From an immense distance the Angel speaks to me:
“Thy presence is not welcome to me, John Dee. It is not wise to kick against the pricks, not God-fearing to set thy face against the trials. How shall the holy work of salvation be performed if the apprentice cannot free his heart of unholiness? The key and the Stone are won by obedience alone! Disobedience brings waiting, banishment. Attend my will in Mortlake, John Dee!”
The signs of the zodiac in the sky? What can they signify? A turning wheel? Ah, I understand: years and years and years that slip by: time, time. Then desolate, burnt-out ruins all around.
I am walking through blackened walls, with rotten tapestries flapping in the wind. My foot stumbles over long-lost thresholds without me, the former carefree lord of the castle, being able to tell into which room they have led me. And I cannot say that I walk; I shuffle, dragging tired, tired feet.
I clamber up a half-burnt wooden staircase. Splinters and rusty nails tear at my threadbare coat. I enter a musty room – the laboratory where once I made gold! The floor is made of worn-out bricks packed together, ends uppermost. In one corner is a stove on which sits a bowl my dogs used to drink out of; there is a little pool of milk at the bottom and a crust of dry bread next to it. The room is protected from the open sky by a sloping roof of bare planks; the cold autumn wind whimpers through the gaps. This is Mortlake Castle which burned behind me when I left for Prague and Emperor Rudolf five years ago.
The old laboratory is the best-preserved room within the walls. With my own hands I have made it into a rough and ready shelter that I share with the owls and bats.
I see myself: completely neglected, a tangle of snow-white hair, a tangled silver beard sprouting from my nostrils and ears.
A ruin of a house and a ruin of a man.
No crown of England, no throne of Greenland – no Queen at my side and no crystal shining over my head. My one happiness is to know that my son, Arthur, is safe with relatives of my dead wife, far away in Scotland. – I have been obedient to the Angel of the West Window, obedient to his command and obedient to his sentence – – – of banishment?
I am freezing, even though my friend Price has brought blankets to wrap me in. It is the cold of old age within me. And always deep within my decaying body there is a burrowing pain, something gnawing at my vitals.
Price bends over me, listening at my back with his doctor’s trained ear. He murmurs:
“Healthy. Sweet breath. Bodily fluids well balanced. A heart of iron.”
I giggle:
“Yes. A heart of iron.”
And Queen Elizabeth is long since dead! The charming, courageous, cutting, seductive, regal, destructive, gracious, ungracious Elizabeth is dead ... dead ... long since dead. She left no message for me, sent me no message where I should seek her. No sign that she sees me. I sit in my chair at the brick stove under the deal roof, listening to the crump of the mass of snow as it slips to the ground and cocooning myself in the past.
Price appears at the ladder, old Talbot Price, my doctor and my last friend. I talk to him about Queen Elizabeth. Only of Elizabeth ...
After a lot of hesitation he tells me a strange story. He was called to her sick-bed as she lay dying. She insisted on having the Windsor country doctor about her; in the past he had given her much good advice. He was alone at her bedside one night. She was feverish, her mind wandering. She talked of her departure for another land. For a land across the sea where her bridegroom lived, the bridegroom who had been waiting for her all her life: “There, where stands the castle with the fountain and the water of eternal life!” There she would go and there she would live in the sweet-scented garden and wait for her bridegroom. The waiting would never seem too long. There neither age nor death could harm her. For there was the fountain with the water of life; she would drink of it, the water would keep her young – young as she had never been since the days of King Edward. And there she would be queen in the gardens of the blest until the gardener gave the sign to the Bridegroom to come and take her from the enchanted castle of patient love ... – such was Talbot Price’s story.
Again the desolate room. I am alone. Price is not with me any more; is it days or weeks since he was here?
I sit facing the stove and poke the dead ashes with trembling hand. Twinkling sunbeams slant through the gaps between the planks of my roof. Has the snow gone? It is all one to me.
Kelley suddenly comes to mind. The only thing I know of him is that he met a gruesome end in Prague – or was that only a rumour? It is all one to me.
