GEOFFREY BELLOC STOOD watching, unnoticed, as Matthew Thatcher considered the Solway Firth, a finger of the Irish Sea probing into England, curling, scraping, picking away sand and soil, carrying it off. The Turk doctor’s hair battled the wind, and his cloak billowed up until the Mahometan pulled it close against the cold and indecisive rain.
“Are you hungry? I have something rare.” The doctor turned to find the baron’s guest, the imposing Mr. Leveret, removing from his bag a ball of cloth. Leveret shook it, and the cloths fell away as he drew a knife from his belt. As often happened, the sight of a knife provoked in Thatcher the image, even the desire, of throwing himself onto the blade or merely sighing in acceptance as its bearer drove it into his chest.
“I remember you being taken by the queen’s orchard,” said Leveret.
Thatcher bent himself backward to hold his gaze on the face above him, a moment longer before looking down to see that the giant’s hand held a pomegranate. The sight was confusing, as if Thatcher had conjured the fruit from out of his own memories, as if staring at the sea until his eyes watered, longing for a far-off garden, could produce one of its blossoms.
“Do you? Remember me? Remind me, Mr. Leveret, please, where we met. I thought it was last evening with your arrival.”
The doctor spoke English quite well, much better than a decade earlier, but with the same strange intonations, the scratched noises that carried Geoff back to the summer of 1591, all those Ottoman voices and smells that filled the court those months when even a man’s glances were foreign and difficult to translate.
But if, for a moment, it seemed like no time had passed since those days, looking at Thatcher corrected Geoff’s chronology: Ten years in the north had aged the Turk, and Belloc wondered if he ought to go elsewhere and begin again, tell Cecil and Beale he had miscalculated, but that would be a costly, perhaps fatal, delay.
The doctor was fatter in a few places but leaner nearly everywhere else, his head and shoulders pulled toward the earth and the inevitable, his hair white and coarse, the eyes retreating into grottoes of bone and skin. Perhaps his age would make him easier to control and easier to insert into the play. Old men walk onto stage unnoticed and unresisted; audiences instinctively feel they perform no action, only comment; what harm can they do? Important characters just keep speaking around them as if they are deaf, until finally they are acknowledged with an exasperated “Well, what is it you wanted?”
David Leveret described their shared scenes precisely enough: the baron thrashing on the floor of the Presence Chamber, his fists drawn to his cheek; the lady’s cry of demonic possession; the tool the doctor had used to protect Moresby’s tongue; and a strange detail that Thatcher himself had never forgotten—Queen Elizabeth’s slippered foot appearing, just its jeweled tip, from under her gold and red gown as she leaned forward for an avid look at her baron’s convulsions.
With the tip of his dagger, Leveret pushed a few swollen red seeds from their waxy bed onto the Turk’s white palm. The rain prickled, blowing diagonally, and the fruit glistened with beaded water and pale, clouded light. “I don’t suppose that the English variety is as good,” said Leveret. “The queen’s father planted the first one in England, so they are still news. I suppose the Turkish ones are far sweeter, from your hot sun.”
Thatcher let the seeds sit on his tongue, firm and pregnant, watched the crosshatched sky brighten as the sun yellowed the ceiling of gray, and the rain stopped, almost stopped in place, glowing and suspended. Ten years had vanished since last he had tasted a pomegranate, outside of dreams and carefully framed recollection. He bit, pressing the ruby until it burst. The cold red release of juice was almost audible in his skull.
Leveret fed him more, watched from above (where it was easy to keep his glance disguised, as if he, too, were considering only the sea and cliffs, James’s kingdom at the arse of the world just beyond the firth). “A gift to me from a friend at court,” Leveret said, a little pride in his voice. “That’s probably one of England’s five hundred this year. No more than that.”
“You are very fortunate,” said Thatcher, a tint of red touching the white of the whiskers at his lip (pomegranate juice or the last of his own coloring).
“Rather more common in Turkey, I think? I imagine them falling into the streets, growing wild.”
“Something close to that, in places. Like sour apples here.”
“Enviable. Have some more. Are there fruits there that we in England do not have at all?”
“There are. Flavors difficult to describe.”
“But easy to remember, I would guess. Something about the memories of earliest life, the smells and tastes that one can still summon, even years later.” Leveret cut another few seeds free, watched the man take them greedily. “Please, have the whole thing. A gift.”
Thatcher laughed a little, looking up to Leveret and then nodding. “That is most kind. I cannot even politely pretend I do not want it. It is extraordinary. Like a child, to want to make oneself a glutton without a thought for what price gluttony.”
