The Watchtower

come in.” Dee stepped back and then ushered Will through a narrow hall into a small, square room, well lit by dozens of candles. The room contained several high-backed, velvet-cushioned chairs, arranged around a long oak table that was unadorned. Perhaps this was a place for an entire group to summon spirits, Will thought, not entirely sarcastically. Dee took a seat at one end of the table and gestured Will to the chair opposite. Will was mulling over what Dee’s Euclid reference could have meant, and weighing the relative risks of confessing ignorance and sitting in lost silence. He chose the latter.
    Dee grew impatient again. “You’re quite the incurious interviewer, aren’t you, boy? Have you at least got a name?”
    “W-W-Will Hughes, sir. My apologies, I’m no expert in Euclid. I’ve heard of him of course and studied a bit of Greek for that matter, but my logical bent is centered on the math of music, as in poetry, and not that of measurement. Except when measuring out sonnets.”
    Dee stared at Will as if he’d claimed to be an octopus. His eyes blazed briefly, as though they were made of the finest alchemist’s gold. “So you have not even heard of the new edition of Billingsley’s 1570 translation of Euclid’s Elements with my preface in it?”
    The boom in Dee’s voice now could have been the reason some of the stones had fallen off the cottage, Will thought.
    “My preface which explains how math can transform England into the center of the world? How it can fill the void left by falsified faith and all manner of superstition, replace it with its own miracles but of logic and reason? How our very faculty of math itself is a miracle worthy of a new scripture?! Speak up, boy! Surely you know of this work that all London speaks of right now, thanks to the great grace of John Day, printer extraordinaire? Countless youth have been coming here recently to question me about my insights, my wisdom. They have become a nuisance in their numbers, but nonetheless I have continued to admit such youth, marking it the cost of my genius. But apparently that’s not the attraction for the great”—Dee seemed to be searching for Will’s name—“Houghton, as you are. And if it’s not, then what is?” Dee glared at Will.
    Will vacillated as to the degree of flattery with which to respond, deciding not to claim to have heard of the Billingsley Euclid, let alone this new edition, let alone to have read it. Too much risk of Dee following up with questions. “I come, in all my ignorance, on a different matter, Your Excellency. But surely it takes my breath away that you are so glorious an expert on this geometer as you remind me you are, and yet one of comparable stature in the, pardon the expression, dark arts. It is amazing that one mind can encompass two such areas of genius! And that is the Lord’s truth.”
    “‘Dark arts’? What ‘dark arts’? There are none, I assure you,” Dee answered hotly. “There’s only the darkness of the population’s ignorance regarding certain matters, a shameful state I have spent my adult life trying to correct. I shine the light of logic in the darkest of corners. For only by math’s laws of probability can we witness something truly miraculous. If everyone walked on water, would Jesus doing it have been a miracle? Of course not! Singularity makes the miracle! That’s what I do, with sacred math. Prove miracles. What do you do with your gifts—lad?”
    “… I am a poet,” Will finally said, uncomfortably, since he lacked a book. Then his expression brightened. “And a prospective trader in stock certificates, for which I have been having a discussion with Sir Guy Liverpool.” Why not say this? “As you know, it was Liverpool who directed me here this evening. But the urgent matter for me on this errand, Your Brilliance, is immortality.” Will hoped that Dee would not be offended by such an inventive form of address. “You have a great reputation in this sort of dark affair, as I mentioned, and I thought—”
    As if it had taken several seconds for immortality and dark to register, Dee now stood and leaned dramatically toward Will across the table, seeming to elongate an elastic torso halfway along the table length as if he had serpentine powers. “Silence!” Dee shouted, pointing an adamant finger at Will. Will obeyed.
    “It’s no dark affair as you blasphemously put it,” Dee said in a tense voice, as though trying to restrain himself from