The Angel of the West Window Page 12
She confessed to me, by turns calm and tempestuous, that her heart disavowed none of the wild passions of her youth, insofar as they concerned me, and she freely acknowledged that she had not forgotten the potion that she had had from the witch.
To my astonishment I saw that she knew more than I had thought. At the same time, however, she declared with rare solemnity that she felt now and forever for me as a sister for a brother and no longer desired me as her paramour; our companionship must be based on the blood-bond of brother and sister so that it might one day be consummated in the communion of the blood. I understood but little of such fantastical speech – even at that time I felt that some otherworldly being were speaking through the Queen – unless it were intended to put a barrier between us which all my hopes and ambitions would find the greatest difficulty in acknowledging. Still it is strange that I cannot rid myself of the thought that some other being than she, some unknown force and voice, were speaking through her lips, some being whose message I may perhaps never unravel. What could that mean: Consummated in the communion of the blood? In those days in Greenwich I wrestled openly with Elizabeth for love and its requital, for a man’s natural right to a woman. In vain. Elizabeth withdrew, more unapproachable than ever.
Yes, after those days of deepest spiritual communion she suddenly turned to me whilst we were taking the morning air in the empty park with a face completely transformed. Her eyes mocked me with an inscrutably equivocal expression, and she said:
“As thou dost plead man’s natural right to a woman with me, my friend, I have this last night thought over the matter and resolved not only to grant thy virile urge relief, but to help thee to the satisfaction of thy desire. I would join the spear to the ring and add it to thy achievement as a sign of a happy marriage. I know that thy affairs in Mortlake stand not well and that Gladhill is mortgaged up to the last roof tile. I am sure a rich wife will not come amiss, especially if it is one whose ancestry would not offend the pride of a descendant of Rhodri Mawr. I have decided that thou shalt wed the charming and most gentle companion of my youth, Lady Ellinor Huntingdon. The wedding will take place on the earliest seemly occasion. – Lady Ellinor was informed of Our desire this forenoon, and in her devotion to Us did not hesitate to accept Our wish. By this thou seest, John Dee, how tender is my concern, my sisterly concern, for thee.”
The mockery – at least so it seemed to me – of this speech wounded me to the quick. Elizabeth must have known just what my feelings were for Ellinor Huntingdon, that arrogant, overbearing – and tale-bearing – bigot who had shattered our childish dreams and youthful affection. The Queen well knew the injury she would do to me and to herself if, in her absolute power, she ordered me to marry the born enemy of all my instincts, of all my hopes. Again I was consumed with hatred for that incomprehensible something in the character of my Royal beloved; full of bitterness and wounded pride I bowed my head before this disdainful earthly Majesty and, without saying a further word, rode away from Greenwich Park.
Why rehearse once more the battles, the humiliations and the “politic” reasoning that followed? Robert Dudley played the marriage broker and the Queen had her will. I married Lady Ellinor and spent four frigid summers at her side and five frustrated winters, warmed only by the heat of our dislike. Her dowry has made me rich and free from material care; her name has made me envied and honoured among my countrymen. Elizabeth enjoyed her malicious triumph, for she knew that I, her spiritual bridegroom, was in the cold arms of an unloved wife whose kisses were no cause for jealousy for the “Virgin” Queen. As I stood at the altar I swore two oaths: marital fidelity to my wife and, from the depths of my blighted eternal love, vengeance on the cruel mistress who toyed with me, Queen Elizabeth.
It was Bartlett Greene who pointed the way to my revenge.
In the meantime, however, Elizabeth sucked the last drop of malicious pleasure from my torment by involving me in the most intimate aspects of her political schemes. She confided to me that reasons of state made her own marriage advisable. As she asked my opinion as to what kind of qualities I thought her ideal consort should possess, her eye never left my face and her lips were parted in the smile of a torturer observing his victim’s suffering. Finally she decided that I was the ideal person – to travel the courts in search of a husband. And this burden, too, I shouldered to complete my humiliation. Nothing came of the marriage projects, and my diplomatic career finished when Elizabeth changed her political alignment and I fell seriously ill in Nancy – and in the guest chamber of one of the candidates for the hand of my Royal Mistress. My pride and courage crushed, I made my way home to England.
