Alchemy

‘When will you make up your mind?’

‘I’ll call you,’ I say, ‘when I’ve come to some decision.’

‘Please at least pay in my cheque for what you’ve already done. Expenses must have been incurred…’

‘As long as it isn’t regarded by you as a contract.’ I type out a receipt with disclaimer and print it off. Galton signs it meekly. We shake hands. And yet I know I’ll take the case and not just because I need the bread. I’m hooked, like falling in love. You don’t feel the gaff go in that flips you gasping on to the bank, however much you twist and turn. You ignore the stab of the knives you’re suddenly walking on like the Little Mermaid, out of your rational element, in thin air that’s heady with the ecstasy of lust or power or the thrill of the chase.

I think those words of my lady’s contriving will never leave me that I learned the next day and rehearsed with Secretary Samford in the forenoon. They are here with me now in my cell and I repeat them like some old receipt against the madness that threatens, for if I should lose my reason I should indeed lose all.

The secretary began with the words of old Thenot:

I sing divine Astrea’s praise,

O Muses! Help my wittes to raise

And heave my verses higher.

Then I was to answer as Piers:

Thou needst the truth but plainly tell,

Which much I doubt thou canst not well,

Thou art so oft a liar.

And so we jousted through the verses in our litany of praise.

He:

Astrea is our chiefest joy,

Our chiefest guard against annoy,

Our chiefest wealth, our treasure.

I:

Where chiefest are, there others be

To us none else but only she.

When wilt thou speak in measure?

He:

Astrea may be justly sayd,

A field in flowry robe arrayed,

In season freshly springing.

I:

That spring endures but shortest time,

This never leaves Astrea’s clime,

Thou liest instead of singing.

Thenot:

As heavenly light that guides the day

Right so doth shine each lovely ray

That from Astrea flyeth.

Piers:

Nay darkness oft that light enclouds

Astrea’s beams no darkness shrouds.

How loudly Thenot lyeth.

Coming all too soon as it seemed to me to the last verse he began:

Then Piers of friendship tell me why,

My meaning true, my words should lie

And strive in vain to raise her.

I answered:

Words from conceit do only rise,

Above conceit her honour flies;

But silence, naught can praise her.

As we ended we both fell upon our knees before the countess, for we spoke in homage to her who was our queen indeed however she might have writ for another and greater. I was aware of the richness of her dress of her favourite white silk sewn all over with pearls and the intricacy of her lace at throat and wrists, floating gossamer against the darkness of the hall as the winter day passed, lit only by sconces and the leaping flames from the hearth. There was much applause and our lady rising to her feet clapped her hands too and cried out, ‘Excellently done. I would that her majesty herself had seen it. Let more candles be brought and the music play now for dancing. Come, Piers who would praise by silence, and lead me out. I would not have you dumb for ever.’

‘Madam, as I have never acted before so too I have never danced.’

‘It is only to put one foot before the other in time to the music. Give me your hand. You will soon learn. Was there no dancing in your father’s house?’

‘His only visitors were old grey physicians like himself.’