by John Crowley
Doctor Dee said nothing in answer. He knew as well as Kelley did that alchemic gold was nothing but an expression of those who made it, as honey is of bees. Only the purest and most noble souls would be able to secrete the purest and most noble of substances in their furnaces. Half-hearts would fail; weak faith would fail; the impure and the wicked would produce false things and monsters.
He said at last:
—How, made perfect?
—They have spoken to me, Kelley said, of our cross-matching. But I would not listen.
John Dee lifted his head to regard his friend, looked long at him to see if what he had said would resolve itself to sense.
—They have commanded, Kelley said, that we are to have all things in common.
—Yes. So we do.
—That we are to live as in the Golden Age; thus we will bring that Age to be again. When gold grew in the earth.
John Dee nodded carefully.
—That thus. That therefore we must have our wives in common too. Uxores nostres communes.
The angelus rang from the church tower, each sweet bell-clap hanging in the room’s spring air till it was removed by the next.
—Who has told you this? John Dee asked.
—A little spirit came privily to me, Kelley said. The name of it was Ben.
—Ben?
—Who said this cross-matching was no sin, but was required of us, to make us perfect; and was what the angels spoke of, though they spoke as it were in a cloudy or obscure manner. But I would not agree to it. Not I.
—You have not spoken of this one before.
—Ben taught me how to distill an oil from spirits of wine. And said if we are not conformable to the voices, my powder of projection will lose its virtue. To distill the oil, he taught, take thou two silver dishes, whelmed one atop the other, and a hole in them …
—Our wives in common, John Dee said. It is a great sin, a most unpure doctrine. They cannot have said so.
—They have. They did. Let us therefore deal with them no more. I swear I will not.
He folded his long fingers together and laid them in his lap, and looked at nothing.
Doctor Dee studied him. Always, always Edward Kelley had played this part in their dealings with the spirits that only he could see: protesting, hesitating, refusing to have further dealings with them, calling them damned and saying that he and his employer were endangering their own souls. So that John Dee had always to plead with him, reassure, belittle his fears, and beg too, beg. Beg him to do that which his own heart desired.
Like a man with a maid. So that it was always his, John Dee’s, doing, not Kelley’s: his fault, if it was one.
—Come, he said, and slapped his knees, and rose. Come. We will ask. We will see.
There was a little tower room in the castle at Tebo where John Dee had set up the table of practice, where night after night the spirits had come, drawn to the clear stone in the center, to speak to the two mortals. John Dee mounted the stairs toward this room, tugging Edward Kelley after him by the sleeve of his gown. The afternoon entered in at the lancet windows of the spiralling stair, the voices of those in the courtyards below.
—Up, said Doctor Dee. Up.
The pretty stone in its frame on the table was shot through with sunlight, smug (so it just now looked) and mum. On the table lay John Dee’s papers, his record of all that was said here; his horn of ink, and the little cup of turned wood his son Rowland had made for him to hold his pens.
He knelt before the stone. He drew Kelley down with him. They prayed together, as they always did, to be helped, to be kept from harm, to be not drawn into temptation. When Kelley’s voice fell behind his, and his eyes narrowed as though with awful weariness, John Dee ceased. Waited. Then:
—We will move the question, he said, taking his forehead in his hand, concerning the commandment given to Master Kelley, that we two have our wives in such sort as we might use them in common.
Kelley snored hugely just then, as he sometimes did when taken up by the spirits.
—Whether the sense were of carnal use, Dee said, contrary to law and the Commandment, or of spiritual love and charitable care and and.
Kelley began to speak.
—A scroll, he said, and his hands made a soft gesture. Unrolling. On it words written.
Doctor Dee began to write down what Kelley said.
De utroque loquor, said Kelley. Those are the words written. I spoke of both. John Dee wrote DE UTROQ: LOQUOR.
Oh terrible. De utroque loquor, I spoke of both. He put down his pen. Assist me O God. Assist me O Christ.
