A raven-haired woman, seated at the left of the older man at one end of the table, raises her head and her drink in salute. “To Rosa Mundi, then, Will—two blent as one. The secret heart of love.” From end to end of the long table their eyes are now fastened on each other. The eroticism is disturbed only by the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind the fireplace, coming from the passageway that leads into the meeting room from the main body of the White Hart Inn. In a moment a door, flush with the paneling, has opened. All faces turn, scrutinizing the latecomers; all eyes seem to challenge them unblinking; until the man who had proposed the toast rises again quietly:

“Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold, and see not what they see?”

A dark-haired, dark-eyed, fresh-faced beauty is hovering in the doorway; then she spills into the room in semidarkness, leaving her openmouthed companion rooted to the spot where he stands. She is aware of the faces in the room fixed on her, the cold silence, broken only by the harsh metallic sound of the keys that suddenly jangle so loudly in her hand. A strange odor pervades the room, which is not altogether a pleasant one. Her emotions are taut, and she can hear her pulse in her ears. She is aware of feeling like a child who has disturbed adults at dinner. She breathes purposefully slowly; then she floats to the opposite doorway, which has been curtained off. The fire is spitting: and she knows that she is “in” the moment.

“This is it,” she whispers. “Nothing enraptured, no angel—unless it be me.”

Now she hesitates, and stares at the man who has spoken to her. His is a strangely familiar face, and he is speaking to her again, and to his friends.

“Gentlemen, and dear ladies. No remedy, when this ‘lady of light’ proves afresh that beauty herself is black.” His gaze shifts from the raven-haired lady at the table, to the equally dark-headed Lucy.

Lucy plucks up the courage to confront him without shrinking. “Through the wall’s chink, poor souls, must we be content to whisper,” she says. The company implodes in laughter—everyone other than the oldest man, at the far end of the table. His eyes are restless.

“The lady of light, Will?”

“No other, Your Grace: a vision which, by thine art and mine, we have called to enact our present fancy.”

“Know you, then, lady, that the rose gives us that which is undying.” Dr. John Dee looks at the beautiful, welcome intruder. “And truly, when you understand its meaning, embrace its nature to the very core, a healing of all that is askew shall follow, shall come to the philosopher’s child. We each of us seek, everyone here, to possess the Rose in the desert, which blooms at the center of the labyrinth.”