The Angel of the West Window Page 10

  “Really?” Lipotin answered languidly. “Well, then, it must have been some time ago that I sold you the weapon.”

  “Never! Not recently nor some time ago! Some time ago, what does that mean, some time ago?! How long have we known each other? Six months, and your memory really ought to be able to cope with that.”

  Lipotin cocked his head, looked up at me and replied, “When I say ‘some time ago’ then I mean in another life – in a former incarnation.”

  “What do you mean? In a –.”

  “In a former incarnation”, Lipotin repeated pronouncing each syllable distinctly. I sensed an undertone of mockery and responded with an ironic, “Of course”.

  Lipotin said nothing.

  However, as I was desperate to know why he had sent the Princess to me, I took up the thread:

  “Anyway, I am grateful to you for allowing me to make the acquaintance of a lady who – – –”

  He nodded.

  I continued, “Unfortunately, the trick you felt you had to play to achieve that put me in an awkward spot. If at all possible, I would very much like to procure the desired weapon for the Princess – – – “

  “But it is in your possession!” Butter wouldn’t have melted in Lipotin’s mouth.

  “Lipotin, you’re impossible today.”

  “Why ever so?”

  “It’s grotesque! You allow a poor lady to believe I possess a weapon – “

  “– which you acquired from me.”

  “But, my dear chap, you have just admitted – ”

  “– that it was in a former incarnation. Maybe.” Lipotin pretended he was deep in thought and mumbled, “It is possible, now and then, to get the century wrong.”

  I realised there was no chance of a serious conversation with the antiques dealer that evening. I was still rather irritated, but I concealed it. I fell in with his tone – I had no other choice – gave a dry laugh and said:

  “Pity I can’t tell Princess Shotokalungin in which particular former incarnation she might find the spearhead she so much desires.”

  “Why not?” asked Lipotin.

  “Because the Princess is likely to find your philosophy merely a very convenient excuse.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Lipotin smiled, “The Princess is Russian.”

  “So what?”

  “Russia is a young country; very young even, in the opinion of some of your compatriots, younger than everyone else. Russia is also old. Age-old. Nothing about us ever surprises. We can whine like children, we can watch the centuries pass, like the three ancient greybeards on their island in the sea and still – “

  The same old arrogance. I could not conceal my scorn:

  “I know. The Russians are God’s own people on earth.”

  Lipotin gave an apologetic grin:

  “Perhaps. It’s a devil of a country. Anyway, it’s all one world.”

  The urge to mock this tea-and-tobacco philosophy, the Russian national disease, became even stronger:

  “Wisdom worthy indeed of an antiques dealer! When we touch an object from the past, from whatever period, we have a living demonstration that the categories of time and space are not absolute. We alone are bound to them – –” It had been my intention to produce a stream of such and similar banalities, chosen at random, to drown his philosophical rhetoric, but he interrupted me with a smile and a darting movement of his bird-like head:

  “It could well be that I have learnt from antiques. Especially as the oldest of the antiques I have come across is ... myself. My real name is Mascee.”

  Words cannot describe the jolt of terror that shook me as Lipotin said this. For a moment my head seemed to have become a seething mass of cloud. My whole body was in turmoil, and it took the greatest effort to keep my expression one of mild surprise and curiosity as I asked:

  “Where on earth did you come across that name, Lipotin? You can hardly imagine how fascinating it is! You see, the name is not unknown to me.”

  “Really?” replied Lipotin. His features remained inscrutable.

  “Yes. I have been interested in that name and its bearer for – oh, for some time now.”

  “A fairly recent interest?” Lipotin’s tone was mocking.

  “Why, yes. Certainly!” I replied eagerly. “Since these – these – – – ” Automatically I took a step towards my desk, piled high with the evidence of my endeavours. Lipotin must have noticed; it was not difficult to put two and two together. He interrupted me with a smug expression of self-satisfaction:

  “You mean, since these documents on the life of John Dee, that dreamer and necromancer from the days of Queen Elizabeth, came into your possession? You are correct; Mascee did count both of them amongst his acquaintance.”

