THREE DISCARDED OUTFITS LAY ON THE BED. SIÂN HOPED TO EXUDE A confidence today that she was totally lacking. A stylist by profession, she found it second nature to orchestrate a carefully chosen wardrobe that belied any trouble and looked nonchalant, as though she’d thrown something together in minutes that could grace the cover of Vogue. What was wrong today? She couldn’t carry off this feat of effortless polish.
At Calvin’s request, a walk across Barnes Common to Mortlake was planned first. Flat shoes, she thought, or boots? Then lunch at an old pub on the river, so she had to be practical as well as feminine. It was hardly The Ivy. Plus it was a chilly day for early November. There was her new boyfriend to keep one step ahead of. And there was her ex-lover’s best friend meeting for a second time this relatively “new” man of hers, which she felt anxious about.
But worse than all of these, she feared the censure of Alex, the pressing worry that he might think ill of her for replacing his exceptional brother with a cousin he’d met only once to date. And that was at his brother’s funeral when everyone was in shock, too numb to think. She thought Alex had been cool with Calvin. Well, he would be. Or maybe Alex had just been somewhere else in his head, that day? Though somehow he’d given the eulogy to a packed country church without a quiver in his voice—a rich, strong cadence that had made even the downcast Simon, seated next to her, look up appreciatively and listen with something close to a smile, as Alex had delivered a speech of warmth and delicate humor. It still made her weep when she thought of the words he’d closed with, about our being only what dreams are made on, and our lives being “rounded with a sleep.” Will had sometimes said these words to her, from The Tempest, as though he’d had an inkling of his own fate. Her throat caught now; but she staunchly held off her tears. That would be too much today.
The entry phone buzzed, and Calvin’s voice was on the intercom, on his way up. She’d have to settle it now, and try to relax. She threw on a pink hacking jacket with multicolored buttons on the cuff, and pinned a silk rose to her lapel. She looked quirky, and stylish too, and it would have to do. “Will left me,” she whispered to herself, “so they can hardly hold it against me that there’s someone else in my life now. Alex has always been too kind to make me suffer for it.” But she felt an anxiety, an edginess, that she couldn’t fathom.
ALEX RESCUED LUCY FROM HER SUNDAY SOLITUDE PROMPTLY AT ELEVEN A.M., noting that the ill spirits of Friday night seemed to have fled. Her dark hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, knotted with a scarf, and she looked somehow chastely sensual, but certainly lovely. He held her hand softly down to his car. Their talk had a light rhythm as he filled her in on the rendezvous, aware that meeting his friends might seem a bit daunting. He explained the proposal had come from a cousin he’d never properly met, who wanted to see him before he went back to the States in a few weeks. With Alex’s busy schedule, it was now or never. He thought he’d omit the intricacies of this cousin’s present love life. He hadn’t considered how he felt about it himself, though he had no conscious objections he could identify.
Simon waved as Alex parked behind his distinctive four-wheel drive on Woodlands Road. He whistled appreciatively to himself as he took in the apparition that was Lucy, ushered on Alex’s arm, walking toward him. The men shook hands firmly, Alex making the introductions. Whoa! thought Simon. Why are doctors always blessed with such good fortune?
“Have we met?” Lucy asked him immediately. She was very comfortable with his open, intelligent face.
“I’d definitely remember.” Simon’s gallantry couldn’t always be relied upon; like Will, he had a powerful critical eye and satirical wit, which stubbornly refused to bend a knee to social mores. However, the lady was disarmingly lovely, and he added with honesty: “But I’m delighted to do so now.”
Lucy smiled naturally at him, and stepped comfortably between him and Alex.
“Siân and Calvin will be somewhere near the duck pond.” Alex’s tone was placid, but Simon wondered how he was feeling inside.
“I’m very curious,” Simon replied. “I hardly spoke to him at the funeral.”
