The Empire Of Glass Part 7

"No, my dear lady," Galileo replied with a smile, "stabbed through the heart with a long, thin blade. A rapier, perhaps, although the ribs were crushed, indicating that the blow was a forceful one."

"Did you know either of the murdered men?" the Doctor asked.

"The first, no. The second, yes." Galileo waved a hand at the shadowy room around him. "He was the owner of this fine house, and thus my landlord."

"To be at the scene of one murder can be accounted a misfortune," the Doctor said with a slight smile. "To be at the scene of two begins to look like carelessness. Do you have any suspects?"

"For the first death - the poisoning?" Galileo shrugged. "Only the man who bought me the wine. He was an Englishman with long grey hair and a deep scar running down the side of his face -"

Steven, who had just picked up his flagon of wine, suddenly jerked in his chair, spilling wine over his lap.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Sudden chill."

"- Although I suspect that he may have been employed by my enemies, of whom I have many." Galileo smiled, rather proudly.

"Not only among my contemporaries at the University of Padua, but also among the wider philosophical community. I have proved the valued theorems of many distinguished thinkers to be less worthy of consideration than the maunderings of a village idiot, and they do not thank me for it. I think it would be fair to say that I have many enemies."

"You surprise me," the Doctor murmured. "Is there any more of this fine wine, by the by?"

The crickets were rasping in the bushes and the gra.s.s as Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine's coach halted. Disturbed, Bellarmine paused in his reading of the Bible and glanced out of the window. Ahead of him the soldiers were conferring and examining a map. The moon glittered on the waters of the Adriatic and, from their position on top of the rolling hills that swept down toward the sh.o.r.e, Cardinal Bellarmine could just make out the dark bulk of Venice on the horizon, pinp.r.i.c.ked with the red spots of torches. To Venice's left the island of Murano lay sleepily: to its right the long line of the Lido separated the lagoon from the sea. Down near the beach, Bellarmine could see a ramshackle collection of huts and, a few yards into the water, the bobbing hulls of fis.h.i.+ng boats. There was a fire lit, and a group of fishermen were sitting around it singing and eating. His mouth watered as the smell of cooking fish drifted up the hillside towards him. Perhaps in the name of G.o.d these simple fishermen would offer them food and shelter for the night, and carry them across the lagoon to Venice in the morning.

Then again, given the well-known Venetian feelings about the Pope, perhaps not.

As the soldiers conferred, Cardinal Bellarmine took up his reading where he had left off: chapter two of the Book of Hosea. "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her," he intoned, "for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s." He paused for a moment, turning the words over in his mind, searching for meanings within meanings, hidden symbols, links with pa.s.sages elsewhere in the Bible. Bellarmine firmly believed that the answer to any question was hidden within the Bible, couched in obscure language and poetic imagery. It was the task of theologians such as himself to tease out these answers and apply them to the secular world.

A noise from above made him pause - a great roaring, as if the mother of all lions were showing its wrath. He glanced out of the coach's window, and gasped as he saw a red star falling from the sky to the Earth, casting its fiery light all around. Smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace, and the sky and the stars were blotted out by its pa.s.sage. A torrent of noise like a trumpet blast blotted out the wild neighing of the horses and the shouts of the soldiers, and made him cover his ears and cower.

His coach suddenly began to shake as the horses jerked in their harnesses. Bellarmine shouted to the driver to calm them down, but the man did not answer. Perhaps he hadn't heard over the roaring. Perhaps he had fled, or fainted. Bellarmine shot a concerned glance out of the window to where the red glare illuminated the hillside and the now deserted beach with the light of h.e.l.l. If the horses took it into their heads to plunge down that gra.s.sy slope then the coach would certainly tip over and smash into firewood. Bellarmine gathered his robes up and, throwing the door open, jumped out just as the coach began to move. The door caught his foot as the horses pulled away, pitching him to the hard ground. As his shoulder and knees. .h.i.t the earth simultaneously a wave of nausea pa.s.sed through him. His bible slipped from his grasp and spun away.

The noise and the light ceased. The rasp of crickets in the underbrush gradually began afresh: one at first but soon too many to count.

