1590, Prague
Laurenciana Pylmannová entered the outer courtyard of the palace by way of the secret tunnel connecting it to Prague’s Jewish quarter, set down the handles of the wooden wheelbarrow and rubbed her lower back. Dawn was just breaking, and already flies buzzed around the fresh meat which filled the barrow to brimming, gathering in clusters around the corners where the sackcloth had fallen aside to reveal the red raw load.
Ordinarily a member of the community would deliver this tax themselves, but today was Saturday, so she collected the day’s ration herself, from the ice safe where it had been left the day before. This chore should have been done then, and the nocturnal hunters in her care fed before nightfall, but Lauren, lion tamer to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, had been waylaid. The rising sun now picked out auburn strands in her chestnut mane of hair, which she wore loose, flouting the conventions upheld by other courtiers of her gender.
Lauren wore a tunic embroidered with laurel leaves, symbols of prosperity and a pictorial representation of the meaning of her name – ‘victory of wisdom’. She was a widow with her own house on Vlašská Street, the object of fear and envy, with a salary more generous than many of the gentleman of the court, total exemption from tax and a yearly clothing allowance as generous as her ever-growing curves. She was a magnificent beast, much beloved of the Emperor; when first she took up her post she would entertain his guests by arriving on the back of his favourite lion Mohammed, gifted him as a cub by the Sultan. Heavier now, still she would crack her whip, and the lion would leap through fiery hoops making the assembled dignitaries whoop and gasp, and all day long the big cat trailed behind her like a dog. But at night when Lauren went home Mohammed had free run of the menagerie, and the other animals were caged for their own safety.
Yet men were often abroad, going about business best conducted in the shadows, and one such lay before her, mauled and quite dead. Lauren gave him a little kick to make sure, then went to wake the scribe who kept the record of lion- and tiger-related injuries, fatalities and family compensations.
Greenwich, London
Elizabeth, Regina, watched the messenger cross the lawn from her perch in the window, with its leaded glass and sumptuous cushions. Good, she thought, news from her man in Prague. She went down to meet him, pre-emptively calling for Walsingham as she went. Taking the letter she glanced at it, and her assumptions were confirmed: 00, signifying ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and 7, code number of her agent Dr John Dee. Bustling in to her private chamber she found her ‘Eyes’ Francis Walsingham, prompt as ever, waiting for her by the fireplace. Handing it to him she threw herself in a great chair with the command ‘Read!’
Taking the letter with alacrity the queen’s spymaster opened it, and ignoring the anodyne account of life in the Rudolphine court went to a fruit basket in the far corner of the room, cutting a lemon with his pocket knife he squeezed the juice across the page and held it patiently above a candle, while his sovereign fidgeted in her seat.
‘He says the asset Talbot has become a liability and begs your leave to return to England with his family, post-haste. He says his Ottoman counterpart was mauled to death by the emperor’s tiger last week, and that a few days before that unhappy demise the woman had indicated to him that her sultan, Murad III, wishes to ally with your Majestie, and will shortly be sending a missive.’
‘Well,’ she arched one brow ‘the learned doctor might be better placed by our side than in the belly of the – a – beast!’
Walsingham guffawed lightly for the sake of form. Dee had been in situ for a number of years, gathering intelligence whilst ostensibly pandering to the emperor’s alchemy obsession. Dee himself had chosen the code name 7 – the number of service, and ably devised a language that only his old friend could understand. Walsingham did understand, very well, that there was more to this than what he’d read in and between these lines.
*
Rudolph jolted from a reverie that had lasted the span of several hours. He had been contemplating his self-portrait as the god Vertumnus, and now shivered - not only from the cold of stillness and the falling night, but also from the sudden awareness that he himself was being silently observed. Rubbing his upper arms he raised his eyes to meet those dark and glimmering orbs from which Don Julius Caesar, eldest of his bastards, surveilled the bright court that was his world.
‘It pleases you, father.’
At just seven years old the boy was able to offer this as statement, quite flatly. Any other subject of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, of any age or station, would have added a question mark at the end, out of deference. Unsettled, Rudolph blustered as cover for his discomfort:
‘It pleases me, Julius, to be seen as I am.’
The humourless child looked from painting to man and back, failing to see any trace of the divine in the man, nor likeness of the man in the assemblage of fresh produce. He tried to imagine what vegetable might have represented the manhood, had the painting not stopped at the chest. He imagined what it would look like if his father’s likeness was rendered as sculpture, form a pile of animal viscera.
‘What is that, in place of your ear?’
‘It is an ear of corn, a precious crop from the new world, brought now under my dominion.’
At this last word the child glared, turned on his heel and left. Might as well be a flayed stoat for all he cared.
From the outer courtyard came a lion’s roar; from the inner a tiger’s growl.
