The Alchemist's Door Read online

  He closed his eyes, remembering. At Cambridge he had studied eighteen hours a day, stopping only to eat, sleep, and go to church. He had wanted to know everything: What were the stars made of? Why did water boil and wood did not? How were salamanders able to live in the heart of fire? What had God and Adam talked about in the Garden of Eden? Did women have fewer teeth than men, as Aristotle said? (Later he had counted Jane’s; she had thirty-two, the same as he.) Was it truly possible to create the Philosopher’s Stone and live forever?

  He learned a good deal; he knew enough magic to satisfy most men. But it was simple stuff; the answers to his most pressing questions eluded him. Only God knew the answers; everything existed in the mind of God. And so he had started trying to summon angels. When Edward Kelley had knocked on his door and introduced himself a year ago, he thought the man had come in answer to his prayers.

  “Will King Rudolf want us to search for the Philosopher’s Stone?” Kelley asked.

  Dee opened his eyes and looked at Kelley, sitting on the bench across from him. “I don’t know,” Dee said. “Maybe.”

  “Good,” Kelley said. “I am tired of scrying.”

  Dee studied the other man. Had he truly been sent by God? Then why was he so recalcitrant? Why was he interested only in money and ways to acquire money? Kelley had told him what he would do with the Philosopher’s Stone if he had it: he would touch everything he owned and turn it to gold as Midas had, and then live like a king, surrounded by splendor and wealth.

  “Rudolf may want us to scry as well,” Dee said.

  “Then you scry for him,” Kelley said. “I am tired.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then find someone else.”

  “I have never been able to.”

  “God damn it!” Kelley said. “I am tired. I never want to see the glass or those damned angels again. Leave me alone!”

  Dee caught his breath at the blasphemy. He tried to speak mildly. “We’ll see how you feel when we get there.”

  “I know how I’ll feel. Tired.” As if to prove his point he closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.

  The coach continued over the mountains. They passed tangled forests, the trees growing wildly in the profligacy of summer. Despite Dee’s best efforts his thoughts turned sometimes to the spirit’s messages. How much of what it said was true? Was his precious library destroyed, and if so had the spirit done it?

  How could God permit such a spirit to run loose in the world? Or, conversely, if there were such a spirit, did that mean that God did not exist, or that He was powerless to stop evil? Was everything random, did everything happen at the whim of powers he did not understand? And the feeling of dread would come over him again, the terror of standing naked before such things without even God to protect him.

  When this happened he would strain to see beyond the trees to the next bend in the road, hoping to find an inn and firelight and people. But inns were rare in this part of the world, and in the few they did find no one spoke any language they understood. They were forced to convey their needs by gestures.

  Once they found a man who knew German, though he spoke brokenly and with a good many mistakes. But the man was no comfort; he told them a tale about people who could turn into wolves, and another about a Hungarian noblewoman who bathed in the blood of virgins to stay young forever. Unbelievable stories, Dee told himself, tales meant to frighten children. His mood did not lighten.

  After a while the language they heard in the inns changed from Polish to Czech, and Dee guessed that they had crossed into Bohemia. Czech was a barbarous language with few vowels; every second word seemed to run aground against the shoals of the teeth and become swallowed.

  Finally the land flattened out and they began to see acres of farmland and a scattering of houses. Other travelers joined them on the road, everything from elegant coaches with coats-of-arms on the doors to the mule-drawn carts of farmers bringing their produce to market. The traffic raised a fine dust from the road; it sifted in around the closed windows of the coach and covered them in a gritty film.

  Smaller roads began to converge with theirs, tributaries to their vast river. Then they were through the walls and in the city. Dee knew only one person in Prague, a scientist and counselor to the king named Thadeus Hageck, and he gave the driver his address on Bethlem Street.

  At Doctor Hageck’s house they received the first bit of good news in a long time—the first, it seemed, since they had started on this mad journey. The doctor and his family gave them a warm welcome and invited them to stay as long as they wanted, setting aside a portion of their large house for him and Kelley and the others who were coming later. Dee accepted gratefully.

