The Angel of the West Window Page 9

  However, although it was horrible to behold, for the singular man at the stake it seemed as if it were but a refreshing spring shower or manna from above. And all the while he kept up a stream of insolent remarks at Bonner so that it seemed more as if the Bishop on his velvet cushions were the accused, rather than his victim on the bonfire. His sins were trumpeted abroad in public; Greene knew of his most secret transgressions and did not withhold them, so that had he been able to with good grace, my Lord Bishop would gladly have sacrificed the pleasure of watching the execution. He seemed bound by some spell and must needs sit there silent, trembling with shame and fury; then, foaming at the mouth, he screamed order on order at his henchmen that they should hasten to put an end to the spectacle that he had thought before to draw out to the last terrible second. It was miraculous to see how none of the arrows that rained upon Greene could silence him; it was as if his whole body were invulnerable. Finally dry wood, with much kindling and tow mixed in, set the pyre blazing, and Greene disappeared in smoke and flames. But then he began to bellow out his song, more joyfully than in the cell, where he had swung from the wall, and the crackling of the wood was drowned in the spine-chilling rapture of his wild singing:

  “Heave ho! All night Tom plays on his fiddle

  After the moult of May.

  Heave ho!

  While Kitty sings hey diddle diddle

  To the moon and Black Isaye.

  Heave ho!”

  It was deathly still around the place of execution; all the executioners and guards, the judges, priests and nobles felt their skin crawl with fear and loathing until every limb seemed paralysed; and the sight made me want to laugh out loud. Before all the rest, however, sat my Lord Bishop, Edward Bonner, like a grey ghost on his throne, his hands clamped on the arms, gazing fixedly into the flames. As the last note of the song died away on the lips of the blazing Greene I saw the Bishop stagger forward with a cry like a condemned man. Was it a gust of wind blowing through the fire or were there truly satanical powers at work there? – from the top of the pyre a wreath of flames, like yellow tongues of fire, suddenly flew up, fluttered, plunged and whirled upwards into the sky over the episcopal throne and the head of Bishop Bonner. Whether it really was singed by a drop of sulphur as Greene had prophesied only minutes before, I cannot say; from the grimace of terror on the face of the Bloody Bishop it would almost seem so – it was impossible to tell in the general tumult of men and weapons that filled the reeking courtyard.

  One final detail I must record for accuracy’s sake: when I regained my senses a lock of hair, singed off my own head, floated down to my feet as I brushed the confusion of the last hours from my forehead. The night that followed these terrible events was full of the most strange happenings, of which I can confide but a small part to these pages; but I shall never forget that night, nor anything that befell me in the Bloody Bishop’s dungeon.

  That evening and the first part of the night I spent in constant expectation of a renewed interrogation, if not torture, by the Bishop’s men. I must confess that I did not put much trust in the words of Greene, yet I kept taking out the black coal to see if there were an image of my future on the polished surfaces of this common mineral. Soon, however, it was too dark in the cell: as on the previous night, the turnkeys did not think it necessary to give me a light; they may well have been following an express order.

  I spent I know not how long sitting there pondering my fate and that of Bartlett Greene; at times I even sighed with envy of the outlaw, who was now beyond all chains and cares. Towards midnight I must have fallen exhausted into a leaden slumber.

  Then it seemed to me that the heavy iron door to my cell swung open – by what agency I know not – and Bartlett Greene entered, hale and hearty, sound of limb, a very giant of a man, alive in every sinew, that I was sore amazed, since not for one moment did I forget that he had been burnt at the stake but a few hours ago. I said that to his face in a calm voice, and asked him in the name of the Holy Trinity if he did confess he was a ghost or whether he was Bartlett Greene in person, in some incomprehensible way returned from another realm.

  At this Greene let out his usual rumbling laugh and replied that he was no ghost but Bartlett Greene made whole, and that he came not from another realm but from our present world, except that he lived on the other side: there was no “world above”, only this one world, but that had many – countless – aspects and reticulations; the one where he now resided was, admittedly, somewhat different from mine.

  These words are a mere blind groping after the great clarity with which all seemed plain before me in those half-sleeping moments of spiritual awareness; for the truth of what Greene told me was steeped in a sunlit radiance, so that the mysteries of space and time and the essence of all things lay open before me. In that night Greene revealed to me secret knowledge of my self and my future, all of which, down to the tiniest jot and tittle, is preserved for ever in my memory.

  In that night I was still in doubt, thinking it was some phantasm come to mock me, but since then so many of his prophecies have come to pass in ways that defy all reason, that it would now be foolish of me not to believe that those that remain unfulfilled shall yet bear fruit. In all this there is one thing I do not understand: what can be the reason that Greene looks down on me with such favour and guides me in the paths of plenty, for to this day he has nothing required against the law or against my God – if that were so I would fling a thunderous “apage Satanas” in his face that would send him tumbling back down to the very jaws of Hell to which, in his pride, he thought to drag me down.

