The Angel of the West Window Read online

  “Strange!” I thought to myself, for I remembered exactly how I had thrown the two ivory spheres out of the window before my arrest.

  “And you bought them from the secret agent before his death?”

  “N-no” – the stranger avoided my eye and looked to the side, but quickly recovered his composure and said, louder than need be, “he gave them to me.”

  I was sure the man was lying and I was beginning to rue the contract we had drawn up. Had he murdered the old bawd himself to get possession of the book and spheres? And I swithered and swayed, for the vision I had had in the night of a man without ears now seemed to be a warning. But I calmed my fears and told myself that my suspicion must be unfounded and that at the worst the stranger had stolen the two objects – and that from a dishonest finder. Moreover, the temptation to share possession of such rarities was so great that I could not bring myself to show my visitor the door, as a scholar and one of my station should properly have done. Rather I persuaded myself that Divine Providence had sent this man to me so that I should be blessed with the Stone of immortality. I further told myself that my own path in my youth had not always been straight and narrow and that I thus had no right to play the judge to this bold rascal. And so, after a short reflection, I resolved to accept my fate and welcomed the stranger, who told me his name was Edward Kelley, to my house and gave him my hand on our agreement to test the objects in his possession for their true value. He had been, I learnt, a lawyer’s clerk in London, and had then become a travelling apothecary and quacksalver after he had had his ears cut off by the public executioner for forging documents.

  God grant that his arrival will bring blessing on my house!

  I have taken him in despite the objections of my wife Jane, who from the very start has taken a strong dislike to this man with the cut off ears.

  A few days later we made the first trial with the two powders in my laboratorium and were successful far beyond expectation: even with a very small projection we produced almost ten ounces of silver from twenty ounces of lead and from the same quantity of tin no less than ten ounces of pure gold. Kelley’s mouse’s eyes took on a feverish glitter and I was horrified to see how greed can transform a man. I told him that we would have to use the powder extremely sparingly, especially as there was only a little of the “Red Lion” left; Kelley would have preferred to turn everything into gold immediately.

  I, however, vowed to myself by all things holy – and I told Kelley in no uncertain manner – that for my part I would not use even one grain of the valuable powders to enrich myself, but would endeavour to extract the secret of the preparation of the philosopher’s stone from St. Dunstan’s book; and when I knew how the red tincture was to be projected onto the incorruptible body of the resurrection I would use them for no other purpose. At this I presume Kelley secretly turned up his beak of a nose in disgust.

  Inwardly I still could not rid myself of my unease that these treasures had yet been dishonestly acquired; and, moreover, I was tormented by the thought that there must perhaps be some curse laid on objects taken from the grave of such a great adept, especially as I could not entirely absolve myself from guilt on that account, as I was the originator – albeit distant – of the pillage by the Ravenheads. Thus I resolved at least to take an oath only to use the find for the most noble of purposes. Once the secret of the alchymical process is found, Kelley can leave me and go his way in peace, and can pour as much of the “Red Lion” as he wishes over base metals to turn them into endless gold which he can squander on whores in bawdy-houses. He may be as rich as King Midas – I shall not envy him for it, just as little as he will envy me, who strive for other goals with the priceless stone. Surely I will need but a tiny amount of the powder to distill from it the immortal essence, thus myself to live on until the day of the “chymical marriage” with my Queen, when I shall see the Baphomet within me realised and the Crown of Life above my head. May this “Lion” from this day forward lead me on to my Queen! – – –

  What is remarkable is that I have daily come to regret more and more that my faithful assistant Gardner has left me, now that this vagrant Kelley is in my house and by me all the time and at every meal does slobber and belch like a pig. I would dearly love to ask honest Gardner what he thinks of this intruder and whether he might after all be an unknowing instrument of Bartlett Greene! Can it be that the loot from the desecrated grave of the Saint has returned to me like a bad penny? Was the one who first brought them not the uncanny Mascee, the accomplice of Bartlett Greene, that mysterious intermediary of fate?

