Simon looked down at the stark covers of the books without understanding Calvin. He saw four horses galloping on a cover, and a view down the barrel of a gun, but he couldn’t take it in. He was aware, though, that Calvin was in a strange mood when he continued speaking.

“I do believe in the person of Jesus, Simon, and preaching, and the lessons of scripture. But that faith should impact on our culture and our political agenda—that it should be used as a moral argument to promote war? I don’t go along with that. The head of my college is a charismatic man, but he is using his religion as a gun in the world. I distance myself from that totally.”

Simon stayed and listened to the things Calvin offered him for a little short of an hour, and left clutching the oddly named and disturbingly covered volumes from Calvin’s personal library. It was just about credible. Calvin might, he thought, have shared their theology but not their politics. But the journalist’s instinct in him niggled, and he had a deep suspicion that Calvin was concerned with buttering his own bread, and that he had revealed, in fact, very little of what was really going on. He came away no wiser as to what the cherished Dee papers might have offered Calvin’s Christian evangelists—and not at all sure of what personal and unconfessed allure they had for Calvin himself.

But he was going to find out.

21

“DID YOU PICK THIS ROSE FOR ME YESTERDAY, AND BRING IT UP?”” LUCY, clutching a warm towel to her, rose from the bath and examined the delicately fading bloom more closely. It was scented and colorful, but now that she looked more closely, she saw it was perhaps slightly rain-damaged. “You should have done it today, the twenty-first—for the spring equinox.”

Alex appeared beside her from the adjoining room, the bathroom serving each of the brothers’ bedrooms from either side. “No, I thought you must have. I was amazed you’d found one so early in the season.” Alex shook his head. “You make me wish I’d thought of it—though I doubt there’s anything in flower yet. Who’s been here? Perhaps someone borrowed the house.” He stepped closer and studied the flower properly. “Actually, it’s faded, isn’t it? Beautifully preserved. As though it were touched by frost on the bush.”

“It has a wonderful myrrh fragrance, though. Can it have been picked long ago?”

She returned to the bedroom without waiting for his answer, and found the shutters thrown back, and a window open. Alex had brought a breakfast tray up with a teapot and brioche. “Are you drinking my brew now?” She laughed at him. “You’re spoiling me. I’ve got to go back to the real world tomorrow and put in rather a long day.”