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I held fast to the sneery gaze.
    ‘Dee’s a common conjurer, anyway,’ a man said to my left.
    ‘Give us a prophecy.’ The pamphlet man smiling crookedly. ‘Go on then.
Make us a prediction.’
    I saw then that he was not alone. Two boys of fourteen or fifteen were each carrying a stack of his publication. They’d been moving among the audience and now stopped, a hand of one moving to his belt.
    ‘Beware the criminal element!’ The pamphlet man whirling himself in triumph to the crowd. ‘A beardless youth what dares posture as the Queen’s seer. Go on! Tell us the future, boy!’
    The mood of the crowd had begun to turn like a great mill-wheel. Someone began slowly to clap, the pamphlet man joining in with his flabby butter-pat hands. And then came another man’s loud voice, cold as cracking stonework.
    ‘Prophecy is blasphemy!’
    Something wet hit me on the cheek and I flinched. Saw that both of the boy assistants had put down their pamphlets and were glancing towards me and then at their master, as if awaiting instructions to stab me and run.
    ‘Dr Dee trades with demons!’ a woman shrilled.
    ‘I’ve heard that.’ Another woman, older. ‘He spits upon the Holy Bible.’
    Someone pressed against me and, as ever in a tangle, my body tensed, anticipating the fleet fingers of pickpockets, a glint of daggers. Some gentlemen, I noticed, were guiding their ladies away. I glanced behind me, looking for a way out of here.
    Staring into a bearded face all too close. The beard splitting into a gap-toothed grin. Now the press of hard bodies, the stench of ale-breath. Before me, the pamphlet man was bloating into a near-frenzy, and the eyes of his peacock feathers were vibrating either side of his head.
    ‘Go on!’ he screamed. ‘Prophesy! Tell us of the coming of your dark master!’
    I froze, watching the feathers wave.
    A wild fury shook me. ‘All right…’ Barely aware of my words coming out. ‘I prophesy that before the week’s out you’ll be banged up in the lowest dungeon in the Fleet, you—’
    A forearm was wrapped across my throat. My head jerked back, both arms seized, wrenched stiff behind me. Hard rain slashing my face.
    Then a leathered hand across my mouth, and I was spun around to behold a man with a black velvet hat pulled down over his eyes. His dark cape failing to conceal the golden glow of a doublet that was like to a treasure chest split open.
    ‘Take this fucking impostor away,’ he said.

Stability of the Realm
     
    E VEN ON SUCH a day as this, the light was everywhere in the room. Windows you could ride a horse through.
    He had his back to them. He was sitting behind a trestle of wide oaken boards, which faced a modest coal fire.
    ‘This is merely a humble cottage, I tell everyone that. Plea for privacy.’ He poured wine for me, a little less of it for himself. ‘And, of course, they all fail to understand. Especially the Queen.’
    There was a hanging smell of linseed and beeswax around the empty shelves. It seemed the house, at present, had room only for himself, his wife, two daughters and a mere fourteen servants. But he was already acquiring substantial properties on either side and, by the spring, it would be more than twice its size. In the meantime, I could see it would have its limitations for a man of the eminence of Sir William Cecil.
    Who now turned limpid, mournful eyes upon me.
    ‘I do greatly love that young woman, Dee. And shall serve her, God willing, for the rest of my working days. But she does, dear Lord, require constant diversion.
Oh, I shall come to sup with you, William. Soon!
Everything must be
soon.
’
    ‘It’s only the newness of it,’ I said. ‘The limitless power of monarchy is an intoxication. And she, more than most, knows how short life is. That is, um… some lives.’
    ‘She came through.’ Cecil’s eyes hardening fractionally, but he didn’t move. ‘And now she’s protected. For ever.’
    He wore a black robe over a cloud-grey