  But these misgivings slowly pass, like my long, dreary days. I see everything in a much calmer light: neither Mascee nor Kelley are emissaries of Greene, but both are blind instruments of a benevolent Providence and, despite the traps and pitfalls of the Evil One, will help me to my due salvation.

  How otherwise could it have been possible for things that had belonged to a Saint to fall into the hands of a degenerate! Can ought ill reside in such objects? Can the Holy Bishop’s curse be a threat from the world beyond to me, a humble and zealous student of the divine mysteries and a servant devoted to their fulfilment? No; I have atoned for the sins of my arrogant youth and my body bears the marks of my past foolishness. All is expiated, and today I am no longer an unworthy recipient of gifts from Beyond, as I was when the “Tutor to the Czar” offered me these mysteries for the first time and I toyed with them and marked them and threw them out of the window – so that thirty years later I should recognise them and receive them again with a more serious, truly prepared mind.

  My trusty Gardner was certainly right to warn me not to turn to an alchymy that was devoted to the worldly transmutation of metals. To achieve that, beings from a dark, invisible world must be called down to meddle in ours – black magic, magic of the left hand Gardner would have said; that is my belief, too, but what has it to do with me? I do not take part in it and do not strive for gold, but for Life Eternal!

  That spirits are involved, I will not deny: since the day Kelley entered my household there have been strange, unexplained signs of their presence: repeated knocking, a dry sound that dies away quickly, as if someone were stabbing a pair of compasses into wood, a crackling and rustling noise in walls and cupboards, in tables and other pieces of furniture; also the steps of invisible messengers coming and going, and sighing and breathless whispering that suddenly stops when one listens – and at the second hour of the night it is often accompanied by drawn out chords, as if the wind were blowing through taut strings. Often in the middle of the night I have raised my head and beseeched the invisible being in the name of God and the Holy Trinity to stand and speak and tell me why it had been aroused from the peace of the grave or sent to us from the world beyond, what its mission was and who had charged it to visit me, but until this day I have had no answer. Kelley is of the opinion that it is connected with St. Dunstan’s book and spheres: the spirits, so he maintains, desire to preserve what is left of their mysteries; but he, so he boasts, will tear them from them. And he confessed that he had been plagued by such voices and noises since the very day he had procured the objects.

  At this revelation I was mightily troubled, for again it made me think that the old secret agent and whoremaster, from whom Kelley had procured them, had perhaps after all been murdered for the possession of the book and spheres. And once more words spoken by my trusty Gardner came into my mind: it were, he said, a vain and dangerous enterprise to create the philosopher’s stone by chymical means, if the arcane process of spiritual rebirth had not previously been completed, of which the Bible told, though in veiled words. First, he had warned, I should discover this process and undertake it, otherwise I would fall from one trap into another and from one sorrow into another, as if I were guided by a will-o’-the-wisp.

  To calm my unease I called Kelley to me and asked him to swear on his soul’s salvation that what he had told me was true: namely that it was a green angel and not a demon that had appeared and promi
sed to disclose to us the secret of the preparation of the stone. And Kelley raised his hand and swore that it was true. The Angel, he said, had announced to him that the time was come when I was to be initiated and the Great Arcanum would be revealed to me.

  Then Kelley told me what preparations were necessary that the Green Angel might be revealed to us in a physical body, according to the laws of the of the invisible world. As well as the two of us and, most important, my wife Jane, who was to sit close by Kelley’s side, two of my friends should assemble at a given hour of a particular night during the waning of the moon, in a room that had a window giving onto the west.

  Straightway I sent a messenger to two of my trusted friends, Talbot and Price, to beg them to come to me that the conjuration of the spirits might take place at the appointed hour acording to Kelley’s instructions: the time ordained was the night of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, the 21 November, at two o’clock.