What was that? A noise on the rotten staircase? I turn my head slowly: laboriously, panting at every step, someone is clawing his way up the stairs. What is it that makes me think of the cavernous cellar with the iron ladder in Doctor Hajek’s house in Prague? It was just the way that I climbed from the depths, feeling with my feet for every rung, my knees trembling because Jane ... And at the top, above the void – Kelley.
There! There: Edward Kelley, as large as life; his head gradually appears at the stairhead, then his chest, his legs; he sways as he stands leaning against the doorpost – no, he isn’t standing; I look more closely: he is hovering, perhaps a hand’s breadth, above the floor. He couldn’t stand if he wanted to, both his legs are broken, broken several times at the thigh and shin. Here and there the bones poke out through the mud-covered trousers of finest cloth like bloody skewers.
He is still richly clad, the man with the cut-off ears. But his face is ravaged and his courtier’s garments are in tatters. – The man is dead. Blank eyes stare at me, blue lips move soundlessly. My heart beats calmly. The deep calm of my senses is undisturbed. I watch Kelley ... Then:
Images, like coloured scraps of wind-tossed mist. They gradually come into focus: a forest, the Bohemian forest. Above the tree-tops a tower with the Habsburg double eagle as a black weather-cock on the roof: Karlštejn. High in the donjon tower which is built against the smooth-ribbed rock face a cell window has been forced open. A human body is clinging to the precipitous rock like a tiny black spider, scraping and fingering its way down, its life hanging from a thin thread ... slowly, slowly it descends the weak rope attached to the mullion ... pity the poor insect trying to get down there! Now it is swinging free in the air, for the wall curves gently inwards; the man who built these cells thought of every possibility; there is no escape, poor human spider on your thin thread. The man spins round in the air as he tries to climb back up. Then: a flurry in the window frame, the curling drop of the rope, a scarcely perceptible impact. The pale visitor on my threshold gives a spectral groan, as if he has to go through the moment of falling again and again, of falling into the green depths from Karlštejn, the fortress of a capricious emperor. I see how Kelley, the ghost on my threshold, keeps trying in vain to speak to me. His tongue has gone, decayed in the earth. He raises his hands beseechingly. I feel that he wants to warn me. What of? What is there left for me to fear?! Kelley’s efforts are futile. His eyelids begin to tremble and close. The phantom loses all appearance of life and slowly pales into the empty air.
It is summer in my ruined castle in Mortlake. Impossible to say how many years have passed since my return from exile. Yes, from exile! For the exile in Mortlake to which the Green Angel condemned me – I am beginning to smile to myself at the dark orders of the Angel – exile here is really a homecoming! Here is the maternal ground – oh, had I never left it – from which my worn-out body draws healing and strength. Strength which may yet help me to find the way to myself. Here my foot treads in the footprints of my Queen; here the evening breezes over Mortlake are scented with the breath of the high hopes of youth. Here is the tomb of my ruined life, but here too is the place of my resurrection, however long it may be in coming. I sit day after day at my cold hearth and wait. There is nothing left to do, for Elizabeth has reached “Greenland” and nothing now can take her from me, no pressing affairs of state, no wild chase after the illusions of vanity.
Another noise on the stairs! A
royal messenger stands before me. After he has looked round in some surprise, he gives an extremely stiff bow:
“Is this Mortlake Castle?”
“It is, my friend.”
“And I am speaking to Doctor Dee, Lord of the Manor of Gladhill.”
“You are, my friend.”
It is grotesque how pained the courier manages to look. The fool can only recognise an English gentleman if he is dressed in silk and satins. Clothes do not make the gentleman, nor rags the beggar.
The messenger hastily hands over the sealed packet, bows stiffly with all the grace of a puppet without joints and scurries back down the rickety stairs that lead to my “audience chamber”.
In my hands is a packet sealed with the arms of Count Rosenberg, Lord High Constable of Prague. When I open it the miserable belongings of the late, unlamented Kelley roll to the floor; there is also a smaller bundle with the Emperor’s seal.
