The Showstone

by Glenn Cooper

  Laski first met Dee at a reception at Greenwich Palace and later came to Mortlake to witness one of the Doctor’s famed angelic actions for himself. The Pole seduced Dee as thoroughly as he had seduced the Queen, although Dee was enchanted before he had even arrived. The angel Uriel had spoken well of Laski, implying that the nobleman would deliver unto him riches and further his opportunities for the acquisition of celestial knowledge.

  When he met Edward Kelley at Mortlake on a fine May evening, Laski treated him like a functionary, but as he began to understand Kelley’s pivotal role as a scryer, he came to offer up rather more respect. At his first spiritual session in Dee’s inner study, Laski asked Kelley to transmit questions concerning his future in Poland. Would Laski prevail in his disputes? Would he succeed Stephen Bathory as king? The angel who replied was Madimi, who appeared in the showstone as a pretty young girl with a red and green dress. She replied that the prince would have a kingdom within a year. Laski returned to London that night, his chest puffed up like a mating bird, while Dee, also satisfied, wrote in his diary that Laski would ‘strive to suppress and confound the malice and envy of my countrymen against me, for my better credit.’

  Over the ensuing weeks, Laski became a steady presence in Dee’s Mortlake study, participating in numerous actions and prodding the angels to divulge details of what the future held for him and for Doctor Dee. They were told to look to the east, for that was where all manner of treasures awaited them. Dee and the angels would profit Laski and he in turn would profit them once he was restored to his rightful positions in Poland.

  By midsummer Laski declared to Dee and Kelley, ‘We must go to Krakow.’

  For Dee the timing seemed auspicious if only to escape his mounting financial obligations. He owed money to friends. He owed money to his brother-in-law. His suit to the Crown for the 200-pound pension he believed he was owed was squashed by Walsingham, who wished to turn the screws. He was at the end of his tether and he saw that Kelley was, perhaps, taking advantage of his weakened position. He caught wind of discussions between Laski and his scryer to the effect that Kelley alone could provide Laski what he needed – access to the angels via his showstone. He even overheard Laski and Kelley talking about attempting to conjure evil spirits to do damage to Laski’s enemies at home. As to Dee’s attraction as a great alchemist who might one day succeed in the transmutation of base metal into gold, Kelley assured Laski that he was learning that art too. Why not cut out the magus and decamp to Poland as a smaller party?

  Increasingly desperate to leave his troubles behind, Dee reckoned that if he could make one more push to borrow funds, he would cement his pivotal role with Laski. He turned once again to his wealthy brother-in-law, Nicholas Fromoundes, and borrowed 400 pounds, secured by his only assets – his house and his books. That sum would provide what the penniless Laski and Kelley could not: the rental of two ships to carry his Mortlake household, several hundred books and manuscripts, Laski with his servants and horses, and Kelley’s rather more meager household. Funds in hand, Dee made his final arrangements, dismantling and packing his paraphernalia for angel magic, closing his alchemical research facility, making provision for his students and alchemical research staff, and dodging a host of creditors. His wife, Jane, had the unhappy task of dismantling the domestic trappings she had spent these years of marriage constructing. She held her tongue, for she was nothing if not her husband’s obedient mistress.

  Before Dee packed his table and wax seals he held one final spiritual action in early September with Kelley and Laski. Auspiciously, God’s covenant with Laski appeared to be solidified. Kelley saw in his obsidian mirror the angel Uriel holding a crown over Laski’s head and promising kingship over three wicked nations. A fortnight later, they were on the high seas, sailing toward Holland, unaware that Nicholas Fromoundes, unwilling to bear the financial risk, was already selling off Dee’s furniture and many of his rare books.

  The winter crossing through the Low Countries, across northern Germany, and into Poland was arduous. While most of the party had to endure icy roads, spending nights in poor inns or huddled in wagons, Laski, traveling with his demanding Italian wife, generally had a more salubrious experience, riding off to stay in the houses and lodges of well-heeled friends along their route and rejoining the Dees and Kelleys after pleasant interludes. Along the way, Dee and Kelley anxiously consulted with the angels and were told to press on. During one of these actions Dee was perplexed and Kelley delighted by the assertion that Kelley was to become a great seer and supreme alchemist.

  They arrived in Krakow, the Polish capital, in a frigid February, road-weary and eager to take up new lives. Dee scraped together the money to pay the rent for year on a house on St Stephen’s Street, barely large enough for his family and the Kelleys, and Laski and his wife retired to the opulent residences at their disposal in their native city. While their wives toiled at feathering a nest, Dee and Kelley visited the renowned Jagiellonian University, where Dee secured a teaching post and Kelley insinuated himself into their alchemy laboratories.

  It was not until April had come and the snows began to melt that Dee unpacked his magic table and his seals in a small room at the back of the ancient house.

  ‘So, Edward,’ Dee said when the house finally quieted after supper, ‘we begin our angel conversations anew.’

