*

John Dee was described by Aubrey as 'one of the ornaments of his Age'; Queen Elizabeth called him 'hyr philosopher', and another contemporary said that he was 'the prince of Mathematicians of this age'. Peter French, in his biography, declared him to be 'Elizabethan England's greatest magus'. So much I recognized at once. But then, over the next few days, I began to be surprised by this man who had once inhabited my house; he was an adept in mathematics and astronomy, in geography and navigation, in antiquarian studies and natural philosophy, in astrology and the mechanical sciences, in magic and theology. I consulted other books which chronicled his development: Frances Yates's Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England by F.R. Johnson, and E.G.R. Taylor's Tudor Geography, 1485-1583. All these accounts had very little to do with his reputation as a conjuror or a black magician and, as I read various alternative descriptions in other texts, the only familiar image was the face I now knew so well. Every time I entered the ground-floor room, with its thick stone walls and narrow windows, I took up the book and tried to return his steady gaze.

In Frances Yates's history Doctor Dee was described as a 'Renaissance Magus' who continued in England the same hermetic tradition that encompassed Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno. But in his study Nicholas Clulee disagreed, suggesting that a large part of Doctor Dee's inheritance came from medieval sources and particularly from the writings and experiments of Roger Bacon. Where Yates tended to see Doctor Dee as the steady exponent of a European philosophy, Clulee described him as a more eclectic and empirical figure. Yet all my books conveyed the same central theme – that he stood upon that ground where the concerns of his age met and could not easily be distinguished. There was another fact which seemed to be of equal significance. John Dee himself had, in one way or another, belonged to every time. He was in part a medievalist, expounding ancient formulae, but he was also an active agent in contemporary natural philosophy; he was an antiquarian, who speculated about the origins of Britain and the presence of ancient cities beneath the earth, but he was also one of those who anticipated a future scientific revolution with his experiments in mechanics; he was an alchemist and astrologer who scrutinized the spiritual world, but he was also a geographer who plotted navigation charts for Elizabethan explorers. He was everywhere at once and, as I walked about his old house, I had the sense that somehow he had conquered time.

Through these books, too, I came to understand the alchemy in which John Dee placed his faith. He believed the world to be imbued with spiritual properties – with 'signatures' and 'correspondences' that reveal its true nature. The seed of the aconite is used to cure optical disorders because it is in the shape of an eyelid; the breed of dog called the Bedlington terrier resembles a lamb and is thus the most nervous of its species. Each material thing is the visible home of a universal power, or congregation of powers, and it was the task of the enlightened philosopher and alchemist to see these true constituents. He understood from the very successful medicine of Paracelsus, for example, how the stars, the plants of the earth and the human body might be fruitfully combined to effect cures. But there was another truth: God is within man, according to John Dee, and he who understands himself understands the universe. The alchemist finds the perfection or pure will within all materials; he knows that salt is desire, mercury is turbulence, sulphur is anguish. When the alchemist finds that will and idea within the material form, then he is able to bend it to his own will. For this was the truth which John Dee maintained all his life – there is nothing in heaven and earth which is not also in man, and he quoted Paracelsus to the effect that 'the human body is vapour materialized by sunshine, mixed with the life of the stars'. When the astrologer sees the sun rise, according to Dee, the sun within his own self rises in joy. This is the true gold of wisdom.

That, at least, was the theory. But in reading accounts of his life (there was even a novel about him by Marjorie Bowen, entitled I Dwelt In High Places), it became clear that he was too concerned with secrets and with mysteries – with numerology, cabbalistic tables, and magical technique. He became infatuated with the poetry of power and darkness, which in turn made him susceptible to the demands of envy and ambition. So there were times when he lost sight of that sacred truth he wished to investigate.

I knew now the full story of his life – his intense studies as a young man, his travels to Europe where he had acquired his reputation as an extraordinary scholar, his services to Queen Elizabeth, his scientific and mathematical researches, his creation of the largest library in England, his work as an alchemist and a magician. He believed that he spoke with angels, and as yet I had found no reason to disbelieve him. He was a man obsessed with learning, one who spent his entire life trying to resolve the mysteries of nature and, by various means, to achieve a kind of divine illumination. He knew too much to be impressed by the work of his contemporaries, and understood too much to be unduly affected by their malice when he went beyond the boundaries of established theory. He was energetic, ambitious, determined; and yet, as I said, there was a darker aspect to his love of learning. He seemed to want knowledge, and power, at almost any cost to himself or those around him. Something drove him forward, something harried him into that darkness where he spoke to the angels and plotted the restoration of the spiritual world through the agency of alchemy. Many of his contemporaries believed that the Devil was perched upon his shoulder, but how could I believe that as I sat in the room where he had once worked?