  I was growing impatient: “Now listen here, Lipotin”, I expostulated, “that’s enough pulling my leg for one evening. I don’t mind putting up with your mystical clap-trap, but how on earth did you come across that name, Mascee?”

  “Well now”, said Lipotin, as languid as ever, “he was, as I think I may already have suggested – ”

  “A Russian, of course. ‘Tutor to the Czar’ the documents call him. But you. What have you to do with him?”

  Lipotin stood up and lit another cigarette.

  “A mere joke, my dear fellow! The Tutor to the Czar is well known in our – let us say in our circles. Is it an impossibility that a family of archaeologists and antiquaries such as mine might be descended from the said Mascee? Only a suggestion, my friend, only a suggestion!” – and he picked up his coat and hat.

  “Very amusing, indeed”, I cried. “You know this strange figure from the history of your country and, lo and behold, it appears in old English papers and walks into my life – so to speak – – ” – the last phrase seemed to appear on my lips of its own accord.

  But Lipotin was shaking my hand and at the same time his left hand was on the doorknob:

  “ – and walks into your life, so to speak. At the moment, of course, you are merely immortal, whilst he – ”, Lipotin hesitated a moment, his eyes twinkled and he gave my hand another squeeze, – “for simplicity’s sake, let’s say ‘I’ – I, you must know, am eternal. All beings are immortal; they just don’t know it, or forget when they enter the world or leave it. That is why it would be wrong to say they have eternal life. But more of this another time. We will continue to see a lot of each other, I hope. Goodbye for now!” And he hurried down the stairs.

  I was confused and uneasy. I shook my head to try to clear my mind. Had Lipotin been slightly tipsy? At times there had been a gleam in his eye that suggested a few glasses of wine. But he had not seemed at all drunk. A little mad, rather, but he’s been that since I’ve known him. To suffer exile at the age of seventy, as he did, can loosen a person’s hold on reality.

  Still, it’s remarkable that he knows about the “Tutor to the Czar”, – even claims to be related to him, if that was meant seriously.

  It would be useful to find out from him precisely what he knows about Mascee. But, damn! I didn’t get anywhere in the matter of the Princess. But when I catch Lipotin in broad daylight and stone-cold sober I’ll get a straight answer out of him. I won’t let myself be led up the garden path again.

  And now, back to work!

  A random dip, exactly as I had decided, into the depths of the drawer containing the rest of John Roger’s package, brings up a notebook bound in ragpaper. When I open it I see immediately that it must be one of a series of such books; the entries begin straightaway, without fly-leaf or title page; there is an occasional date given. The hand is much altered from that of the diary, but still unmistakably that of John Dee. I begin to copy out:

  Notes from the later years of John Dee, Esq.

  Anno Domini 1578.

  Today, the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord, I, John Dee, rose early from my bed and slipped silently out of the chamber so that I should not disturb Jane, my – second – wife, nor my beloved baby son Arthur, who w
as sleeping in his cradle.

  I felt an inward urge to go out into the mild silver light of the awakening spring morning. I could not say what drove me out of house and farm, unless it were the thought of the evil that had befallen me on this same Easter morning twenty-eight years ago.

  I have great cause to give up my heartfelt thanks to fate or, as it is more seemly to say, to Divine Providence and Mercy, that has allowed me life and health in this, my fifty-seventh year, to enjoy the glorious vision of the sun as it rises above the eastern horizon.

  Most of those who had designs against me are long since dead, and all that remains of Edmund Bonner, the Bloody Bishop, is the loathing of the people wherever the old stories are told; when children misbehave, their nurses tell them that the Bloody Bishop will come to fetch them.

  But what has become of me and of the prophecies and of all that I strove for in the vigour of my youth? – – – I would rather not reflect on the passing years and how my plans and projects – and my strength – have gone with them.

