With people now watching and listening Butler paused for breath, his face burning and eyes glowing like devil’s coals, and I think by then my own colour was quite on fire, for I felt not only infuriated by his rant, but unhinged by it, cast back in memory to that terrible, wretched, blackened desert of a land. As he shouted the image had come to me that again I was riding patrol in Munster, and it was void all round, with no buildings standing, and the graves opened so the poor might eat. This is what it was like, and not wholly the fault of the English, though true that Sidney’s predecessor, Sussex, had left a terrible mess behind him.
But I restrained myself and said nothing, for behind me stood two men with pool cues. They’d stopped their game to listen, and for all I knew they were the bosom buddies of this lunatic.
“You’re very quiet!” Butler affected astonishment. “Does this mean that you still claim to be this bastard Gilbert?”
“Sir,” I said, almost in a whisper, my fists clenched at my side, “I acted in the interest and standards of my country and age, and I did my duty, though it was not to my pleasure, nor to my profit! I spent four years trying to get out of that hellhole, and paid the troops out of my own pocket, though I never got more than six hundred back of the thousands I was owed by the government!”
“Will you hear the man?” Butler appealed to all about, “it’s not the killing of helpless folk that bothers him, it’s the money!” I almost struck him, but the pool cues suggested I might do better with words than with fists.
“Mr. Butler!” I said rapidly, “you blame it all on me and mine, but your family had been feuding with the Geraldines for years, taking heads and tearing the land apart! When I got there it was already a land of buzzards that the Irish made for themselves. As for myself, I was a soldier, sent to subdue rebels who were pirating English ships, blocking our way to the open sea, and welcoming papal troops come to invade us. I was told to restore order as quick and cheap as possible. I decided severity would be quickest and most merciful. So, as you say, I gave the option—surrender or die! Once they knew I meant it, twenty-six castles gave in without fight. Time, money, lives were saved. As to the heads outside my tent, the rebels were headhunters, and I gave them what they understood so they would not think me soft! In the event…”
Butler finished his whiskey and slammed down the glass. “Ye fascist English bastard!” he shouted in my face.
“No trouble now, boys,” said the bartender.
“In the event…”
“Look at the miserable man! Not an ounce of pity!”
“IN THE EVENT, I PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN THEM, WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY TO RULE A REBEL AGAINST HIS WILL!” I bellowed, standing suddenly up. “WE WENT TO KEEP THE PEACE, WE…”
“RIGHT YE DID, SORR!” Butler bellowed back, spittling my face as he stood, saluting derisively, “OUR PIECE!”
That did it. It was a silly business, I was lucky to get out of it with no broken bones, I was laid up some days and could not work, the bruises stiffening so much I could not even crack a whip.
Yes, I was cruel in Ireland. I steeled myself to it, and did what I had to do, and was commended by all save the rebels. I did not hide from the enemy. At Knockfergus with but a hundred and fifty foot I withstood four thousand kerns and over sixty horsemen. At Kilkenny with thirteen men I charged twelve hundred, and we came through unscathed, though my horse was much hurt. At Kilmallock in September of sixty-nine I held a ford against over twenty men, covering the retreat of my men. Yes, I killed, and modern opinion condemns the cause I served, and what good did it do? As soon as I was gone they were up in fresh revolt, and now here we are four hundred years on, and nothing resolved. If I aided the growth of this tragedy, well, I am not proud of it, and was not proud of it then, despite the praise I got; I was sick of it, and unutterably relieved when at last I was let go from it. For years I was kept from my work. In all that time my only achievement was to complete the first version of my Discourse on the Northwest Passage, in 1566. I took it to the Queen that year when I found excuse to return to London with letters, hoping I’d not have to go back at all. She ignored both my hope and the Discourse, as did brother John when I sent him a copy asking for money to fund an expedition. He told me to give up my silly dreams, and so back I went to Ireland. But it passed, for myself, at any rate.
Bastard I may be, but I never yet stabbed any man in the back.
Now it’s night again, and cold in here, and I’m hungry. Stoke up the stove, boil potatoes and carrots, unfreeze a slab of the white stuff that Michael called fish, fry it, and eat. And calm down.