Terrible to know God’s command, but not His intentions; terrible that he must commit at the instructions of good angels what he could not but believe a sin. Worst of all, though, was that he would now have to convince his wife of it: and he could not even think how he might speak its name to her.
Jane Fromond had been just twenty-two when John Dee first saw her, a lady-in-waiting to Lady Howard of Effingham, wife of the Lord Admiral who would years later sail against the Armada. It was the year of the comet that alarmed everyone, most especially the great, whose birth and passing such ærial events foretell. A Swedish astronomer made a lucky guess, and said it foretold the birth of a great Swedish prince, who would lay waste all Europe, and die in 1632: and Gustavus Adolphus was duly born, red and squalling—he would carry off all of Rudolf’s and the Romberks’ treasures from looted Prague to the snowy North. But the noseless Dane Tycho de Brahe saw the same comet from his sorcerer’s castle on the island of Hveen, and proved it to be not any exhalation of the lower air but an object far beyond the moon’s sphere—which made it the more unsettling: the changeless heavens were giving birth to monsters.
John Dee, summoned to Elizabeth’s court to expound upon this blazing star, caught sight of Jane Fromond among the worried nobility, bright-cheeked and smiling as she was always then, or so it seemed to him looking back from this far place. He was then a man of fifty, white-bearded already, who had buried one wife; but she had come to know well the court and the men around the Queen, and his honesty and good heart shone among them like the man with the lamp in the story he liked to tell. She was a blazer herself—it was John Dee who said it to her—quick and hot especially when she saw injustice or indifference to cruelty, which she did see often at Windsor and Richmond and Nonsuch; and if she was dismayed at her new swain’s great age, she also thought she would rather have this frank grave man than any of the sprouts at court who did not know right from wrong.
Which never until now had she doubted her goodman knew.
It took her so long to interpret what he told her, what he said the angels now required of them, that she could only stare at him, her mouth open and her fingers fencing it.
Then she wept, he had not seen her weep so, not for her fear and her homesickness, no nor for her child born dead, a full 1/4 of an Howre he later wrote; he had not known she could weep so. Then she raged, even longer and more terribly; she damned Kelley and the spirits in words he had not heard her use, and broke in fury a mirror that Duke Romberk had given her. The younger children, forbidden the room, crept back weeping too, not knowing at what and shouting at their father to stop, stop. He sent them away and turned to beg his wife to possess herself.
—Stop, stop, he said, trying to gather her battling arms to his. She went to her knees suddenly with a cry as though shot, and flung her arms around him.
—Husband I beg you do not leave me. Never. Never never.
He could not raise her, could not comfort her. No Jane no. Almost he withdrew what he asked of her; he thought of Abraham with the knife at Isaac’s throat, he longed to hear an angel voice call his name, to tell him the test was passed. No one called to him.
All that night there were comings and goings and meetings and partings in the wing of the castle they and Kelley and his wife all shared, lights in the common rooms and halls, doors slammed, voices raised. Jane and Joanna locked themselves in Kelley’s room and left the men to
pace back and forth outside, their eyes not meeting.
Why did they want this of them, John Dee wondered, was it not enough that they be squeezed like a lemon of all unwillingness, he would go as far as they desired but why must they stretch out their hand to touch his wife, his and Kelley’s poor doe of a girl, trembling as though the dogs were at her? Was it that alone, only a further proof of his constancy, were they like jealous lovers, never convinced: or was Kelley right, that they two were to be crossed in this way as roses or apricots are crossed, to bring forth new fruit?
Calm and dry-eyed, holding Joanna’s hand, Jane came forth. There was a sudden odor in the air, withdrawn as soon as sensed, none of them could agree later what to name it, new-mown grass said Joanna, Persian attar said Kelley. They two had prayed, Jane said, and vowed a vow.
—You must ask them again, Joanna said. You must.
—We, Jane said, will in no wise agree to this except we are certain they have said what you have told us. Who never before said such things but often comforted us. And we will eat no flesh nor fish till this be answered.
