Then, suddenly, a torch flares up, several torches. In their light I can see that we are proceeding along a kind of mine gallery. From time to time massive beams support the arched roof that has been cut through the bare rock. From time to time there is a sound like a distant rumble of thunder somewhere above our heads. For a long, long time we make our way through the unbearably musty stench of the tunnel. Countless rats dart between our legs. Every step wakes strange crawling things from the rubble and cracks in the walls. Bats singe their fluttering wings on the smoky torches.
Finally the tunnel begins to rise again. In the distance a bluish light flickers. The torches are put out. When my eyes are adjusted to the darkness again I see that the men put them into iron rings let into the wall. Then I can feel wood under my feet again. The incline becomes steeper, sometimes there are steps. God knows where we are, where we will surface. But then the daylight reappears: “Halt!” Two men strain to lift an iron trapdoor. We climb out and find ourselves in a cramped, grubby kitchen: we emerge from the stove as from a well-shaft. It must be the dwelling of some menial, so tiny is the room and the door through which we go into a narrow hallway. Immediately I am pushed into another tiny chamber, which I enter alone. My escort disappears without a sound.
In front of me, in a huge winged armchair taking up half of the room is the Emperor, dressed just as he was when I saw him that first time in the Belvedere.
Beside him an open window full of gillyflowers is bathed in the warm gold of the afternoon sun. You might almost call it a cosy den. From the moment you enter it gives you a sense of comfort, pleasure and relaxation. Looking round, I almost have to laugh – it is the kind of room that ought to have a goldfinch singing in a cage – after my march through the gloomy, eerie tunnel under the Vltava where every stone seemed to whisper: Murder.
The Emperor greets me with a wordless nod and waves away my deep bow. He orders me to sit opposite him in an equally comfortable chair. I obey. The room is filled with silence. Outside the old trees rustle in the breeze. A glance out of the window only serves to increase my confusion: Where am I? That is no part of Prague that I know. Sheer cliffs rise up behind the treetops, that scarcely reach the window. We must be in a house in a gorge or mountain ravine? “The Stag Moat!” says an inner voice.
Slowly the Emperor sits up in his chair.
“I have had you brought here, Master Dee, because I have heard that you have had some success in making gold – unless you are the most cunning of tricksters, that is ...”
My silence says louder than words that I am above any insults from one who, by his position, is beyond any demand for satisfaction. The Emperor understands and nods his head.
“So: you can make gold. Good. I have long been seeking such as you; what are your conditions?”
I am silent; my eye does not leave the Emperor.
“Or: what do you want?”
“Your Majesty knows well that I, John Dee, Lord of the Manor of Gladhill, do not share the ambitions of mountebanks and alchymical charlatans, who look only to squander the gold the tincture brings them on dissipation. I came to seek counsel from an Imperial adept. – We seek the Stone of Transformation.”
Rudolf puts his head on one side. Now he really does look like an old golden eagle, his head cocked and looking – half awe-inspiring, half unspeakably comic and yet melancholy at the same time – resignedly at the sky, from which he is separated by iron bars. “The Lord of the Skies in Captivity” – the thought comes to me involuntarily.
Finally the Emperor replies:
“Heresy, Sir! – The charm that will transform us is in the hands of God’s Representative on earth; it is called: the Sacrament of Bread.”
It seems half threat, half mockery.
“The genuine Stone, Your Majesty – at least this is my supposition – has one thing in common with the host: neither of them is of corporeal substance.”
“Theology!” says Rudolf wearily.
“Alchymy!”
“Then the ‘Stone’ would have to be a magic injectum that transforms our blood,” murmurs the Emperor, thoughtfully.
“And why not, Your Majesty? Aurum potabile is but a drink that mingles with our blood.”
“You are a fool, Sir,” the Emperor interrupts me brusquely. “Beware that the stone you seek so fervently does not turn into a millstone round your neck!”
