“Yes, I agree that’s odd from today’s perspective. But Dee was influenced by the crosscurrents of extraordinary ideas from fifteenth-century Europe. It was at that time that documents and books were pouring into Italy from Constantinople and Spain, where the Jews were cast out by Ferdinand and Isabella. One of the most important of these ideas was brought with the teachings contained in the cabala. The other was the discovery of a group of documents about Hermes Trismegistus, which became known as the Corpus Hermetica.” Lucy looked at Alex: this was the hub of her information, and she wanted to be sure he was paying attention while dealing with the icy road and the now heavier snow flurries, which tested the dexterity of the windshield wipers. She paused to consider that the maiden had chosen terrible weather for her reemergence.

“Don’t stop.” Alex glanced at her, fascinated. “I’m enjoying your voice.”

She smiled, relishing the role reversal that cast her as the authority. “The Renaissance philosophers Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino worked for the Medici, and it was Lorenzo’s grandfather, Cosimo, who asked them to put everything else to one side and concentrate on the Hermes texts that had just come into his possession. These texts they translated—the writings of Hermes—sent ripples of mysticism across Europe. Hermes was a mythical Egyptian sage—not the messenger to the Greek gods. He was a sort of Greco-Egyptian hybrid who embodied the qualities of both the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian god and scribe, Thoth. He was called the Egyptian Moses by Renaissance scholars.”

Alex turned the heating up a fraction as the air temperature was dropping outside. “It sounds as though he probably wasn’t a real person at all?”