“I would say the same about you, but since you are always healthy, I will spare us both the empty courtesy.” The man turned to me. “And here is La Diosa.”
“Diana,” I said, bobbing a greeting.
“That is not your name here. Rudolf calls you ‘La Diosa de la Caza.’ It is Spanish for the goddess of the chase. The emperor has commanded poor Master Spranger to abandon his latest sketches of Venus in her bath in favor of a new subject: Diana interrupted at her toilette. We all wait eagerly to see if Spranger is capable of making such an enormous change on such short notice.” The man bowed. “Joris Hoefnagel.”
“The calligrapher,” I said, thinking back to Pierre’s remark about the ornate penmanship on Matthew’s official summons to Rudolf ’s court. But that name was familiar. . . .
“The artist,” Gallowglass corrected gently.
“La Diosa.” A gaunt man swept his hat off with scarred hands. “I am Erasmus Habermel. Would you be so kind as to visit my workshop as soon as you are able? His Majesty would like you to have an astronomical compendium so as to better note the changes in the fickle moon, but it must be exactly to your liking.”
Habermel was a familiar name, too. . . .
“She is coming to me tomorrow.” A portly man in his thirties pushed his way through the growing crowd. His accent was distinctly Italian. “La Diosa is to sit for a portrait. His Majesty wishes to have her likeness engraved in stone as a symbol of her permanence in his affections.” Perspiration broke out on his upper lip.
“Signor Miseroni!” Another Italian said, clasping his hands melodramatically to his heaving chest. “I thought we understood each other. La Diosa must practice her dance if she is to take part in the entertainment next week as the emperor wishes.” He bowed in my direction. “I am Alfonso Pasetti, La Diosa, His Majesty’s dancing master.”
“But my wife does not like to dance,” said a cool voice behind me. A long arm snaked around and took my hand, which was fiddling with the edge of my bodice. “Do you, mon coeur?” This last endearment was accompanied by a kiss on the knuckles and a warning nip of teeth.
“Matthew is right on cue, as always,” Joris said with a hearty laugh. “How are you?”
“Disappointed not to find Diana at home,” Matthew said in a slightly aggrieved tone. “But even a devoted husband must yield to God in his wife’s affections.”
Hoefnagel watched Matthew closely, gauging every change of expression. I suddenly realized who this was: the great artist who was such an acute observer of nature that his illustrations of flora and fauna seemed as though they, like the creatures on Mary’s shoes, could come to life.
“Well, God is done with her for today. I think you are free to take your wife home,” Hoefnagel said mildly. “You promise to enliven what would otherwise be a very dull spring, La Diosa. For that we are all grateful.”
The men dispersed after getting assurances from Gallowglass that he would keep track of my varied, conflicting appointments. Hoefnagel was the last to leave.
“I will keep an eye out for your wife, Schaduw. Perhaps you should, too.”
“My attention is always on my wife, where it belongs. How else did I know to be here?”
“Of course. Forgive my meddling. The forest has ears, and the fields have eyes.” Hoefnagel bowed. “I will see you at court, La Diosa.”
“Her name is Diana,” Matthew said tightly. “Madame de Clermont will also serve.”
“And here I was led to understand it was Roydon. My mistake.” Hoefnagel took a few steps backward. “Good evening, Matthew.” His footsteps echoed on the stone floors and faded into silence.
“Schaduw?” I asked. “Does that mean what it sounds like?”
“It’s Dutch for ‘Shadow.’ Elizabeth isn’t the only person to call me by that name.” Matthew looked to Gallowglass. “What is this entertainment Signor Pasetti mentioned?”
“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. It will no doubt be mythological in theme, with terrible music and even worse dancing. Having had too much to drink, the courtiers will all stumble into the wrong bedchambers at the end of the night. Nine months later there will be a flock of noble babes of uncertain parentage. The usual.”
“‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’” Matthew murmured. He bowed to me. “Shall we go home, La Diosa?” The nickname made me uncomfortable when strangers used it, but when it came out of Matthew’s mouth, it was almost unbearable. “Jack tells me that tonight’s stew is particularly appetizing.”
Matthew was distant all evening, watching me with heavy eyes as I heard about the children’s day and Pierre brought him up to date on various happenings in Prague. The names were unfamiliar and the narrative so confusing that I gave up trying to follow it and went to bed.