  They were pleasantly surprised at the immediate appearance of Nalvage, an angel who had not shown himself in a long while. What he told Kelley so excited Dee that his diary entry for the session betrayed his tremulous hand. Dee had learned from earlier sessions that the realms of Heaven were controlled by powerful angelic Governors. Yet however painstakingly he had mastered the angel language, they had no way of communicating with these Governors. On this night, Nalvage revealed that they would be taught the first of the calls to summon each Governor, although one call, the 49th and last, would not be revealed. Asked why, Nalvage told them that a single call was held back by God Himself and it was not for them to know it.

  Nalvage promised them this: ‘In time you may use the calls to move every gate save one, to call out as many as you please, to open unto you the secrets of their cities through which knowledge you will easily be able to judge, and of all things contained within the compass of nature, and of all things which are subject to an end.’

  And with that the lesson began. Nalvage appeared in the showstone holding a rod. Standing within a grid of angelic letters he pointed to one letter at a time, slowly spelling out the first words of the 1st Call.

  Ol sonf vors g, goho Iad Balt, lonsh calz vonpho.

  It was slow, hard work receiving each call, letter by letter, and it took three months of scrying to receive the first eighteen calls. On a warm, moonless night in July, the angel Ilemese appeared in the showstone and dazzled Dee and Kelley with this revelation. He was about to impart unto them the 19th Call, which was in actuality, thirty calls, bringing the total to 48. The 19th Call, they learned, was a master call to access the next thirty Aethyrs. The only thing that differentiated the thirty calls was the insertion of the name of each of the Aethyrs in the first line.

  When an exhausted Dee finished recording this lengthy call and all its embellishments, he wanted to know if he was the first man to know them.

  ‘You are not the first, but few men have received them,’ Ilemese replied.

  Dee was elated. If nothing else was revealed to them, the journey to Poland had been worth the expense and discomfort. Kelley, however, was not fully satisfied. He inquired about the missing 49th Call, of which the angel Nalvage had spoken.

  Ilemese rose from his chair and said sternly, ‘God does not wish man to know the call.’

  ‘But pray, tell us why?’ Kelley asked.

  Dee berated him. ‘We have been told this call is reserved by God Almighty. Do not defy the angels, Edward!’ But then his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, ‘What sayeth Ilemese to your question?’

  Kelley heard Ilemese’s answer. ‘It u
nlocks the realm of the fallen.’

  Kelley gulped but chose not to pass the pronouncement along. Dee would never permit further inquiry if he had been truthful. Instead, he said, ‘He refused to supply an answer.’

  ‘Then it is a question well left,’ Dee said. ‘Do not ask it again.’

  Kelley looked into the showstone again and said, ‘The angel has stood up and he is gone in a great flame of fire upwards.’

  That night, Jane Kelley was woken in bed by Kelley’s restlessness.

  ‘What is the matter, husband?’ she asked.

  ‘Doctor Dee is perfectly happy to accept the judgement that the 49th Call is not to be known by us. I am not.’

  ‘Why do you wish it?’

  ‘I feel it might open the gate of opportunity for me. Perhaps it is the gate to the philosopher’s stone. Perhaps it is the gate to other knowledge and riches. I am tired of being poor as a mouse and living in another man’s house.’

  ‘But what if it opens a gate of evil and horror? Perhaps that is why it is not on offer.’

  He had not told his wife what the angel had said about the realm of the fallen, but he silently credited her intuition. ‘Then I would harness that evil to become powerful. Powerful men are invariably wealthy men.’

  She let her hand wander onto the thigh of his withered leg, but he was uninterested. He had already tired of the plodding sexual congress to be had with his Jane. His interests lay elsewhere. He rolled onto his side and declared that he would sleep.

  Just as it was in England, in Poland there was never enough money. Dee’s teaching stipend from the university was barely enough to keep his large household afloat. To make ends meet he sold a book here, a book there. And he turned to the showstone, scrying on his own when his master was gone, hopefully exploring the Aethyrs and exhorting the angels to help him find buried treasure or the alchemical powders he might need to make the elusive philosopher’s stone. And every new angel he encountered, he asked about the 49th Call. His powers as a scryer allowed him to penetrate all the way to the fourth Aethyr, where he saw an angel named Selaphiel who told him that although he possessed knowledge of the 49th Call it was too dangerous for man to receive. But Kelley pleaded with the angel for help, complaining about the indignities of poverty he had suffered since Dee had been forced to suspend his annual wage. He could not afford to buy a new pair of boots or a thicker cloak for his shivering wife. He was trapped in servitude in a foreign land. Selaphiel seemed to take pity on him and dictated, using the grids of angelic letters, the holy words that an alchemist might use to compel darker angels to transmute base metals into gold and silver. He began using these chants, but the results were disappointing. His lumps of lead remained lead.

  Count Laski was also spurred on by his mounting debts and royal aspirations. Encouraged as he was by angelic prophesies, he joined in a conspiracy to overthrow King Stephen, but the conspirators were routed. His compatriots were beheaded in Krakow’s marketplace and Laski only escaped punishment with the support of the citizenry who held him up to be an estimable character duped by devious men.

  On one occasion, three dispirited fellows, Dee, Kelley, and Laski, came together around the showstone to have an angel advise them to turn to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, for financial assistance. Laski, a known Habsburg supporter, would surely get a favorable audience with Rudolf, and as the emperor had a keen interest in alchemy, Dee and Kelley might secure patronage. A plan was hatched. If they could raise money for the journey to Prague, then they would depart before the summer turned to fall.