Why is it, that at these words from the Emperor, Rabbi Löw’s warnings about misdirected prayers suddenly flash in upon my mind? – – After a long pause, I answer:
“Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”
Emperor Rudolf shoots out his neck. I can almost hear the beak snap:
“My advice is good, Sir: do as I do and eat and drink nothing that has not been tried by someone else beforehand. The world is full of deceit and poison. Do I know what is in the cup the priest sets at my lips? Could not the body of Our Lord ... dispatch me to Heaven? It would not be the first time – –! Green angels and black shepherds – they are all of the same satanic brood! – – I warn you, Sir!”
A shiver runs down my spine. I remember what people have whispered in my ear here and there, even on my way to Prague. I recall Doctor Hajek’s cautious hints: the Emperor is not always in his right mind, he is ... perhaps ... mad. –
A furtive, sideways glance momentarily meets mine.
“Once more, I warn you, Sir. If you want to transform yourself, transform yourself quickly, that is my advice. The Holy Office takes a keen interest in your ... transformation. It is doubtful, however, whether this interest is quite to your taste; nor whether I can protect you from the attentions of this charitable institution. You must realise: I am a lonely old man. My word does not count for much ...”
The eagle seems to be nodding off. What should I make of it? Rudolf, the Emperor, the most powerful man on earth, the monarch before whom princes, even princes of the Church, tremble, calls himself a weak old man. – – Is it a sham? Is it a trick?
His eyelids almost closed, the Emperor can still read my thoughts on my face. He clears his throat with a derisive cough:
“Become a king yourself, Sir. Your will find it brings nothing but travail. A man who has not found himself, a man who cannot grow a double head like the eagle of the House of Habsburg, should not grasp after crowns – whether they be crowns of this earth or spiritual crowns.”
The Emperor slumps back into his chair like one who has long since exhausted his strength. My head is in a whirl. How does this odd, puzzling old man in the faded chair opposite come to know my innermost secrets? How can he guess ...? And I remember Queen Elizabeth sometimes saying things which could not possibly have come from her mind; things that sounded as if they came from another realm, from one beyond the reach of her conscious mind. – And now: Emperor Rudolf, too! – What is the mystery of those who sit on thrones? Are they shadows of greater beings who wear the crowns “on the other side”? – – –
The Emperor sits up again.
“Tell me about your elixir.”
“If Your Majesty commands it I will hand it over.”
“Good. Tomorrow at the same time,” is the curt reply. “Tell no-one of our meeting today. It is to your own advantage.”
I bow silently and then hesitate. Have I been dismissed? It seems so. The emperor has fallen asleep. I turn to the low door, open it – and shrink back: on the threshold there is a sandy-coloured monster which rises up with a fearsome yawn. A demon from the underworld? A second, more composed glance does not lessen my terror: it is a massive lion, its green cat’s eyes fixed shortsightedly on me; its rough tongue rasps hungrily across its grinning lips.
As I retreat, step by step, the guardian of the threshold languidly moves its massive frame through the door. Now it raises its spine like a cat and now, so it seems, it is ready to pounce on me. I dare not make a sound. I am paralysed by mortal fear: that is no lion! The d
emonic face grinning out of a red mane ... the bared teeth – next will come a thunderous rumble of laughter; it is ... “The face of Bartlett Greene!” I want to shout, but my voice fails me ...
Then there is a click of the tongue from the direction of the Emperor, the yellow monster turns its head, pads obediently over to his chair and stretches out, purring; the impact of huge body makes the whole floor tremble. It is only a lion! An enormous specimen of a Barbary lion with a flaming red mane.
Outside the trees of the Stag Moat rustle.
The Emperor nods to me:
“See how fittingly you are guarded. The ‘Red Lion’ stands everywhere at the portal of the mysteries. Any novice will tell you that. Leave me now.”
My ears are bombarded with noise. Raucous dance music. An enormous hall. – Oh, yes; it is the rout that Kelley and I are giving for the city of Prague in the great hall of the City Chambers. My senses are dizzy from the whirling dancers and the racket of the drunken mob. Kelley staggers towards me with a foaming tankard of Bohemian ale. The expression on his face is crude and vulgar; incredibly vulgar. The crooked lawyer’s little rat face is no longer disguised by carefully combed hair. The scars of the cut-off ears glow a disgusting red.
