The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles, Anno 24 Elizabeth Regina, 1582

Prompt - Four Seasons (400 words): Structure a story based on the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Write 100 words for each season, with the four episodes tying together and leading to a dramatic or thought-provoking conclusion. 

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Winter

    Sleet tapped the glass windows, and John Dee shivered with cold on Plough Monday as he re-read his notes on the new principles of cartography he wished to introduce to Queen Bess in his upcoming audience. 

    Walsingham strolled into his office. “Her Majesty wishes you to be the Official Uncorker of Ocean Bottles.”

    Dee started to laugh, but Sir Francis’s eyes lacked mirth. “But … I am a mathematician and map-maker, sir.”

    “Her majesty says, ‘Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.’  You have been tested. Those bottles may contain messages from spies.”

Spring

    Dee was in the garden, enjoying the first warm spring day, when a royal messenger interrupted him, handing him a very old bottle, like no design he’d ever seen.

    Dee sighed, carried the bottle inside to a windowless room, and locked the door behind him.  He set to worrying the clay and wax stopper free, extracting the aged-stiffened parchment, and carefully unrolled it.

    Greek letters. Interesting.  

    “Theophrastus… ocean currents …” he translated rustily. Dee pushed a pin into a wall map, marking Greece, writing “2000 yrs” underneath. He placed the bottle on a shelf with the rest of his salt-encrusted collection.

Summer

    In the sweltering heat, John Dee sat looking through William Cecil’s atlas of manuscript maps, not allowing a single drop of sweat to land on the lovely collection.  

    My Lord Burghley, he wrote, the maps appear accurate, excepting the Roanoke and Virginia colonies, which lack proper proportions.  I should be glad to draw —

    A royal messenger placed a bottle on his desk. “Another one, sir.”

    Dee opened the bottle, not allowing the messenger to see the message, and scanned it, picking out a few words of Spanish.  “Columbus’s report of Hispaniola.”  

    “Oh! The New World? Your bottle-message collection is wonderful, sir!” 

Autumn

    Snow drifted on a frigid breeze across the messenger’s path as he carried a bottle to Dee’s house. Dee met him at the door and eagerly took the bottle.  

    “Good Yuletide, sir!” the messenger said, following him in.  

    Dee opened the bottle and read aloud, “The Spanish prepare for war against beloved Gloriana, 1st September 1580. —Drake.”  Dee dropped the bottle, and it shattered upon the hearth.

    The door slammed open. “’Tis a shame, John,” Walsingham said, leading soldiers inside. “I see I didn’t test you enough.”  To his men, he said, “The Tower. And destroy the too-renowned bottle messages.”

--April 19, 2020

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Notes:

• John Dee was a real person, an English mathematician and cartographer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
• Sir Francis Walsingham and William Cecil/Lord Burghley were also real; important advisors to Elizabeth I and sometimes patrons of Dee.
• Cecil really did create an atlas of maps, and it is in the Royal Library today.
• Elizabeth I supposedly created a position “The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” in the 1580s believing messages found in bottles washed up on the beach to contain coded spy messages, and it was on pain of death for anyone else to open them. However, this is no evidence of this, nor is there any evidence that John Dee held the position. He also lived to 1608, so even if he was sent to the tower in 1582, he survived the ordeal
• Elizabeth considered Sir Francis Drake’s accounts of circumnavigating the earth to be Royal secrets.
• Columbus set reports of his findings adrift in bottles
• Theophrastus also did in about 300 BC, but as a science experiment, to understand the tides and currents of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/the-bizarre-history-of-messages-in-a-bottle/9522322
• https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/saxton-and-speed-two-early-elizabethan-cartographers-and-the-flemish-influence/