  On a Tuesday morning the Dee household was as quiet as it ever was. Jane Kelley had taken the children into the garden to play tag. Doctor Dee was at the university lecturing a class of advanced students in mathematics. Jane Dee was in the kitchen, plucking chickens and chopping vegetables. And Edward Kelley was at home, tired of reading one of Dee’s particularly obtuse alchemy texts. He limped into the kitchen without his walking stick and stood at the doorway for a while, watching Dee’s wife at work, admiring the faint outlines of her pert rump through the fabric of her dress.

  When she realized she was being spied upon she said, ‘Have you never seen a woman dressing a chicken, Master Kelley?’

  ‘None as charming as yourself, Jane.’

  ‘I believe your good wife is outside with the children.’

  ‘The fresh air will do her good.’

  ‘Perhaps you might join her. Fresh air is wholesome for men as well.’

  He came toward her, the shoe on his palsied leg scraping the floorboards. ‘What I find wholesome is the sight of a comely woman.’

  She looked at him sharply, but he came closer.

  ‘My husband would put you out on the street if he knew of your impertinence.’

  ‘He need not know, Jane. He is an old man. I am a young, vital man and you are a young, vital woman. Do you not think that destiny has brought us together under the same roof?’

  ‘Destiny?’ she said. ‘Nay, Master Kelley, it was not destiny. It was my husband who, for reasons I am unable to judge, sees fit to employ you. If you provide him with good services, then I have little reason to object. However, if your work is in any way suspect, then surely you will be judged harshly, in this world or the next.’

  ‘What do you mean by suspect?’

  ‘How am I to know if you really do see angels in that stone of yours?’

  A frown darkened his face. ‘Madam, I can assure you that the angels do indeed answer to my call.’

  ‘I pray you say the truth, sir. Your ears have already been cropped. What parts could next be on the block to answer for so great a lie?’

  As the hoped-for departure date for Prague approached, Kelley returned to the St Stephen’s Street house from his alchemy studio in the university district to see a fine carriage and horses outside the front gate. He was weary from another day of little progress. He had obtained a large bladder stone from a physician, and having pulverized the specimen, he had not succeeded by means of chemical manipulation and chanting in angel tongue to transmute it into anything more valuable.

  Kelley saw his wife in the front hall and asked who had come calling.

  ‘I am not certain, husband, but I took his name to be Spanish.’

  ‘How long has he been here?’

  ‘He has just arrived.’

  The parlor was unoccupied, so he climbed the stairs and walked as quietly as he could up to the door to Doctor Dee’s outer study. That door was open but the door to the inner study where they conducted their scrying sessions was closed. He entered the first chamber and gently shut the door behind him so that Jane Dee or the children could not see him if they passed. With his ear to the inner door he instantly heard the voices of Dee and a gentleman with the distinct accent of a Spaniard.

  Juan Carlos de Guzmán was the ambassador to Poland from the court of King Philip II. A proud Castilian from a family with long service to the Spanish Crown, he had sent a man to the university to see Dee and to arrange for a discreet visit at Dee’s residence. Kelley could tell that the ambassador was being more than deferential to his master. He was being obsequious.

  ‘This is surely, without a scintilla of doubt, one of the greatest days of my life meeting a man such as yourself, Doctor Dee. You must know that you are regarded as one of the finest intellects in all of Europe.’

  ‘Please convey my good tidings to your king,’ Dee said, making no acknowledgement of the praise.

  ‘And I bring you the good tidings of my colleague, Bernardino de Mendoza, the ambassador to your queen.’

  ‘He is a fine gentleman. He expressed an interest in my collection of navigational instruments. Sadly, I left those behind in Mortlake.’

  ‘Yes, he told me. It was he who recommended I visit you in Krakow.’

  ‘How might I be of service?’

  ‘Your expertise in the zodiacal arts is well known. I was hoping to commission a horoscope concerning a certain English gentleman and some tasks my
king desires him to perform. He wishes to know future dates that may prove to be auspicious concerning a business venture he intends to pursue.’

  ‘This gentleman,’ Dee said. ‘May I know his name?’

  ‘It is Sir Francis Throckmorton.’

  Dee said that he knew of the man, but they had never met. Throckmorton’s cousin was a lady in waiting for Elizabeth with whom Dee was acquainted. ‘This work,’ Dee added. ‘I trust it has nothing to do with any differences that might exist between Catholic Spain and Protestant England.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ the ambassador said, ‘but as you raise the matter, you were a Catholic priest when you were a younger man, is that not so?’

  Kelley felt his heart beating in his throat. Walsingham would need to hear of this conversation. What an opportune moment to ask for funds to further various and sundry clandestine activities!

  ‘I renounced my Catholic orders and I am now content as a Protestant,’ Dee answered him.

  ‘I pray that one day we all should be blessed with contentment.’

  ‘This horoscope you seek,’ Dee said. ‘I find myself to be a very busy man these days. How much could you pay me to put aside present obligations and take up this task?’