“My brother”, he slobbers drunkenly, “my br-br-brother, let me have the rest of the rep p-p-powder; it’sh t-time, I t-tell you; we’re b-broke, brother!”
Shock and disgust strike me at the same time.
“What? You’ve already squandered all that the Angel gave us after months of praying till our knees bled?!”
“What do I care for your bloody kneesh, b-brother of mine?” blabbers the drunken lout. – “Let me have the red p-p-powder, do you hear, and we’ll be out of this damned messh by m-morning!”
“And then?”
“Then? Count Ursinus Rosenberg, Lord High Constable and Imperial fool, has more money than he knows what to do with; I’ll shoon find a use for it.”
I see red as my fury boils over. I hit out blindly and the tankard falls to the ground, soiling my best coat with good Pilsener ale. Kelley lets out a foul oath. Tongues of hate shoot up from the debauchery all around. The band strikes up:
Two groats and two lips
Are all that I need.
“Show our claws, would we, my fine tom cat?!” screams the quack. “The p-powder I say.”
“The powder is promised to the Emperor.”
“The Emperor can ...”
“Silence, scum!”
“Who do the spheres and the book belong to, Sir Knight of the Light Fingers?”
“Who brought the spheres and the book to life?”
“Who orders the Angel: Fetch, boy! Yah!”
“Shut thy blasphemous mouth!”
“Sanctimonious hassock-warmer!”
“Out of my sight, blasphemer, or ...”
Two arms wrap themselves around me from behind, taking all the force from the dagger-thrust. Jane is clinging to me, the tears streaming down her cheeks...
For a moment I am once more the man sitting at the desk, staring at the polished coal – but only for one, brief moment, and then I become my ancestor, John Dee, again, wandering aimlessly round the oldest, most dilapidated quarters of the medieval city, not knowing where my steps will take me. I feel an instinctive need to sink into the slime of the nameless, lawless, conscienceless masses, that fill their days with the satisfaction of base urges and are content with a full belly and sated lust.
What is the end of all striving? – Weariness ... disgust ... despair. – The dung of the nobles and the dung of the mob is the same excrement. – – The Emperor’s digestive tract is no different from that of the serf who cleans out his cess-pit. What madness to look up to His Imperial Majesty in Hradcany Castle as if you were looking up to heaven! – And what does heaven send? Fog, rain, miles of dirty slush. For hours I have been trudging through heaven’s excrement, the grubby, sticky flakes dropping from a leaden sky. – The end-product of heaven’s digestive system – filth, filth, filth. I see that I have ended up in the ghetto, with the lowest of the low. The choking stench of a whole people crammed mercilessly into the compass of a few streets, a whole people conceiving, giving birth, growing, dying – piling corpse upon rotting corpse in its cemetery and the living on top of each other in its dark, towering houses, like herrings squashed in a barrel. – And they wait and watch and scrape their knees bloody and wait ... wait ... all the long centuries they wait ... for the angel. For the fulfilment of the prophecies ...
John Dee, what is thy waiting and praying, what is thy hope and faith in the promises of the Green Angel compared with the waiting, believing, hoping, praying of these wretched Israelites?! And God, the God of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of Elijah and of Daniel, is He a lesser, a less faithful God than His Servant of the West Window?
I am struck by a burning desire to see Rabbi Löw and to ask him about the terrible mystery of waiting for God.
I know – somehow, I know – I am physically standing in the low chamber of the Cabbalist, Rabbi Löw. We have talked of Abraham’s sacrifice, of the unavoidable sacrifice that God demands from those He would make his own blood-offspring. I have heard dark, mysterious words about a sacrificial knife that can only be seen by one whose eyes have been opened to the things of the other world which are invisible to mortal man: things that have more reality than the things of this earth and which can only be indicated through the symbols of letters and numbers. The enigmatic words from the toothless mouth of the old madman chill me to the marrow ... Mad? Mad like his friend up there in his castle, mad like the Emperor, Rudolf of Habsburg! The monarch and the Jew from the ghetto – brothers in the mysteries ... gods, both of them, under the ridiculous trappings of earthly appearance ... where is the difference?