Lucy was hushed. She had heard from Amel about this dreadful recent death in Alex’s family, and she knew the ghosts couldn’t possibly be laid to rest yet; but he had said nothing at all to her about it, and she didn’t know him well enough to broach the subject herself, to say that she’d heard of the loss and was desperately sorry. So she would wait for an evening when, perhaps in the right mood, a glass of good wine might invite him to talk to her. She was longing for him to do so. Such an evening, and such a confidence, would mark a change.
The men chatted as they walked across the Common, until they spotted a couple moving toward them from the pond. As they came close enough for Lucy to see their faces, she tensed. Introductions were made between them. Alex was all courtesy, and gave the girl a warm hug. Simon put on a good performance with the boyfriend and similarly gave the girl an affectionate kiss. Neither seemed to warm to the man; and Lucy also felt herself apart from him, and only him. He was good-looking, after a fashion; squeaky-clean blond hair, smartly dressed, with a chocolate jacket and chinos, and a button-down collar. But she felt a wariness toward him—which was unfortunate, she realized, as he was apparently Alex’s cousin.
But the exotic girl with him—a year or two older than herself, she calculated—transfixed Lucy. She was a Rosetti painting come alive, with strawberry-blond curls, model-girl height, and some magnetic quality she couldn’t define. Lucy was instantly drawn to her. She looked the type who was always outgoing, yet she also projected some vulnerability. Lucy recognized torment in her, and wondered why.
And in her turn, Siân looked searchingly at Lucy, and decided in a second she liked what she saw. Other women often made her nervous—she was far happier with men. But this fascinating classical face—so different from her own, with its huge warm eyes—reassured her, communicated some essence of sympathy; and she was glad she had come, pleased for Alex if this was something special unfolding in his life. He’d almost been an island—by his own choosing—since the end of his marriage to Anna. Today he seemed relaxed and happy, stylishly dressed in a light pink shirt and duck-egg sweater over jeans. Siân smiled approvingly.
Lucy was so caught up in her impressions that she hadn’t followed the conversation. Calvin was explaining the family relationship, she realized. Their grandmothers were sisters, but one had gone to America and the relationship between all parties had lapsed into sporadic correspondence.
“I do remember my mother writing to a cousin—in Nantucket, I thought.” Alex had never said anything about his family, so this interested Lucy, wrenching her back to what they were discussing.
“Yes, that’s totally correct. Grandma met my grandfather when he was in Paris, I believe, and she was learning painting or improving her French, I think. It was love at first sight, by most accounts, and she followed him back to the States. Nantucket was home to his large family; and my mother and her paternal cousins are still there.”
“How do you come to be in the Midwest?” Alex thought Siân had said Kansas was home for him.
“My college—it’s where I’m studying.”
Simon had been taking in the details of his expensive shoes and Hamptons style. He figured him for a business graduate. “Studying?”
“Theology.” Calvin flashed a smile, and Simon tried not to hold the row of perfect teeth against him.
Alex stifled a laugh as he looked down at the path. A cousin of mine and Will’s connected with the Church, he thought. That’s different. A similar thought must have amused Simon. “Very nice.” Calvin detected no irony.
Alex brought them toward White Hart Lane, and asked the others to walk onto The Ship while he took Lucy by car. He wouldn’t repeat the mistake of Friday night and wear her out; but she protested.
“Please don’t worry about me. You know I’m dedicated to my treadmill, and I walk from Battersea to the hospital whenever the weather is fine enough. The exercise is good for me.” With a mixture of sweetness and firmness she challenged the doctor to disagree.
“In moderation.” Alex refused to be overruled, so she gave in to his protectiveness and he jogged back for the car.
“Have you been ill, Lucy?” The concern in Siân’s voice was genuine.
“A heart operation a couple of months ago. But I’ve got to get back on my feet sometime. I definitely don’t want to be wrapped in cotton wool.”
“I’d enjoy it if I were you.” She threaded her arm through Lucy’s. “Alex will love to take care of you; and he’s excellent at it.”
The car spirited her away while the others walked briskly down the lane toward the river; and when they met up again ten minutes later, Alex and Lucy were settled comfortably at a round table by the window, overlooking the water. He was talking her through the reverse image of their view from the boat the other night.
