The Watchtower

rival the Crown’s. Dee was so celebrated—a sometime adviser to kings—that Will, upon reflection, could not readily accept that this man had a connection to him. Anyone could print a card!
    Dee was also rumored to have flirted with practicing black arts. On at least one legendary occasion, the so-called Wormwood Convention, he and some associates had tried to summon supernatural beings. It had been written about in “the press” (pamphlets at that time) and also been the subject of posted broadsheets. Some anonymous witnesses stated afterward that Dee had not cared about the nature of the beings summoned so much as that a being from another world appeared. Will, who’d heard about these notorious endeavors even in the countryside, was not attracted to a mind-set in which no difference was detected between angel and devil. He picked up the card and moved it back across the table to Liverpool. If the man was offended, his hirsute features did not show it. But his next words to Will were quite bold:
    “What exactly would your occupation or education be, m’lad?” he asked, eyeing Will’s attire, which, even with the grayish cast his perspiration had given it, was of aristocratic quality. “This is an odd hour of the day not to be gainfully employed!”
    Liverpool glanced up at the sun as if it were a moral censor. Then he took from a gaudy pocketbook that contrasted with his bleak coat two small lumps of metal, one gold and the other lead. He put them on the table, but then covered them with a handkerchief as the serving woman approached them; he sent her off with an order of Spanish wine for both of them, one that Will, tired of ale, did not protest.
    After a pause, Will said, “My situation would be none of your business.”
    Now Liverpool’s features did look hurt: his jaw dropped, his lips formed a compressed oval that resembled a pout, and his eyes narrowed to slits. He moved his chair back from the table as if recoiling from Will’s comment, rattling the table and the dishes on it. Will noticed that nothing connected the chair to the table or the dishes, casting doubt as to how this ripple effect occurred. As he pondered this question, a chill crept up his spine.
    He’d been attacked by the devil once today already, in the form of that miserable footman. Was it happening a second time? He was not going to sit here idly and suffer black wizardry, in the wake of a severed love. Yet, he was not quite ready to get up and leave.
    “It’s just that you look an unusually bright and energetic sort,” Liverpool said plaintively. “No meaning to offend. You look that even with all the liquor you have in you, at this ungodly-early hour. So, here I am, your humble servant Guy Liverpool, with a remarkable opportunity to present to you, and you’re discouraging me. It beats the damnation out of me, I tell you.” Liverpool looked around as if he were desperate to escape this social encounter, so profound was the pain that Will had inflicted on him.
    “Opportunity?” Will asked. He suspected Liverpool was at best just putting on some silly wizard’s show for him.
    But, he’d almost certainly blown up his acting job this morning, he reminded himself, which was the rationale for even being in London. And he wasn’t returning to his father’s house, he reminded himself more adamantly. Maybe he should hear the oaf out—to a point. “If it’s alchemy, my good Mr. Liverpool, I have to caution you against bothering to speak. I am of noble lineage. A metal trade is, put bluntly, beneath me!”
    Liverpool drew in a long, whistling breath, as if his patience were sorely tried, before replying, “It is a sort of alchemy, lad, but not of the base-metal kind, you may relieve yourself on that point. I must rebuke you nonetheless, though. Sir Dee, one of the great minds of this or any other time, is an alchemist. That’s no mere craft, no sport for gutter guilds. Its source is a heightened spirit, same as any preacher’s is. But please, let me not digress…”
    Will yawned.
    “Along the streets surrounding this tavern, in this very Seething Lane neighborhood sometimes referrred to as Exchange Alley, a new sort of alchemy is coming into our fair land. Slinking in and out of the darkest corners for now, but make no mistake that this is the port of entry and it is coming. From the Low Countries, the exalted spirit of which contradicts their names; note that Holland, for example, is but one added letter from