  The Conjuration of the Angel of the West Window

  O the night of the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin! How deeply it is engraved on the memorial of my soul! Now all those hours of waiting, of feverish expectation are behind me, past and forgotten. A miracle, an unbelievable miracle has been vouchsafed me from the world beyond. I am dumbfounded with wonder and amazement at the might and power of the glorious, thrice blessed Angel. Deep within my heart I have made apology to Kelley that I ever thought ill of him and that I saw the mote in my brother’s eye and not the beam in mine own. He is an instrument of providence, that I now know and I shudder at the thought of it.

  The days that preceded the night were a torment to me. Every day I sent servants to London to enquire of the craftsmen that had contracted to make, according to Kelley’s precise instructions, the table around which the five of us – Jane, Talbot, Price, myself and Kelley – were to sit when we conjured the Angel. It had to be made of pieces of costly sandalwood and laurel and greenheart and in the form of a five-pointed star. In the middle there was to be a large hole in the shape of a regular pentagon. Set in the edges were cabbalistic signs, seals and names in polished malachite and brown cairngorm. Now I am ashamed to the depths of my soul when I think of my miserable, mean-minded concern at the thought of the enormous sum of money this table would consume. Today I would tear out my eyes and use them as jewels to decorate the table if it were necessary.

  And always the servants would return from London saying, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. The table was never ready, there seemed to be a spell on it; for no reason this or that journeyman would suddenly fall ill and whilst working on it three had already died a sudden, inexplicable death, as if seized by the ghost of the plague.

  I strode restlessly round the rooms of the castle, counting the minutes until the morning of the 21 November broke, dull and grey.

  Price and Talbot were sleeping like winter marmots, a strange, heavy, dreamless slumber, as they later told me. Jane, too, had been nigh impossible to wake and she shivered with inner cold, as if taken by a fever in her sleep. My eyes alone were unresting; heat, unbearable heat coursed through my veins.

  Days before, Kelley too had been seized with a mysterious unease; like some shy animal he avoided the sight of men; I saw him wander round the park in the twilight and start like a guilty thing surprised when steps approached. During the day he sat brooding on the stone benches, now here, now there, murmuring absent-mindedly to himself or shouting in an unknown language at the empty air, as if someone were standing there. When he awoke from this state it was but for minutes, and then he would ask breathlessly if all were prepared at last; and when I told him, despairing, that it was not, then he began to berate me with curses, which he would suddenly interrupt to return to his soliloquy ...

  Finally, shortly after midday – I had not been able to force even one mouthful down, so wrought was I with the impatience and unrest of the long wait – I saw, on the brow of a distant hill, the carts and waggons of the London craftsmen approaching. In a few hours the parts – for it would have been impossible to bring it through the doors in one piece – had been assembled in the room prepared for it in the castle tower. As Kelley had ordered, three of the windows – to the north south and east – had already been bricked up and only the high, arched west window, a good sixty feet above the ground, remained open. On my orders the walls of the circular chamber had been hung with the pictures of my ancestors, dark with age; chief among them was to have been a portrait of the legendary Hywel Dda, from the brush – and the imagination – of an unknown master, but we had had to remove it, as Kelley flew into a wild rage the moment he saw it.

  In the niches of the walls stood my tall silver candelabra with sturdy wax candles in them in preparation for the solemn conjuration. Like an actor memorising his part, I had spent much time walking up and down in the park to commit to memory the enigmatic, incomprehensible formulae that were needed to call up the Angel. Kelley had given them to me one morning and told me they had been handed to him, scratched on a strip of parchment, by a disembodied hand lacking a thumb. My mind immediately saw the terrible Bartlett Greene as he bit off his thumb and spat it into Bishop Bonner’s face in the Tower. The memory sent a cold shiver down my spine, but I shook it off: had I not burnt the outlaw’s present, the polished coal skrying-glass, and thus broken all bonds between us ...?