I’m still worried. Gossip, the Hawk, my memories. This is the fifth successive day on which I’ve written, and the twelfth that I’ve been here. There’s a telephone, but so far Michael hasn’t called me and I haven’t called him. He agreed not to unless there is need.
I feel memories stirring of things I hoped I’d never have to call back to mind again.
7. Another Night of Imp & Sprite
So to another night of imp and sprite. I could not sleep, I burned, I tossed and turned, I was plagued by voices from the past in every creak of house and blast of wind, and by succession of visions to match, very real to me. “But Humphrey, where will the money come from?” my wife demanded, and she was pregnant again; and then I heard a gruff Yorkshire voice: “Black muck!” it muttered, “No brass! No gold! Just black muck!” I looked, and saw that giant man Frobisher facing me, bankrupt, back from his second voyage with his “golden ore,” later used as slag on London streets, and he was furious. “Northwest, tha said, Northwest! Gilbert, if tha’st such passion for t’ sea, why in Name of God art still on land?” And now a new ghost, bowing roguishly, offering me a copy of my own Discourse, published by him, without my permission. George Gascoigne! “As your friend I had to do it, Humphrey. You’re too modest and meek to put yourself forward, and the world should read this work. So I stole it from your library and got it printed up, admitting my sin in the Introduction…” But suddenly a voice behind my shoulder and George is gone; I’m looking up a glassy tube at a fiery rushing comet, in 1577, and my heart is beating at the meaning of it. “Jacta est alea!” Her Majesty declares grimly, “So comets are not sublunary, the glass makes it clear, nor exhalations of the atmosphere. The die is cast. There is change in the heavens, the new star in Cassiopeia proved that, and even if it means not the Last Judgment as many say where will it take us? Where?”
So there I lay with these voices and visions, not asleep and not awake, but in time I was asleep, it must be, because my dreaming was remarkable. And perhaps it was more than dreaming.
Deep in the night it seemed I was awakened, as happened the other night, by a pale light that glowed all through the room. The night seemed hushed and still, wrapped in a cocoon of motionless silence. The silvery glow came strongest from the doorway. Before going to bed I had shut the door, but now as I looked I saw a shining opening, and beyond it a corridor echoing away into milky misty distance. And standing either side of this brilliant gate, as though they had just come through it into the room, were two wraiths. Left of the gate was Mery-Isis, Tari, the Beloved of Isis, slim and small and dark, ghostily clad in the boots and jeans and denim shirt she wore that terrible day we were attacked in Denver. Her hair was a snow-white halo, her face somewhat hawkish and grave, yet I was glad to see her.
It was when I recognised the second shade that my heart missed a beat, or two or three. For this other, wearing black cap and his star-studded gown the colour of the midsummer clear night sky, was the shade of a man I once knew well—the magus, Doctor John Dee!
I gaped, and it was he who stepped forward, or rather glided, to the foot of my bed, where he stopped and floated all wan and pale and half-transparent like one of those spirits he was often accused of conjuring out of the netherworld. Yet when he spoke (in my mind, not aloud) he was as sardonic as ever he was in the flesh:
“I hear you found your Passage after all, Humfrey, though not what you expec
ted, and time-consuming in the crossing.”
“It is so,” I answered drily, my heart stuttering. I looked past his shade to the clear blue spirit-glow of the Egyptian I loved, and still love. “How did you learn this? Did she tell you? Are you now among the spirits of the dead?”