The coach was receding into the distance and the soldiers had fled; he could see their horses galloping frantically along the path, the riders clinging to the reins. Or perhaps the horses had bolted and the riders were attempting to regain control. Either way, he would receive no help from that direction. Slowly, fearfully, he turned his eyes to the nearby hillside, and a prayer rose unbidden to his lips.

On the hill nearby, on the side away from the beach, sat a glowing wheel, twenty feet across, set around with small hubs that looked like eyes. Bellarmine's legs suddenly gave out, and he sank to his knees. Confusion filled his mind. Surely this was the very object that Ezekiel had written about - the chariot sent by G.o.d? What could this mean? Was he being called to Heaven to meet his Maker, or was this one of Satan's tricks?

A section of the great wheel slid aside like a curtain. White light spilled out, so bright that Bellarmine had to s.h.i.+eld his eyes. In the midst of the light, four creatures emerged from the wheel. One was taller than Bellarmine, heavily muscled, and had the face of a lion.

Another walked on all fours, with a heavy, anvil-like face that bore two short horns. The third had a face like a man, but was taller and thinner than any man had ever been that walked the Earth. The fourth was feathered and winged like an eagle. They were familiar to him. They were like old friends. How often had he turned to those pa.s.sages in Ezekiel and Revelations, seeking out their secret meanings? Why had he never suspected that the pa.s.sages might have been literal truth, and that G.o.d's Angels bore those forms?

"We have come for you," the Angels said in unison."You are expected."

And Cardinal Bellarmine broke down in tears.

"An excellent meal," the Doctor said. "My compliments to your cook." He reached out and speared a chunk of cheese from the plate in the centre of the table."I always say you can tell the quality of a civilization by the food it eats, don't I, my boy?"

"Yes, Doctor," Steven dutifully responded. In fact, there were so many things that the Doctor always said that he was beginning to lose count.

"This dessert is wonderful," Vicki said, spooning more of the thick yellow liquid into her mouth. "What is it?"

"Zabaglione," Galileo replied. "A confection made with eggs, sugar and marsala wine. I am humbled that it meets with your approval.

My modest fare is exalted by your glorious beauty. In fact -"

Steven coughed warningly and, when Galileo glanced over at him, Steven shook his head. He'd seen what Galileo was like when he had a few bottles of wine inside him, and he'd had quite a few over dinner. So had Steven. In fact, his head was beginning to swim.

"You said earlier on," the Doctor mused, "that there was an unusual occurrence that you would demonstrate after dessert. Am I permitted to know what it might be, or do you intend keeping me in the dark for a while longer?"

Galileo gazed thoughtfully at the Doctor. Despite his prodigious consumption of wine, his gaze was still sharp and watchful.

"Before I do," he said abruptly, "I must break one of my personal rules, and discuss religion. You and your companions are, I presume, English: you have that look about you. That may indicate Protestant leanings. However, your perfect grasp of Italian may suggest a long residence in our fair land, leading one to believe that you have Catholic tendencies. But then again, what is Catholic in Venice has been considered heresy in Rome, and vice versa.

So, you see, I can come to no firm conclusion concerning at which altar you wors.h.i.+p."

"In a long and eventful life," the Doctor said eventually, "I have experienced nothing that I could not account for by the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. If a G.o.d or G.o.ds exist, and I cannot rule out the possibility, then I can only presume that He, She or They take no active part in the lives of the many and various creatures that populate this extensive and wonderful universe of theirs." He picked a crumb of cheese from his plate and swallowed it. "In addition, I have seen countless races wors.h.i.+p countless G.o.ds with attributes which are mutually incompatible, and each race believes itself to be following the one true faith. While I respect their beliefs, I would consider it arrogance for any race to try and impose their beliefs on me, and if I had a belief of my own then it would be equally arrogant of me to impose it on them. In short, sir, I am currently an agnostic, and by the time my life draws to its close, and I have travelled from one side of the universe to the other and seen every sight there is to see, I firmly expect to be an atheist. Does that answer your question?"

