THE DOORBELL RANG AGAIN. THE PORTER WAS EITHER AWAY FROM HIS DESK OR he had allowed a man to come up right to her threshold. “Taxi, love. Ordered for the name of King?” Lucy looked at the man mystified. “I have this note to give you, and then I’ve got to hang on for ten minutes.” He winked at her, gave her a sealed envelope, and turned. “I’m out front when you’re ready.”
Grace was running late for work with all the interruptions this morning. “What is it now? If it goes on like this, I’ll never get out the door…” She laughed and peered over her friend’s shoulder at the handwritten words on the card:
3rd Feb. Mademoiselle. Bring a warm coat, sensible shoes—and your passport! Depêche-toi…Alexandre
“I’ll put these in water for you.” She took over the luxurious box from the porter’s previous intrusion. “Get yourself together, Lucy. You’re obviously off somewhere disgustingly romantic. Like Paris?” Grace started singing a Piaf song, and swooped on a vase.
“I don’t get it, Grace. He leaves a card and an expensive bottle of my favorite Bulgarian Thé Rose perfume for Christmas, before I go to Shropshire; then he’s unavailable in January. The longest phone call has been just ten minutes, and that’s a poor substitute for seeing him. I could destroy a garden of daisies trying to work out how he feels. I could find it irritating you know: I do find it irritating! He’s interested; he’s not interested…”
Grace dismissed her attempt. “Lucy, the man is interested. He took all the trouble to identify your perfume—then the greater problem of tracing where to buy it. And now, look at this!” She swept an arm across the two dozen long-stemmed reds that she was quickly arranging. “As well as the taxi! I’m sorry, but you can’t blame a guy for his workload. He was teaching, wasn’t he? Simon says he had barely a day off for the whole of last month. He must have done something particular to arrange a free day today. And how romantic: he’s obviously taking you somewhere very special.”
But Lucy’s strong new heart was suffering an attack of nerves. Risking her feelings for Alex Stafford was complex. The possible breach of professionalism, the uncertainty about his private life, imparted heavy warnings. She looked at Grace, who was stifling a grin, and suddenly cottoned on to something. “What do you know about this?” She flashed the note in her flatmate’s direction.
“I haven’t got time to tell you. You’ll be late.”
“Did he set this up with you?”
Grace grinned without replying, and Lucy chased her into the kitchen.
“There has to be some reason why neither you nor any of my closest friends were free to have lunch with me today. Were you so sure I’d get a better offer?”
“Well”—she noticed the roses were thornless as she started arranging them for Lucy and softened—“I do know that he had to call on every favor to get a clear day in the week for your birthday. But I didn’t tell him at Christmas what perfume you wear, and I don’t know what he’s planning for you today.” She looked at her friend. “And only a simpleton could doubt he’s interested, Lucy. He works twenty-four/seven, right? Plus he’s finishing a PhD. Not masses of free time there. Besides, I think he’s extremely cautious of your health—which is sensible after the last fiasco. He wants to get you well—not woo you to your death. But somehow he still manages to find the time to call you every other day. And isn’t it sweet, really? Reassuringly old-fashioned in a world where everyone’s in such a rush, and affairs are over before they’ve begun. He’s not like other men. Of course, if you’re having second thoughts yourself, I’ll keep the roses.”
Lucy shot her a look of agony. “Two or three phone calls in a week is not every other day! And he doesn’t really say anything.”
“Which is just the point! Now go on. Shoo!” Grace laughed back at her wholeheartedly. “Put on something pretty—but warm! Cab’s waiting.”
ALEX OPENED THE DOOR OF HER TAXI ON THE CHISWICK SIDE OF THE Thames at Kew Bridge, which had a light dusting of snow, and paid the driver. “Happy Birthday, you!” He pulled her coat tighter around her.
“Not Paris then,” she teased him. “I was expecting to be met at Waterloo Station.”