“Yes and no,” he said, his bright ghost-eyes giving me a sorry look. “Let me explain. Earlier this evening I was home at Mortlake, where you often visited me, packing boxes, because we are all off to Poland soon—Joan and myself and Kelly and his wife, and all the household too—when your brother Adrian and half-brother Sir Walter came suddenly to visit me. Hakluyt was also with them, and in a sad state, poor fellow. They brought the heavy news that last Sunday the Golden Hind returned alone to Falmouth from your Newfoundland expedition; and that Captain Hayes reports loss of the Delight with Parmenius and a hundred other souls, and worse, that two weeks ago you and the Squirrel were lost as well—lost, and almost certainly drowned. Yet none in the Hind actually saw your little boat sink in the storm, so your brothers and Hakluyt came asking me to use my art to learn if you might yet be alive, perhaps cast upon art isle of the Azores. It is a measure of his love for you that Hakluyt, who is devoutly of the Clergy, as you know, is willing to countenance such activity. At first I demurred, for such workings are not lightly undertaken, and I am busy, and Kelly is in a temper today. But they pressed me, saying privately the Queen also wishes to know, and your wife Anne. They asked if I were not your friend, so I said I am, and agreed to try it. ‘It is for Great Britain’ I said.
“Therefore I washed and anointed myself and went privately to my temple, and entranced myself through the shewstone, first gazing on a picture of you that your brother had brought. I journeyed, and cast an eye through the world, but found no sign of you alive. But neither did I meet any shroud or dark symbol to confirm your passing-over. This seemed strange, so I climbed higher up the Tree, holding your image in mind to attract any spirit that might help me. Soon I saw a flash of fish, a field of green blue, and heard a voice that spoke of ‘a death, not any of the Seven Deaths, but on that same path.’ I confess I was perplexed and most intrigued—what death is not among the Seven?—so I hastened to the relevant Path, the Twenty-Fourth, a Path of death and rebirth, between the spheres of Raphael and Haniel, where the Scorpion lurks in wait. For a time I wandered amid sombre brown fogs shot with lightning-bolts of vivid indigo, and skirted sighing chasms—then I sensed the silver flash of fish again, and took that key to the green blue way which is the higher arc of this Path, and there felt the presence of one I sought who sought me too. So I met this Priestess of Isis, your friend, and she has told me the remarkable tale of how you and she and many others from many ages have been cast, physically, without intervening death of the usual sorts, into manifestation at the end of this Age of the Fish.
“So, when I heard of your present strait, I agreed we must combine immediately to alert you before you forget everything important. But it has been most difficult to reach you! We almost had your attention several of your nights ago, but you became confused, and lost Mery-Isis into image of your mother, and lost your mother too, and instead of myself you heard your cunning man. But now you have rid yourself of him, so now we ask you to make a choice! Will you rise and step through this gateway with us?”
Now large in my vision loomed the crystalline glimmering of the transcending gate, and the misty passage with its hint of bitter emptiness beyond. My balls and brain both crinkled in fear.
“Where does it lead?” I demanded suspiciously.
“That’s for you to find out.”
“But why should I?”
“Humfrey, have you lost your British pluck?” The Doctor, sounding puzzled, peered closer to me.
“He is now in a society that makes folk very defensive,” came Tari’s quick thought as she too approached. “He wants to survive”
“Oh?” Dee looked glum. “How sad. I never thought he was a coward.” And he turned to Tari, his ghostly head nodding with concern. “Are you sure this man is really the Humfrey Gylberte I knew? I would hate to be in error. My professional repu…”
“I AM SIR HUMFREY GYLBERTE OF COMPTON!” I bellowed, starting up and stamping straight at the gate, quite forgetting how Dee always knew how to take advantage of my rash nature. “I’LL DO IT! WHY NOT?”
They did not stop me. I marched past them and into the shining doorway. There was a great wrench, everything turned inside out, instantly I was plunging through a universe ablaze, through the babble and mutter of a million voices and wars. I wailed, laughed, roared, wished myself elsewhere. There was another horrid jerk of dislocation, I was twisted back to front and landed where I’d started, in my room, facing the glowing, ghostly pair.
“What sort of Gate is this?”
I laughed incredulously but Tari faced me, stem.
“What did you see, my friend?”
“Vulcan,” I told her, my teeth bared, “Vulcan!”
“Dear man, that is in the past! Why cling to it? The Gate takes you where you most decide to go. You learned your purpose through the Hawk’s eyes: why forget it now?”
“Purpose?” I was infuriated. “What purpose can exist now?” I cried. “History has fallen into Chaos; all Order and Hierarchy and Sovereignty are overthrown, the Chain is snapped into pieces!”
