by John Crowley
As soon as, in fact almost before, he had formulated this conception, Pierce felt an unlikely satisfaction in it, a relief, as though a long-standing cramp had at last released. Sure. If the Author of the universe were nine years old, a girl-child loving and imperious and jealous. Jealous! Thou shalt have no other gods before me, nosirree. ’Cause I said so.
He laughed out loud. God the Daughter. Infinite God with infinite knobby knees and an infinite plaid kilt, held together with an infinite safety pin.
Infinite.
With no inward fanfare, Pierce was just then visited by, or awarded with, one of those large simple insights, logical solutions or dissolutions of a mental obstacle you had not even recognized as an obstacle, the sensation of finding that a stuck door opens inward and not out. Infinite had of course nothing whatever to do with size. Nothing at all. In every other context he had known this to be so: large followed by very large followed by very very large was not eventually followed by infinite. He had only not ever applied this knowledge to an infinite God.
How can God notice a tiny human soul in the vast cosmic amphitheater? Because infinity is not relative. To God, Pierce was himself not appreciably smaller than the whole universe. No difference.
And contrariwise: God did not need an infinite universe to reflect himself in; Bruno was wrong, even though he knew this himself about infinity, knew that to an infinite being a really enormous universe is no larger than a small one; the abyss of space, the titanic creatures of the abyss, nebulæ, galaxies, whatever, are not to an infinite being effectively larger than atoms. Bruno still wanted a great big infinite universe for a great big infinite God, who would be insulted with anything less. And yet an infinite God is not in any sense great big.
Of course.
You got no closer to God by imagining something huge, then something huger, then something hugest. No. You might, to imagine an infinite being, get just as close by imagining not something vast but something small; makes no difference.
Something small. Something tiny, since infinitesimal is infinite too; infinite tiny spark at the core of reality. Sure. Beau had drawn the first circle of his plot—Him, Her—actually too large for infinitude; it needed to be a dot, a dimensionless point.
Had he actually been told all these things long ago, and had he only not been able to receive them? Had Sister Mary Philomel explained it to him and been unable to broach his hardened heart? God is Everywhere. Sure. He has numbered the hairs of your head. Sure. The whole of great big God the Father, condensed without loss of fullness into the human body of His Son, is condensed further and without loss into the round of Bread, sure, sure. Veni Creator Spiritus: Come Holy Ghost Creator Blest/And in our hearts take up Thy rest. Here, maybe, was the real functional reason for a Trinity: an approach to the paradoxical and newly understood infinitude of God by positing three persons, big, medium-size, and small.
He balanced his brown bottle on a tussock of grass, where the sun struck through its heart, an amber spark. Whether or not it was what they had meant, he felt himself (at last and for no particular reason just at this time) admitted into the room where those who understood were gathered, those who knew that the idea of God, whatever its other merits, was not affected by cosmology. Hildy, probably, had known it all along.
“I have friends who are Christians,” Val said. “Jesus Freaks sort of, I guess. A lot of love: you do feel a lot of love.”
There were other big problems with the old Unmoved Mover still to be solved, of course. Never mind. Pierce thought his vis imaginativa had had enough workout for one day. He pulled his hat across his eyes and laced his fingers over his breast.
He ought to write this down soon. Sentiments that delicate, an insight that paradoxical, were just the sort of thing he was finding it hard to retain in memory; the kind of thing that could evaporate between the turning to a clean page and the finishing of an introductory paragraph. New thought about God today. Now what actually had it been, pen hovering bemused over the page like a bee whose intended flower has just been plucked.
A nine-year-old girl. An infinitely tiny spark of nine-year-old girlhood ensconced at the heart of things, and therefore apprehendable by, within, his own heart as well.
Like Tinkerbell, sort of. Hm.
The afternoon was golden on his eyelids, then dark, and his ears ceased by degrees to hear.
He experienced a sort of visitation then, a remembrance of a sort he only seemed to experience just before the onset of chance sleep; not a remembrance of something but a recurrence, occupying his whole self, of a stored past moment, a moment he could taste and feel and recognize as past but could not further identify. Pre-puberty; indoors; not summer; close guilty preoccupation … gone.
A ghost of himself, haunting him momentarily, warning(?) or reminding, passing on. Animula vagula blandula.
That little vial of time happened to have been filled in the winter of 1953, in the upstairs closet of the house in Bondieu, with Bobby Shaftoe next to him; but that wasn’t returned to him, only the drop of melancholy sweetness on his tongue. Then the earth resumed its turning; the underside of Pierce’s lids brightened momentarily, and there was a brief ritornelle, summer and the meadow, birdsong and human voices. Then that too was gone. Pierce was asleep.
ELEVEN
She knew the secret names of the seven governors of the planets, but she could not recognize a picture of King Edward VI. She could be as cruel as a child, and as dismissive, consigning people and nations to perdition in a way that made John Dee’s back hair stand. She teased Kelley tirelessly, speaking to him in Greek which he did not understand; she liked to play the older man against the younger one, until Kelley would stagger to his feet furious, and break off, despite John Dee’s gentle remonstrances, now now, now now.
