The Magus was at the top of the Dark Tower outside of the city walls. He looked over the higgledy-piggledy roofs and spires of London, some gleaming gold, others casting shadows in the sunlight. The gates out of the city were guarded by the Queen’s soldiers. It was as if the city were in the grip of a plague, and none might leave and none might enter.
Food was scarce. Water scarcer. People were drinking from the Thames and falling ill with fevers. At the food auctions, a loaf of bread cost the weight of a baby’s head in gold. Where country-dwellers had once tried to enter the city by force to take what they could, and where foreign adventurers had come with weapons to steal and plunder, now everyone whispered that the Devil was in the gold and that London was cursed.
The Magus rejoiced. That night he was to go to Queen Elizabeth herself, and he would offer her unlimited treasure in return for the kingdom – yes, the whole kingdom of England, its lands and dominions. And if she refused, he would continue this siege of gold.
He wrapped his cloak around him and walked down the stone stairs of the Dark Tower. Wedge was waiting, holding his horse. Without a word, the Magus swung up into the saddle and galloped away. Wedge didn’t care a fig, or even a coconut, about the Magus, for his Egg was growing.
He hopped back as fast as he could and watered the palm tree, now five feet high.
‘I had better find that old witch Mother Midnight!’ he said to himself, ‘and ask her what to do next!’
But Mother Midnight, after her escape from Wedge and the Abbess, had gone for shelter on London Bridge with the Keeper of the Tides. Soon the two of them – three of them if you count the cat – were joined by Max and Mistress Split, because Mistress Split could no longer abide Wedge and his Egg-work, and she half reasoned to her half-self that if the Keeper of the Tides had rescued her once, he might rescue her again.
In this unlikely role of protector of strange ladies, one dog and one cat, the Keeper of the Tides spent a lot of time fishing, which the cat enjoyed, and she soon found a perch on the window sill, well away from Max, where she could do as all cats like to do; look out and look in at the same time.
It was thus, day by day, that the Keeper of the Tides had noticed the sunflower winding its way across the bridge from the seed that the Magus had nailed there.
It was noticeable too, that the bridge was not at all gold – not any of its houses, shops, persons or animals was in the least bit gold.
‘It means something! Bless my maps and globes!’ said the Keeper of the Tides. ‘But what it is I do not know!’
* * *
The Magus rode through Whitechapel towards the Tower of London, where he was to keep his appointment with the Queen.
John Dee was in close counsel with the Queen. Her Barbary parrot preened itself in its golden cage.
‘I will not cede sovereignty of England to a magician!’ said the Queen.
‘You are correct, Glorious Queen,’ replied John Dee, ‘yet he is very powerful.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ said the parrot.
‘On what account is this Magus so very powerful?’
‘Madam, you have seen the city for yourself! He is the only one who has ever discovered the longed-for secret of turning base metal – indeed any material at all – into gold.’
‘And truly it is gold?’ said the Queen. ‘Or does he keep us under a spell, an illusion?’
‘Truly, it is gold.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ said the parrot. The Queen laughed and fed it a piece of sugar.
John Dee frowned; he was an important person and not used to being contradicted by parrots. He cleared his throat and continued.
‘The Magus has taken the power that was intended for the inner work of the soul and turned it to base use in the world. His power is great because he found a boy, known among alchemists as the Radiant Boy, and one whom we imagined to be a symbol and not a reality. I confess that this boy lodged for some years under my own roof and I was too foolish to recognise him. On his twelfth birthday he came into his power, and was caught by the Magus.’
‘Where is this boy?’ asked the Queen.
‘He is safely at the house of Sir Roger Rover. That house is protected by a powerful charm and is free from the golden plague. This boy has great power, but he does not know how to use it. It remains to be seen whether or not he can defeat the Magus –’
But before John Dee could speak further, there was a flurry among the courtiers, and the Magus was announced.
‘Sit by me,’ commanded the Queen to John Dee.
The Magus entered like a dark wind. He bowed, but not low enough. He stood up, but too quickly. He called the Queen glorious, magnificent, beyond compare, beyond price, but he meant none of it. The insolence was in his voice.
The Queen narrowed her eyes, and she said, ‘There is a bucket in front of you. Turn it into gold!’
And the Magus did so.
The Queen said, ‘There is a parrot in that cage. The cage is golden, the parrot is not. Can you turn him so?’
And as the parrot was halfway through saying Fiddlesticks, its beak turned to gold. It raised its wings in astonishment, and they held there, half-flap half-fall, and made of gold leaf.
‘’Tis a pity,’ said the Queen. ‘I was fond of the parrot.’
‘I can remake him,’ said the Magus mildy. ‘That is my power. If you wish it, I can turn your whole city into gold, and you will be the golden queen of a golden world, or I can return it to what it was; its filth and chaos.’
‘I do not mind filth and chaos,’ said the Queen. ‘It is life.’
‘Choose, Great Queen,’ said the Magus. ‘Let us rule together, you as the figurehead, and I as the engine that drives the world. You shall have riches beyond the measure of counting. You shall be unassailable. There is nothing that you shall not have for your whim.’
‘Except free will,’ said the Queen, ‘except control of mine own kingdom. Except the choosing of my own life.’
The Magus shrugged and smiled. ‘What is free will? What is control? What is life?’
‘What do you intend?’ said the Queen.
‘Men will do anything for gold,’ said the Magus. ‘They will kill and maim, and lie. There are alchemists, such as John Dee,’ (and the Magus made a slight bow, more out of contempt, than in acknowledgement) ‘who believe that the self can be transformed into gold – a rare gold, an inner gold, that is of the spirit. But I have shown that men do not wish to turn themselves into rare gold – they would prefer to turn everything around them into common gold that can be spent.’
‘Your magic is dark,’ said John Dee.
‘My magic is the magic men seek,’ replied the Magus.
‘They do not seek to die of starvation and thirst,’ said the Queen.
‘That is in your gift to remedy,’ said the Magus. ‘If you wish it, the golden calves in the fields will be fit to eat by morning. The golden eggs will be ready to boil. The wheat will no longer crack a man’s teeth. The fish will dart. The birds will sing.’
‘The Queen of England does not make bargains with a street magician,’ said the Queen.
The room darkened. The room darkened like an eclipse. The room chilled and the burning fire stilled into standing ice. The courtiers and soldiers began to shiver, and those who could, pulled their cloaks around them. Only the Queen did not shiver, but gazed at the Magus, her eyes steady.
‘Very well,’ said the Magus. ‘Now you will see what power is.’
And he left the palace.