On the very day of my dismal return to Mortlake – it was a warm early autumn day of the year 1571 – I learnt from my first wife, Ellinor, who had the nose of a beagle when it came to news, that Elizabeth had sent word that she was to return to Richmond, which was unusual so late in the year. Ellinor could scarce conceal her spiteful jealousy, even though she remained as cold as marble towards me, in spite of the fact that I had been away for so long.
And Elizabeth did, indeed, return to Richmond. She came with but a small retinue and took up residence as if she intended to stay for some considerable time. Now, it is scarcely a mile from Richmond to Mortlake; an early encounter with the Queen was inevitable and likely to be repeated, unless she had expressly desired not to see me. The opposite was the case and Elizabeth received me the next day with great honour and friendship, just as she had sent two of her own physicians to attend me in Nancy and ordered her most trusted courier, William Sidney, to see to my every need.
Even now she showed herself most concerned for my welfare and, through words casually dropped here or there, through the bewildering shower of favours she poured on me, made it daily clearer how relieved, how happy she was in her regained liberty and how grateful she was to have escaped the bonds of a marriage which could have inspired in her neither love nor fidelity. In brief, her hints often seemed to flutter round the flame of our secret union, and it often seemed to me as if my unfathomable Mistress were at the same time mocking Ellinor’s quibbling and fruitless jealousy and justifying it. For more than a month my blind devotion kept me tied to my Lady’s apron strings; and more than at any other time she bent an earnest and approving ear to my boldest plans to bring glory to her and her government. Once again she seemed fired with enthusiasm for the idea of a Greenland Expedition and set everything in train to examine the plans and make preparations.
In several reports drawn up by the Admiralty my meticulously prepared dispositions and projects were judged to be practicable and the military advisers were in enthusiastic agreement. Week by week the Queen became more impatient to start the Great Enterprise. I believed I was close to the goal of my life’s ambition, and Elizabeth’s lips – lips magically radiant with a most auspicious smile – had spoken the word that would have made me Viceroy of all new lands subject to the English crown – “King of the Throne beyond the Western Sea”. But in one single night my life’s glorious dream was shattered in the most cruel, most miserable, most bitter reversal any man’s heart and soul have ever had to suffer. What the hidden event was that led to it, I do not know. Even today darkness surrounds the dreadful mystery of the collapse of my hopes.
This much I do know:
A final meeting of the Privy Council with all the Queen’s closest advisers had been arranged for that evening; in particular, the Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, had been commanded to appear. Late in the afternoon I had an audience with my Mistress to give counsel on a number of matters – or, rather, I conversed with her under the autumn splendour of the trees in the park as with my closest and most intimate friend. At one point, when we were in accord on all aspects of my project, she grasped my hand and said to me, her regal gaze fixed questioningly on mine:
“And wilt thou, John Dee, as Lord of the new provinces and subject to Our Crown, ever keep thine eye fixed on Our advantage?”
At this I threw
myself to my knees before my Queen and swore, as God was my witness and my judge, that from that time forward my sole aim should be to expand her Power and influence on the new Indian continent.
A strange light flashed in her eyes. With her strong hand she herself raised me from my knees and said slowly:
“Thou sayest well, John Dee. I see that thou art determined to devote thy self and thy life to the service of – – – England by subjugating the new continent to Our power. The country thanks thee for thy good will.”
With these cool and impenetrable words she dismissed me.
That very night the envious and short-sighted Secretary of State, Walsingham, succeeded in persuading the Queen to put the enterprise off until some vague future date when it had been scrutinised once more.
Two days later Elizabeth removed the court to London without having taken leave of me.
I was prostrate with a despair that words cannot express.