“Great place!” Calvin enthusiastically pulled out a chair for Siân.
“We used to come here and expect war to break out between the brothers every March,” she told him. “Will was at UCL, but he supported Oxford in the Boat Race just to irritate Alex, who did his degree at Cambridge. You never rose to it, Alex, although Will had been pretty noisy about Oxford winning these last two races.”
“You definitely need to book on Boat Race day.” Alex’s emotions were caught in crosscurrents, but he managed some laughter. “But the view of the Thames is a good tonic even in winter.” He poured them each a glass of wine from the bottle he had waiting, neglecting only his own, which contained mineral water.
“Oh, Alex, are you working later?” Siân had a long acquaintance with his teetotal lunches; but he rarely complained about them.
“On call, but it comes to the same.”
“I imagine that’s why doctors binge drink—is that right, Alex?” Calvin flashed an earnest look at them all, but Alex only raised an eyebrow.
A blackboard menu arrived, and there was some discussion between Alex and Lucy about the safest choice for her: nothing that might be reheated, avoid salad bar. She settled on char-grilled chicken, and once the food was ordered, Alex turned to his new cousin with interest.
“Why did you want to come here? What’s the attraction of Mortlake Church?”
Calvin brought his hands together in front of him and looked squarely at Alex. He paused, with a dramatic effect that almost made his cousin laugh. “Do you know very much about Dr. John Dee?”
“The Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth? Not much at all. I seem to remember he made a translation of Euclid—or wrote a Preface to it? He was the first to teach Euclid across Europe, since classical times. The original of Prospero, I think. An odd mix of science and magic. Am I right?”
“You are. But you know that we’re related to him? Did your mother tell you about it?”
“No, not at all. It’s through him we’re connected?”
Simon leaned in to give the conversation his undivided attention. He watched the American intently.
“Through our female line. It must be entirely through the female line.” Calvin’s reply to Alex seemed unexpectedly intense.
“Which means it could be traced through our mitochondrial DNA.” Alex met Calvin’s eyes with a hint of humor, but his cousin in turn looked at Alex without paying much attention to his last comment. He appeared instead to be weighing something in his mind. He didn’t want to make a mistake and rush this.
“I believe your brother may have inherited something from your mother when she died. It would have come down from Dee, or actually, from Dee’s daughter, Katherine. I’m amazed you don’t know, Alex.”
Lucy noticed Simon’s hands tightened a fraction. He was working to conceal some agitation. “Sorry, Calvin, what period exactly was it?” she asked. “Queen Elizabeth’s?”
“Yes. His life extended right through her long reign. He died in the earlier years of James’s kingship, but James had no time for him. His best years were with good Queen Bess. He’s buried right here, at St. Mary’s, which is why I thought it appropriate. I’d like to look at the church after.”
Alex’s green eyes were contemplative, but betrayed no thought or emotion. He shifted his gaze to Siân as she spoke energetically.
“That key, then, that Will had—when Diana died. Is that what you mean?”
“Possibly. Probably. I might know if I saw it.” He turned his gaze on Alex again, attempting what the latter thought was a casual look, but not quite succeeding. “I don’t guess you know what would have happened to it?”
Alex, though usually such a private human being, reacted to the question in a moment, which concealed the deliberation of his answer. He drew something easily from his shirt pocket, which dangled on a chain in front of them. Three pairs of eyes were transfixed by the object.
“I have it.” His voice was mild.
Siân looked at it like a fleeting ghost, and Will’s hands were there with her, turning it over reverently; but she was almost more touched that Alex—normally such a level man—had it with him, a piece of Will, an inextricable link; a revelation, to see Alex with such an object. She wanted to cry.
Calvin was trying not to let his hands betray him. He wanted to reach for it; but before he could speak, Lucy, who had been only an observer for most of the conversation, stretched a hand toward it, then cradled it in her own palm.
“Alex, it’s beautiful. Can I hold it?”