The giant laughed. “No price. Truly, just a gift.” He offered his knife, but Thatcher declined and unearthed the seeds with a deft thumb instead. “Yes, I do remember you, quite clearly, Doctor. And, of course, you were much discussed, celebrated even.”
“It was only one day. It was only what physicians do.”
“Oh, not just that. Your fame lived on behind you in London. Really? You don’t know the rest?”
Belloc watched and waited, would not speak again until Thatcher admitted curiosity, expressing his first need for Belloc, having already suspected he was falling into debt. The doctor chewed, slow to reply or make any expression at all to the puzzling statement—a skill he had learned in his years as a foreigner in England. One never knew when an accusation was being made or a trap laid. Belloc watched the man’s natural protections and was pleased. That would do very well.
“My fame?”
“There are not so many Turks who became Christian as we once expected. There was one fellow back in ’85 or ’86, I recall. He was going to be the first of thousands; we were all certain of it. But then nothing for a while, until…you. London talked about it for some time. A man who chose England and Christ and Elizabeth, left behind the sultan and the wealth of Turkey. Were you married, sir?”
“I suppose that I still am, if she lives. Surely God will accept a marriage made between heathens.”
“And this, too, you left behind. A child as well, I am told.”
Thatcher only nodded slightly—the giant asked questions but already knew the answers. He examined the fruit, now heavy in his hands, felt the tips of the seeds cut and stick between his teeth. Belloc watched him bend a little, the crown of his head drawn just an inch closer to the earth as the rain began again.
“There was a play about you.” That did it, shocked an unguarded expression onto the man’s face at last; Belloc would know from this point forward what sincere surprise looked like on Matthew Thatcher’s face. “Your name was changed, but it ran a few performances. They added a fair piece, of course. A love plot, and another Turk, wicked, tried to stop you from being baptized, at the altar.”
The doctor moved his lips but didn’t seem to know what might emerge until, finally, “A play?”
“The Turk’s Revenge. Double meaning was nice. Your revenge was to become Christian, but then the other Turk took revenge, too. Bit of a tragic ending. Bunch of makers punched it together. Munday and Chettle did the bulk, I think,” he added offhand, as if Mr. Leveret were not at all sure of Thatcher’s interest in all this. He could see that it was a bit too much still for Dr. Thatcher, whether he was going to be drawn into such details as to what happened at the end of the play or how it could be that a play ever existed or who this man was or what he had come all the way from London to say, or if he had even come expressly to find Thatcher. “Was it very different for you? Your baptism, I mean. As an adult. Did you feel the waters wash away your superstitions, I wonder? An infant feels nothing but a bath, I would guess. But you, a man…”
“I had studied Christian law and scripture with Dr. Dee. He prepared me for my conversion, for the men who examined me.”
“But the baptism itself, Dr. Thatcher. Did it feel—what’s the word—did it feel…right? Certain?”
“It has not washed away in the years since,” said Dr. Thatcher.
“And up here, in the north, do you feel the pull of the old ways?”
“Why would I feel more Mahometan in the north?”
Belloc laughed with release and relief, tilted his face up to the renewed rain. “No, my friend, do you feel the pull of the Catholics?”
“Sir, I am not sure I have ever met a Catholic. Would I know them by their appearance?”
“By their actions and words.”
“I did not come to England until 1591. I understood the Catholics to be eradicated by then.”
“Easier to rid the island of rats, Doctor. You arrived only three years after the Armada.”
“People spoke of this to me. Do you mind if we go to the bench? I need to sit awhile.”
Belloc watched the man move slowly toward the stone bench set under an alder tree. He guessed there was pain in the knees. Even this seemed promising. Everything about the Turk was now unthreatening. He was interesting without being dangerous in any way. He would walk onstage perfectly. As he sat heavily on the wet stone, he rubbed his face, pressing the collected mist from his thick eyebrows toward his damp temples.
“Are you in pain? Your legs?”
“Nothing to complain about. You are young still, I think, Mr. Leveret? The day comes when, like a river changing direction, every day we try to lose as little as possible.”
“Would you like to read it?”
“Read what?”
“The play. The Turk’s Revenge. I have a copy back in my things at the hall. Went up for sale in St. Paul’s this month.”
Thatcher pulled a pomegranate seed from its bed. A man he could not recall meeting had come all the way from London with exotic fruit and a copy of a play inspired by his life.
“You are a celebrated and pious man, Dr. Thatcher. Celebrated for your piety and your loyalty to the queen.”
“I would like to read it, if that doesn’t strike you as immodest. How does it end?”