“Ah, you were hoping for lunch at Boffinger, were you?” He laughed and took her hand more tightly than usual, guiding her to his parked car. “I’m sorry to ask you to meet me here. I had to drive from the North Circular. I was caught at the other hospital till the early hours and had some errands to run first thing.” Lucy waited, and when he opened the door the scent took her breath away. The black soft top of Alex’s Audi had concealed its contents; the surprisingly roomy backseat was filled with fragrant bunches of jonquils, hyacinths, violets, and other spring flowers. She couldn’t speak, and he was pleased.
“For the Return of the Maiden,” he said. She looked quizzical. “Your birthday is a special date—well, the day after one. This is the first breath of spring—according to the Pagans. It’s when Persephone and her myriad namesakes come back from the Underworld.”
“And so I have.” Lucy hugged him. “And where are you taking me? I thought I needed a passport.”
“And so you do.” He mimicked her tone. He checked his wing mirrors, and as they moved off, he explained. “I thought I’d take you to the country for lunch: to the village I grew up in, where my family home is. It’s picture postcard stuff!” He laughed. “And you know L. P. Hartley says the past is a foreign country? Well, it’s my past.”
She laughed with pleasure. “I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather you take me, Alex. It’s perfect. Thank you.”
She settled into the generous beige leather of the passenger seat and absorbed the delicious scent of the flowers, the physical proximity to Alex. She hadn’t expected this today: had steeled herself to have a non-event for her birthday. Now, cocooned in warmth that belied the outside temperature—reading just 1°C on the panel—she let the driver concentrate on the traffic out of town and opened the conversation on her own terms.
“I’ve been thoroughly fascinated about your illustrious ancestor, Alex. I’m only halfway through the books Simon brought me, but they’re full of surprises.”
“I imagined they’d be very dry bones—especially if Calvin is so rapt with it all?”
“Not at all! I know you’re an Enlightenment man, Alex, but we should try to understand your forebear through the lens of his own time, if we can, to appreciate the considerable impact he made on Elizabethan England. He was a true Renaissance man, with a thorough knowledge of astronomy and history, an authority on navigation and, by all accounts, an outstanding lecturer. If Drake and Gilbert found their way to the New World, it was because Dee helped them. I’m not sure if I can do justice to him, really.”
“Well, I know absolutely nothing, and we have an hour at least to get to Hampshire in this weather! Give me a taste of the man.” He was in particularly playful spirits today, and Lucy relaxed thoroughly to enjoy them.
“The first thing I should explain about John Dee, Alex, is that a lot of what we know—or if you like, how we see him—comes from Meric Casaubon, a seventeenth-century scholar who was determined to destroy any positives in his reputation. Casaubon is the reason we still can’t quite look at Dee without preconceptions. He thought Dee was deluded, and that his practices were ‘dark,’ as he put it. He published the most salacious details of Dee’s life. Not that he had a lot to go on there, but he did manage to dig up some oddities.”
Alex grinned. “Not an evenhanded biographer then?”
Lucy shook her head. “Far from it. But what might be most of interest to us is that Casaubon was privy to an extraordinary stash of Dee’s personal documents, which he happened on in the strangest manner.”
He looked at her, intrigued. “Go on.”
“In the early seventeenth century it was Sir Robert Cotton—think Cottonian Manuscripts in the British Library—who was for some unexplained reason inspired to go and dig in the grounds of Dee’s house in Mortlake. And he got lucky…”
Alex just looked at Lucy. “So the possibility of our key, and some other find related to it, is entirely in keeping.” Her eyes affirmed this. “Why bury everything? Was he really writing such dangerous ideas?”
“Cotton discovered a cache of papers which were damp-ridden, but still legible, and from among these came all the transcripts of Dee and Kelley’s communications with angels, which Cotton’s son later passed on to Casaubon.”
“With angels.” Alex’s voice was in its familiar ironic register, and it made Lucy giggle. She repositioned her body in the seat, turning more toward him.
“You’re on a promise—to grant him the perspective of his own time and remember that many of his sixteenth-century contemporaries cherished similar beliefs and ideas!”