  His way cannot be my way; the moment I perceive that he seeks my soul’s damnation, I shall put him behind me for all eternity! –

  To my pressing question Greene replied that I would be freed on the morning of the morrow. And when in my disbelief I pressed him more urgently, for all likelihood spoke against his assertion, and tried to show him that what he had promised was impossible, his eerie laugh tumbled out as loud as ever as he said:

  “Brother Dee, thou’rt a fool! Seest the sun and wouldst deny the eye! As thou art a beginner in the Art, perhaps a stone wrenched from the earth will say more to thee than the living word. Take my Gift, when thou awakest, and see what thy spirit will not accept.”

  The main part of the instructions that followed concerned the conquest of Greenland and the inconceivable importance of this enterprise for my whole future existence. And I will not conceal that at later visits – his appearances have become frequent – he does most truthfully and solemnly aver that this is the way to achieve my highest, my longed for goal, for the Crown of Greenland is assured me; and I do begin to understand the signs! – – When I awoke from my vision the waning moon stood high in the sky so that a bluish-white shaft of light shone down through the tiny window. I stepped into the moonbeam, hastily drew out the polished coal and held one of its dark gleaming surfaces out in the ray from the heavenly body. It flickered with bluish, deep purple reflections and for a long time there was nothing more to be discerned. But at the same time a wondrous peace, such as I could feel in every fibre of my body, spread through me and the black crystal in my hand stopped flickering as my fingers, like every part of me, became strong and steady.

  Then the light on the coal mirror became iridescent. The surfaces were veiled with milky, opalescent clouds which dispersed again. Finally the clear contour of a bright image became discernible; at first it was tiny, as if I were peering through a spyhole at dwarves playing in bright moonshine. But soon the picture began to grow in breadth and in depth until the vision overflowed – it was intangible, and yet it was, too, as if I were standing there myself. And I saw – – – (scorch mark)

  For the second time there is a section of the diary – not a very long one, it is true – that has been carefully destroyed. As far as I can judge, it was the hand of my ancestor that rendered the passage illegible. It seems that soon after he had written it down he must have been struck by the thought
that here was a secret he would not want revealed to unwelcome readers. After his experiences in the Tower he would be sensitive to such dangers. However, the fragment of a letter has been placed in the diary between these pages. Obviously my cousin, John Roger, must have come across it somewhere in his researches and inserted it here, as it is prefaced by a note in his hand:

  Sole remaining fragment of a document relating to the secret of John Dee’s liberation from the Tower.

  In its present state, it is not clear whom the letter is addressed to, but that is irrelevant; what is important is the light the fragment throws on John Dee’s life. It indicates that it was due to the intervention of Princess Elizabeth that John Dee was freed.

  I reproduce what remains of the letter in full:

  – – – that hereby I (John Dee) do reveal to you – and to no other person on earth – this secret that is the proudest and at the same time most dangerous in my life. And this, if nothing else, should justify me in all that I undertake, and shall in future undertake, to the Honour and Glory of our most gracious Lady and virginal Majesty, Elizabeth, my great Queen.

  In briefest summary:

  When the Royal Princess received news of my desperate position she secretly sent – with a courage and circumspection to be found in no other child of her age – for our mutual friend Leicester and asked him to pledge his word as a nobleman to prove his courage and his love and loyalty to me. As she found him resolved and ready to sacrifice his own safety if necessary, she boldly set about delivering me from the Tower. And I believe, though I have no evidence to prove it, that it was through a childish excess of spirit that knew no danger, through a wildness that oftentimes seized her, that led her to do what was impossible, and yet the only possible means of rescuing me:

  At night, using both true and copied keys – Heaven knows how she came by them! – she crept secretly into the royal chancellery, King Edward at that time being particularly close in both friendship and cooperation to Bishop Bonner. She found the chest, wherein was kept the King’s own paper with a royal watermark, opened it and wrote, imitating the King’s own hand, an order for my immediate release which she sealed with Edward’s own Seal – in what manner she obtained it I do not know, it being always kept locked away.

  All this she did herself boldly and yet with care and caution since there was never the least doubt cast upon the document – indeed, King Edward himself, when it was later presented to him, was so confounded to see a product of his own hand of which he knew nothing that it seemed to him as if it had been written by magic, and he silently accepted it as his own. It may be that he saw through the counterfeit but condoned it rather than admit to such sorcery or presumption in his own immediate vicinity, – however that may be, the next morning Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, strode into Bonner’s registry, handed over his urgent missive and insisted on receiving both reply and prisoner from the episcopal court himself. And he did!

  Neither I nor any man ever learnt what was in the supposed letter from King Edward, devised and written by a sixteen-year-old child. What I do know is that, in the presence of Dudley, as the emissary of the King, the Bloody Bishop, ashen-faced and trembling, gave his bodyguard orders to hand me over. And that is all, dearest friend, that I may reveal to you. And from this, which I have only set down after much hesitation, you can see whence comes the “eternal obligation” to our gracious and sublime Queen, of which I have often spoken to you ...

  That is the end of the fragment.

