Djinn, shayatin and angels
Don Julius was under the table, blinding mice with a small stick he’d sharpened himself especially for the purpose. He kept their lifeless bodies in a box arranged in order of their powers to withstand torment before expiring. The trick was not to stab too deep into the brain. His father was talking at length about nature, and the importance of not divorcing it from the spiritual life. About the beauty of his portrait as Vertumnus, god the turning seasons, of transformation.
The child had been jealous of the hours the painter had had with his father. The great Arcimboldo had indulged the child at first, attempted to guide his sketches, but abandoned the project as it pleased no-one, and seemed entirely in vain. His patron was indifferent, the artist himself disturbed by the boy’s efforts and the boy’s talents lay more in destruction than creation.
Rudolph vacillated between an unhelpful indulgence rooted entirely in his own egotism and an indifference that could only ever wound and nullify the emerging ego of the boy. The mother was in and out of the Emperor’s bed and favour, frequently displaced by the head of household, a man of unquestionable talents and dubious morals. She weaponised her child, to ill effect.
As he grew he attempted to garner paternal attention and praise, in all the wrong ways. He spent hours walking up and down his father’s ever-growing collection of marvels and oddities, chiefly in the hope that he would encounter him there, and draw his gaze and approval. On occasion the stratagem proved effective, but generally not. So as both he and the cabinet of curiosities grew, so too did his resentment and jealous anger. How could a dodo in a glass case receive more attention than the natural son of the Holy Roman Emperor? Eventually he understood why society needed him to disappear and he retreated, awash with rage.
It was at this point that the shaytaan – the evil spirit that the Turkish emissary Bilal had sensed hovering around Don Julius even as a babe in arms – finally gained entry to the boy’s body, where he nestled under his ribs, whispering wickedness to his lost soul. No exorcism, however expert, could save him now.
The first kill had been an ocelot from the imperial menagerie. The creatures grew in size and the techniques in complex cruelty until he was unable to satisfy his brute needs with animal sacrifices alone. He would go to watch Aisha the tigress maul her live prey. He was enthralled. He started to experiment with willing her to kill this animal or that servant. He stopped being able to tell the difference between himself and the devil in him, except when the shaytaan left him to possess the tiger: this was a painful separation for Don Julius, so he only invoked it in extremity. One such instance was the necessary killing of Bilal. Don Julius and his devil had never liked the man. Shortly before his demise a most interesting visitor had come to the castle, one who had seen the new world, it’s people and their ways. He came bearing promises, and exotic produce such as that in his father’s strange portrait. A man also possessed by a djinn. This explorer had more time for the child, and regaled him with accounts of human sacrifice, which augmented the powers of the rulers. He showed him an obsidian mirror. This ritual object had come into Bilal’s hands, and now it was passing from the lion tamer’s to her lover’s.
*
Fereshteh held the black disc, sliding it out of Lauren’s fingers she crossed silently to the corner, beckoning to be followed. Holding it up she showed the reflection of the room beyond, with its table illuminated by a circle of light:
‘This is one use for it.’
Lauren raised her eyebrows – ‘And you think you know someone!’
‘Until you discover they know more about you’ Fereshteh shot back.
The silence was gifted, then retracted:
‘For the other I must take it now to Dr Dee.’
*
It was John Dee that first gave Elizabeth Regina the idea of building an empire which would extend far beyond the British Isles. He was interested in navigation, had published on it, as well as in al-chemia, astronomy and astrology. He’d cast charts for Elizabeth and her sister when they were young, and pronounced on the most auspicious date for Elizabeth’s coronation. He was happy to teach in the spy school Walsingham had set up, and accepted whatever missions he was sent on without complaint. But this latest one with the rascal Talbot, who was now calling himself Edward Kelley, it had got out of hand. Bank-rolled initially by Stefan Batory, when he was Voivode of Transylvania, they had come to the Rudolphine court to work on the transmutation of base metals to gold, a pet project of the emperor’s. Years had passed and Kelley, as he now called himself, had shifted the focus to that of angelic conversations, asserting his ability to channel one such being, Madinia.
Kelley had insisted the angels wanted them to engage in wife swapping. Dee was reluctant to put it mildly, and sent an SOS to Walsingham and the Queen, which was duly ignored. Dee felt then obliged to sabotage his relationship with Rudolph to effect his repatriation, but not before half the tawdry arrangement had come to pass. When they returned to London Dee’s wife was pregnant; she named the child Madinia.
The morning of his departure Fereshteh had come to Dee with a parting gift, the Aztec scrying mirror that Lauren had taken from Bilal’s body.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, dear heart. I must leave, and you must hold your position. That which has been put in motion will yet come to pass. Thank you for your service.’
‘It is an honour to serve. But I fear what may happen in your absence. Jep tells me of the depravity of that foul child - he’s a demon, lost to the Light!’
‘Indeed. But the Light covers you as completely as you serve it, my dear one. He cannot harm you, and you are our eyes and ears here. Our friend Tygge will have your back. Stay close to the lion tamer, and await further instructions from Jep.’
