Lipotin was undaunted: “May we go up the tower, steward, to look at the view from the top?”
The answer he received – after politely repeating his request – was strange enough:
“There is no need today. Everything has been taken care of already.”
As he spoke the old man kept shaking his head, though it was not clear whether this was from old age or to emphasise his refusal.
“What has been taken care of?” Lipotin shouted in his ear.
“Going up and keeping a lookout. She will not be coming today now.”
We assumed the old man was expecting someone. In the dim recesses of his consciousness he probably thought we had come to help him keep an eye open for his visitor. Probably someone who brought him his frugal meals.
The Princess took out her purse and hastily handed a gold coin to Lipotin:
“Give that to the poor devil. He’s obviously weak in the head. Let’s go.”
Suddenly the old man opened his eyes wide and looked at us one after the other; but not in the face, rather he looked over our heads. “It’s all right”, he murmured, “it’s all right. Go on up. Perhaps my Lady is coming after all.”
“Which lady?” – Lipotin handed the old man the Princess’ gift but he rejected the money with a hasty gesture:
“The garden has been taken care of; there is no need for a reward. The Lady will be content. If only she did not stay away for so long. When winter comes I cannot water the flowers any more. I have been waiting for ... for ...”
“Well, how long have you been waiting, old man?”
“Old man? – But I’m not old. No, no I’m not old. Waiting keeps you young. I’m young, as you can see.”
The words sounded funny but we did not feel like laughing.
“And how long have you been here, my good fellow?” Lipotin persisted.
“How ... long ... have I been here? How should I know that?” the old man shook his head.
“Think! You must have come up here for the first time once? Or were you born up here?”
“No, no I came up here. That is right. I came up here, thank God! And when? You can’t count time.”
“Can you not remember where you were before?”
“Before? But I wasn’t anywhere before.”
“But my good fellow! Where were you born, if not up here?”
“Born? I wasn’t born; I was drowned.”
The more meaningless the mad old man’s answers seemed to become, the more uncanny they seemed to me and my curiosity began to torment me to uncover the perhaps trivial secret of this shipwrecked mariner on the shores of life. The workman’s words: “He’s always digging up the ground”, came back to me. Was it some treasure that the old man kept searching for in the ruins and was it that that had driven him mad?
Jane and Lipotin seemed to be in the grip of the same curiosity. Only the Princess was standing to one side in a proud indifference which I had not noticed in her before; in vain she kept trying to get us to leave.
Lipotin, who not unnaturally could make no sense of the old man’s last reply, raised his eyebrows at us and was trying to think up some cunning, probing question, when abruptly the old man started to talk, hastily, almost as if driven by some machinery like an automaton. Some cogwheel must have been released, setting in motion a memory which whirred on of its own accord:
“Yes, yes; then I surfaced out of the green water. Yes, yes; rose straight up to the surface. And I walked, walked, walked until I heard of the Queen at Elsbethstein. Yes, I came here, thank God. I am a gardener, yes, yes. And I dug ... until ... thank God. And now I keep the garden tidy for the Queen, as I have been told. So that she will be glad when she comes, you understand? That is not difficult to understand, is it? Nobody should be surprised at that, should they?”
At these words an inexplicable tremor ran through me. I grasped Jane’s hand as if a squeeze from it could help protect or support me. Lipotin’s cynical features twisted themselves – or so it seemed to me, at least – into a fanatical expression of blind sadistic lust. He pressed the old man:
“And won’t you tell us who your lady is. Perhaps we can give you news of her.”
The old man shook his head violently, but his straggly-haired skull wobbled uncontrollably in all directions so that it was impossible to tell whether he intended to express agreement or disagreement. His hoarse croaking could have just as well been a denial as an outburst of mad laughter.
“My Lady? Who knows my Lady? You, I should think, Sir” – he turned to me and then to Jane – “you know her; and you, young lady, I am sure you know her very well, your face tells me that. Yes, your face tells me that. You ... you ...”
