The Angel of the West Window Read online

  The face, its eyes without lashes and set wide apart, was fixed beyond description. There was something fearful, paralysing, deadening and yet shatteringly sublime in its gaze which froze me to the bone. I could not see Jane, she was blocked by the figure of the Angel, but Talbot and Price seemed corpses, so deathly white were their faces.

  The lips of the Angel were red as rubies and formed into a strange smile, turned up at the corners, where they tapered to a delicate point. The child before had seemed unnatural in its flatness, this gigantic creature was stupefying in its corporeal presence, which surpassed all earthly measure: there was not the slightest shadow cast by its garments to give it emphasis or perspective. Yet in spite of – or perhaps because of – that, it made me feel that until that point I had in my whole life on earth seen nothing but flat surfaces, when compared with the sight of this being from another world.

  Was I the one who asked, “Who are you?” Or was it Price? I cannot say. Without opening its lips, the Angel said, in a cold, piercing voice that sounded as if it were an echo from deep within my own breast:

  “I am II, the messenger of the West Gate.”

  Talbot wanted to ask a question, but all he could bring out was incoherent babbling. Price pulled himself up straight; he wanted to ask a question but all he could do was babble too! I gathered all my strength to raise my eyes to the Angel’s countenance, but I had to let them drop; I sensed I would die if I insisted. My head bowed, I asked in a stuttering voice:

  “Il, All-powerful Being, you know that which my soul longs for. Grant me the secret of the stone! I would give my heart, I would give my blood – so fervently do I desire the metamorphosis from a human animal into a King, into one that has risen from the dead both here and beyond. I would understand St. Dunstan’s book and its secrets! Make me into the one that I ... was destined to be!”

  Time passed – it seemed an eternity. Deep sleep threatened to overcome me but I fought it with all the strength of my longing. The room resounded with words, as if the floor and walls were joining in:

  “It is good that thou hast sought in the West, in the Green Realm. I am well pleased. It is in my mind that I shall grant thee the Stone.”

  “When?” I screamed, almost consumed in wild, nameless joy.

  “The day after tomorrow!” came the answer, syllable by syllable.

  “The day after tomorrow!” My heart leapt up. “The day after tomorrow!”

  “Dost thou know who thou art?” asked the Angel.

  “I? – I ... am John Dee.”

  “You are? You are ... John Dee?!” the apparition repeated. The Angel said it in a piercing voice, even more piercing than before. I felt ... I dare not even think it: ... as if ... no, I will not let it pass my lips as long as I have power over them, nor will I let my quill write it down whilst I have the strength to control it.

  “John Dee thou art, Lord of the Manor of Gladhill and Master of the Spear of Hywel Dda, oh, I know thee well!!” came a shrill, mocking voice from the window. I sensed it was the spectral child outside speaking.

  “He who has the Spear is the Victor!” – the words echoed from the mouth of the Green Angel. “He who has the spear is called and chosen. The Watchers at the four Gates are all subject to him. But thou, follow ever thy brother Kelley. He is my instrument here on earth, he is appointed to lead thee over the abyss of pride. Him thou shouldst obey, whatever he demand. Inasmuch as the least of these my brethren demand it, grant it him, for I am he and thou grantest it unto me. Then I can be with thee, in thee and around thee until the end of time.”

  “That I solemnly swear to you, Blessed Angel!” I replied, struck to the very marrow and trembling in every limb. “I raise my hand and swear to you, even should I thereby perish!”

  “Should ... perish!” came the echo from the walls.

  There was a deathly hush in the chamber. I felt as if my oath were resounding through the depths of the cosmos. The candles flared up; the flames were horizontal as if in a blast of wind.

  An icy cold that froze my fingers came from the Angel. With numbed lips I asked:

  “Il, hallowed spirit, when shall I see you again? How can I see you when you are far from me?”

  “Thou canst always see me in the coal-glass, but I cannot speak through it.”

  “I have burned the coal,” I stammered, and I regretted that I had destroyed the skrying crystal in the presence of Gardner, my cursed assistant, for craven fear of Bartlett Greene.

  “Shall I return it to you? John Dee ... heir to ... Hywel Dda?”

  “Give it to me, mighty II!” I beseeched him.

  “Put thy hands together in prayer. To pray is to receive if ... a man ... has learnt to pray!”

  “That I have,” I rejoiced. I placed my hands together – an object swelled up between my palms, pushing them apart. When I opened them, there was the coal skrying-glass!

  “Thou hast burnt it. Through that it lost its old life; now it has thy life in it, John Dee. It is reborn and risen from the dead. Just like men, things live on too.”

  I stared at the thing, full of astonishment. How marvellous are the ways of the invisible world. Not even the devouring fire of earth can bring destruction! – – –

  “I ... thank you ... II ... I thank you!” I was about to stammer, but I was so moved that I could not speak. My voice was choked with tears. Then it burst out of me like a spring tide:

  “And the stone? That too ...?!”

  “The ... day ... after ... tomorrow”, the whisper came as if from a great distance. The Angel had become a faint wisp and the child at the window seemed to my eye translucent, like milky glass. It hung in the air, lifeless as a scrap of silk. Then it sank back into the landscape, floated as greenish, shimmering mist to the ground and became a patch of meadow.