The black and yellow ribbon is well tied; tear at it as I might, it refuses to undo. Have I no knife on me? Instinctively my hand goes to my left side; where is my paper knife? The place where I used to carry the dagger, the heirloom of the Dee family, is empty. – Now I remember that the ghostly phantom of Elizabeth took it out of my hand, that night when I conjured her up in the park of Mortlake, according to the directions of Bartlett Greene. Since that night I have always worn an exact copy I had made, to use for opening letters. “I always used to carry the paper knife with me,” I recall, “instead of the dagger I lost. I must have lost the copy, too. It is no great loss.”
Finally I manage to loosen the ribbon with the help of a rusty old nail, which does just as well as the spearhead of Hywel Dda: out onto the floor rolls the coal scrying glass which the Emperor has sent back without greeting or explanation.
A dreary succession of memories drags slowly past; the bailiffs have auctioned off every last square yard of land around the ruin. Once more snow is drifting in through the gaps and holes. Between the stone flags the floor is covered with withered, frozen bracken, clover, bindweed and thistles.
The visits of my last friend, Talbot Price, are becoming less and less frequent. A dishevelled, grumpy old man himself, he sits at the hearth with me for hours on end without saying a word, his chin on his stout stick, his head quivering to and fro. Whenever he comes I have to go through the whole rigmarole of conjuring up the spirits: long prayers which Price, who is getting old and somewhat childish, lays great store by, complicated and meaningless ceremonies ... And Price keeps dropping off to sleep and I nod off too, now and again; – and when we wake up we have both forgotten what we were doing, or it is already evening and dark and cold. Then Price gets to his doddery feet and mutters:
“Till the next time, John, the next time.”
Price, whom I was expecting, has not come; instead there is a terrible storm brewing up. Although it is still early evening it is almost completely dark in the room. Lightning flickers. Its yellow glare brings fantastic shadows to life in the hearth. Mortlake is enveloped in rattling thunderclaps and never ending sheets of lightning. Bitter wrath warms my heart: let it strike me down! What more could I desire?! I pray for a bolt of lightning.
I pray – and suddenly realise that I am praying to “Il”, to the Green Angel of the West Window.
At that, a blaze of anger flares up within me, brighter than any lightning. My eye is suddenly clear: since that fearful seance in Doctor Hajek’s cellar in Prague the Green Angel has not appeared again and none of his promises have been fulfilled – except the miracle of my unbelievable, superhuman patience. Now, in the coruscating brilliance of a lightning flash, I seem to see the stone face of the Angel grinning out at me from the sooty darkness of the old hearth.
I leap to my feet. I half remember old, long forgotten incantations, which Bartlett Greene taught me before he set off for Bishop Bonner’s bonfire, formulae to be used in the hour of great danger when help is sought from the powers of the world beyond to whom sacrifice has been made; formulae which can also bring death.
Have I made sacrifice? Have I not made sacrifices enough in my life?! And automatically the long forgotten conjurations come to my lips complete, and fall like hammer blows. My soul still does not understand their meaning, but they arrive “on the other side;” syllables and words are heard by invisible ears, I sense it clearly; those on the other side obey, for the dead are drawn by dead words. Between the gnarled and pitted slabs of the rough hearth a pale face gradually takes shape – the face of Edward Kelley!
I am filled with wild, triumphant exultation: so now I have you in my power, my old comrade? I’m afraid I must disturb your restless sleep in the land of the shades, my dear ghost. I am truly sorry, but I am compelled to call upon your services, brother of my heart ... How long did I keep up this bitter, futile address to the dead charlatan? Sluggish hours seemed to drag by.
Finally I pull myself together and command Kelley by our mingled blood. At that I see the phantom move for the first time – the figure is racked by a long, icy shudder – as I command him by virtue of our commingled blood to call up the Green Angel immediately.