It was then, in the night, that Bartlett Greene appeared to me once more with his thunderous laugh and mocked me in his coarse manner:
“Ho there, brother Dee; thou wouldst be a mighty warrior and conqueror to the wife of thy soul – thou dost but trample on her fondest dreams like the bull in the adage and stirrest up her maidenly jealousy. Thou art surprised the cat doth scratch when thou strokest it’s fur widdershins!”
Greene’s mocking speech suddenly opened my eyes and I could see into Elizabeth’s soul and read it like an open book: she could not bear that I should devote my passion and zeal to anything other than to her person and to win any other prize than her commendation. And in my need and dire despair I raised myself up in my bed and beseeched Bartlett Greene to counsel me, what I might do to make good the hurt I had done my noble Mistress. And in that night Greene revealed to me many things from the marvellous power of his knowledge and instructed me how to see into the magic coal which he had given me on the night he had departed this side of the world and wherein I was shown proof that both Queen Elizabeth and Walsingham were my implacable enemies – he, because he was about to become her paramour, she because of the wound I had done her woman’s pride. Thereupon I fell into a rage; my long curbed desire for vengeance for all the torments I had suffered was unchained and I surrendered to the counsel of Bartlett Greene, who told me what must be done to render the “woman” Elizabeth once more compliant to my will and my blood.
In that same night, therefore, with my lust for revenge boiling over, I prepared myself according to the instructions of the wraith-like Bartlett Greene.
I dare not here describe all the ceremonies I performed to gain power over Elizabeth’s soul and over her body. Greene stood by me as the sweat dripped from my every pore and my heart and brain throbbed so violently that I thought every moment I would collapse in a faint. All I can say is: there are beings the very sight of which is so dreadful that it freezes the blood – can one comprehend that even more dreadful is the awareness of their unseen presence! The fear is compounded by a terrible feeling of impotence and blindness.
I finally completed the conjurations, the last part of which had to be performed naked, out of doors and by the light of the waning moon. I raised the black coal scrying glass up in the moonlight and, for the time it takes to say three Paternosters, concentrated all my will-power on its gleaming facets. Greene disappeared and the figure of Queen Elizabeth, eyes closed and in mysterious haste, approached with a kind of floating gait over the lawn of the park. I could see that my Mistress was neither awake, nor sleeping a natural sleep. Rather she seemed like a ghost. I shall never forget the sensation that filled my breast. My heart was not beating – no, it was a wild, unarticulated scream that tore itself away from my throbbing blood and awoke, distant and yet deep within me, a ghastly echo, as of a chaos of voices that made my scalp prickle with horror. But I gathered all my courage, took Elizabeth by the hand and led her into my chamber, as Greene had commanded me. At first her hand was cold, but soon it and her whole body became warm, as if, the longer I touched her, the more my blood flowed into her. Finally my tender caresses opened her lips in a warm smile, which I took as a sign of her inner acceptance and a revelation of the true longing of her soul. I hesitated no longer; in joyous exultation of my victory, I consummated our marriage with all my senses afire with the fury of lust.
Thus I took by force my predestined wife.
In John Dee’s diary this account is followed by several pages covered with strange and confused signs, which it would be impossible to reproduce, a jumble of symbols and calculations, letters and numbers, perhaps with some cabbalistic significance. It does not appear to be a meaningful secret code, but, on the other hand, nor does it look like haphazard doodling. I suspect that these cyphers are connected with the conjurations my ancestor performed to compel Elizabeth to appear. These pages exude a sense of horror, like a subtle odour, so that it is impossible to concentrate upon them for more than a few minutes at a time. I feel distinctly the presence of madness on these pages of John Dee’s notebook, pressed flat like the crumbling petals of flowers between the leaves of an ancient diary, and the madness rises like some unmentionable aura and threatens to engulf my own brain. Madness has scrawled its unmistakable mark on these pages, and the next legible lines, scribbled down in haste, seem to confirm it. They rise, if I may put it like this, like the head of a drowning man spluttering up from the waves.