Her voice was full of good humor and entreaty, and Alex was delighted at her passion for the subject. He listened appreciatively while she narrated with skill her understanding of the atmosphere of the time. The Elizabethan world had an eclectic mix of inhabitants: politicians, theologians, poets and playwrights, explorers and glamorous old sea dogs like Raleigh and Drake. But the population also included an extraordinary array of spirits—fairies, demons, witches, ghosts, sprites—both good and ill: and conjurors to talk to them. It was totally within the fabric of their world for Spenser’s great epic poem to be about a fairy queen, and for Hamlet’s troubles to be set in motion by the ghost. This fascinating blend of the physical and the ethereal worlds owed as much to a philosophy of occult thought at the most intellectual level as it did to a tradition of superstitions and folkloric influences. It drew on a legacy of magic and cabala, inherited from the great Neoplatonists of the Italian renaissance. The aim was to comprehend the deepest spheres of hidden knowledge, blurring scientific and spiritual thoughts.
“The face of this movement in Britain was John Dee.”
Alex had been absorbed, admiring her professional control of the flow of so much complicated information; but when she came to Dee—the man he knew as the lecturer on Euclid—he was puzzled. “It’s hard to digest this—a man who’s famous as a mathematician of some genius, obviously, but who is also infamous as a conjuror. I wonder how he was able to reconcile for himself these scientific and occult interests.”
“Hold on to the fact that at that time, even mathematics was regarded as a subject very close to the ‘black arts.’ Calculating was an uncomfortably close relative of conjuration and the casting of astrological charts.”
Alex laughed at this, as it reminded him privately of Will’s distaste for math—the devil’s subject, he’d always called it to Alex while he’d finished his younger brother’s math prep for him. “And yet Dee always maintained a sober claim to be a devout Christian, from what Calvin told us—and even a supporter of the Tudor religious Reformation?”
“Yes, I agree that’s odd from today’s perspective. But Dee was influenced by the crosscurrents of extraordinary ideas from fifteenth-century Europe. It was at that time that documents and books were pouring into Italy from Constantinople and Spain, where the Jews were cast out by Ferdinand and Isabella. One of the most important of these ideas was brought with the teachings contained in the cabala. The other was the discovery of a group of documents about Hermes Trismegistus, which became known as the Corpus Hermetica.” Lucy looked at Alex: this was the hub of her information, and she wanted to be sure he was paying attention while dealing with the icy road and the now heavier snow flurries, which tested the dexterity of the windshield wipers. She paused to consider that the maiden had chosen terrible weather for her reemergence.
“Don’t stop.” Alex glanced at her, fascinated. “I’m enjoying your voice.”
She smiled, relishing the role reversal that cast her as the authority. “The Renaissance philosophers Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino worked for the Medici, and it was Lorenzo’s grandfather, Cosimo, who asked them to put everything else to one side and concentrate on the Hermes texts that had just come into his possession. These texts they translated—the writings of Hermes—sent ripples of mysticism across Europe. Hermes was a mythical Egyptian sage—not the messenger to the Greek gods. He was a sort of Greco-Egyptian hybrid who embodied the qualities of both the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian god and scribe, Thoth. He was called the Egyptian Moses by Renaissance scholars.”
Alex turned the heating up a fraction as the air temperature was dropping outside. “It sounds as though he probably wasn’t a real person at all?”
“More a kind of god imbued with hero-like human qualities. The books and documents that have become known as the Corpus Hermetica—Latin and Greek texts about him, and writings theoretically by him—arose around this mythic figure, but the Florentines read them all and assumed he was a real sage and priest. For them he was a fount of ancient, sacred wisdom contemporaneous with Moses, and believed to have influenced Plato, although it’s more likely that the Hermetic texts were based on some of Plato’s teachings, among others. But the thing to remember is that the texts were real enough, and fascinating, and they believed Hermes’ wisdom to be very ancient. Many scholars now think they are in fact texts from about a century after the time of Christ, but that they preserve much older oral traditions about pre-Christian Egyptian religious ideas. And to liberal thinkers who were looking for religious truths which might transcend the religious factions they were living through, they were a new vision! These texts allowed them to escape the life-and-death struggles about faith—whether to remain true to Rome or join Luther and Calvin, and whether to vilify Muslims and Jews. The ideas expressed in the Hermetic texts took them to the very essence of God’s being. And they were right in many ways to give them such respect, because we do know now how much the Egyptian religious view of the world influenced Moses.”
