Abigail had been trying not to think about that last encounter with the doctor at St Luke’s, but every now and again the memory would intrude like a bad smell in a clean kitchen. She filled her days with Rat – reading with him, shopping with him, attending lectures with him. It was, in many ways, a very pleasurable time, and she almost imagined that she did have a son, that she and Charles were mother and father, but these happy thoughts only served to snag awful realisations: that her womb was barren, her life half-full, her mind preoccupied because it had nothing to love other than her strange, unfathomable partner.
Her visits to St Luke’s had filled the spaces in which these thoughts tended to condense, but now that outlet was gone, leaving only that dirty sense of having been bitterly used by Drysdale.
She needed to be of use. So she decided on a trip. She walked down to the Wapping stairs with Rat in attendance, and took a wherry. It was a sunny day, and the river was as bustling as any London square or market. Voices called across the river from lighter to ship to barge, and their wherry made its way upstream following the same course her husband had taken to Putney. Abigail, though, went further. The trip would take time, but she was in no hurry, and besides, she enjoyed watching the riverbank change its character, from the crowded wharves of Wapping to the colourful splendour of the Tower and the City markets, and then the river widened out to the towers and roofs of Westminster and the fields of Chelsea. Then they were out in the country, on the same river but also on an utterly different one.
They went past Putney, under its wooden bridge, the palace at Fulham passing by on their right as they entered the great river-loop around Barnes. Curious trees leaned into the river to see their reflections as they passed, and as they approached their destination she saw a church tower and several roofs, one of them tall and steep and hard by the riverbank. The waterman tied up at some steps down to the shore, and Rat jumped out first and held out his hand for her, ceremoniously. She stepped up onto the bank.
‘Will you wait?’ she asked the waterman.
‘It’s you as is paying me, missus,’ he said, and sat down in the boat. She turned, and faced John Dee’s house.
It was both bigger and smaller than she’d expected. The house itself was large, but the ground on which it stood was cramped by surrounding houses, most of which looked more recent. The old house had a high roof, steeply pitched, like a country cottage though now tiled rather than thatched. On the other side of the path from the river stood a gate, and she remembered the story of Dee standing in his doorway, and speaking to Elizabeth while she sat in a boat on the river. Abigail went through the gate, as the Queen had refused to do, and here was the door, a black and ancient thing. Almost without thinking she knocked upon it, half expecting Prospero to answer in his wizard’s cloak, blinking with stars and planets.
The man who did answer was no wizard. He looked more like a surprised clerk.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, suspiciously. This place must get some strange visitors, she thought to herself, and wondered as to its current owner.
‘My apologies for disturbing you,’ she said. ‘I have come here from Wapping.’
‘Indeed?’
‘This is, I think – or rather, this was – the house of John Dee.’
‘Yes. It was.’
His manner had not warmed. She thought carefully about what to say next. She decided on an excess of the truth.
‘Sir, my husband is a constable in Wapping. He is investigating the deaths of a family there, and he discovered certain volumes pertaining to Dr Dee beside their bodies. He does not know I am here, but while he has been investigating these matters, I have been doing some investigating of my own. I have come here today as a result of my researches into Dr Dee. I know not quite why, but I have learned in my studies that it often serves the purpose to have visible display of what one is researching. Just seeing this house has given me some new understanding. To see inside it would, I think, help me even more so.’
He smiled, and she could see her decision to tell the truth had been the correct one.
‘Madam, I see all sorts of individuals at this door. Most of them are mad or liars or both. You seem to be neither. Won’t you come in?’
And he stepped back and away, and opened the door of Dr Dee’s house. Taking hold of Rat’s silent but warm hand, she stepped inside.