And what books had he written here? Had he composed his mathematical preface to The Elements of Geometrie of the most auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara as he looked from his window at the quietly flowing stream of the Fleet? Had he paced around this room, as I paced now, while preparing his thoughts for General and rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation? Had he laboured upon Monas Hieroglyphica and Propaedeumata Aphoristica in this house? I spoke the titles out loud, but stopped when it began to sound like the chanting of some priest or nun. After a few moments I took up another book, a modern translation of Doctor Dee's Liber Mysteriorum Sextus et Sanctus; there was a photograph of the original title-page among the illustrations, and on it were inscribed four signs that sent me racing from the room towards the stairs that led under the ground. I switched on the light for the basement and crossed the floor, cautiously approaching the marks which had been scratched above the sealed door; they were the same as the signs in the book, but some other element was missing from them. In the title-page illustration, 'Sunsfor', 'Zosimos', 'Gohulim' and 'Od' had been written underneath each in turn, but these names were not inscribed upon the door. On this old titlepage there was also a picture of a glass bowl, covered with straw, or mud, or some other substance; beneath it I could read the words, 'You will live for ever'. I do not know what happened to me then; I turned and turned under the electric light until I could no longer stand. Then I lay upon the stone floor.

There was a noise in one of the upstairs rooms, and the crash of something falling to the ground. I rolled upon the cold stone, not wishing to leave it yet. But then there was another crash, and unwillingly I rose to my feet: if I hesitated now, I would never be able to remain in this house. When I came to the top of the stairs, by the open door, I heard a sound like rustling coming from somewhere above me; I looked up, but I could see nothing. I crossed the hallway and climbed the stairs to the first landing; the door to my room was open and, as I glanced across my bed, I noticed a white mark upon it like a little globe of smoke. Then something moved across it.

I screamed, and it rose up towards me; I staggered backwards, and would have fallen down the stairs if I had not caught hold of the banister. I thrust out my hands, and they brushed against something very warm. And then there was a fluttering of wings. It was a pigeon. It must have come in through the open window, and was no doubt one of those I had seen clustering around the churchyard of St James. I did not want to touch it: I had a horror of its beating heart beneath my fingers, and of its writhing within my hands. The bird had wheeled back into the room and quietly I followed it, opened my window wider still, and then left it there – beating its wings against the wall – while I closed the door.

There was something amusing about all this. I went back into the room, where the bird was still ineffectually fluttering against the walls and ceilings. There was a book beside my bed – a study of John Dee's alchemical charts – and, with all the violence I could summon with a prayer, I hurled it against the bird. I must have damaged its wing because it slumped down on to the floor and then, with a cry of triumph, I brought my heel down upon its head. I don't know how many times I stamped upon it, but I stopped only when I saw the blood running on to the book which was lying beside the dead bird.

It was then I telephoned Daniel Moore and asked him to visit me that evening: I knew that he was concealing some fact about the house and, in that moment of violence and power, I wanted to discover everything. I was wiping the blood of the dead bird from the cover of Doctor Dee's book when he arrived. 'Sometimes,' I said, 'I'm convinced that there's a madman somewhere in this house.'

'And what makes you say that?'

'Oh, I don't know. Dead animals everywhere. Piles of shit.' He looked at me in surprise for a moment, and I laughed. 'Don't worry. I'm only joking.'

I went into the kitchen, ostensibly to pour him a glass of whisky, but really to devour a plate of biscuits that had been left for me upon the shelf; there were two packets of assorted nuts beside them, and I managed to finish them before coming back into the room.

'If there was someone in the house, Matthew –'

'I know. I would have found him by now.' Then I laughed again. 'Do you want to know why my hands are dirty?'

'I don't think so.'

'I've been doing some digging. Look.' I pointed out the books scattered around the room, and tried to describe precisely what it was I had discovered about John Dee. 'And do you wonder why I'm so confused,' I said, after a long explanation, 'when every book has a different Doctor Dee? Not one is alike. The past is difficult, you see. You think you understand a person or an event, but then you turn a corner and everything is different once again. Just like you. I turned the corner of Charlotte Street and you were different.'

'I wondered when you were going to bring that up again.'

But I brushed his words aside with a movement of my hand. 'It's like this house, too. Nothing ever seems to stay in the same place. And do you know what? This may have been the actual room where Doctor Dee saw his visions. What did I call it just now?'

'The scrying room. Or the chamber of presence. What is the matter, Matthew?'