Alex laid a hand on Lucy’s lap, asking her to pause. The heady scent of the flowers in the close confines of the warm car, combined with the powerful ideas she was communicating, made him suddenly light-headed.
“Wait, Lucy. Have I got this right? When we speak of Hermeticism, it’s the literature that grew up around this supposedly human Hermes, who was invested with the divine attributes of the Greek god of the same name?” She nodded, and Alex asked: “And the significance of Hermes was…?”
“That he seemed to be speaking to them of a pure religious truth, unbranded, if you will. Ficino called the Hermetic documents ‘a light of divine illumination.’ By contemplating these teachings he felt one could rise above the mind’s deceptions and understand the Divine Mind. This was compelling stuff at a time when differing doctrinal issues pulled people in so many directions. Through this course of study you could apprehend the mind of God directly—or so they thought. Hermes even seemed to have anticipated the coming of Christ—but from a vantage point of Egyptian wisdom. There was a strong tinge of magic and occultism which was imported with his Egyptianized teachings—and a respect for women, too, from the worship of Isis. Hermes was so respected that his image was set into the altar at Siena’s cathedral.”
Alex, listening to Lucy’s words, considered how this school of thought might have interested his mother, with her ecumenical approach to spirituality and her gentle feminism. “OK,” he nodded pensively. “The Hermetic texts were widely believed to rival Genesis, as far as their origin and spiritual authority were concerned?”
Lucy nodded emphatically. “Correct. Especially for thinkers like Giordano Bruno and Ficino.”
In the scant traffic and eerie silence of the snowy conditions, which were close to causing a whiteout even on the A road, a lone deer suddenly sprang across their path not far from them, into a copse. They both smiled, bewitched, but Alex held his thoughts.
“And what about the cabala?”
“Right, this was Pico’s interest. The teachings of the cabala came to Italy with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, both in a verbal tradition and in written texts. Pico understood it as an ancient tradition of mystical wisdom connected with the Hebrew language which descended from Moses: Hebrew was the language of God for them, remember. Cabala assigned a number value to each of the ancient letters—it’s called Gematria—and preserved a secret knowledge of the magic believed to be embodied in the Hebrew language itself. Every letter has a corresponding number value. Even the actual words in Hebrew were thought to contain divine power.”
She broke off for a second to get his reassurances that he was following all this, but she needn’t have. Their eyes met just for a moment, though Alex was mindful of the road. “The idea was that the language itself contained deeper information than had been widely disseminated—that it had a hidden subtext. A sort of message to the elite. I’m with you.”
“Good. YAHWEH is the tetragrammaton of God, the four Hebrew letters YHWH, which traditionally make up his name. Some say it’s not pronounceable, because it has no vowels, but Jehovah is a variant—as is Jove, in fact.”
Alex broke in. “Amel tells me, you know, that the word Yahweh owes its parentage to an Egyptian word which means ‘the moon’s power rises.’ It referred to Yah, an Egyptian moon god, and also to a Babylonian moon goddess of the same name.”
Lucy rolled her eyes with humor. “Alex, that’s very interesting, but please don’t sidetrack me. We’re coming to the essence of the excitement about cabalistic doctrine.” He smiled and nodded at her. “Now,” she resumed, “for the Christians, an appealing aspect of the cabala was the way in which the tradition of cabala seemed to confirm the truth of Jesus as the son of God. In this way: when you have the name IESU for Jesus, or better still Jeshua—like Joshua—which is its variant, you are, so they thought, adding in the substantial medial letter ‘S’ to the consonant only name of Yahweh. They saw this letter ‘S’ making the unutterable name utterable; YHWH is otherwise entirely without vowels. For the Christian cabalists, the name made audible was the same as the Word made Flesh.”