—Jane.
—And I trust, she said (said it strongly, though she seemed close to tears again), that God will turn me to stone before he will suffer me in my obedience to receive any shame or inconvenience.
—Yes, her husband said. Agreed. Now let us to bed. Before the sun is up.
They signed a solemn pact, all four of them, it still exists, written on strong parchment that time has darkened but not harmed, in ink made of lampblack and wax more lasting than blood. They swore secrecy on pain of death; they vowed they would tread underfoot all human doubts that power and authority over sins—their releasing and discharging—are from God. They vowed to keep between them Christian charity, spiritual friendship, and (this written as firmly and clearly, a little larger too) matrimonial liberty. And they spread the document on the holy south table in the chapel of the castle, like a letter to Santa, and waited to be answered.
No countermand came. May crept along, the days lengthening.
In their curtained bed, awake in the midnight, John and Jane spoke for the first time since they had put their hands to it.
—They have honored us, he said. And brought us honor.
—They have, said Jane. And I would they had left me unhonored, and suffered me to stay in my own kitchen, and my kitchen-garden.
—Ah, Jane.
—The peasecods are fat now on the vines there. And strawberries.
—We have no such strawberries as are grown here, in Tebo.
—But they are not mine own, Jane said.
He could not look into her eyes, looked at his own hands folded in his lap as though he had already done her wrong.
—You think it wickedness, he said. And well you might. I too …
—I do not. You would never do wickedness. I think it foolishness. If angels speak to you …
—If? he said. If?
—When they speak to you. I think it is like the children, in their play, when they whisper words each to each, one to other. What the last hears is not at all what the first said.
—Yes. I know.
—They laugh at it, she said. Laugh and laugh.
—Yes. Wife I am certain we have been commanded to this by God His holy angels, for purposes only they know, but with this result—this one among others—that we will be made rich.
He regarded her then frankly.
—Rich, he said. Rich beyond counting.
She crossed her arms before her. She had known no other man but he. She asked him:
—When we are rich, then may we go home again?
The book that contains the records of John Dee and Edward Kelley’s dealings with the spirits ends forever on the day of May 23, 1587. Its light has now gone out, of course; it can no longer be understood; it can hardly be read. But those last entries—not the later printed version of them but the actual manuscript pages in the British Museum—begin with one that has been heavily erased and is barely legible; it seems to record an exchange between the two friends and an angel-spirit, who asks Kelley Was thy brother’s wife obedient and humble unto thee? To which Kelley answers She was. (It is John Dee’s hand, his writing.) Then this spirit—gratified, presumably—asks of Dee the same question about John Dee and Joanna, and is given the same answer: She was.
That, anyway, is what one scholar or investigator claims was there on that page, on a certain day some years ago, in the Manuscript Room of the old museum, the high windows casting the light into bars, dust of ages, the odor of disintegrating paper. Maybe in that year it was. Maybe it still is.
May 22, 1587 had just turned to 23, cusp of Gemini the Twins, moon passing into Scorpio; John Dee in his nightgown heard footsteps mounting toward the tower room where he sat. Heard a gasp or sob too: Kelley. There was a candle lit in the room, burning out; Dee lit another at it, and pressed it down into the candlestick.
—Well? he said. How is it with thee?
—I, said Kelley. I have scotched.
—Was she not obedient to thee? If she was not …
—No, Kelley said. No it was I.
They sat close and whispered, though there was no one there to hear. On the table of practice the globe was dark, gone out.
—And Joanna? Kelley said. What success, what …
—I spoke long with her. But she was in no receptive frame.
—No?
—I could not force her.
—No. No.
Limp as a poppet when he strove to embrace her, tears on her cheeks that he could feel on his, she was just the age Dee’s firstborn would have been, the daughter of his first marriage, who died of a fever. Her wide frightened eyes. Unresisting. For an awful moment a sort of rage possessed him, he knew the soldier’s awful freedom, given liberty to sack and despoil. It so frightened him his male part failed him.
