If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 4

Mack approached the London house of Dr. Dee. Mack said, "Are you sure you've got it straight now?"

"I think so," Marguerite said. "But I don't like it."

"Forget about that. Just do what I told you. It'll work out, believe me."

Marguerite looked unhappy, but quite pretty. Her chestnut hair was shining. She had had a chance to freshen up after Mephistopheles had brought her to join Mack. Even her gown, of green with panels of spotted dimity, was fresh and shining. Mack had seen to it that she looked her best.

He approached the door of a queer, humpbacked old house with shuttered windows that made it look like a cat sleeping. It was in a noxious pan of London. On either side were the shadowed headquarters of dubious business enterprises, because this was the notorious Tortingham district, only later to be gentrified to the confusion of cutpurses, lollygaggers, yokels, and assorted cony-catchers. Here was where the famous Dr. Dee now made his home.

"Kelly!" he cried.

At the other end of the room, a short, broad-shouldered man looked away from a ball of yarn he was untangling. Edward Kelly, medium extraordinary—a fey-eyed Irishman from County Limerick, with a fur cap pulled down over the sides of his head—quirked an eyebrow.

"Yes?" he asked.

"I've a premonition of someone on the stair," Dee said.

"Shall I go and see who it is?" Kelly asked.

"Prognosticate first, for I've also a foreboding or two."

Kelly reached across the table and put a glass of water in front of him. With a moistened forefinger he roiled the surface, then stared into it intently. In its swirling depth he saw strange shapes uncoil, glimpsed the forms and visages of drowned things and the many-colored windings and unwindings of spirits no more palpable than so many twists of smoke. He heard sounds as well, for that was how the gift took him. And he looked into the water and saw a man and a maid. Around them, visible only to his eyes, hovered a nimbus of mysterious events.

"There are two people approaching the door," he told Dee. "They are a strange pair, though it is not easy to say wherein their strangeness resides. The man is tall and yellow-haired, and the woman brown-haired and beautiful. They look decent enough."

"If they look good to you, then we'll see them," Dee said. "It was just a matter of certain feelings that came over me."

"So why ask me?" Kelly said. "Why didn't you look into your magic mirror and learn all about them?"

"The magic mirror is in the other room," Dee said. "And I don't see what you're so cross about."

"Me, cross?" Kelly said, scowling. "What makes you think I'm cross?"

"Well, you look cross."

"Why should I look cross," Kelly asked, "when I have nothing to complain about? Didn't I follow you and your psychic circus across Europe? Am I not the star act in your dog-and-pony show? Do I not do all the work, the better to give you the energy to enjoy all the credit?"

"Now, Edward," Dee said. "We've been over this ground before. Go see to the arrivals."

Thus grumbling, Kelly went to the door. The servant was never around when you wanted him to do something like this. It didn't take much prognostication to know that the servant was in his room under the eaves, nursing the old war wound he'd got under the Black Prince, or so he told the tale. Kelly thought about Ireland as he walked to the door, Ireland green and boggy, with the young girls who used to walk by him on their way to sheep flocks they tended on the downs beside the cold and glittering sea.

He shook his head irritably. Stop speaking, Memory.

He opened the door.

"Hi," Mack said. "We'd like to speak to Dr. Dee, if you don't mind."

"What do you want to see the doctor about?"

"That's for his ears."

"Give it to my ears or his ears will never hear."

"It's for his ears alone," Mack said.

Kelly shrugged and led them to the sitting room.

"Something secret and important, so he says," Kelly told Dee.

Mack nodded to the doctor and smiled.

"We are interested in buying your magic mirror," he told him. Dee raised his heavy eyebrows.

"Sell you my magic mirror? Sir, you must be daft! A mirror with the power and foresightedness of mine is not sold like a bag of horse feed. This mirror of mine, my dear sir, has been the object of covetousness in royal circles throughout Europe. The king of Poland offered me an estate for it on the Wladiwil, complete with servile peasants and wild boars, and the title of duke to go along with it, and to sweeten the deal he threw in the favors of the beautiful young countess of Radzivill whose callipygian accomplishments have caused restlessness and social upset as far west as the Weser. I turned him down with a laugh, a laugh of scorn, my dear sir, for to offer mere worldly goods for my mirror, which presents a view into the unseen kingdom, and can prognosticate future events, is to offer dross for gold." "I realize that," Mack said. "But I come to you with an offer you can't refuse."

"Can I not, now? Let's hear your offer." Mack produced the scarlet silk handkerchief Mephistopheles had given him, still enfolding its mysterious prize. History fails to tell us what was involved, or its precise effect on the vain and supercilious Dr. Dee. Only one thing is certain. Some ten minutes later, Mack and Marguerite left Dee's house and were on their way to Southwark, the magic mirror under Mack's arm, nestled in a form-fitting case of chamois.