Alex laughed aloud, glancing at Lucy as they turned off the dividing highway toward the little village of Longparish. “Well, even taking the etymology of ‘Yahweh’ out of it, it’s a strange argument. And I can just hear how much more irreverently my brother would have put that.” She laughed. “Did they buy it?”
“Depending on how deftly you manipulated the Hebrew alphabet, and stretched the consonants to allow for elided vowels—yes! It seemed convincing to the adepts of the time. But part of the agenda was to convert Muslims and Jews to the idea of the Trinity—to Christianity.”
Alex nodded pensively. “Plus ça change! But, haven’t we come a long way from John Dee?”
“It must seem so. You need to understand this rather complex web of thought to see what excited Dee’s fine mind. Christian cabala gave its blessing to communion with the angels, via their holy names in Hebrew, which had a magical power to bring the magus, or conjuror, directly to God without doctrinal restrictions—”
Alex added: “In ancient times, names carried power. If you knew the real name of an entity, and spoke it, you had power over it.”
“And this, effectively, was what they believed Moses himself had had access to, as a special magus or initiate. And Hermes Trismegistus too. The journey of the initiated person was from the physical world—earth—through the ether or air—demi-paradise—to the celestial world—true heaven, or nirvana, if you like. But the angels protected the magic and the journey from bad spirits. So Dee could be both an ardent scientific enquirer and a conjuror of angels. For him, the concepts of Neoplatonism—which had been the spirit of the Renaissance and seriously upset Lorenzo de’ Medici’s implacable foe, poor old Savonarola—were high-minded ideas. He followed a Venetian friar, named Giorgi, who wrote a book on the teachings of Hermes and the cabala called De Harmonia Mundi, which was a philosophy of universal harmony.”
Alex laid a hand on her arm: “But surely any hopes of achieving some gentle unity in the practice of religious faith simply weren’t materializing in Dee’s time?”
Lucy laughed quietly. “No, that’s certainly true. The man Simon mentioned, Giordano Bruno, put it beautifully. He said that the methods used by the Church to bully people back to them were not those of the Apostles, who had preached with love. Anyone not wishing to be a Catholic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries faced torture at the hands of the Inquisitors—or, conversely, in any number of northern European countries, burning at the stake if you wished to remain Catholic. The Reformation and the Catholic reaction fueled disunity. What a pessimistic prospect for the more liberal intellectuals of the time. Bypassing the Church—in all its forms—by talking to God’s angels directly seemed to offer hope. But then, magic and communion with the angels? It was seen as wildly heretical.”
Alex had been taking the car through a series of turns on snow-covered lanes, and it was a moment before he spoke. “So, Dee was a man of the late Renaissance, exploring occult philosophy in scientific directions, through alchemy and astrology, mathematics and geometry—all of which could bring you closer to the workings of God. Amel still feels some truth in this.”
“And, Alex, crucially, the Hermetica justified their study of astrology, because it showed them how the Egyptians had laid out their buildings to reflect the constellations. Many scholars today recognize that this was the impetus which led them to understand that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the solar system. It moved them out of medieval thinking.”
He was contemplative on this point, and took some time to answer. “But, Lucy, you think Dee was really attracted to the reforming aspects of this occult philosophy?”
“No doubt. He helped to build up Queen Elizabeth as a Neoplatonic heroine. Dee directly influenced the writings of people like Spenser and Philip Sidney. He also challenged Spain’s colonial power through his belief in the British right to commit to their own exploration. The term ‘British Empire’ was coined by Dee—was part of his worldview.”
“Calvin mentioned that—but surely that weighs heavily against him!” Alex suggested.
“Yes, now it would, but not when you place him in his own time and environment. His concept of Britannia was a deliberate challenge to the Spanish/Catholic control of the globe. That Americans speak English rather than Spanish owes something to Dee.” Alex was lost in thought, and Lucy looked at him, laughing self-consciously. “I’ve exhausted you.”