Before I continue copying out the book there are a few things I want to note down, for my own justification and to confirm my own memory:
First of all: I have always felt the need to be consciously aware of what is going on within me. Thanks to this characteristic I know that something is happening to me: the more I continue to work my way through John Dee’s inheritance – the less I feel sure of myself. At times I lose my grip on myself; I suddenly find myself reading with another’s eyes, my thoughts seem to come from an alien mind: it is not my brain which is thinking, the thoughts are produced somewhere physically outside the body sitting here. At such times I need the guiding hand of consciousness to jolt myself out of this state of uncontrolled vertigo – a “spiritual” vertigo.
Secondly: I note that John Dee did indeed flee to Scotland after his imprisonment in the Tower and did indeed find somewhere to stay in the area of the Sidlaw Hills. I note further that John Dee had the same experience with the chrysalis as I did, right down to the similarity of formulation. – Is it only the blood that one inherits? Can one inherit experiences? Of course, it could easily be explained if one assumes “coincidence”. Of course, of course; but to me it feels different. To me it feels the opposite of coincidence; what I am experiencing is... I don’t know what. And that is why I need my consciousness in control.
Continuation of the Notebooks of John Dee
Elizabeth returned another time, but after so many years do I really know that it was truly Elizabeth herself? Was it not rather a ghost? She sucked at me like a vampire. Was it not Elizabeth after all? Dreadful thought. Was it Black Isaïs? A succubus? No, Black Isaïs has nothing to do with my Elizabeth! But do I? – – – And yet Elizabeth partook of the experience; yes, Elizabeth herself! Whatever I did with the demon, if such it was, Elizabeth also experienced through some inexplicable manner of metamorphosis. And yet the Elizabeth who came to me through the park by the light of the waning moon was none other than my Elizabeth, and not Black Isaïs!!!
And in that night of dark temptation I lost my most valued heirloom: my talisman, the dagger – the spearhead of my ancestor Hywel Dda. I lost it on the lawn in the park where I performed the conjuration, and it seems to me that I was holding it in my hand, according to the instruction of Bartlett Greene, when the ghost approached me and I held out my hand. Then it was gone. – Did I pay to Black Isaïs what I later was to receive from Black Isaïs?
Today I seem to understand it thus: Isaïs is the woman within all women, and one word may transform all womankind into Isaïs!
After that it became impossible for me to see int
o Elizabeth’s mind. She had become completely foreign to me and yet I felt her as close as never before. Very close: that is the worst thought that the lonely soul can torture itself with. Very close, without union: that is almost like death. Queen Elizabeth was very gracious to me. Her cold gaze scorched my heart. Her Majesty was as far above me as Sirius. She exuded a great and ghostly coldness when I was in her presence. And she often commanded me to Windsor. But when I came she only had empty words for me. It was enough for her to kill me again with one glance. The silence between our souls was terrible.
Once she rode by Mortlake. With her riding crop she smote the linden tree by the gate where I stood to greet her. The tree sickened and the branches withered. – – –
Later I met the Queen in the marshes close by Windsor Castle where she was flying her hawks at a heron. At my side was my trusty bulldog. Elizabeth signalled me to approach. She received my greeting graciously and stroked my dog. It died the following night. – – –
The linden tree withered from the base upward. The splendid tree had become a pitiful sight and I ordered it to be felled. — -
I did not see my Queen again for the rest of the autumn and the whole of the winter. No invitation, no attention at all paid to me. Leicester kept his distance, too.
I was alone with Ellinor, who had hated me from the beginning.
I buried myself in the study of Euclid. But there is one thing that the Father of Geometry failed to understand: our world is not limited to his three dimensions, length, breadth and height. For many years I have been close to working out a theory of the fourth dimension. The world is not bounded by our five senses, not even our own nature is ....
The clear winter nights allowed me to make wonderful observations of the heavens. My soul settled and became once more a fixed point in my breast, like the Pole Star in the immeasurable vastnesses of the cosmos. I had begun a treatise entitled, “De stella admiranda in Cassiopeia”. Cassiopeia is a mysterious constellation; it changes in size and brightness, often within hours. So stars, too, may be soft and disappear like the light in a man’s soul. Marvellous are the soothing powers that stream down upon us from the vault of heaven.