"That and several others," Galileo said. "You and I have more in common than I had thought." He stood up. "Follow me. I have something that might interest you."

He led Steven, Vicki and the Doctor away from the table, strewn with the remains of their meal, and out into the stairwell. For a moment Steven thought he was going to take them down into the alley outside, but instead he headed upstairs. At the top he climbed up a ladder and threw a trapdoor open. The others followed him up onto a wooden platform which crowned the house.

The sky above them was so bright with stars that Steven could have read a book by them, most of them lying in the thick band of the galactic disc. From far below he could hear the lapping of water.

"Careful," he muttered to Vicki, "don't lose your footing."

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm as sure footed as a - Oh!" He caught her arm as she stumbled. She pulled her arm free. "I can look after myself, thank you," she said.

"You couldn't get much wetter if you did did fall in," he whispered to himself as she moved closer to the Doctor. fall in," he whispered to himself as she moved closer to the Doctor.

Galileo and the Doctor were standing beside a shrouded shape.

Galileo pulled the covering sheet off with a flourish. Steven couldn't see what the fuss was about: all that was underneath was a crude, low power telescope on a tripod. It looked as if it was made out of bra.s.s covered in red leather.

"With this spygla.s.s," Galileo said proudly, "I can bring objects sixty times closer. The principle is complex and difficult to explain, and I laboured mightily to produce it. The Doge will pay heavily to obtain it."

"The principle of refraction is simple enough," the Doctor said.

"The power is limited, of course, by the distance between your lenses. If you can reflect the light from a concave mirror at the end here -" he indicated the eyepiece, "- and then reflect it out of the side of the spygla.s.s using an inclined plane mirror halfway up, then you could almost double the length and greatly increase the magnifying power. I could suggest other -"

Galileo's face was thunderous. "There are no improvements to make to this spygla.s.s," he interrupted. "I have perfected it."

"If you say so." The Doctor smiled at Steven.

"Is this piece of gla.s.s meant to be broken?" Vicki said. She was peering into the far end of the telescope.

"What?" Galileo pushed her out of the way. "What have you done, girl?" He peered at the end of the telescope. "The lens has been smashed! It took days to produce one to the right specifications, and now it's ruined!"

"I didn't do anything!" Vicki protested. "It was like that when I found it!"

Galileo whirled around as if he expected to find the saboteur on the platform with them. "Whoever did this will rue the day that their paths ever crossed that of Galileo Galilei," he shouted.

"Yes, yes, that's all very well," the Doctor fussed, "but I presume that you wanted to show me something through this simple device.

Can you not at least tell me what it was that you saw?"

Galileo sighed, and turned back to the Doctor. "I can do better than that," he said, still angry, "I can show you a sketch I made." From beneath his coat he brought out a roll of parchment and handed it to the Doctor. As Steven watched, the Doctor unrolled it and glanced at whatever ill.u.s.tration it contained.

"I saw it last night," Galileo said. "It was travelling between the moon and the Earth. I swear so."

"I believe you," the Doctor said. He turned the parchment toward Steven, who drew in his breath sharply. The sketch on the parchment was rough, done in charcoal, but showed a disc like a flattened egg with circular holes along the side.

"Do you recognize it?" the Doctor asked quietly.

Steven met his worried gaze. "It's a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p," he said tersely.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

William Shakespeare licked the salt from his lips and gazed forlornly at the distant horizon. There was still no sign of Venice, no blemish upon the junction of sea and sky that might indicate the presence of land. The translucent blue sea stretched all around them, as if they were mired in gla.s.s. For all Shakespeare knew, they might not have moved for days. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. He wasn't a good traveller at the best of times, and this was not the best of times. Not by any reckoning.

The deck beneath his feet rocked with a predictable rhythm as the s.h.i.+p fell forward into each wave and rode up again upon the wave's back, dragging its bulk forward, yard by precious yard. A gust of wind blew spume into his eyes. The salt stung, and he wiped his sleeve angrily across his face. d.a.m.n Walsingham!

d.a.m.n both the Walsinghams. d.a.m.n both the Walsinghams and thrice d.a.m.n the King!

