michel de Nostradame was, I believe, quite well known.’
With that first use of his full name, a mystifying lightness was grown within me. As if I were thrown back into the night of the storm when the dust of vision had me and I floated like an angel in the night garden. I gripped a stone ledge behind me, as if it would hold me down.
At length, there came a reply.
‘I was – and am – a physician. A physician, he does not kill. Well…’ He shrugged. ‘Not with intent.’
‘Not invariably true,’ I said.
He replaced the candlestick upon the stone altar.
I looked around. On the wall nearest the entrance where I stood, there was a crucifix and, in niches where stones had been removed either side of it, small statues, presumably of saints.
There was a tabernacle on the altar. In the air a vagueness of incense.
‘You look cold, my friend.’
Still wearing his monk’s robe. A quite practical form of apparel in this house. I was yet angry with myself that I’d made no link betwixt Nostradamus and the deaf mute Brother Michael until I’d heard him speak. One of the letters in Borrow’s surgery had confirmed that he was to arrive in February and would be lodging with our mutual friend of the judiciary. The rest of the letter had made little sense and I’d guessed it to be coded.
‘I left my lodgings in rather a hurry,’ I said. ‘Having not long before read your latest prophetic quatrain. Relating to the Queen of England and the bones of King Arthur? I was wondering how it had found its way to Throckmorton.’
I’d gone too far. His tolerant smile said that this time he knew I was on the wing.
‘Dr Dee, there are questions I cannot answer.’ He touched an ear. ‘Questions I cannot even hear.’
‘Do you get many… messages… about the Queen of England?’
‘I receive what I receive.’
‘But you obviously put each one before your masters at court. There must needs be scrutiny of them prior to publication… surely?’
He took a patient breath.
‘Dr Dee,’ he said. ‘I know not how you came to be here this evening, but I’m happy to greet you as a fellow man of science… and would positively relish a discussion with you on our common ground – astrology, alchemical texts, meditation, all matters scientific. The first rule, however, must be that… the matters of state, they are not for us.’
I found this sentiment disingenuous in the extreme but said nothing.
‘Come.’ He extended an arm. ‘Rest awhile. We’ll not be disturbed, I promise. No-one comes down here at night but me.’
There was a stone seat projecting from the wall to the side of the altar. I lowered myself into it. Just taking the weight off my feet brought on a quivering drowsiness which made me glad of the cold. Nostradamus fitted himself into a wooden chair with arms and pulled it up opposite me. He placed his hands in his lap.
‘It offends me, you know, that – from what I hear – your talents are regarded less well in your native country than are mine in France. As you suggested… a sad indictment of England’s values.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘that our talents are identical.’
He shrugged, opened out his hands, and I reminded myself that his apparel was misleading, maybe deliberately so. This was not, nor had ever been, a man in holy office.
‘Why are you really here?’ I said.
‘A question most reasonable. Which you answered yourself. A fascination with these islands. The portals to the past, they are open here in ways which are not so apparent in most of Europe. This place in particular… has a sense of continuity denied to us. And, it appears, a relationship with the cosmos which elsewhere… is long-lost.’
‘Ah.’ Now I was no longer on the wing. ‘You mean the Zodiac.’
‘My God…’ He spread his arms wide. ‘When I heard of that…’
‘How long since you heard of it?’
‘Not long.’
‘And how came you by the knowledge?’
‘A ha!’ The smiling Nostradamus wagging an admonitory forefinger. ‘How came you by the knowledge of it, Dr Dee?’
So he knew. I must have shown my discomfort, for he laughed.
‘But what’s to be done with the thing, that’s the biggest question. I am perfectly ready to accept that the celestial Zodiac is refashioned, by whatever means, on the ground, but what are we to make of it?’