'Did you hear something then?'

'No.'

'I thought I heard a voice.'

'You'll be seeing him next, glimmering in the corner.'

'Well, I do see him. Look here.' I held up the book, with the portrait of Doctor Dee on its cover. 'Reader,' I said, 'this is the beginning and the end.'

We finished our drinks soon after and then walked slowly to the restaurant by Clerkenwell Green, where we had eaten a week before. I had known nothing then about John Dee, but now my life had changed. It was a warm night, and through the open window I could see the lighted interior of a small printing-works on the opposite side of the Green. Someone was moving back and forth and, in his random gestures against the light, I saw something of the frailty of all living things. A cluster of small flies, or gnats, was hovering near the door of the restaurant; they were circling in the evening air, with the setting sun glinting upon their wings. They might fly over the threshold into this small room, and to them it would seem an almighty palace of wonder. But where was the place to which I might fly, and see the glory around me?

As we sat down at the restaurant table I felt some excitement pass over me, but it was of so rare a kind that it seemed like sickness. I had experienced this sensation once or twice before, and I knew that something was about to happen. Something was about to change. I took the bottle of Frascati which the waiter had brought over to the table, and poured myself a very large glass before handing it to Daniel. There was a constriction in my throat, and some fire within me which I needed to extinguish; if I believed in such things, I might have been embodying the alchemical theory of the dry world aspiring to the moist. Daniel was watching me with uneasy amusement as I poured myself another glass of wine. 'Are we very thirsty?'

'Yes. We are. It's not often I sit opposite a beautiful woman.'

He looked at me reproachfully for a moment. 'Do you have to keep on mentioning that business?'

'But I'm very interested in you, Daniel. I become more interested all the time. How did you know that one of the upstairs windows was sealed?'

He put his index finger up to his nose, and sniffed it. 'There are always sealed windows in old houses. Haven't you heard of Pitt's window tax?'

'And by some miracle you also knew that there was a cupboard under the stairs.'

'I guessed.' He was still sniffing his finger. 'Or do you think I have magical powers?'

'Magic had nothing to do with it. You remembered something.' I filled my glass again. 'You know that house very well, don't you?' He shook his head with an uncharacteristically violent motion. 'There's no point in lying to me, Daniel. I think my mother recognized you, too.'

'She doesn't know me at all. I can promise you that.'

'But what else can you promise me?'

'Nothing.' He had lowered his eyes and, when the waiter came over to take our order, he took advantage of the diversion to clear his throat. Then he tightened the knot of his tie with another violent gesture. 'It's very odd,' he said, 'but whenever I come to this area, I always want to get back to Islington again. Is that what they call homesickness? And have you ever wondered who "they" are?'

I was tired of his attempts to divert me. 'Go on, Daniel. It's time.'

He looked at me directly now. 'This is all very difficult.' I noticed that his left hand was trembling, and I watched it with interest as he continued in a low voice. 'You're quite right. I have been to the house before. I knew your father. I went there with him sometimes.'

I had become very still. 'And why was that?'

'There is something I ought to tell you. I've been meaning...'

The waiter had brought us a first course of parma ham, and Daniel began to cut it into very small pieces.

'Go on.'

'Your father and I knew each other very well.' He stopped again, and continued cutting the meat without putting any of it into his mouth. 'We met in that club. Where you found me.'

'I don't think I know what you mean.'

'Yes. You do. Your father and I were lovers.' I think I rose to my feet but, at his look of alarm, I must have sat down again. He started talking very quickly, almost incoherently. 'It was about ten years ago. I do prefer older men, you see. And he was very charming. Very gentle.'

The excitement, or sickness, which I had sensed before was now all around me. It was as if I were bathed in some white light which made every movement and every word distinct. I got up again, and walked to the small lavatory at the back of the restaurant. I sat on the bowl of the toilet, and stared at the graffiti on the yellow door in front of me – something about a penis and a tube. I could see them together, Daniel and my father, lying naked in the basement. I could see them kissing one another. I could see my father kneeling against the sealed door, while Daniel knelt in front of him with his mouth open. I could see Daniel's dress and wig being hurled against the wall, while my father smiled that peculiar smile I knew so well. I could see them in The World Turned Upside Down, dancing together in the dim red light. And then I wondered what it would be like to have my father's tongue down my throat. I stood up, and vomited into the bowl.

Curiously enough, when I returned to the table I was smiling. 'Tell me, Daniel. Did he wear women's clothes as well?'

'Oh no.' He seemed almost offended at the suggestion. 'But he liked me to wear them. Around the house.'