Rope creaked alarmingly against wood in the rigging, and the cries of the sailors were almost indistinguishable from the cries of the birds that flew alongside the s.h.i.+p, waiting patiently, mindlessly, for the slops to be thrown overboard. The slops! Shakespeare's stomach rebelled at the thought of food. He'd forced down some wormy meat and hard biscuit that morning to blunt the edge of his hunger, but it had just come straight back up again. He hadn't kept anything down since leaving Southampton. He wasn't sure if he would ever be able to eat again.

He leant upon the rail and rested his head in his hands. Below him, past the line of portholes, the water slapped against the curve of the hull. And beneath that, what? Fathomless depths. Darkness and silence. How easy it would be to miss one's step, to pitch when the s.h.i.+p was tossing, and to tumble, alone and unnoticed, into that murky abyss. What was the nightmare that he had put in Clarence's mouth in The Tragedy of King Richard the Third? "Lord, Lord, methought what pain it was to drown: what dreadful noise of water in mine ears, what sights of ugly death within mine eyes!

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks; a thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept as it were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems that woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, and mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by."

He pulled his mind away from those morbid and somewhat flowery words, and found them migrating toward the play that they came from. Sudden anger surged up within him - or, at least, he thought it was anger. It might have been the last fragments of his breakfast. Not only had that zooterkin Christopher Marlowe stolen some of his themes for Edward II, but that coney-catching mountebank Francis Pearson had produced his own inferior copy and called it The True Tragedie of Richard the Third. Marlowe was dead, thank the Lord, and Pearson was a talentless hack who would never amount to anything, but there was no saying what was happening in London with Shakespeare gone. He could return to find his entire body of work being performed under other t.i.tles by inferior actors, with some upstart writer getting all the credit. Worse still, Macbeth was in rehearsal, ready to be performed before the King at Hampton Court Palace. What travesties might Richard Burbage and the rest of the King's Men commit upon it in his absence?

Perhaps he should think about returning to Stratford, his family and his grain-dealing business. Writing was a fool's game. Long hours, low pay and little praise.

Just like spying, really. "All right, Mr Hall?" Shakespeare almost didn't acknowledge the sailor walking past, but at the last moment he remembered his false ident.i.ty - the one that Walsingham had persuaded him to take on for this mission. "Feeling a little unsteady," he replied.

"Get some victuals down your neck," the sailor shouted back over his shoulder.

"Thank you," Shakespeare muttered. "I'll try." He turned to stare across the damp boards at his fellow pa.s.sengers, trying to distract his mind from the warring sensations of hunger and nausea. There were other Englishmen aboard, but they seemed to be avoiding him as a.s.siduously as he was avoiding them. Their dress was old fas.h.i.+oned and much patched, and despite their gaiety he discerned some darker feeling within them, some hidden mood that could only be glimpsed in their eyes.

Or perhaps he was just being foolish. What had possessed him, agreeing to this absurd mission? His work as an informant and courier for Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State whose network of agents and informers had been set up to protect the Queen from Catholic plots, had been fulfilling and financially rewarding. The work had taken him across Europe, from Denmark to Venice, and provided the raw material for many of his plays, but when Walsingham died Shakespeare had thought that he was free of the life of intrigue, free to return to grain dealing and acting. No such luck. Thomas Walsingham had taken over where his cousin had left off. Shakespeare was still an agent of the crown, as were Ben Jonson and half the other playwrights in London. If any of them needed to be reminded of the risks, all they had to do was remember Christopher Marlowe, stabbed in a tavern in Deptford.

Marlowe, of course, had been one that loved a cup of hot wine: drunkenness had been his best virtue, and it was handy-dandy whether that or his spying had led to his death.

Shakespeare shuddered as he recalled Walsingham's ascetic face, floating on a foam-like ruff above his raven-black robes, his hair hidden by a skullcap. And that voice! That cold, dry voice!

"You will travel to Venice. You are familiar with the city? Good. A reliable agent tells me that the Doge is negotiating with a previously unknown Empire - probably in the East - for lucrative trade concessions. The King wishes you to determine the truth of this matter and engage in preliminary negotiations on his behalf with this Empire. While you are gone, we will put about the rumour that you are secluded, writing a new play. It is an explanation that has served us before - it will work again."

