I was lost. “All right,” I said.

The court moved to Greenwich Palace in February and it was given out that the king was better. But he never asked for me, nor for Will Somers, he did not ask for music nor for company, nor did he ever come to the great hall for dinner. The physicians, who had been in full-blown attendance with their gowns flapping, waiting in every corner of the court, talking amongst themselves and giving carefully guarded replies to all inquiries, seemed to slip away as the days wore on and there was no news of his recovery, and not even their cheerful predictions about leeches cleansing the young man’s blood and poison carefully administered killing his disease, seemed to ring very true. Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, was all but king in Edward’s place, seated at the right hand of an empty throne at dinner, taking the chair at the head of the council table every week, but telling everyone that the king was well, getting better all the time, looking forward to the finer weather, planning a progress this summer.

I said nothing. I was being paid as a fool to say surprising and impertinent things but I could think of nothing more impertinent and surprising than the truth – that the young king was half prisoner to his protector, that he was dying without companions or nursing, and that this whole court, every great man in the land, was thinking of the crown and not of the boy; and that it was a great cruelty, to a boy only a little older than me and without a mother or a father to care for him, to be left to die alone. I looked around me at the men who assured each other that the young man of fifteen, coughing his lungs out in hiding, would be fit to take a wife this summer, and I thought that I would be a fool indeed if I did not see that they were a bunch of liars and rogues.

While the young king vomited black bile in his chamber, the men outside quietly helped themselves to the pensions, to the fees from offices, to the rents from monasteries that they closed for piety and then robbed for greed, and no one said one word against it. I would have been a fool indeed to tell the truth in this court of liars, I would have been as incongruous as an angel in Fleet Street. I kept my head down, I sat near Will Somers at dinner, and I kept silent.

I had new work to do. Lord Robert’s tutor Mr. Dee sought me out and asked if I would read with him. His eyes were tired, he said, and my father had sent him some manuscripts that could be more easily deciphered by young sight.

“I don’t read very well,” I said cautiously.

He was pacing ahead of me in one of the sunny galleries overlooking the river, but at my words he turned and smiled.

“You are a very careful young woman,” he said. “And that is wise in these changing times. But you are safe with me and with Lord Robert. I imagine you can read English and Latin fluently, am I right?”

I nodded.

“And Spanish, of course, and perhaps French?”

I kept my silence. It was obvious that I spoke and read Spanish as my native tongue, and he would guess that I must have picked up some French during our stay in Paris.

Mr. Dee came a little closer and bent his head to whisper in my ear. “Can you read Greek? I need someone who can read Greek for me.”

If I had been older and wiser I would have denied my knowledge. But I was only fourteen and proud of my abilities. My mother herself had taught me to read Greek and Hebrew, and my Father called me his little scholar, as good as any boy.

“Yes,” I said. “I can read Greek and Hebrew.”

“Hebrew?” he exclaimed, his interest sharpened. “Dear God, child, what have you seen in Hebrew? Have you seen the Torah?”

At once I knew I should have said nothing. If I said yes, that I had seen the laws of the Jews and the prayers, then I would have identified myself and my father beyond doubt as Jews and practicing Jews at that. I thought of my mother telling me that my vanity would get me into trouble. I had always thought that she meant my love of fine clothes and ribbons for my hair. Now, dressed as a boy in a fool’s livery I had committed the sin of vanity, I had been prideful of my schooling and the punishment could be extreme.

“Mr. Dee…” I whispered, aghast.

He smiled at me. “I guessed you had fled Spain as soon as I saw you,” he said gently. “I guessed you were Conversos. But it was not for me to say. And it is not in Lord Robert’s nature to persecute someone for the faith of their fathers, especially a faith which they have surrendered. You go to church, don’t you? And observe feast days? You believe in Jesus Christ and his mercy?”

“Oh yes, my lord. Without fail.” There was no point in telling him that there was no more devout Christian than a Jew trying to be invisible.

Mr. Dee paused. “As for me, I pray for a time when we are beyond such divisions, beyond them to the truth itself. Some men think that there is neither God nor Allah nor Elohim…”

At his speaking the sacred name of the only God I gave a little gasp of surprise. “Mr. Dee? Are you one of the Chosen People?”

He shook his head. “I believe there is a creator, a great creator of the world, but I do not know his name. I know the names that he is given by man. Why should I prefer one name to another? What I want to know is His Holy Nature, what I want is the help of his angels, what I want to do is to further his work, to make gold from base, to make Holy from Vulgar.” He broke off. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”

I kept my face blank. In my father’s library in Spain there had been books that told of the secrets of the making of the world, and there had been the scholar who had come to read them, and the Jesuit who wanted to know the secrets beyond those of his order.

“Alchemy?” I asked, my voice very low.

He nodded. “The creator has given us a world full of mysteries,” he said. “But I believe that they will be known to us one day. Now we understand a little, and the church of the Pope, and the church of the king, and the laws of the land all say that we should not question. But I don’t believe that it is the law of God that we should not question. I think that he has made this world as a great and glorious mechanical garden, one that works to its own laws and grows to its own laws and that we will one day come to understand it. Alchemy – the art of change – is how we shall come to understand it, and when we know how things are made, we can make them ourselves, we will have the knowledge of God, we ourselves will be transubstantiated, we shall be angels…”

He broke off. “Does your father have many works on alchemy? He showed me only those on religion. Does he have alchemy texts in Hebrew? Will you read them to me?”

“I only know the permitted books,” I said cautiously. “My father does not keep forbidden books.” Not even this kind man who trusted me with his own secrets could lure me into speaking the truth. I had been raised in utter secrecy, I would never lose the habit of fear-filled duplicity. “I can read Hebrew, but I don’t know the Jewish prayers. My father and I are good Christians. And he has not shown me any books on alchemy, he does not stock them. I am too young to understand books like that. I don’t know that he would want me to read Hebrew to you, sir.”

“I will ask him and surely he will allow it,” he said easily. “Reading Hebrew is a gift of God, a skill with languages is the sign of a pure heart. Hebrew is the language of the angels, it is the closest we mortals can come to speaking to God. Did you not know that?”

I shook my head.

“But of course,” he continued, glowing with enthusiasm. “God spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the Fall and they became the first people of earth. They must have spoken Hebrew, they must have understood God in that language. There is a language beyond Hebrew, which is what God speaks with heavenly beings, and it is that language which I hope to discover. And the way to it must be through Hebrew, through Greek and through Persian.” He broke off for a moment. “You don’t speak or read Persian, do you? Or any of the Arab tongues?”