  DEE SENT A NOTE UP TO THE CASTLE ASKING FOR AN AUDIence. Days passed, but there was no answer.

  In the meantime he decided to explore the city. Kelley refused to come with him; he had set out his retorts and alembics and filled Hageck’s study with disgusting-smelling potions and philters, leaving only to buy more of the ingredients he needed. The study was very congenial to him; it had been used by alchemists even before Hageck lived there. Mysterious hieroglyphs were carved on the walls, along with birds and fish and flowers and fruit. An earlier alchemist, Simon, had written his name in several places in letters of gold and silver.

  On Dee’s first day out he discovered a river spanned by a long, handsome bridge. Coaches drove noisily back and forth, their drivers swearing and lashing their whips, but there was space for those on foot as well. Curious, he went across.

  On the other side he saw an arch flanked by two towers. As soon as he passed under the arch all the bells in all the spires rang out at once. All over the city something was taking wing, ascending … . Were they angels? His heart began to beat loudly. Then they settled back, wings flapping, and he realized that they were just birds, pigeons and seagulls for the most part.

  Whatever happened later, this was his first impression, and an enduring one—that Prague was haunted with angels.

  This side of the river was grander than the one he lived in. He saw a forest of statues and cupolas and cathedrals, spires and dark towers, a blur of copper domes and red roofs. People thronged the streets, priests and beggars and scholars and tradesmen. Huge houses with carved facades stood by the side of the road, dwarfing the people. Carts and coaches squealed on the cobblestones. And over all of it loomed a castle on a hill, King Rudolfs domain.

  He soon discovered that everything had two names in this city, which confused him until he realized that one was German and one Czech. The river dividing Prague, for example— it had been called the Moldau on his maps, but the Czechs called it the Vltava. He heard a babel of other languages as well, Latin and Dutch and Italian and others he could not recognize. London was as big as Prague, perhaps even bigger, but London was isolated, a backwater compared to this, and the only language one ever heard there was English.

  Well, of course Prague would be greater than London, Dee thought. It was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, a German confederacy that stretched from the Italian states all the way to Russia. And farther still, if you counted all the marriages and alliances the Habsburgs had made. King Rudolf’s uncle, for example, was King Philip of Spain, Elizabeth’s old enemy.

  He felt very small, and sorry for his country and sovereign. They should be greater, an empire, Britannia. After all, he had once drawn up a genealogy proving that Elizabeth was descended from King Arthur.

  He began to walk and came almost immediately to a church. It was small and unassuming, nothing like the grand cathedrals the Catholics built. He remembered that there was something called the Czech Brethren, that a man named Jan Hus had once challenged the Roman church.

  And yet now he saw that there was a cathedral on this street as well. Did Rudolf allow the two faiths to exist side by side? How could that work, how were they kept from violence? Or did violence flare out anyway?

  He should know more about this strange place where he had come to rest, was
hed ashore like so much sea-wrack. But they had left in such a hurry … . He wished he had had more time.

  The next day he kept to his side of the bridge. The streets across the river had been clean, far cleaner than those in London, paved with cobblestones and swept often. The streets in his neighborhood, however, seemed to belong to a different city; they were poorly-drained, littered with refuse, so muddy that carts sank up to their axles. There were mice here, too, and other vermin; once he saw a cat study a rat, its haunches twitching, until it finally sprang in a blur of speed.

  His wanderings brought him to a walled city within the city. He looked in through an open gate; the people inside went about their business like everyone else, sweeping and building, shopping and gossiping. But why did none of them go out? And why did no one come in? He took a step toward the gate, but several people on both sides frowned at him and he backed away.

  On both sides of the river he saw alchemists and conjurers selling herbs and elixirs, powders and gemstones from their booths by the side of the road. A few even claimed to have the Philosopher’s Stone. They beckoned and called out to him as he passed but he ignored them.