  In such thoughts, which oppressed me more than they had for many a year, I wandered along the banks of the Surrey Dee, which, I presume, once gave its name to our family; and the comical haste of the Dee, a mere bustling brook, reminded me of the all too rapid flow of human endeavour. Eventually I came to the place where the stream, winding its many twisting curves around the hillock at Mortlake, spreads out in an old claypit forming a kind of reedy pool. The Dee seems to have come to a standstill and disappeared in a swamp.

  I stopped beside the marshy pool and spent I know not how long gazing at the reeds stirring in the breeze over this haunt of frogs and toads. I was filled with feelings of dissatisfaction and my head began to throb with the notion that here in the fate of the Dee Brook was a reflection, a visible symbol of the fate of the John Dee who was standing there beside it: a rapid course to an early swamp, stagnant water, frogs, toads, weed and reeds – and above it in the gentle sun a shimmering dragon-fly on jewelled pinions: but when you catch the trumpery marvel, all you hold in your hands is a horrid grub with transparent wings.

  As I became immersed ever deeper in such thoughts, my eye fell on a damselfly that was just emerging from its dull brown larva in the warmth of the spring morning. For a few brief seconds the insect clung trembling to the yellowing reed-stem close by the place where the larva, now an abandoned, ghost-like husk, had attached itself for its birth-in-death. The delicate wings were soon drying in the warm sunshine: after a series of upward jerks they unfolded daintily and smoothed themselves out with dreamy movements against the busy polishing of the back legs, gave a voluptuous shudder then – suddenly the tiny elf rose with a flash of colour and the next moment it was darting to and fro in ecstatic flight through the balmy air. The brittle husk of the larva hung on the dry reed-stem above the stagnant decay of the pond – dead.

  “That is the secret of life”, I cried out loud. “Once more the immortal part has sloughed its skin, once more the victorious will has broken out of its prison to seek its destiny.”

  And suddenly I saw myself many times in a long train of images disappearing into the mists of my past life; squatting in the Tower with Bartlett Greene; hunting rabbits or hunched over musty tomes in Robert Dudley’s Scottish mountain hide-out; in Greenwich, putting together horoscopes for the wild, untameable Lady Elizabeth; – – – bowing and scraping and holding forth before the Emperor Maximilian in Buda in Hungary; spending months of foolish mystery-mongering with Nikolaus Grudius, private secretary to the Emperor Charles, and even more privately an adept of the Rosicrucian order. I saw myself in the flesh, but as it were frozen in the various stages of my pilgrimage: exposed to ridicule, in fear and trembling, distraught and numb of soul: ill in the house of the Duke of Lorraine in Nancy; in Richmond, burning with ambition, love, hopes and plans for Her, a Lady hot and yet ice-cold, now blazing with determination, now smouldering with distrust, a Lady ...

  And I saw myself at the bedside of my first wife, my enemy, the unfortunate Ellinor, as she wrestled with Death; and I saw myself quietly slip away from her death cell and out into the garden at Mortlake to – to her – to Elizabeth!

  Puppet! – Phantom! – Ghost!! – And all myself; yet not myself, but a brownish grub desperately fixing its claws into the earth, now here, now there, to await the birth of the Other, the True John Dee, the winged Conqueror of Greenland, the Royal Youth with the world at his feet!

  Again and again the wriggling grub and never the bridegroom! O youth! O fire! O my Queen!

  Thus was the morning stroll of a fifty-seven-year-old man who had thought, when he was twenty-seven, to grasp the crown of England and to have the throne of the New World for his footstool.

  And what had happened in the thirty long years since I lectured in the celebrated School of the Sorbonne with learned scholars for pupils and a King and a Duke eager to hear me? Which was the thorn bush that had caught the eagle’s wings as it strove toward the sun? In what fowler’s net had he become enmeshed so that an eagle shared with thrushes and finches the fate of a household pet, and still had to thank the Lord that he had not shared the pot with partridges?!