He smiled with some surprise at her fascination; it was a fairly simple silver key, old perhaps, but with only the modest decoration of a tiny engraving and a small pearl. Yet he passed it to her freely. She closed her hand over it respectfully, and her eyelids closed as well. Sunlight played on her long, dark lashes, and she was a part of that light.
In the moment that was suspended Calvin was trying to find a way to ask for it too; but Alex was moved by something intangible on Lucy’s face. “Would you like to hold on to it? Keep it for a time?” Saying anything seemed a travesty. He felt his words broke across an evanescent moment, but he had to voice them. Without shattering the spell, she answered him silently, with a look Alex had never seen before, but hoped to see again. It communicated a powerful “yes,” and other emotions Alex couldn’t translate.
Simon was the only one at the table whose eyes hadn’t jumped from their sockets when Alex produced the little key. He had been watching Calvin, whom he now saw struggling with something. He decided to ask a very practical question.
“Does anyone know what it opens?”
“The most precious jewel in the family.” Calvin’s answer was fervent. “But we don’t know what that is.” He looked at Alex for a second before returning to the key in Lucy’s grasp. “You know it’s supposed to be unlucky, if the key doesn’t pass from mother to daughter?”
“I didn’t.” Alex’s voice was no-nonsense. Charms and curses weren’t any part of his vocabulary. “Will was given it, and whatever my mother may have told him, it’s a secret between them now.” He looked at his cousin with a flicker of amusement. “You seem to know much more than we do.”
“My mother told me that it must pass from mother to daughter—or we think perhaps a niece if there is no daughter. Otherwise, something bad could happen. It’s supposed to break the chain in some way.”
Lucy’s expression was a mute challenge to Calvin, but she articulated nothing.
“Well, it hardly seems to matter if we can’t find the desk, or the door, or the box, that it unlocks.” Siân felt the need to diffuse whatever was going on here. She resolutely wanted the key to stay in Alex’s care. Will had lost far too much sleep over it in the months since Diana’s death, and she associated it sadly with his deep well of pain at her loss, and even perhaps their own breakup as he’d become so obsessed with it. Let it remain with Alex: he wouldn’t let it haunt him, as it had Will.
Lunch arrived and broke the tension, and Calvin found that, despite his best efforts, there was no opening to return to the subject of key or curse. But he had little appetite for his food, and was glad when they could rearrange themselves for the walk to the church.
Strolling down the street, he couldn’t quite let it go, and he turned directly to Alex. “There should be some kind of document that goes with the key. It was still intact in my grandmother’s recollection of it. It tells something about the location of whatever the key unlocks, I think.”
“I’m not aware of anything, but I’ll check among Will’s papers. Some of his effects are still with the coroner.” Alex affected a lack of interest, and for the first time, hid something of what he knew.
As he opened the heavy door of St. Mary’s, Alex asked, “What of Dr. Dee, then? What should we remember him for?”
Before he answered, Calvin took in the little church, which looked sunny inside and yet felt heavy. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Lucy had immediately picked up on this atmosphere. Her hand was pressed to her chest, and he wanted to talk to her, yet not to appear rude to Alex.
“He was the first to use the term ‘British Empire’—and to help the Queen’s ships discover it, using his maps. He had a vast library, one of the great libraries of Europe. His collection ran to more than three thousand volumes and rare manuscripts, when your university at Cambridge had about three hundred books! Some people believe that when it was ransacked and dispersed it was a loss comparable to the burning of the library in Alexandria.” Calvin had focused back on Alex.
“Yes. Some of the volumes are in the Royal College of Physicians—I remember, now that you say that. Clearly the inspiration for Prospero’s books…” Alex was drifting somewhere Calvin didn’t follow, but he picked up his narrative.
“He was also the very first James Bond, so to speak—one of Walsingham’s rather special clique of spies, which had included Sir Philip Sidney—his own son-in-law—and Sidney was tutored by Dee. “007” was Dr. Dee’s personal cipher—it signified that he was the Queen’s “eyes” alongside the spiritual power of the number seven, which was the holy number, of course, and had some further personal significance for Dee. But what’s even more interesting, he and a man named Kelley”—Calvin cleared his throat—“performed alchemy. And they could also talk to the angels. Astonishing secrets were said to have been given to them.” He looked right at Alex. “If you believe all that.”