  That was my first meeting with the Angel of the West Window.

  After such favour, can fate hold any torment in store for me? Blest be the night of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.

  We sat together for a long time and talked ecstatically of the wondrous occurrence. As if it were the greatest treasure in the world, I clutched Bartlett Greene’s – no, no: the Angel’s coal crystal as a constant reminder that I had been found worthy of a miracle. My heart was full to bursting when I remembered the Angel’s promise: The day after tomorrow!

  Kelley lay in a deep sleep until the dawn appeared in a sky flushed red, as if smeared with blood from wounded clouds. In silence, shuffling like a weary old man, he went down the stairs without one glance at the rest of us.

  How wrong is the common cry: Beware of him who bears the brand! I felt this as I watched the man with the ears cut off disappear down the stairs. “He is an instrument of providence and ... I took him, my brother, for ... a criminal. – – – I will practice humility”, I resolved. Practice humility ... and be worthy of the stone! – –

  One strange fact I learnt from Jane: I had assumed the Angel had stood with its back to her. To my surprise she told me that the face had been turned towards her the whole time, just as it had been turned towards me. She had heard what it had said, just as I had. Price spent his time trying to fathom how the miracle of the return of the coal had happened and what were the hidden laws behind it. He thought things were probably different than we, with our dull senses, supposed; perhaps they were not physical objects but visible manifestations of some unknown force. I did not listen to him! My heart was too full.

  Talbot was silent. Perhaps he was thinking of his dead child.

  Months, many months have passed and the records I have kept of the angelic conferences have gradually expanded to fill fat tomes. Despair comes over me when I look at them. Hopes, hopes – the consuming fire of expectation all those never-ending days! Still no certainty, still no fulfilment. It is the old torment renewed! The cup I have already tasted to the lees! Will it come to it that I must exclaim, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?! So be it; but can I then hope to achieve the regenerate bod
y? There has been no end to the promises of the Angel of the West Window – nor to the doubts that gnaw at me like the worm in the bud. At every conjuration, night after night during the period of the waning moon, sometimes with my friends, sometimes alone with Kelley and my wife Jane, the glittering promises are repeated, assuring me that untold wealth and above all knowledge and the secret of the Stone are ever more surely, ever more nearly mine. During the time of the waxing moon I count the hours and minutes until we start our seances again; the waiting wears on me and drains me of all energy. Time becomes a vampire, sucking the life force from my blood, and the maddening notion that awful, invisible beings are fattening themselves on it has me in its talons; I cry out in prayer to free myself from it, but in vain. I repeat my vow that I will never desire riches, and yet at the same time all my hope is fixed on Mammon, for daily my wealth melts away like ice in the sun. It is as if Fate would prove that I cannot keep my vow, as if it would force me, yes, force me to break it. Has almighty God given the Devil power to make me an oath-breaker? Or is the God whom we men believe in Himself a ... no I will put that thought from me, I will not let it take shape in words, I will not write it down: my scalp tingles!

  And once more I conjure the spirits, time after time, in sitting after sitting, sparing no effort nor expense, forgetting the morrow: forgetting health, duties, reputation and wealth, I continue to invoke the insatiable Angel, my patron, my tireless benefactor, to plead with Him, to sacrifice hopes and heart’s blood to Him. The book wherein I keep the record of these meetings becomes an oracle of mockery when I pore over it with burning eyes in sleepless nights, looking for errors I have made, seeking for conditions I can put the next time to give me the power to win the gifts of the fiery Green Angel, even if it cost the last drop of blood from a weary heart. I keep watch with feverish eyes and halting pulse, weary unto death, praying and searching until I begin to lose my faith in God. For days after such vigils I lack the strength and the will to examine the book of St. Dunstan, and Kelley heaps reproaches on me, that I am delaying the enterprise and endangering its success.

  Nights on end then are spent in prayer to my God until my knees ache and bleed, I do penance, I tear my garments in remorse, I make empty promises to renew my faith, to strengthen my soul and persevere in belief and trust in His heavenly messengers and His Green Angel. And yet all the while I know this: a man may expect nothing in the spiritual world unless he possess the unshakeable calm and grandeur of soul of an Elijah or a Daniel in the lion’s den; how else shall he confront the temptation to feel God has forsaken him and there is naught but the gaping abyss before him? What justification have I to invoke the Other World and its shining messengers, miserable worm that I am? I, who am a prey to doubt and despair in spite of the most glorious revelations? I, who begin to feel hate instead of love for them, just because their promises remain unfulfilled? – Does not the Angel speak to me! Should I sink back into the company of the countless blind, unknowing human dwarves who do not even believe such things are possible, let alone have eyes to see their splendour? Has not the sight of the Angel been vouchsafed me a hundred times in his blazing majesty? In his unfathomable mercy did he not reveal to me at the very first meeting his perfect knowledge of all my sorrows, my heart’s unquenchable hopes and my soul’s most secret longings? – And did he not promise to satisfy them all? What more can I ask of the Eternal Being, fool and weakling that I am? Can I not see the signs everywhere around me that God’s power and the mysteries of the hidden world beyond are about to be placed in my hands – if only these hands did not tremble like an old man’s, enough to let the precious gift run through my fingers like sand. Is not sacrifice to the Lord, Christian communion and fervent prayer to the Giver of Life the be-all and end-all of our endeavours to keep the evil spirits away from our sittings? And each time does not an unearthly light, yes: light, announce the fiery messenger? Are not the most secret things made manifest? Does not Kelley speak in tongues, as did the Apostles of the Lord on the Day of Pentecost? I have long established through careful, nay, cunning, trial that Edward Kelley knows scarcely any of the Latin he speaks when the spirit is upon him – not to mention Greek and Hebrew, or even Aramaic! All his speech concerns the noble mysteries of perfection, and often it seems as if the great masters of the ancient world were speaking through the unconscious Kelley – Plato, King Solomon, Aristotle himself, Socrates and Pythagoras.