He wandered off into incomprehensible mutterings whilst his gaze bored into Jane’s eyes with the expression of one who is desperately trying to bring some memory back to mind.
Involuntarily she took a swift step towards the mad old gardener, or whatever he was, and immediately his trembling hand grasped at her dress, catching the coat hanging loosely round her shoulders. He clutched it fervently, and such a beatific expression came over his features that it seemed for a moment as if his brain had cleared. But the moment of clarity went as quickly as it had come and the expression of indescribable emptiness returned to his face.
I could see by the look on Jane’s face that she too was making every effort to awaken some memory that was sleeping in the inner depths, but with no greater success. I assume that she asked her question just to fill the embarrassing silence, so uncertain did her voice sound:
“Whom do you mean by your Lady, my friend? You are wrong if you think I know her. And I am sure this is the first time I have ever seen you, either.”
The old man kept shaking his head as he stammered:
“No, no, no; what are you saying! I’m not wrong. No, no, I know better – and you, young lady, you know ...,” he spoke swiftly and with a mysterious urgency and his gaze was directed into the empty air, as if that was where he saw Jane’s face, instead of right in front of him, “... you know: Queen Elsbeth rode out hunting for a husband when all thought she was dead. Queen Elsbeth drank of the water of life! I am waiting for her here ... they told me I have been waiting since ... I saw her ride off out of the West, where the water is green, to find her bridegroom. One day she will rise from the earth when the waters flow. She will rise from the green waters, just as I did, just as you have, young lady ... yes, yes, just as we all have ... . You know as well as I do: she is the enemy of the lady there! Yes, yes, I have heard all about it! We gardeners come across all sorts of things, hee, hee! when we are digging. Oh yes, I know, the enemy wants to obstruct Queen Elsbeth’s wedding. And that’s why I have to wait so long until I pick the bride’s posy. But that doesn’t matter. I can wait. I’m still young. And you are young too, young lady, and you know our enemy. Oh yes you do or I’m very much mistaken. No, no, I don’t make mistakes, not I, young lady.”
The sad encounter with the mad old gardener of Elsbethstein was beginning to become embarrassing. It was true that the old man’s confused ramblings did seem to make a kind of sense – at least to my prejudiced ears – that somehow fitted in with the mysterious and fantastic events I had been through. But what does one not see or hear as a secret revelation of the voice of nature when the heart is full and wants to hear?! The most likely explanation was that the old madman was weaving experiences of his own, which had engraved themselves on his mind, with the popular legends about Elsbethstein into a crazy, half real, half imaginary garland.
Suddenly, from one of the dark corners of the hearth, the old man took up an object which reflected the dying rays of the sun in a fiery glitter and held it out to Jane. Lipotin’s head shot forward like a vulture’s. A hot current coursed through my veins too:
In his claw-like fingers the old man held a dagger with a long handle. A noble example of the sword-smith’s art with a short, broad and obviously still dangerously sharp blade, it was of a metal unknown to me
and a strange bluish-white in colour; the general shape was that of a spearhead. The haft seemed to be inset with Persian chrysolites, but I could not see them very clearly, for the old man was waving the dagger about in the air and the light in the tower kitchen was growing dim.
The Princess, as if by instinct – until that moment she could not have seen the dagger – turned round to face us. Until then she had stood apart, prodding the crumbling brickwork with her umbrella in bored irritation. In a most unladylike manner she pushed us aside and grabbed at the weapon, her collector’s lust brushing aside all considerations of politeness.
Like lightning the old madman withdrew his arm back to his chest.
A strange sound came from the Princess’ mouth. The only thing I can compare it to is the hissing of a cat facing up to battle. It all passed so quickly that a second later it seemed unreal. Then I heard the old man bleat:
“No, no; not for you, old ... old woman! There, take it young lady. The dagger is for you. I have been keeping it long enough for you. I knew that you would come.”