“Possibly you do!” Simon had been hovering and had overheard this account from the American.
His retort encouraged a smile in Alex’s face again, bringing him out of the curious mood he had entered a moment before. He had been lost in the lovely vision of Lucy, who was looking searchingly at the high altar, and the chancel, as though she’d misplaced something, with all the hushed reverence of a small child. Such a delightful day, Alex was grinning, his thoughts his own. So many diverse and unexpected entertainments.
ALL SOULS’ DAY, 1609, ST. MARY’S CHURCH, MORTLAKE
“HOW GOOD IT IS, TO STEP INTO THIS QUIETUDE.” FINDING REFUGE FROM the unusually cold November day, Katherine Dee’s words are only a whisper as she closes the heavy church door and slips quietly into the building. Still only in her twenties, she is a kindhearted but rather steady girl, wise beyond her years, glad to escape the giddy noise of the revels and the dancing of the feast-day fair on the green outside. Just for a moment she breathes in, closing her eyes, catching her breath: there is a faint smell of incense, and also of the late autumn flowers that decorate the church in celebration of All Souls’ Day. Under the great Elizabeth, the two festivals have merged into one, All Saints’ and All Souls’; but the people are still enacting the traditions of their grandparents, bringing small cakes and food gifts for the souls of the dearly departed, still offering up prayers for the faithful. This she too will do.
She thrills at the unpeopled space: busy with the activities, the food, and the music that fills the High Street, everyone has gone from here now, the service over long since. She walks quickly to the chancel steps, and kneels to lay a posy of herbs and flowers she has gathered from the last offerings in the garden of the cottage, just across the way from the church. The rosemary is still growing strongly, and a few pinks have survived—as has a late-blooming damask rose; in her late mother’s favorite shade of rich cream fading to blush pink, it has miraculously defied this morning’s early frost brought on by last night’s cold new moon.
Enjoying the serenity, she sits here in peace at her father’s feet, studies the bright new brass, recently fixed to his grave. Paid for by subscription at the wishes of her father’s good friends, it has taken months to arrive and grace the heavy tomb slab. Her father would be pleased, she decides: there is a glow of light about it, a sense of alchemy that transmutes the colorless stone beneath it into something golden and brilliant.
“Indeed, I think it looks fine, Miss Kate.”
The voice makes her jump suddenly; it is the curate, and he approaches her. She is nodding at him, reassured by his familiar face. He looks closely at the flowers.
“The pinks are for a private love,” she tells him. “Oft times I made from them the spicy sops in wine, to ease his health toward the end.”
The curate looks sadly at the girl, who has dedicated all these last years of her life to the great but impoverished man. He wonders how she fills her days now, her chance of marriage surely past. “The rosemary is for remembrance, Kate?”
She nods, and takes her time, considering whether to say more. Then: “The rose, though, was his favorite—his perfect companion. It is a code, showing the aim of all humanity, to attain divine wisdom.” She looks the young man directly in the eye, wondering whether he will contradict her from his own—a slightly different—theology. But he is quiet, and she continues. “The only path to that wisdom is through love, and knowledge; the blooming rose translates the whole meaning of the universe—indeed, the whole meaning of the universe can be explained to us through just such a rose as this one. To understand the mystery of the rose is to comprehend the essence of the universe. Through its simple perfection, we may become more perfect.”
She is looking at him now, yet talking beyond him, through the space and the time. “To realize the possibilities of the rose, mankind must develop the capacity for love to the point of loving all peoples, all creatures, all that is different and foreign to us. We must enlarge our capacity for knowledge and understanding through the loving intelligence of the heart.”
She smiles at the man, who feels as though a spell were thrown upon him, though it is a happy enchantment. And setting the flowers at her father’s feet, she bows quietly to him, and is gone.