—The willingness is all, said John Dee. If they be perfectly obedient, but the act not done, it is no matter. If it offend not God it offends not me.
Kelley seemed unreconciled. Twisted in his chair. His head lifted as though his ears pricked up; he chewed his beard.
—I pray God, Dee said, that it offend not Him.
Noises chased one another through the tower with unearthly speed. They felt airs on their faces, touching them, buffeting them sometimes. They heard what seemed to be quick steps on the stair that circled up from this room toward the tower’s top; then as they looked, their eyes wide and arms linked, a child’s ball came bouncing down from above into the room: a ball striped red and white, capped with blue and stars. It rolled across the little chamber’s floor and out the wind-opened door and down. Little footsteps receding.
—Let’s go in to them again, Kelley said. We will see if they be in better frame.
—Very well, John Dee said. Pray we be stronger too.
—We’ll go down together. No. I will go, then you.
—Play the man, Edward. God be with thee.
May dawn lay along the flags of the halls, when John Dee returned to his own bedchamber. Servants and men-at-arms were up; horses laughed and clattered in the yards. He had lain long with Joanna Kelley in her chamber and knew her heart as he had not before, but she was still a virgin; would still be one when her brothers came to Prague at last to take her back to the Cotswolds, away from the strange man the angels had inflicted on her.
At first it seemed his door was locked against him, but it was not; he opened it. Smelled spilt wine. His feet encountered the shards of a jug, which chittered across the floor. The curtains of the bed were drawn.
—Jane.
She made no answer, and for a moment he imagined her gone. Then he heard something, the pillow struck. He waited. He thought: I am a thousand miles from home.
—Jane, I would know how it is with thee.
He drew aside the curtain. There was an outrush of night odor, familiar, familiar. She lay with her face to the wall, her dark curls escaping from the white cap on her head, h
er shift about her shoulders.
—He is a little withered root, she said. And once again she struck the pillow.
—Did you, John Dee began. Did he …
—We did as we did, she said. But you need have no fear for your line.
She turned to face him. He thought that she laughed, or was trying not to; her eyes were alight in the dark of the bed.
—My line?
—There will be no issue.
—How, no issue.
—He was too quick, she said. And spilled beforehand.
—Spilled?
—As we, she said, as we … set out.
She laughed aloud, looking at her husband’s face; he could see his own puzzlement in her look.
—Spilled, she said, spilled, you foolish old man! He is a little withered root and he was as hasty as a boy stealing a pie from the sill, and try as I might I could not get him in his right place before he.
—You’re certain of it?
—I catched it, she said. She held up her big red hand in the dimness. Strong hand, flat fingertips like an old tailor’s, the thumb (he knew) with a double joint. She grinned and said:
—The Widow Palm, her daughters five.
A ring on her third finger, little glint of gold deep in the fold of flesh. Worn thin after twenty years; it would not though wear away. Pronubus that finger’s name. Index, medicus, pronubus, minimus. Ringman, from which a vein ran delicate as a thread but growing thicker, procedens usque ad cor, running right to the heart.
—I think he knew not, she said. Poor little forked stick. So choleric that his flesh burned to my touch.
John sat down on the bed’s edge.
—I hope we have done aright, he said. I hope by this we have done what was asked.
—I care not if we have, Jane Dee said. Come husband, come in bed. I have somewhat to show thee.
—What dost have.
—Well come in. Give me thine ear and I will tell thee what. And thou canst tell me of thy sins too. Tell me all.
He looked down at her, and she pulled her cap from her head, and shook out her hair.
—Oh Lord, John Dee said. More fire in the bedstraw.
In Radnorshire where he was raised it only meant More trouble to attend to, but his wife laughed at it. Fire in the bedstraw: he laughed too, helpless not to, and she drew him into the bed. They heard their children at the door, forbade them to come in, the children complained, the parents called for the nursemaid, banged against the wall (the wall of her chamber) to rouse her, and drew the bedcurtains tight.