  But there were others in the city, powerful-looking men who walked the streets purposefully, going about on their own mysterious errands. Several times he saw a man wrapped in a black cloak with two giant black mastiffs by his side: one of the dogs had only one eye and the other three legs. And once he saw a tall man who held himself like an aristocrat but wore the clothing of a lower class; he carried a vial and spoke as if to a companion next to him, but as Dee came closer he saw that there was no one there. He longed to talk to these people, to trade knowledge with them, maybe even ask them for help, but something—their mystery, their haughty bearing—stopped him.

  On August twenty-fourth a strange thing happened—Hageck’s son informed him that, in spite of what the angels had told him, his friend Henry Sidney was not dead. The angels could not lie, Dee knew that. The message about Sidney must have come from the demon, then, and so had the horrible prophecy about Dee’s wife. Dee gave thanks that they had left Poland when they did, that his wife would be fine, that they had, perhaps, escaped the demon’s notice.

  Three days later an angry and bewildered letter came from Prince Laski. Why had Dee left Poland in such a hurry? Why hadn’t he told Laski about his plans? “I am sending a messenger to Prague,” Laski said, “and if my man does not get satisfactory answers from you then my patronage will come to an end.”

  Dee hid the letter away. Now, truly, all his hopes were pinned on the emperor.

  He continued to send messages to Rudolf. Once he climbed up to the palace itself, wondering how far he would get before he was turned back. There was an unguarded moat in front of him and he crossed it. A lion roared from somewhere and he looked around in alarm. He saw nothing, no animals, no courtiers, not even any servants.

  A man stepped out from behind a hedge. His clothing was good, Dee saw, and he had a well-trimmed beard and full cheeks and lips. Was he from Rudolf’s court? Dee headed toward him, formulating a polite German phrase as he went.

  The man brandished a rake and yelled something in Czech. Dee stepped back. Was he a gardener? Did even the gardeners dress well in this country? Perhaps he was a courtier who enjoyed working with plants, Dee thought, someone who would report to Rudolf that he had been trespassing. He quickly spoke a few words to change his appearance, shifting his shape so that he seemed smaller and fatter. The gardener returned to his plants and Dee headed back toward the moat, walking slowly so the other man would not realize he had been alarmed.

  Jane arrived the next day. She had left Rowland, who was not yet two, in Poland with a nurse, and brought Arthur and Katherine with her. She was not near term but Dee scoured the city for a midwife, wanting to be prepared when the time came. He found only a dirty foul-mouthed crone who smelled of sweat and animals and excrement and other, perhaps worse, things. In his desperation he nearly hired her, but then, fortunately, Hageck found him a stout woman from the country. The woman spoke no German and Dee no Czech, but somehow Dee managed to convey to her that he would have need of her in a few months’ time.

  Jane and the children settled in. Jane complained about the smell from Kelley’s experiments but for the most part she was too busy learning her way around the city to argue as forcefully as she once did. Arthur and Katherine played out in the streets and came home speaking what sounded like whole sentences in Czech or German.

  Laski’s man arrived, and to Dee’s horror Kelley immediately got into a drunken fight with him. Dee wrote of the incident, “God suffered E. K. to be tempted and almost overcome by Satan: to my great grief, discomfort, and most great discredit, if it should come to the emperor’s understanding.”

  But the emperor had not heard, or had taken no notice, because the next day, September third, a man wearing Rudolf’s livery knocked at their door. Dee’s request for an audience had been granted.

  3

  DEE LOOKED AROUND AT THE STRANGE ROOM he found himself in. Shelves and cabinets lined the walls, holding precious items and junk all jumbled together: swords, globes, clocks, and jewelry as well as rusty nails, old spectacles, turtle shells, and gaming dice. An ivory skull, probably human, stared down at them from atop a bookshelf.

  Kelley had said nothing since they had been ushered into the room, though he had clutched the velvet bag containing the scrying glass closer to his chest. There was another man in the room as well, and Dee tried to study him without being obvious.