At my request the Cabbalist has drawn my soul to his. I begged him to transport my soul, but he refused; it would collapse, he said, if he were to do that; it had to cling to his, which had been detached from the earthly body. – How those words made me think of the silver shoe of Bartlett Greene. – Then the Rabbi touched me on the collar-bone – just as the outlaw in the Tower did. And now I can see, can see with the calm, tearless, imperturbable eyes of the old Rabbi: my wife kneeling before Kelley in our chamber at the house on the Ring. She is resisting him, struggling to save my happiness, she thinks, to save the gold and the Angel. Kelley wants to break open the chest and take the book and the spheres, he has an iron bar because the keys are in my keeping. He wants to take his booty and flee from Prague like a thief in the night and leave us in wretched misery. Jane puts her body between him and the chest. She tries to reason with the knave, she pleads with him ... she does not know what she is inviting.
And I ... smile!
Kelley uses every kind of argument. Crude threats alternate with cunning ploys, cold calculation with feigned pity. He makes conditions. Jane agrees to everything. Ever more lustful glances play over the body of my wife. As she kneels before him the kerchief slips to reveal her bosom. Kelley checks her hand. He looks down at her. Desire burns in his cheeks.
And I ... smile.
Kelley raises Jane up. His hands grasp lasciviously, shamelessly. Jane protests, but weakly: her fears for my well-being sap all her strength.
And I ... smile.
Kelley finally agrees: everything that is to be done shall be done according to the orders of the Green Angel. He makes Jane swear that she – like him – will obey the commandment of the Green Angel to death and beyond, whatever He may command. That is, so he says, the only course of salvation. – Jane swears, fear draining the blood from her cheeks.
And I ... smile; but I can feel a tiny point of pain, as of a razor-sharp blade, cutting through the living artery. It is almost like the thrill of death ...
Then, as if I am hovering in the air, I see before me again the furrows of the Rabbi’s ancient, tiny child’s face. He says:
“Isaac, God’s knife was set at thy throat, but the lamb that shall be offered up in thy
stead is caught in the thornbush. If ever thou accept a sacrifice, be merciful as ‘He’ was; be merciful like the God of my fathers.”
Darkness glides over me like a wave of moonless nights and I feel the memory of what I have seen with the eyes of the Rabbi’s soul fade and disappear. It seems no more than a bad dream.
In front of me rise wooded hills. I am standing wearily on a rocky ledge, wrapped in my travelling cloak, shivering. A cold dawn is breaking. My guide for the night, some charcoal burner, some woodlander, has abandoned me. I must climb up to where a patch of grey wall is visible through the leafless trees and swirling mists. Now the massive fortress becomes visible: a castle doubly ringed by battlemented ramparts, a long, narrow hall and, jutting out above the sheer rock, the gatehouse; behind it is a low, squat tower with the Habsburg double eagle whirling above it as a huge weathercock. Even higher up, beyond a flower garden, is a huge, angular tower, six stories tall, with windows like the lights of a high, gothic church. A tower, half an impregnable stronghold, half a cathedral containing holy relics: Karluv Tyn – Karlštejn Castle – the charcoal burner called it; the treasury of the Holy Roman Empire; venerable repository and feared custodian of the Imperial jewels.
I descend the narrow path down the cliff. Over there Emperor Rudolf is waiting for me. He sent for me at dead of night, unexpectedly, as secretive as ever, concealing his intentions and requiring completely incomprehensible precautions to be taken. – An enigma of a man! Fear of treachery, suspicion of everyone, contempt for men and hatred of the world have robbed the old eagle of his finest feathers, of love and his natural nobility of character. – What an Emperor! – And what a strange adept! – Is misanthropy the beginning of wisdom? Must the price of initiation be a constant fear of poisoners? These are the thoughts that occupy me as I approach the rocky gorge spanned by the vertiginous drawbridge to Karlštejn.
The Angel of the West Window Page 26