She took Kelley’s black book and said it was no puzzle to her; it was written in the language of Enoch, the language men spoke with God before the Flood. Sit, she said to them; learn and do, she said; pluck up your hearts, she said, nothing will come of nothing; I will teach you this language by which the world was made, and the names Adam gave to the animals.
She told them, too, the names of their enemies at court, which included not only Burleigh, whom Dee had always suspected, but his friend and patron Sir Francis Walsingham too. So she said. And yet she was as hard to trust as a child, as the child she was, Jesus’s child whom they were enjoined to become like if they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
They bent their minds and their wills to understand and believe, two large bearded men kneeling to be chastised and scolded by her, her finger raised (even Doctor Dee could see it with his mind’s eye) and her brow darkened. When they asked for advice about the long sudden journey they were to take with the Polonian prince, where they would stay, what would become of them, she stamped her bare foot, arms akimbo: Thou hast no faith. He is your friend greatly and intendeth to do much for you. He is prepared to do thee good and thou art prepared to do him service. Those who are not faithful shall die a most miserable death, and shall drink of sleep everlasting.
Just when it had been decided that they would depart with the Lord Laski, Kelley suddenly spent five pounds on a horse, saddle, and boot-hose. He was grooming the animal with fierce determination when Dee (who had sought him everywhere, he needed Kelley’s help in making ready, he suspected some trouble) came upon him in the dark of the stable.
—Where do you go?
—Brentford. I have been told to get clean away.
—Who has told you?
—This one, by my right shoulder. Do you see him not? I did not think you would.
He poked viciously toward his own eyes with two fingers, as though to put out his sight:
—You have not eyes to see wickedness. Even did it speak the truth.
—And when return, asked Doctor Dee. Time is short.
—If I stay here I will be hanged; if I go with the Prince I shall have my head cut off.
He turned upon Dee, pointing to him w
ith the curry-comb:
—You mean not to keep promise with me. I release you of your promise of fifty pounds a year. And if I had a thousand pounds I would not tarry here.
Dee raised his hand, palm out, to stop the man, but his gesture only made Kelley’s face stranger and more suffused with violence:
—Oh you need not doubt God will defend you. And prosper you. He can of the very stones raise up children to Abraham. You need not worry.
He turned to his horse again, and began brushing violently, as though to flay the beast and not groom it.
—And I cannot abide my wife. I love her not, nay I abhor her, and I am misliked here because I favor her no better. She is a witch and has robbed me of my powers. You have helped her I doubt not. Touch me not.
Always in these possessions he feared to be touched, even by the friend who had knelt by him hand in hand for hour upon hour. Dee bowed his head in his hands as Kelley pushed past him unseeing and stamped into the house. His wife tried to shut the door of their room against him, but he flung her aside, gathered up clothes and books and a hat and some silver-gilt spoons in a parody of packing. Joanna slipped out and down into the kitchen, where she and Jane and the scullery-girl sat together and listened to the banging and muttering above.
When he had stamped down the stairs and ridden off, Jane climbed to her husband’s small study.
—Jane.
—Husband I am sorry for thee.
—Well he is gone.
It was nearly dark then. Her husband’s head was in his hands, his white hair disordered. She came to take his shoulders, and could tell he wept. He said into his hands:
—I beseech Almighty God to guide him and defend him from danger and shame. Oh let him not be hurt.
—Husband, she said again, but could think of no comfort to speak to him, did not dare tell him Good riddance, did not truly think it in her own heart: that strange angry man, she wanted to take him sometimes in her own arms and shake him and hug him into silence, as she did her own sons in their anguishes and fits. There there. There there.
She guessed, too, that he was not gone for good. And he was not.
Late that night John Dee (who had not left his study, sat up writing the records of his last dealings with his spiritual visitors) heard someone mount the stairs. It was he.
A well of hot relief overflowed in Dee’s breast. He said nothing, kept writing; only looked up when Kelley stood in the study door.
—I have lent my mare, he said. And so am returned.
—It is well done.
—I have come from Brentford by boat. Those were false friends.
He sat down in the chair by John Dee’s table, the chair where some sixteen months before he had first sat down, whose arms he had taken in his hands (as he did now) as though he thought Now I am home.
Doctor Dee said to him:
—There are some books the Lord Laski has sent. They are meant for you. He has written in them to you.
Kelley put his hand on them. Almost immediately Madimi was there with them. (They had seen her first among books; she read to them out of books; she was a book angel, somehow.) She patted a parchment cover; John Dee heard the sound of her hand.
—Mistress you are very welcome. In God for good as I hope. What cause of your coming now?
—To see how you do.
Softly she said it, but not hesitantly, entering into the breach between the two friends. A sweetness entered with her.
—I know you see me often, John Dee said. But I see you only by faith and imagination.
—That sight is perfecter than his.
The doctor could no longer maintain his careful calm. Kelley had come back to him, the child Madimi would not be lost to him. He knitted his fingers together and asked in tears:
—O Madimi shall I have any more of these grievous pangs.