I had heard enough. Now I understood the reason he had bought the property in Cloak Lane – it was the perfect cover for his sexual activities. There had never been any reason for him to divorce my mother, because she also had acted as a form of camouflage. But perhaps she had realized this all the time; that was why she remained so angry with him, even after his death. Perhaps she also suspected that my father had left me everything because I was in some way involved – but that was too hard a thought to bear. The whole of my past life had shifted now, and in these few moments had acquired a different shape. It seemed as if I must approach my own history as I approached the history of other centuries. 'Did he ever mention Doctor Dee?' was all I could think of asking him.

'Not as far as I remember.' We had both now assumed our customary manner and tone, as if we were trying somehow to reassure each other that nothing essentially had changed. He ate his food very quickly, stuffing it into his mouth and swallowing it voraciously. 'But he did say that there was something special about the house. He thought that something had once happened there, and he wanted to restore it. Or relive it. I'm not sure what he meant. But that was why – ' Once more he hesitated.

'It's a little late to keep any secrets.'

'He believed in something called sexual magic. He believed that you could raise spirits by practising, well, certain things.'

'And did he?'

'Did he?'

'Did he raise the spirits?'

'Of course not.'

So here was another truth with which I had to become reconciled. My father had practised magic in Cloak Lane, in the vain hope of conjuring up the ghosts of the past; that, at least, seemed to be the substance of Daniel's confession to me. He had performed some kind of sexual rite for the sole purpose of finding something which, he believed, still resided within the house. Could it be connected with his speculations about the homunculus? There were dark passages and corners here which I did not want to explore. In any case he should have known something I was now beginning to understand from my knowledge of John Dee: only love can restore life. The rest is illusion, and trickery, and nonsense.

'I never believed any of it,' Daniel was saying now, as some spaghetti was placed in front of us. I stared down at the white threads with something like horror. 'Some historians say that radicalism and occultism were related to each other, but I think it was only an act of despair. It was a way of pretending to have some secret force at your command, of imagining you had a form of power which could destroy the established powers. But occultism is really a refuge for the weak and the desperate. It's radicalism gone sour.'

'But my father was never weak.'

'No. He wasn't weak. Most occultists work in groups – it helps to bolster their confidence. But your father was different. He was quite alone. And he really believed that he had come upon a secret truth. It was as if it were some kind of inheritance.'

There was a meaning in all this which alarmed me. 'Did he ever mention me?'

'All the time.'

'Not when –'

'No. We remained friends, after we ceased to be lovers. He had a great passion for the past, you see. Just like you. He was always interested in what I was doing. Funnily enough, he was the one who led me to the Moravians. He found those meeting-places we visited. Do you remember?'

'Yes. I remember.' My father was coming too close to me, and it filled me with fear. I ordered some more wine, while Daniel tightened the knot of his tie again.

'There's something else I have to tell you, Matthew.'

'Oh God.'

'We didn't meet by accident.' The wine had come, and I started drinking heavily again. 'About two years ago, your father realized that he had contracted cancer. That's when he asked me to watch over you. He said that you were very special.'

'Special?'

'He said that you were unique. And of course you are. He just didn't want you to come to any harm. He told me what libraries you used, and it was easy enough to arrange an encounter. We share the same interests, after all, and London can be a very small city.' He stopped suddenly, trying to observe my reaction; but he could see none. 'I hope you don't think I'm a very dreadful person. We did become friends, after all.'

We had come to the end of our meal, as far as I was concerned, but it was still so early that the restaurant was almost empty. A young man and woman were sitting close together in a corner of the room, and I had already noticed that they were whispering intently. I strained to hear what they were saying, but all I could make out were stray angry words – 'worm', 'bitch', 'cow'.

'I'm sorry,' I said to Daniel. 'I really can't put up with this any longer.' I left the table, and went over to them. They looked at me in alarm. 'Why don't you fucking keep quiet?' I whispered, just as they had whispered. 'Do you hear me? Shut your fucking mouths.' Then I returned to Daniel. 'And that reminds me, my darling. I must get back to the house.'

I left him at once, and as I looked into the window I was pleased to see him bewildered and unhappy. I was no longer aware of any particular sensation as I walked back to Cloak Lane, and instead I began repeating the words of a song I had heard that morning as I sat in the old house. I think it was called 'Fortune, My Foe', but I could not be absolutely sure. I passed the churchyard and then, feeling the need to piss after so much wine, I jumped across the stone wall and urinated on one of the gravestones. Something moved beside it, and after I had zipped up my trousers I stamped on it with my foot. I felt as if I were knocking upon an open door.