Jack’s cries woke me, and I rushed to him only to discover that Matthew had already reached the boy. He was wild, thrashing and crying out for help.
“My bones are flying apart!” he kept saying. “It hurts! It hurts!”
Matthew bundled him up tight against his chest so that he couldn’t move. “Shh. I’ve got you now.” He continued to hold Jack until only faint tremors radiated through the child’s slender limbs.
“All the monsters looked like ordinary men tonight, Master Roydon,” Jack told him, snuggling deeper into my husband’s arms. He sounded exhausted, and there were blue smudges under his eyes that made him look far older than his years.
“They often do, Jack,” Matthew said. “They often do.”
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of appointments—with the emperor’s jeweler, the emperor’s instrument maker, and the emperor’s dancing master. Each encounter took me deeper into the heart of the huddle of buildings that composed the imperial palace, to workshops and residences that were reserved for Rudolf’s prize artists and intellectuals.
Between engagements Gallowglass took me to parts of the palace that I had not yet seen. To the menagerie, where Rudolf kept his leopards and lions much as he kept his limners and musicians on the narrow streets east of the cathedral. To the Stag Moat, which had been altered so that Rudolf could enjoy better sport. To the sgraffito-covered games hall, where courtiers could take their exercise. To the new greenhouses built to protect the emperor’s precious fig trees from the harsh Bohemian winter.
But there was one place where not even Gallowglass could gain admission: the Powder Tower, where Edward Kelley worked over his alembics and crucibles in an attempt to make the philosopher’s stone. We stood outside it and tried to talk our way past the guards stationed at the entrance. Gallowglass even resorted to bellowing a hearty greeting. It brought the neighbors running to see if there was a fire but didn’t elicit a reaction from Dr. Dee’s erstwhile assistant.
“It’s as if he’s a prisoner,” I told Matthew after the supper dishes were cleared and Jack and Annie were safely tucked into their beds. They’d enjoyed another exhausting round of skating, sledding, and pretzels. We’d given up the pretense that they were our servants. I hoped the opportunity to behave like a normal eight-year-old boy would help to end Jack’s nightmares. But the palace was no place for them. I was terrified they might wander off and get lost forever, unable to speak the language or tell people to whom they belonged.
“Kelley is a prisoner,” Matthew said, toying with the stem of his goblet. It was heavy silver and glinted in the firelight.
“They say he goes home occasionally, usually in the middle of the night when there is no one around to see. At least he gets some relief from the emperor’s constant demands.”
“You haven’t met Mistress Kelley,” Matthew said drily.
I hadn’t, which struck me as odd the more I considered it. Perhaps I was taking the wrong route to meet the alchemist. I’d allowed myself to be swept into court life with the hope of knocking on Kelley’s laboratory door and walking straight in to demand Ashmole 782. But given my new familiarity with courtly life, such a direct approach was unlikely to succeed. The next morning I made it a point to go with Tereza to do the shopping.
It was absolutely frigid outside, and the wind was fierce, but we trudged to the market nonetheless.
“Do you know my countrywoman Mistress Kelley?” I asked Frau Huber as we waited for the baker to wrap our purchases. The housewives of Malá Strana collected the bizarre and unusual as avidly as Rudolf did. “Her husband is one of the emperor’s servants.”
“One of the emperor’s caged alchemists, you mean,” Frau Huber said with a snort. “There are always odd things happening in that household. And it was worse when the Dees were here. Herr Kelley was always looking at Frau Dee with lust.”
“And Mistress Kelley?” I prompted her.
“She does not go out much. Her cook does the shopping.” Frau Huber did not approve of this delegation of housewifely responsibility. It opened the door to all sorts of disorder, including (she contended) Anabaptism and a thriving black market in purloined kitchen staples. She had made her feelings on this point clear at our first meeting, and it was one of the chief reasons I went out in all weathers to buy cabbage.
“Are we discussing the alchemist’s wife?” Signorina Rossi said, tripping across the frozen stones and narrowly avoiding a wheelbarrow full of coal.
“She is English and therefore very strange. And her wine bills are much larger than they should be.”
“How do you two know so much?” I asked when I’d finished laughing. “We share the same laundress,” Frau Huber said, surprised. “None of us have any secrets from our laundresses,” Signorina Rossi agreed. “She did the washing for the Dees, too. Until Signora Dee fired her for charging so much to clean the napkins.”
