It had been precisely 3:40 p.m. GMT when the ceremonial nature of the day had ebbed away. Grace squeezed Simon’s hand in a half-gesture of panic. Completely absorbed in the Garter Stalls at St. George’s Chapel, they were suddenly alerted to footsteps echoing through the huge building; and Grace’s nerves strained at the approach of a robed figure, his eyes fixed on them. When he was close enough for Grace to see the pores of his skin, a smile warmed his face, and a verger introduced himself. Why were they interested in the emblems and banners in the ancient stalls, he wondered. Grace demonstrated her passion for history and heraldry, which delighted him, and a floodgate opened. An alchemist and a self-confessed Rosicrucian, he took them on a tour of the exquisite building, explaining that the white roses—so much in evidence—are a symbol of female in alchemy, and to the Rosicrucians. The frequently missed message about the white rose of York, he told them proudly, is that they were descended from Edward III through the female line; red Lancaster was male. Answering a stream of Grace’s fervent questions, white roses were revealed as the unclouded hopes of a pure heart and good judgment over selfish passion.

“It should be everyone’s spiritual goal,” he’d told them.

“I’ve made notes, Alex.” Simon spoke softly into his phone. “All initiates of this ancient wisdom strive to be ‘open to the grace of the rose.’ That’s something Will wrote—remember? The rose is commonly associated with romantic love; but this uncanny messenger today told us it paradoxically encodes purity and passion, earthly desire and heavenly perfection, virginity and fertility, life and death. It was as though he were sent to tell us that the rose itself links the goddesses Isis and Venus with the blood of Osiris, Adonis, and Christ. The male red rose, when married to the white—like the Tudor rose—becomes the basis of magic and the metamorphosis of the soul. He called it ‘the means by which we distill the divine in ourselves.’”

Alex interrupted: “That’s the metaphor for this whole quest of Dee’s, Simon. The message of the rose is common to all spiritual, and even aesthetic philosophies. If we can blend the contrasted characteristics it represents, we become godlike—the best we can aspire to be. Put simply, the white and red roses married represent a celestial wedding—the best expression of ‘male’ and ‘female’ on earth.”