  In John Dee’s diary the illegible section is followed by this short passage:

  That very morning the words of Bartlett Greene were fulfilled; without delay and without formality I was released from my grim situation and led from the Tower by the companion of my youth, Robert Dudley, and taken to a safe place where even the Bloody Bishop would scarce think me hid and where he would have found it difficult to take me if he should come to regret his compliance regarding the release of my person. I will make no further commentary on the matter, nor even presume to explain secundam rationem the mysterious ways in which God moves. I will only add that, besides the incredible boldness and skill of my saviours and God’s visible assistance, Bishop Bonner’s state of mind after the execution of Bartlett Greene also played some role in the matter. I heard from the Bishop’s chaplain – through what intermediary need not trouble us – that Bonner spent a sleepless night: for hours he paced up and down in his chamber in a restless perturbation of the spirit and then fell into a strange delirium in which he seemed to suffer the most indescribable horrors. He spoke, as if with an invisible guest, in despairing, often incomprehensible tones and for hours fought a desperate battle with all kinds of imagined demons; finally he cried out, “I confess that I cannot command thee, and I confess that I am consumed by Fire – Fire – Fire!” At this the chaplain rushed in to find him unconscious on his bed. I will not record the many rumours that have come to me on this matter. What I heard is so terrible that I think my soul would faint with the torment if I should even try to set it down on paper.

  Thus ends John Dee’s report on “The Silver Shoe of Bartlett Greene”.

  A few days away in the country and rambling in the mountains have done me the world of good. On a sudden impulse I left my desk, the meridian line and old Uncle Dee’s dusty relics behind me and broke free of the spell that had bound me to house and work.

  Isn’t it funny, I said to myself as I strode out over the heather-covered foothills, that I feel the same as John Dee must have felt when he walked over the Scottish moors after his release from prison? And I had to laugh at the idea that kept going through my mind: John Dee must have tramped over moorland just like this, just as happy, with his heart almost bursting with the new sense of freedom, just like mine as I trot over these Austrian hills almost three hundred and fifty years later. And it must have been in Scotland, in those same Sidlaw Hills that I used to hear my grandfather talk about. It is not surprising that I should make the connection – my Anglo-Styrian grandfather used to tell us often enough about the similarities in landscape and atmosphere between the Scottish moors and the uplands that form the foothills of the Alps.

  And I continued to daydream –

  I saw myself sitting at home; not as one usually sees oneself, looking back into the past, no: it was as if I were still there, seated at my desk in the city like an empty husk, the cast off cocoon in which an insect larva had spent the winter, dead and abandoned since I emerged as a butterfly a few days ago, spreading my wings in the new freedom of the purple heather. So strong was the hold this feeling took on my imagination that it came as a shock when mundane matters took over again and I had to think of returning home. I gave a shiver at the thought of the empty skin, like some pallid Doppelgänger still attached to my desk, into which I would have to crawl back to be reunited with my past.

  But such fancies quickly dispersed when I entered the vestibule of the house where I lived, for there, coming down the stairs from an unsuccessful attempt to see me, was Lipotin. In spite of the fact that my limbs were aching from the journey, I insisted on dragging him straight back up with me. I suddenly felt the need, stronger than ever, to talk to him about the Princess, about Stroganoff and about so many other things that – – –

  In short, Lipotin came back up and spent the rest of the evening with me.

  A remarkable evening! Or, to be precise, an evening’s conversation that took a remarkable turn: Lipotin was more talkative than usual, and a certain scurrilous tendency in him, which I had noticed before, was more marked than usual, so that many things about him seemed new, or at least different.

  He described Baron Stroganoff’s death – a philosopher’s death, if ever there was! – and told me some uninteresting details of his own problems as executor of an estate consisting of a few articles of clothing hanging on the walls of the empty room like butterfly chrysalises. I was struck by the fact that Lipotin used an image similar to the one that I could not get out of my head during m
y walking holiday, and a host of fleeting thoughts swarmed over my mind like ants: was the sensation of death very different from the feeling of going out into the open air, leaving behind an empty cocoon – the cast-off garment – our skin, which even while we are alive – my recent experience had taught me this – we sometimes at eerie moments see from outside, like a dead man who is able to look back on the corpse he has left behind.

  All the while Lipotin prattled on about this and that in his disjointed, half ironic manner; in vain I waited for him to bring the conversation round to Princess Shotokalungin of his own accord. For a long time a strange reserve kept me from giving our chatter the turn I so much desired, but eventually my impatience won and, as I made the tea, I asked him straight out what he thought he was doing, sending the Princess to see me, and what made him tell her he had sold me antique weapons.

  “And why should I not have sold you such things?” Lipotin calmly replied. His tone irritated me; I became more worked up than I intended when I cried:

  “But Lipotin, you must know whether you once sold me an ancient Persian or God knows what kind of spearhead or not?! Or rather, you know very well that you never ...”

  He interrupted me, as impassive as ever:

  “But, my dear friend, of course I sold you the spearhead.”

  His eyelids were half closed and his finger tamped a few tobacco threads back into a cigarette; his whole expression was one of blasé self-assurance. I flared up at him. “A strange kind of joke, my friend! I have never bought anything of the kind from you. I have never even seen anything like that in your shop. You are wrong, so wrong that I cannot understand it!”