“A difficult woman, Jane Dee, but you could not fault her thrift,” Frau Huber admitted with a sigh.
“Why do you need to see Mistress Kelley?” Signorina Rossi inquired, stowing a braided loaf of bread in her basket.
“I want to meet her husband. I am interested in alchemy and have some questions.”
“Will you pay?” Frau Huber asked, rubbing her fingers together in a universal and apparently timeless gesture.
“For what?” I said, confused.
“His answers, of course.”
“Yes,” I agreed, wondering what devious plan she was concocting.
“Leave it to me,” Frau Huber said. “I am hungry for schnitzel, and the Austrian who owns the tavern near your house, Frau Roydon, knows what schnitzel should be.”
The Austrian schnitzel wizard’s teenage daughter, it turned out, shared a tutor with Kelley’s ten-year-old stepdaughter, Elisabeth. And his cook was married to the laundress’s aunt, whose sister-in-law helped out around the Kelleys’ house.
It was thanks to this occult chain of relationships forged by women, and not Gallowglass’s court connections, that Matthew and I found ourselves in the Kelleys’ second-floor parlor at midnight, waiting for the great man to arrive.
“He should be here at any moment,” Joanna Kelley assured us. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bleary, though whether this resulted from too much wine or from the cold that seemed to afflict the entire household was not clear.
“Do not trouble yourself on our account, Mistress Kelley. We keep late hours,” Matthew said smoothly, giving her a dazzling smile. “And how do you like your new house?”
After much espionage and investigation among the Austrian and Italian communities, we discovered that the Kelleys had recently purchased a house around the corner from the Three Ravens in a complex known for its inventive street sign. Someone had taken a few leftover wooden figures from a nativity scene, sawed them in half, and arranged them on a board. They had, in the process, removed the infant Jesus from his crèche and replaced it with the head of Mary’s donkey.
“The Donkey and Cradle meets our needs at present, Master Roydon.”
Mistress Kelley issued forth an awe-inspiring sneeze and took a swig of wine. “We had thought the emperor would set aside a house for us in the palace itself, given Edward’s work, but this will do.” A regular thumping sounded on the winding stairs. “Here is Edward.”
A walking staff appeared first, then a stained hand, followed by an equally stained sleeve. The rest of Edward Kelley looked just as disreputable. His long beard was unkempt and stuck out from a dark skullcap that hid his ears. If he’d had a hat, it was gone now. And he was fond of his dinners, gauging by his Falstaffian proportions. Kelley limped into the room whistling, then froze at the sight of Matthew.
“Edward.” Matthew rewarded the man with another of those dazzling smiles, but Kelley didn’t seem nearly as pleased to receive it as his wife had.
“Imagine us meeting again so far from home.”
“How did you . . . ?” Edward said hoarsely. He looked around the room, and his eyes fell on me with a nudging glance that was as insidious as any I’d felt from a daemon. But there was more: disturbances in the threads that surrounded him, irregularities in the weaving that suggested he was not just daemonic—he was unstable. His lips curled. “The witch.”
“The emperor has elevated her rank, just as he did yours. She is La Diosa—the goddess—now,” Matthew said. “Do sit down and rest your leg. It troubles you in the cold, as I remember.”
“What business do you have with me, Roydon?” Edward Kelley gripped his staff tighter.
“He is here on behalf of the queen, Edward. I was in my bed,” Joanna said plaintively. “I get so little rest. And because of this dreadful ague, I have not yet met our neighbors. You did not tell me there were English people living so close. Why, I can see Mistress Roydon’s house from the tower window. You are at the castle. I am alone, longing to speak my native tongue, and yet—”
“Go back to bed, my dear,” Kelley said, dismissing Joanna. “Take your wine with you.”
Mrs. Kelley sniffled off obligingly, her expression miserable. To be an Englishwoman in Prague without friends or family was difficult, but to have your husband welcomed in places where you were forbidden to go must make it doubly so. When she was gone, Kelley clumped over to the table and sat down in his wife’s chair. With a grimace he lifted his leg into place. Then he pinned his dark, hostile eyes on Matthew.
“Tell me what I must do to get rid of you,” he said bluntly. Kelley might have Kit’s cunning, but he had none of his charm.
“The queen wants you,” Matthew said, equally blunt. “We want Dee’s book.”