The old man is nodding slowly, deep in thought, following the expanse of the river, where the torch-lit boat, which has only just preceded the arrival of his friends, is already receding from sight. A haunting vessel, he decides. He turns back to his guest, grasping his hand. “Signor Bruno. ’Tis strange, this vision. Yet devils may tempt, through spirits seeming light.”

Signor Bruno is unperturbed. “Though she is dark, she is the truest fair. The cabbalistic tree teaches us through Kether that the source of Light guides our intentions and activities. Did you not hear her? She is the breeze that breathes upon Apollo’s lute. When love shall speak, so shall the gods together; and they make heaven attend their harmony. Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas.”

“God holds the wheel of creation in his hands.” Dee completes the words in English. “And what an exceptional, complex, marvelous world it is.”

They turn together and walk in concert with their party across the lawns toward the house.

“And she is celestial,” Bruno whispers, turning back one time to search for the vanishing apparition.

12

WHEN THEY RETURNED TO THE PIER, ALEX ENFOLDED LUCY—NOW enveloped in his gilt-edged rococo jacket—in a protective arm, and then ushered her quickly to his car. He was disgusted with himself for risking her apparently too soon after the operation. She hadn’t shown the least sign of any illness since going home from the hospital, was a model patient in every sense recovering in copybook fashion; but she had gone unnervingly quiet, and something had plainly exhausted her tonight. He was more anxious that perhaps she had taken a chill, as she felt cold to the touch—which would be catastrophic if he wasn’t onto it quickly. So the doctor immediately took possession of the man as he chauffeured her along the streets toward the Brompton Hospital. He reached across from the wheel and quickly crushed, then chafed, her cold hand in a gesture that was concern, examination, and affection. It would have been romantic, she thought, had he not seemed quite so alarmed.

As they came through a side entrance to the hospital, she took comfort in the fact that he walked her into the elevator and ignored the possibility of a wheelchair. He settled her smoothly into a private room and attached her to the cardiograph. Then Alex seemed to regain a perfect sense of calm as he spoke quiet commands of instruction around him. A pair of bemused junior doctors were surprised to see him shed his accustomed immunologist’s role and resume that of a knowing specialist registrar. He would relinquish care of her to no one else.