The Princess did not register the insult which the phrase “old woman” must have contained, especially as she could scarcely be much older than Jane. Perhaps she just ignored it. She stretched out her hand again and offered fabulous and ever increasing sums for the blade. I found the collector’s blind passion to possess the desired object highly amusing. I did not doubt for one second that the old pauper, mad as he was, would accept the offer, especially as such a sum must have been wealth beyond his wildest dreams. But the unexpected happened. What caused it I could not tell. Was it some other, weird spirit that had taken control of a soul that had lost its senses anyway, or did the old madman no longer have any idea of the meaning of riches? Whatever it was, he raised his eyes to the Princess and a horrible expression of insane hatred flickered across his features. Then he screamed at her, his shrill voice cracking:
“Not to you, old ... woman! Not to you, not for all your filthy lucre! Not for all the filthy lucre in the world. There, take it young lady! Quick! The old enemy is here! See her hissing and spitting, see her mouth gape. Grab it quickly! There ... there ... there ... take the dagger! Keep it safe. If the enemy should get it, then that is the end of my Lady, that is the end of the wedding, that is the end of me, poor unworldly gardener that I am. I have kept it until today. I have never betrayed my Lady. I have never told where I had it from. Go now, all of you, go now!”
Jane, as if hypnotised by the strange words, had taken hold of the dagger and with a quick twist of the wrist concealed it in her clothes, out of the reach of the Princess’ hawk-like swoop. My eye caught the dull, flinty gleam of the spear-shaped blade. Like a flash the thought went through my head: the blood-stone of Hywel Dda! The dagger of John Dee! – But there was no time to say it out loud. I looked at the Princess; she had herself under control again. Not a flicker betrayed what must have been going on inside her. I sensed the wild passions raging within, like tigers trying to tear down the bars of their cage.
Lipotin’s behaviour during the whole sequence of events had been bizarre. At first merely curious, at the sight of the dagger he seemed to go mad. “You’re making a mistake,” he had screamed at the old gardener, “a stupid mistake not to give it to the Princess. It’s not a dagger at all, it’s ...” The old man did not even glance at him.
Jane herself behaved in a way I did not understand either. I assumed she would fall into one of her trances, but no sign of it appeared in her eyes. Rather she gave the Princess the sweetest of smiles, even held out her hand to her and said:
“This trivial matter will bring us all the closer together, will it not, Assja Shotokalungin?”
What a way to talk to the Princess! What did Jane think she was doing? To my even greater astonishment, however, the normally so proud Russian aristocrat answered Jane’s rather sudden familiarity with a charming smile, threw her arms around her and kissed her. A sudden voice shouted inside me: Jane, keep hold of the dagger! I hoped she would sense what was in my mind, but, to my horror, she said to the Princess, “I will, of course, let you have the dagger when a suitably ... festive occasion presents itself.”
Not another word could be got out of the old man in his skeleton chair. He just went on chewing his crust of bread with his toothless gums as if he were completely alone. He seemed to have forgotten our presence. A disconcerting old fool.
It was not a talkative group that left the tower by the last light of the setting sun, whose rays were refracted into all the colours of the rainbow by the billowing steam-clouds from the geysers.
On the dark wooden stairs I gripped Jane’s hand and whispered to her:
“Are you really going to give the dagger to the Princess?”
She replied hesitantly; there was something I found alien in her voice:
“Why not, dearest? If she is so desperate for it?”
As we were preparing to drive down from the ruins I turned round for one last look; framed in the gate as in a massive proscenium arch I saw a spectacle I shall never forget: lit by the fiery red of the setting sun and surrounded by crumbling piles of masonry, the flowerbeds of Elsbethstein were a blaze of wild glory. A sudden gust of wind swept the clouds of mist from the geysers across the overgrown park and it seemed to me to that it coalesced into the majestic figure of a woman dressed in flowing silvery robes striding towards the tower. The Lady of the castle? The legendary Queen Elsbeth, suggested to my receptive senses by the mad steward of the tower, the “gardener”?