Terrified, Kelley makes pleading gestures: in vain. Desperately he writhes to escape the spell: in vain. Mutely he implores me to wait for a more favourable moment: in vain. With the suppressed fury of a torturer equally impelled by a determination to wring a confession from his victim as by a bloody, sadistic frenzy, I bind Bartlett Greene’s incantations tighter and tighter round Kelley’s spectral body. Slowly his cruelly tormented face dissolves into the stone figure of the great Green Angel.
It is as if the Angel is eating the defenceless Kelley alive.
Then the Angel is alone in the shadows of the fireplace.
Again I feel the paralysing look. Again my heart begins to pound, driving the blood to the extremities as a shield against the intense cold that creeps in from outside. But to my surprise the cold the Angel exhales seems to have no effect on an old man’s leathery skin. I realise the cold is already deep within me.
And I hear a musical voice, with which I am long familiar, like the voice of a cheerful, unfeeling child:
“What is thy will?”
“I know you keep your word.”
“Dost thou think I care aught for words?”
“Here on earth men believe it is God’s command that a word given is a faith pledged; that must hold on the other side, or else heaven and hell would tumble into chaos.”
“Take me at my word, then.”
“I shall take you at your word.”
Outside the storm continues unabated but to my ears the deafening crackle of lightning striking round the castle and the continuous waves of thunder are muted background music to the sharp, clear utterings of the Angel:
“I have always sought what is best for thee, my son.”
“Then give me the key and the Stone!”
“St. Dunstan’s book is lost. What use is the key?”
“Yes: Kelley – your instrument – lost it. If the key is no use to me any more, you must know what I am in need of.”
“That I do know, my son. But how can a thing be found that has been lost for ever?”
“With the help of Him Who knows.”
“That is not within my power. We are all subject to the Book of Fate.”
“And what is written in the Book of Fate?”
“That I do not know. The Book of Fate is sealed.”
“Then open the Book!”
“If thou wishest it; give me thy knife to loosen the seal.”
Realisation, understanding and despair strike me like lightning bolts. I collapse to my knees at the hearth, as if it were an altar with the Blessed Sacrament on it. I beseech the stone guest. Futile! – Yet wait. He is smiling. A gentle, kindly smile lights up his pale green, jade face:
“Where is the spearhead of Hywel Dda?”
“Lost ...”
“And still thou takest me at my word?”
Futile rebellion flares up within me
once more; I cry out in impotent fury:
“Yes, I still take you at your word!”
“What is thy courage? What is thy right?”
“The courage of the martyred soul. The right of the sacrificial lamb.”
“What dost thou want of me?”
“The fulfilment of the promises made through the years.”
“Thou demandest the – Stone?”
“I demand the Stone!”
“In three days thou shalt have it. Use the time to prepare thyself to set off on a new journey. The time of trial is over. Thou art called.”
I am alone in the darkness. The glow of the sheets of lightning reveals the yawning emptiness of the grate.
Day breaks. Wearily, wearily I drag myself round the blackened ruins to gather together whatever leftovers of the former wealth of the Dees are still to be found. My back – every limb – aches whenever I have to bend down, as if red-hot knives were being jabbed into my muscles. I pack my rags and tatters into a bundle, ready for the journey.
Talbot Price suddenly appears. Without a word he watches me. Then:
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Prague, perhaps.”
“Did He come? To you? Has He commanded it?”
“Yes, He was here. He h – has com – manded it.” – I feel myself slowly fall into a swoon.
The neighing of horses. The rattling of a carriage rolling up. A strange coachman comes into the kitchen and looks at me questioningly. This is not the neighbour who promised to take me to Gravesend. For one third of all that I possess. I have never seen the man before.
It matters not! I try to stand up. I cannot. It will be difficult to make my way to Prague on foot. I gesture to the man, trying to make myself understood:
“Tomorrow ... perhaps tomorrow, my good man ...”
I cannot set out on a journey. I can hardly raise myself from the bed of straw they have laid me on. The pain in my back is ... much ... too great.
The Angel of the West Window Page 34