  On that tranquil Easter morning I saw my whole life pass before me: not in the usual manner as one would speak of memories of the past; I saw my physical body, the larval form of each period of my life, and from my earliest awareness to the present day I have tasted again and again the torment of having to crawl back into each cast-off husk of the body. But this voyage through the hell of my vain endeavours was still not without its usefulness, for my astonishment threw a harsh, clear light on the confused route of my wanderings. And it seemed good to me to use this day and the experience it had brought me and to write down all that I had “seen”. So I shall use these pages to record everything that has happened in the last twenty-eight years as a Rhodri Mawr – Roderick the Great – of Wales was my ancestor and Hywel Dda – Hywel the Good –, who has been celebrated in folk songs down the centuries, is the pride or our line. Thus I come from a line of blood that is older than that of the “twin roses” of England and as royal as any that has ruled in the Kingdom.

  My pride in our blood is no whit lessened by the fact that the lands and titles of the Earls of Dee have been blown away by the winds of time. My father, Rowland Dee, Lord of the Manor of Gladhill, a madcap and a rake-hell, preserved little of the family inheritance apart from the fortress of Deestone and tolerably extensive estates, the rent from which sufficed to gratify both his coarse passions and his inexplicable ambition to cultivate in me, his only son and the last of the ancient line, a blossom that would renew the old glory of our house.

  As if he were determined to make good the omissions of generations of Dees, he restrained his wild nature wherever my future was concerned and although he only observed me from afar and we were as different in character as fire and water, yet it is him alone that I have to thank that my every inclination was allowed free rein and every wish, however contrary to his own, was granted. This man, who had a horror of all books and naught but mockery for all learning, most solicitously encouraged the development of my intellectual gifts and ensured, herein showing his old pride, that I enjoyed the most excellent schooling, as any rich and honourable gentleman in England. In London and Chelmsford he retained the first teachers of the day.

  I completed my studies at St. John’s College in Cambridge in the company of the noblest and keenest minds in the country. And when, at the age of twenty-one I received my Master of Arts from Cambridge, it was bought neither with money nor influence. On that occasion, my father gave a feast at Deestone which compelled him to mortgage one third of his possessions in order to pay the truly royal debts which he had incurred in celebrating my graduation as sumptuously as possible. It was soon after that that he died.

  As my mother, a quiet and sensitive woman whose life had been embittered, had died many years ago, I found myself at twenty-two the sole heir to a not inconsiderable estate and an ancient name.

&nb
sp; If at first I so strongly emphasised how contrary our two natures were, I did it on purpose to reveal the miracle of the soul of a man who, himself living only for the clash of arms, the roll of dice, the excitement of the hunt or the cup, yet held the seven free arts, which he surely despised, important enough to hope they might, through my love of them, bring new glory to what was a somewhat blotched and weatherbeaten family escutcheon. However, I did not want to suggest that I myself had not inherited a goodly part of my father’s wild and unbridled nature. Drinking, brawling and other, even more questionable sides to my character had, in earlier years, led me into the most ticklish situations, at times even into mortal danger. The old affair with the leader of the Ravenheads – a youthful prank as much as a real revolt – was by no means the worst, though it was to have the most fateful consequences for my life.

  So it was a devil-may-care love of adventure and a complete lack of concern about the future which led me, immediately upon my father’s death, to leave my castle and estate in the hands of my steward and to travel the world like a lord with more than sufficient means at my disposal. I attended the great Schools at Louvain and Utrecht, at Leyden and Paris, attracted by the company of scions of the noblest houses in Europe and also, of course, by their blossoming reputation in the Natural and Occult Sciences.

  I studied under Gemma Frisius, worthy successor to Euclid in the northern latitudes, and under the celebrated Gerardus Mercator, foremost among men skilled in measuring the earth and the heavens. I returned home with a reputation in Mathematics and Astronomy second to none in England. And all this before I had completed my twenty-fourth year! I felt no little pride in all this, which freely confirmed the excess of self-confidence I had inherited from my father.

  The King discounted my youth and my madcap ways and, when he founded the College of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge, installed me there as Reader in the Greek language. What could have tasted sweeter to my pride than to return so soon as a master at the place where I had been a pupil?