  The man seemed all one color—his trousers, shirt, jacket, his eyes and graying hair and beard, all were brown. And yet everything was a slightly different shade, slightly off, as though an entire village had gotten together and loaned him all their best clothes.

  Probably, Dee thought, that was what had happened. It wasn’t every day a man was summoned by the king; his village would see to it that he looked his best. Was he from the outlying towns then, a farmer? But he was too old to work a farm, older than Dee himself, and his spectacles gave him a scholarly air.

  Looking closer he saw that the man wore a yellow circle sewn to his jacket. Dee wondered what that signified. A rank? A craft guild?

  The man turned, saw him, and smiled. Dee smiled back, caught off guard. He greeted him in Latin, the universal language of scholars throughout Europe.

  The man shrugged; he had not understood. Not a scholar then. He said something in Czech; now it was Dee’s turn to shrug.

  Dee tried German. The man nodded, apparently pleased that they had happened on a common language. “My name is Rabbi Judah Loew,” he said. “May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?”

  Rabbi? This man was a Jew! Dee moved back slightly in his chair. Then he felt foolish; the man was an unbeliever, of course, but harmless for all that. They really did not poison wells or kill children.

  “Dee,” he said. “Doctor John Dee. From England. This is my associate, Edward Kelley.”

  “Good day, Doctor Dee. I assume you are here to see King Rudolf as well.”

  “Yes. Can I ask—how long have you been waiting?”

  Loew smiled. “Two hours. This time.”

  “This time?”

  Loew looked around carefully, as if to make certain that no one was listening. “His Majesty is in the habit of summoning people he has no intention of meeting. He is a very private person. I have been in this room twice before, and was sent home without an audience both times. And yet other people tell me he has been eager to see them.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  A woman came in and began to dust the shelves. “Why does he summon you then?” Dee asked.

  Loew shrugged again. “They say he is interested in the Kabbalah.”

  “Kabbalah! Are you a Kabbalist? Tell me, I have long been curious about something Pico della Mirandola says—”

  “I don’t know Pico della Mirandola.”

  “No, of course not. He’s a Christian—I should have realized. But lis
ten, can you explain—”

  Dee leaned forward, his earlier uneasiness forgotten. A moment later he was deep in a discussion of the transmutation of numbers and the attributes of God. Dust flew from the shelves as the servant continued to polish the collection.

  “You have some knowledge of numbers,” Loew said. “What do you know about the number thirty-six?”

  “Thirty-six?” Dee said. He felt pleased that this man, clearly an adept, would solicit his advice. “It’s divisible by a good many numbers: two, three, four, six, and nine, to mention only those under ten. And twelve, of course. Twelve is a powerful number: twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve houses of the zodiac. Is this any use to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Loew said. “Perhaps.”

  The servant stopped her dusting and nodded to Dee. “Come with me,” she said. “His Majesty is ready for you now.” Then to Loew, “And you after him.”

  “What?” Dee said.

  “Go,” Loew said. “King Rudolf uses his courtiers as servants, and his servants as courtiers. One never knows quite where one stands with him. But go now, quickly, before he changes his mind.”

  Dee hurried after her and then slowed, trying to compose himself for an audience with the king. Kelley followed.

  They walked through vaulted rooms and galleries. Shelves and cabinets and tables displayed more of the king’s strange collection: stuffed ostriches, rhinoceros horns, globes and measuring instruments and glassware. Paintings lined the walls, most of them of naked voluptuous women in allegorical poses. A man sat in a small room off the main hallway, twining filigrees of gold around a cup made of jasper. They heard the sounds of saws and hammers, and several times they saw construction going on in different parts of the castle.

  Dee looked up to see a man coming toward them. Who would this be? Courtier, servant, artist? “I’m the Lord Chamberlain, Octavius Spinola,” the man said. “I’ve come to escort you to the emperor.” The servant turned away as though indifferent to their fate.