The Alchemist's Door by Lisa Goldstein

Author:Lisa Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

8

BEFORE THEY PARTED FOR THE NIGHT AL SALAH told Dee a little about Hungary. It had been divided into three parts: one part under Turkish rule; one under King Rudolf and the Habsburg empire; and one ruled by King Stephen, though Stephen had to swear fealty to the Turks and pay them tribute. Stephen had married into the royal Polish family and had become king of Poland as well.

Dee tried to enter the house and go up the stairs quietly, but Jane must have heard him, because she was sitting up in bed as he came into the bedroom. He climbed into bed and drew her down next to him, holding her. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you again,” he said.

She stirred and sighed; her breath was warm against his neck. “You’re always leaving us,” she said. “Where are you going?”

“Hungary.”

She sighed again. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“I’m in danger here—”

“I know. It’s that man Kelley, isn’t it? Didn’t I warn you about him?”

“Kelley, yes, and Rudolf too. Remember when I told you about the thirty-sixth man? Rudolf thinks I know who he is.”

“Let’s go back to England,” Jane said suddenly. “Let’s get away from Rudolf, away from this crazy country.”

“I wish we could, sweetling. I can’t afford to take all of us to England. I have to find patronage from someone. Maybe King Stephen—”

“Maybe. It’s just—I miss you when you’re gone. I feel lost here—I don’t know the language, the customs. I want to go back to England.”

“I’ll get us all back,” Dee said. “I promise.”

The next day he booked passage on a coach to Stephen’s province, which was called Transylvania. The coach drove south and east, passing Vienna, and Dee wondered if it was true that Rudolf had moved the capital from that city to Prague in order to be closer to the spirits.

They left the city behind them and entered a wood. As they continued the trees crowded closer and closer around them, blocking out the sun, turning everything gray and vague. The road they followed grew narrower, nearly disappearing in places in all the vegetation. Squirrels leapt to the top of the coach and ran along the roof, their steps loud in the silence. Other animals cried or chittered within the dense forest.

One evening he heard a pack of wolves howl in the distance. “Here we are—we are here. Here we are—we are here,” they seemed to sing in their thin weird voices; their howls ascending and descending like a scale. The hair on his forearms stood up; it seemed to him that they were declaring their mastery of the forest, reminding them that humans had only managed to carve out a pitiably small realm of order and light.

At the taverns where they stopped for the night he began to hear more Hungarian, and another language spoken by dark bearded men that he assumed was Turkish. He had not realized that these infidels pushed so far westward, so close to the capital cities of Prague and Vienna, and it made him apprehensive about the fate of Christendom.

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