  Greedy for knowledge though I am, I must not let myself be eaten up with impatience, nor despair because the operations that are necessary, according to Kelley’s instructions, to render the spirits visible and audible, are burning a deep hole in my purse. should I stint him when he brings costly ingredients from London at the command of the Green Angel which are necessary to test out the manufacture of the Stone, especially as the formulae in St. Dunstan’s book become darker and more mysterious the farther we progress in our study of it? A further matter is that my house in Mortlake has become a hostelry for many of my former companions, who pour in from all sides because Kelley’s boasting has spread the news of the success of our experiments. I no longer have the strength to put a stop to all this hustle and bustle; I let things take their course; my eyes are fixed on the Stone like a bird on a snake’s. Soon I will not be able to provide for my wife and child, since every day Kelley indulges himself more and more in wine and feasting. I had to give way to him when he demanded that we should use more and more of the red powder to make gold, and in anguish I watch the precious substance daily diminishing. Now all my effort is concentrated on uncovering the secrets of St. Dunstan’s book with the help of the Green Angel’s – dark, too dark – hints, before the “Red Lion” is completely used up.

  In the meantime the rumours of necromancy, of nightly visitations and apparitions in my house, have spread far abroad and come to the ears of the court and Queen Elizabeth. Whilst all the marvels reap more mockery and scorn than scholarly interest from the Queen and her great nobles, the reaction of the superstitious rabble to my studies and their results is much more dangerous. The old suspicion that I am engaged in black magic and other satanic arts has been aroused once more and there is much muttering amongst the people. Old enemies scent new opportunities and seek to set in motion their old machinations against me – the much-honoured favourite of the Queen, now fallen into disgrace but still dangerous, the politician of uncertain influence but versed in the intrigues of the court. In short, all the old fears and jealousies of those I have humbled raise their hundred tongues against me and try to destroy me.

  And whilst we here, behind closed doors, entreat heaven to lighten the darkness of our understanding, and search for the secret way that can raise men above themselves and free them from the curse of death and their animal nature, outside, beyond the walls of Mortlake Castle, the storms of hell are gathering and all are seeking to encompass my downfall.

  Often, o my God, my heart is faint and my belief in my calling wavers. Can it then be true, the accusation that Gardner, the friend who left me in anger, once levelled against me when I contradicted him: that I wanted to grow a mighty oak before I had planted the acorn in the ground. If I knew where to find my friend, I would call him back and, like a child, lay my weary head on his lap ... But for that it is too late.

  Kelley’s strength grows with my weakness. I have left the direction of all matters to him. My wife Jane endures it in silence; for months now she has looked on my distraught features with sorrow and pity. It is her courage alone that has kept me going. She is a delicate creature of no great bodily strength, and yet for my sake she does not flinch before the approach of our ruin. My salvation is her only concern. She will be a loyal companion on the hard and toilsome road. – – – I am often struck by the thought that as I become more tired, weak and weary, Kelley flourishes daily more and more not only in physical health, but also in his undeniable psychical powers – just as the Green Angel of the West Window and the spectral child that precedes it take on clearer, fuller form! I canno
t get the words of John the Baptist from the Bible out of my mind: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Is this secret law of a spiritual world also valid for the dark beings of the Abyss? If it be so, then God have mercy on my soul! For Kelley is the one that does increase and I – – –. And the Green Angel would be – – – no! no! I will not even think it. – – –

  My nights are consumed with restless dreams; but the more my days are frittered away on vain hopes, the more splendid does the Green Angel appear when the moon is in the descendant: its raiment is ever more rich and glorious, covered in gold and jewels. So great is the glory of its appearance that were it to disappear and leave but a fragment of its cloak behind, we would be free from material cares for the rest of our lives.

  Most recently its forehead has been decorated with gems of a fiery ruby red, like huge drops of blood, so that I seem to see the head of the Saviour torn by the crown of thorns in its otherworldly radiance. And drops of sweat, formed by the most brilliant diamonds, shine out from its forehead, just as they have stood on mine in many a sleepless night. – O God, let me not blaspheme, but why does not one single drop of this immeasurably precious blood and sweat fall to the floor of my chamber.