—Cursed wives and great devils are sore companions, she said, as though it were an old saying, as a child will utter a maxim or a jest, having the form and the lilt of it but no meaning. Doctor Dee laughed, shook his head, dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve; laughed again.
Kelley had not laughed, had grown restless, clutching the chair’s arms, his curtained eyes following Madimi (Dee supposed) as she went from place to place. He said:
—Madimi. Will you lend me a hundred pounds for a fortnight?
—I have swept all my money out of doors.
Dee, sensing trouble, said softly that as for money, they would have what was necessary when God saw fit; but Madimi turned on the skryer.
—What dost thou hunt after? Speak, man. What dost thou hunt after?
Kelley made no reply, drawing back as though the unseen child bent over him.
He loved not God, she told him, not if he broke His commandments; see, his bragging words are confounded. Faith Hope Love, these are the greatest things, if he had not these, he had hate. Did he love silver? Did he love gold? The one is a thief, the other a murderer. Oh but he has a just God who loves him.
—Come here, she said to him. Come.
Kelley started from the chair as though pulled by the ear, a bad boy. He was made to kneel before the stone of moleskin-colored crystal, still in its frame in the study, the first glass he had ever looked into, that glass that had first summoned Madimi (though he had not then known her), a fat babe with a glass in her hands.
—Look and tell me if you know these.
He saw the dog-faced one, and fourteen others, herded together in the glass, like footpads and tavern haunters collected by the Queen’s constables in a sweep of Cheapside. They knew him. He knew them. All their names began with B. The dog faced one was as though hauled from their midst.
—This is he who has followed thee for months.
To him and all those gathered she said:
—Depart. Venite Tenebræ, fugite spiritu meo. Depart unto the last cry. Go you hither, go.
The wicked crew looked around themselves, alarmed and trapped: a wind seemed to be stirring their brown garments; they clutched one another, open-mouthed, goggling, writhing, but they were plucked up weightless as ashes and dispersed in a whirl. He had not heard one of them speak, not one: and he was glad of it.
He knelt for a long time looking into the empty glass, feeling the dreadful relief he felt after spewing, or releasing from his bowels a mass of sickness. He raised his eyes, blinking, finding himself in the same place he had been, but a different place. Where had he been, where had his soul journeyed? He saw in his mind a dark slow river, a book, a horse’s eye.
—How is it with you? Doctor Dee whispered.
He swallowed. It was a time before he answered.
—Methinks I am lighter than I was. Empty. Returned from. From a great amazing.
He was trembling. He held up a hand to show Doctor Dee, and laughed to see it shake.
—Thou art eased of a great burden, said the angel-child with satisfaction. Now love God. Love thy friends. Love thy wife.
John Dee had come to kneel beside him, and had begun a prayer of thanksgiving. He leadeth me beside the still waters, I shall not want, behold goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. He took Kelley’s cold hand. They prayed together. They would not be parted.
She drove them out of England like geese before a goose-girl; she hurried them on across Christendom from Amsterdam to Bremen to Lübeck, though she would not tell them their final destination, nor what they were to accomplish. Then in Germany as winter came on she left them, without farewell, whether for good or not they could not know.
They still had congress with all the many others, great Gabriel and Galvah and Nalvage gowned like a king and Murifri in red like a yeoman, Il the merry player (Jesu I had not thought to see you here, he said to them out of the glass in Lübeck, as though it had been he traveling and not they). They had all followed the stone abroad, apparently, like bees following a dish of sugared fruits a housewife carries; and yet in Germany more and more often Kelley did not any longer need to look i
nto the glass to see or speak to them, he met them at the top of the stair as he went down, heard them as he knelt at his prayers; he saw them from inn windows, signaling to him from the crowd in the street.
They brought news, sometimes, as pleased as gossips.
—Your brother is clapped up in prison. How like you that? Your house-keeper I mean.
Nicholas Fromond, Jane Dee’s brother: it must be he they meant. What had happened?
—They examine him. They say thou hast hid divers secret things. As for thy books, thou mayst go look at them at leisure.
In horror Dee thought of his goods scattered, his books seized, he needed no glass in order to see them vividly. Why?
—It may be that thy house will be burnt for a remembrance of thee, too. Well, if they do, so it is. I have given thee my counsel, and desired to do thee good. The choice is thine.
What choice? What choice had they now? He felt himself to be hurrying hopelessly toward his grave, his life burning down behind him.
Hurry, hurry. There was not much time now in which the two men must get their lessons, they were told, to learn the secret purposes for which they had been chosen, and cull the message which it was theirs to deliver to all states and peoples. And yet the saving message, the whole of the new truth whose vessels they had been chosen to be—it could only be given to them in the Enochian language: and therefore they must learn it.
But it was painfully, dreadfully hard. Tables had to be constructed, of forty-nine letters square; the angels gave them numbers, and the corresponding letters were then located; words were built of these, which they were told were angels’ calls, by which they could be summoned; only gradually did it become clear (to Doctor Dee, at least) that the angels who were summoned by the calls were themselves the words of the language, they had come full circle.