Then I was back in the car, dazed by the breakneck drive down to the valley. No-one spoke.
Suddenly I heard the Princess say:
“Frau Fromm, what would you say to a repeat of our outing to that fairytale castle in the near future?”
Jane gave a smile of agreement and replied:
“There is nothing that would give me more pleasure than to accept such an invitation.”
I was quietly pleased that the two women got on so well together, especially when I saw the Princess take Jane’s hand and press it warmly. This mutual friendship seemed to remove a burden of dark forebodings that had weighed upon me, though I could not say why. Reassured, I looked up out of the window of the noiseless, gliding Lincoln at the radiant evening sky.
High up in the turquoise vault of the sky gleamed the thin sickle of the waning moon.
The Second Vision
The moment we were back in my apartment I asked Jane to let me have a closer look at the mad old gardener’s strange gift.
I subjected the dagger to a thorough examination. I immediately saw that the blade and the handle had not originally belonged together. The blade had obviously been a spearhead which had snapped off at the socket. There was something strange about the metal, which I had not come across before. It looked oily – not at all like steel– with a dull gleam, almost like flint. And then the jewel-encrusted haft! There could be no doubt about it: the copper alloyed with a small amount of tin showed all the signs of southwest Carolingian or early Moorish work. Beryls, chrysolites and there, an interlacing ornament, difficult to decipher – some dragon-like being? Three rings around it, two empty, the stones removed. In the third a sapphire; above the dragons’ heads a crowning gem. Spontaneously the image of a shining rock crystal appeared before my mind’s eye.
I said to myself: this dagger fits the description in the Princess’ glass case like no other. No wonder she was so excited when she saw it.
The whole time Jane was behind me, looking over my shoulder.
“What do you find so interesting about that old paper knife, dear?”
“Paper knife?” At first I could not understand what she was talking about; then I had to laugh at female ignorance that could see a thousand-year-old blade as a letter opener.
“You’re laughing at me, love. Why?”
“Darling, you’re a little off target; that isn’t a paper knife, it’s a Moorish dagger.”
Jane shook her head.
“You don
’t believe me, Jane?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It just looked like a paper knife to me.”
“How did you come upon such an idea?”
“It was the other way round; the idea just came to me.”
“What came to you?”
“That it is a paper knife. I knew that straightaway.”
I looked at Jane; she was staring at the dagger. I had a sudden thought:
“Have you seen the dagger, the ... paper knife before?”
“How could I have seen it before if it was only this afternoon that ... but, wait a moment, you’re quite right: now I look at the thing ... the longer I ... the longer I look at it ... the more I’m sure that I have seen it before.” More she would not say.
I was too full of excitement to risk an experiment with Jane. I would not have known how to go about it anyway. There were so many thoughts and ideas crowding into my mind that, in order to be alone, I pretended I had some important writing to do to get Jane to go about her housework. I covered her face with kisses as she left the room.
Hardly was the door shut behind her than I rushed to my desk and started rummaging through John Dee’s papers and the pile of my own excerpts to find where my ancestor might have mentioned the dagger that was an heirloom in the family. I found nothing. Eventually my hand fell on the green notebook; I opened it at random and read:
And in that night of darkest temptation I lost the thing that was most dear to me: my talisman, the dagger – the spearhead of my ancestor Hywel Dda. I lost it in the park meadow during the conjuration; and I seem to remember that I held it in my hand, according to the instructions of Bartlett Greene, as the spectre approached and I stretched out my hand to it. – But after that, no more! – Thus it was that I rewarded Black Isaïs for anything that I afterward received of Black Isaïs. – – And it seems to me too high a price for her deceits.
I pondered long: what did “too high a price” mean? – There were no more clues in the documents. Suddenly I had an idea; my hand snatched up the polished coal scrying glass.
The Angel of the West Window Page 32