“You’ve woven a spell on me.” And this was the truth. He slowed the car right down now as they entered the village. “Look at the snow on the thatch.”
Lucy hadn’t noticed, but now she took in the aesthetics of the place, with a long breath: an unspoilt English country village, airbrushed white by the weather. Houses bowed with the weight of years; roofs sagged under tiles baked in the sun of previous centuries; windows leaned on beams that ran downhill. The river plashed along the front of the gardens, and under old bridges. She was captivated.
“Thank you for this. What a relief from the city. Can we walk a little?”
It was about half-past eleven when Alex parked at The Plough, his mother’s preferred pub. He swathed her in his own scarf and gloves and buttoned her coat to the top. Together they moved along the lane, walking close to share their body heat. A watery sun struggled with no more power than candlelight on the roofs and paths. But Lucy was a world of feelings away from the cold. She let the quiet, the patches of color on the doors and in the waking flower beds, the mere survival of the village itself with its shop and church and post office and playing fields, enter her soul. The weather snuffed out most signs of life, but one or two people coming out of doors or cars nodded at Alex. This was his space. His childhood lay all about him.
They passed the cricket ground, and he pointed out the clubhouse with its thatched roof looking weary of the cold weather. “A second home in the summer months. First kisses under those trees, early hangovers after lost matches. Even bigger ones if we won. My mother used to come and help with the teas.”
His commentary seemed to Lucy to dally behind other, unspoken thoughts. But she said nothing to push him, absorbing instead these details of his life like hungry grassland scenting the rain. It gave her a sensation she’d never experienced—the vicarious pleasure of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, someone becoming beloved. She realized how the absence of such memories in her own childhood had made it harder to know herself. Alex—sure of his identity—was able to touch people closely, with gentleness and strength, unafraid of the dark. Whatever happened around him, he was still himself. She found resilience by keeping her affections leashed, but one storm of serious emotion would threaten her with obliteration, she thought, sweeping away her only creed. It suddenly struck her that it was no surprise her heart had been her Achilles heel.
They now turned the other way, Alex pausing briefly to collect some white, double jonquils from the trunk of his car, and they came to the church. He swung the gate open for her. She played tourist; he showed her the thirteenth-century features of the building, the oldest stained glass, the fine wooden roof. They emerged from the unlit space into the garden, where some sunlight now softly illuminated the sparse snowfall; and in silence they walked to the newest part of the graveyard. Lucy knew what would follow, but she doubted whether she could be of any help. Alex was upright and pensive, though, and didn’t ask for words or consolations. He crouched over the pair of graves, one much too fresh to venture to discuss the pain and the other hardly less so. He soundlessly placed the flowers, and whatever words he offered were unspoken. Soon he stood again, hooked her arm, and they left. All possible words had frozen on Lucy’s lips: she literally couldn’t speak. Perhaps she’d let him down or missed a moment, but she was reassured by the calm strength in his body as their feet marked the path back and crossed the road to the pub.
RETURNING FROM A DREAM, THEY ORDERED LUNCH—AND THEIR MOOD changed. Everyone who came to drink or eat said something to Alex, and over their unhurried courses he asked questions of those occupying and vacating the bar stools and tables—about holidays, relatives, building work. He knew their stories. It was a community he was a part of, and she liked it. It rescued her from a lack of faith in others, a belief that everyone was caught up in their isolated pockets of interest, and she was chirping and light-humored.
“So man can still be a social animal?”
“Oh, I hope so. I’d want to give up if I thought we couldn’t appreciate others’ diversity.” He looked at her more seriously than his tone might have suggested. “Now, if you have the strength for it,” he asked when the decaffeinated coffee and shared pudding was cleared, “I’d like to show you my home. Just for you to see it, really.”
He was surprisingly tentative. Was he concerned the suggestion might be unwelcome? She couldn’t tell. Did he want time alone with her there? Or was he worried about what would be expected if he created that space? Lucy sensed a pivotal moment in their relationship and was racked with uncertainty.