  After much toil, the words had finally seeped into my blood so that they would come automatically to my lips when I opened them to pronounce the conjuration.

  The five of us sat in silence in the great hall as the bell in the spire of the parish church tolled the third quarter before two – excitement had so sharpened my ear that the noise was almost painful to it. Then we climbed up the tower. The five-pointed table that almost filled the chamber shone bright in the light of the candles as Kelley, tottering as if he were drunk, lit them one after the other. Then we sat in order in the high-backed chairs. Two of the points of the pentagram were directed towards the west, where the clear moonlight and the ice-cold night air poured in through the open window. Jane and Kelley sat at these two points; I myself was sitting with my back to the east and my eye was drawn out into the wooded landscape, deep in shadow, through which the frosty paths and roads flowed like rivulets of spilt milk. On either side of me sat Price and Talbot in mute expectation. The candle flames flickered in the air, as if they too were restless. The moon, high in the sky, was hidden from view, but its bright light fell in dazzling cataracts on the white stones of the window-sill. The five-sided hole in the table gaped before me like a dark well-shaft. – –

  We sat as still as the dead, though each one could surely hear his own heart thumping in his breast.

  All at once Kelley seemed to fall into a deep sleep, for suddenly we could hear a snoring sound as he breathed. His face began to twitch, but that may only have been the light of the candles flickering over his features. I did not know whether to begin the conjuration or not, for I had expected to hear an order from Kelley. I tried to pronounce the formulae, but each time it was as if an invisible finger were laid upon my lips ... Is it all Kelley’s imagination? I asked myself and was beginning to fall prey to doubt once more, when my mouth began to speak as if of its own accord and in a voice so deep and resonant that it seemed foreign to me, uttered the words of the evocation. – – –

  An icy numbness filled the room. The candles were suddenly as still as death, their flames rigid and giving off no light: you could break them off from the candles, I thought, break them off like withered ears of corn ... The pictures of my ancestors on the walls had become black chasms, like the openings into dark dungeons, and the disappearance of the portraits made me feel as if I was cut off from those who were there to protect me.

  In the deathly silence a child’s voice rang out:

  “My name is Madini; I am a little girl from a poor family. I am the second youngest of the children; at home my mother has a babe at her breast.”

  At the same time I saw hovering in the open air o
utside the window the figure of a pretty little girl of seven to nine years old; her long hair hung in ringlets over her forehead; her dress shimmered red and green and looked as if it were made from flakes of the jewel alexandrite, which appears green by day and at night blood red. Charming as the child looked at first sight, its appearance made a terrifying impression: it hovered outside the window, fluttering like taut, smooth silk, a shape without any physical depth, its features as if painted – a phantom in two dimensions. Is that the promised angel? I wondered, and a bitter disappointment fell upon me which the miracle of this inexplicable apparition could do nothing to lessen. Then Talbot leant over to me and whispered in a choking voice:

  “It is my child; I am sure I recognise it. She died not long after birth. Do the dead continue to grow?”

  There was so little pain and sorrow in my friend’s voice that I felt sure he was as terrified as I was. Could it be an image, deep within him, that had been projected out into the air, that had somehow been released from his soul and taken visible form? – But I immediately abandoned the thought as the phantom was obscured by a pale green pillar of light which suddenly shot up like a geyser through the hole in the table and then moulded itself into a human shape which yet had nothing human about it. It congealed into an emerald form, as translucent as beryl, and as hard – a hardness which seemed to gather and concentrate at its centre more perceptibly than in any earthly material. Arms detached themselves from the stone, a head, a neck. – – And hands! Those hands! There was something about them that I could not quite pin down. For a long time I could not take my eyes off them until I saw it: the thumb on the right hand pointed outwards, it was the left-hand thumb. I will not say that this terrified me – why should it? But this apparently trivial detail emphasised the otherness, the ahuman nature of the gigantic being rising up before me even more than its miraculous, inexplicably tangible emergence from the green pillar of light.