Walsingham's planning was impeccable, his logic una.s.sailable, his force of personality unquestionable. And so Shakespeare, playwright, grain merchant and sometime spy, found himself the prisoner of circ.u.mstance, bound once again for Venice - home of Shylock and of Oth.e.l.lo - without a clue as to how to accomplish his mission.

He looked up into the s.h.i.+p's rigging: a tangled ma.s.s of ropes and wooden spars suspended like some solid cloud above his head. A sailor swung one-handed from it as he climbed up to the crow's nest. Despite his sea-sickness and his terror of heights, Shakespeare would happily have swapped lives with him. Quite happily.

"Sleep well, my dear." The Doctor smiled and patted Vicki's arm as they entered their salon. Somewhere out in St Mark's Square, a clock tolled twice. "Although I'm sure that you won't have any problems after that marvellous meal."

" I I certainly won't," Steven muttered. He was weaving slightly as he crossed the ornate carpet towards his bedroom. certainly won't," Steven muttered. He was weaving slightly as he crossed the ornate carpet towards his bedroom.

"Not considering the amount you drank." The Doctor's tone was reproving, but Vicki could see a twinkle in his eye. "Good night, my boy. Breakfast at eight sharp. Don't be late."

The sound of the door slamming behind him cut off Steven's grunted reply.

The Doctor took a step towards his own bedroom. Vicki felt a panicky sensation swell up in her chest. She didn't want to be left alone. Not that night. Not if she might wake up to find something...

something alien alien... sitting on her windowsill. "You're in a good mood," she said rapidly.

The Doctor stopped and nodded. "I found Mr Galileo to be a most congenial companion. Most congenial indeed. It is so seldom that I get a chance to converse with somebody almost on my own intellectual level."

Vicki couldn't help but smile to herself. The Doctor was so blithely unaware of how conceited he sometimes sounded. "Better not let Steven hear you say that," she said. "He might take offence. He thinks he's the intellectual equivalent of everyone."

"That," the Doctor said drily, "is his main problem." He turned to face her. "You don't seem to mind an old man's ways, however,"

he said, his voice unusually hesitant. "Do I seem arrogant to you, child?"

Vicki opened her mouth to reply, then caught herself. For once the Doctor was asking her a serious question. The least he deserved was a serious answer. "No," she said finally, "because you're not an old man." She took a deep breath. "In fact, you're not a man at all, are you?"

His clear blue eyes gazed at her for a moment, then he nodded slightly, more in acknowledgement of a point scored than in answer. Crossing to the divan he busied himself with plumping up cus.h.i.+ons and sitting down. "And what makes you think that?" he said finally.

"A lot of things." Vicki crossed her arms and walked over to the window. Outside, the throng of revellers and traders was no different from when she had woken up. Only the faces had changed. "Barbara and Ian were suspicious of you ... I don't mean that they thought you were evil or anything like that - just that you weren't what you seemed. Barbara confided in me one night, shortly before they left. Since then I've been watching you, and..."

She shrugged. "You look like a man, you talk like a man, but you're not. There's something about the way you watch people sometimes, like I used to look at Sandy."

"Sandy?" he prompted.

"My sand monster, back on Dido. I loved him, but not in the same way I loved my mother and my father. And that's the way you love us, isn't it? Like we're pets."

She waited, feeling as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and it was too dark to see where the bottom was. The Doctor's face didn't change, but she could sense a certain re-evaluation going on underneath the surface.

"You're very... sensitive," he said finally. "That is your greatest strength. That, and your ability to play up to the image that people have of you."

"Then ...?"

He smiled. "Then what am I? A wanderer, my dear. A wanderer and a survivor. I am not of your race. I am not of your Earth. I am a wanderer in the fourth dimension of s.p.a.ce and time, a refugee from an ancient civilization, cut off from my own people by aeons of time and universes far beyond human understanding."

"And was Susan a wanderer too?"

His face suddenly clouded over. "Susan? Who told you about Susan?"