Then he explained: “I’ve had no pleasure going there—not for months now. It’s a family home. And my family aren’t at home anymore—except my poor father.” When he looked up at her, his face clean-shaven and his hair perfectly trimmed, he looked younger than she’d ever seen him. His usual calm authority was absent. “I think I’d be happy if you came there with me. Dad will be at work in Winchester, but I’ll leave him a note.”
Lucy took control and said freely: “Yes, please, Alex: you must take me.” The awkwardness passed.
Thick clumps of snowdrops laced the border along the path, and winter jasmine over the porch struggled against the elements. Lucy’s first impression was of the garden: someone had taken a lot of trouble over it. The house was large rather than grand—possibly of Tudor origin, she thought; and the thatch was herringboned with little details that would reveal the identity of the thatcher to the cognoscenti.
It was warm inside as they entered, and she was immediately in thrall. A fireplace large enough to sit in; a baby grand piano in front of French windows that looked out into the garden; an air of peace. “My mother would have had flowers everywhere—even in winter.” Alex was apologetic for its present lack of coziness, though this was softened by a comfortable old sofa with a chintz cover and creamy throws and other soft furnishings. The feeling of a strong female anima was tangible in the room above the more masculine items of a pair of soft leather slippers and the folded newspapers.
Alex leaned against a table. “Shall I make you some tea? I think you prefer it to coffee.”
“Please.” She started looking around. “Is it all right if I explore…?”
“That’s why we came.” He walked through to the kitchen and put a kettle on the Rayburn, then noticed a package on the oak worktop. While Lucy peeked in a study-cum-library and a dining room, Alex fumbled with some cardboard packing and bubble wrap. He took in the contents, then picked up the telephone on the wall and dialed a number.
“Dad, you’re not in court. I’m at the house. I brought a friend down for her birthday, for lunch in the pub. Is everything all right? I’ve just seen the package from the police. What’s the story?”
Lucy heard Alex’s voice sounding agitated, and perched on the arm of a generous chair while he talked.
“And that’s it? They don’t know any more? Nothing else returned?”
Lucy listened as he closed the conversation: the weather was bad, they’d be setting off soon, but he’d see him again with Max at the weekend. He put the phone down and looked at Lucy. “Come and see this.”
With immense care and almost a hint of ceremony, he put a tiny picture in her hands. She was surprised by its weight—more substantial than she’d anticipated. She searched the face of a woman with dark hair, beautiful brown almond eyes, a richly needleworked bodice depicting stags and tiny trees on a blue background, the whole object only a few inches long and wide. Lucy couldn’t look away. A grandfather clock chimed the half-hour, and perhaps another minute passed before she consulted Alex.
“Who is this?” There was no volume in her voice.
“Some distant ancestress of my mother, we think—we’re not entirely sure. It was stolen from the house a few months ago, and it’s just come back through Interpol—my father’s not completely au fait with how they found it. We’d more or less given her up.” He looked at her with a half amused, half-serious expression. “Does she remind you of anyone?”
Lucy looked straight back at him. “Of course.” She sat down with the portrait while Alex made the tea. No one could miss the similarity. It was her own face.
She was aware of a powerful headache growing on her, and feeling dizzy, but she wouldn’t tell him. Since her operation she’d had these sensations before. She told Grace she thought it was because she’d come close to death and was now acutely sensitive to the pain of others. Grace joked that it was a near-death experience. No, she wasn’t turning into Joan of Arc, or St. Teresa, and she wouldn’t be mentioning it to her present companion either. But it was real enough, and holding on to the painting tipped the scales. He gave her tea; she felt nauseous. She would have liked to lie down, but refused to let another outing with Alex become disrupted by her poor health. He talked to her, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying.
She looked once more at the lady’s face, the details of the picture. She left the sofa next to him, holding it distractedly. She made a few strides across the room and sat at the piano without asking if he minded, caressing a few keys absently with one hand. Some densely colored chords escaped. Alex was asking if she could play. She said something meaningless about having completed grade eight, but her words sounded thin and she stared back at him blankly. She was going to be sick. He was beside her in a second.