“These things are overthrown so that through struggle we may all come to live and work in the Light by choice!” Tari declared sharply, her eyes blazing bright. “These processes you speak of are but crutches of reality, not reality itself, and you cannot depend on them! Humfrey, imposed Order is only makeshift, and perpetuates its own weaknesses. Remember, now! My friend! We work so that there shall be no more priests and kings, save in that every man and woman is priest and king in themselves!”
“But without imposed Order,” I protested, “you get madness and murder! Most folk cannot behave at all without Law imposed: they are helpless children, ignorant and greedy! They need direction!”
“Speak for yourself!” she said pitilessly. “Humfrey, the chasm must be crossed. History has come to this, there’s no going back. We can accept the challenge and try to live, or give up and go down with Black Osiris. That’s our choice—and it is why the Eighty-Seven of us were brought from our times into this age!”
“What? To be locked up, tortured, and killed?”
“No! To bear witness! To unite the ages!”
“But the American Navy didn’t mean that Vulcan should…”
“No! You forget. They were unwitting agents. They did not even realise they cast a net, far less what fish they’d catch!”
“But they did! How else would they have been so prepared with doctors and drugs and sterile chambers?”
“Yes, I must admit, I find this hard to understand myself,” said the shade of Dee to Tari, “Do you mean to say that this ‘accident’ was organised on the Inner Planes?”
“More subtle yet,” she replied, “Those on the Inner Planes knew of it, but would not stop it, being sworn never to interfere in human free will. Why? Because our purpose includes the aim that in time all people on Earth will know their true will, by connection with the source, and without need of imposed Order.” She shot her look at me. “Humfrey, the revolutions in this age, however mad they seem, are a part of it—and they run deeper than the sphere of material cause and effect, which is all you are letting yourself see!”
“Did you die at Denver?” I demanded, in a sort of panic. “Are you alive on Earth now, or but a shade in my dreaming?” She said nothing, but her expression said she thought my question a stupid evasion; her shade turned to the window as Dee approached.
“Hear what she says, Humfrey,” said he sympathetically. “I have never heard it put in such a radical way, but there’s wisdom in it. As for the Gate, well, let the lusty rage of your Lancelot give way to the Galahad-son within you! Let your child be father to the man! Stand up straight, and find the Middle Way, and…”
Then Tari
turned back to us.
“I heard the cock crow!” she interrupted. “We must go!” Her eyes were like piercing jewels. “Humfrey, when you wake up you’ll remember this! You’ll see the Hawk again and know what to do!”
I was afraid, and hurriedly said to Doctor Dee:
“What will you tell my family, and my friends?”
“I must say that you are gone from us for good.” His ghost nodded heavily. “It would not help to tell them anything else.”
“You must tell my wife I’m sorry that…”
“Again!” Tari was impatient. “Doctor, we have to go!”
“One minute, one minute! Yes, Humfrey?”
“Tell Anne I’m sorry I never provided better for her and our children,” I babbled. “I thought I had, but I was never good at business, and had so much on my mind with the expedition, and…”
“It crows a third time! Doctor, come now!”
“All right, all right! Humfrey, I’ll do and say what I can. Bear yourself like a British gentleman! Now, farewell!”
Then the two of them turned and began to fade through the shining doorway, the Doctor still talking as in my dream the glowing light grew dim and I heard the wind outside. “Yes,” he was telling Tari, “this has been most interesting, but distressing too, and I do not know what I’ll tell Adrian and Sir Walter, let alone his wife the Lady Anne. One has to give such disagreeable news sometimes, and…”
They were gone.
I awoke, then or later, to the grey of dawn.
Now it is midday. When I went out earlier I saw the hawk, spiralling in the wind, and I shivered. To complete this work I’ll have to go through the Vulcan-Gate again, the sooner the better, and leave my old life behind. But there are matters to wrap up first, never leave your laces untied when you start on a long journey. So, to Doctor Dee, my fatal expedition, Horsfield, the Hawk—yes, yes, in its time, soon, through that dreadful Gate—
Fire in the Abyss Page 6