“It’s just the journey, Alex; I’m tired. Don’t panic. I think I’ve just relaxed properly for the first time in weeks.” She wasn’t going to let the day go, and she fought the gut-wrenching discomfort. “I’ve been happy every moment of the day, and I’m so pleased you brought me here.” She looked at his troubled eyes, which were busy searching hers in a semi-professional way, she realized. It made her uncomfortable that she could conceal nothing from him; so she glanced away and down again to her left hand, occupying herself with the details of the lady’s dress, and she tried to decide what kind of tree she thought was embroidered there. The tree of wisdom.
“This is a mulberry, isn’t it…?” She touched the key around her neck. “Alex, whatever this opens, it’s here. It’s under a mulberry tree. Here in your garden.” And with the effort of expressing this, she put her head in her hands and bent over double. He collected her up gently. She was a weightless figure in his arms, and he took the stairs two at a time, laid her on a bed, slipped off her shoes, and covered her with a heavy throw. She was aware of him stroking her temple for a few moments, holding her wrist with his other hand, checking his watch without apparent distress; and she spiraled into sleep.
When she woke it was much darker, lights were on, and she found her way back downstairs. A well-dressed older man was reading a paper by a lamp, the fire lit; and he looked up at her kindly.
“What a terrible houseguest I am. I’m so sorry. I’m Lucy.”
He was on his feet quickly. “You poor lass; please don’t apologize. Are you feeling any better? Let me call Alex.” He directed her into a chair and opened the back door to bring his son inside. When Alex reappeared he felt her hands and checked her pupils carefully.
“You gave me a fright.” But there was relief in his voice. “We’ll put it down to too much rich food, shall we?”
She nodded gratefully. She wanted to pretend that her strange reaction had never happened, and would have kissed him had his father not been there. Alex understood all this and let the matter drop; then he smiled at her mischievously.
“Did you see what I put beside the bed upstairs?” She shook her head, and he left for a moment. When he returned, he placed a lightly molded wooden casket on the side table next to her. “I believe you have the key!”
SHE SAT LOOKING AT IT FOR A QUARTER OF AN HOUR: A PLAIN OAK BOX, somewhat soiled, not at all large, spotted with mildew in places, finished with metal fastenings that she took, despite their tarnish, to be silver. It looked anything but precious, and she felt a little deflated inside, as though it were an anticlimax—a plain object, clearly containing no jewels, she thought. Was it right that it should be her role to unlock it? Alex had brought her tea and some toast, and sat watching her now, amused but equally intrigued; while Henry managed to strike a balance between polite disinterest and gentle curiosity, tending the fire and drawing the curtains but keeping half an eye on the tentative Lucy. Neither of them hurried her, and the grandfather clock ticked deafeningly in the quiet atmosphere.
Now, she took the key from around her neck and placed it in front of the tiny silver-wrought lock. She looked earnestly at Alex and his father and asked, “Is this for me to do?”
Alex smiled, left the sofa, and came to kneel beside her. He closed his hand over hers to still the tremble. “Go on.” His tone encouraged her; and she fitted the key into the mechanism, and turned. She half expected it would be rusted and stubborn, even that it would fail. Instead, it yielded cleanly. Lucy put on some gloves Alex gave her, and both men watched while she drew back the lid and released an aroma of centuries, of mustiness and old scent, into the room. Henry stood and came over.
Lucy peered in, hesitated, and then reverently withdrew a straw-colored leather wrap, which was secured lazily with a cord thong. She gently unbound it, and found herself holding some folded sheets of vellum, sealed with a red sigil. There was a sparse dusting of white powder on the surface—was it salt, or perhaps alum or lime? Alex was asking—but the condition of the papers was sound. Henry came and went wordlessly, returning with a small sharp knife; so she now slipped the blade through the wax. “It’s orris root,” she told them, very familiar with the delicate scent of dried iris that underscored potpourri and helped to preserve the dried flowers.
And in a moment they were looking at a cache of beautifully calligraphed riddles, keeping company with a small golden coin that had slipped from within their midst.