Peter Ackroyd - The house of Doctor Dee

And so it was that the scrying room was perfected, which work I began on the very next day. Upon the ground I inscribed the magical circles, characters and invocations made known to me by Cornelius Agrippa in his De mysteria mysteriorum. Then with the aid of the Mutus Liber I made a crystalline table which was round like a cartwheel and painted upon it certain characters and names in yellow and blue; its sides were also adorned with signs, written in red, and placed beneath each foot was the waxen seal of Hermes Trismegistus. A great seal was placed upon the centre of the table, bearing the impress of holy names; this and the table were then covered in red silk, with the crystal stone set upon them. Nor were our careful preparations in vain since, laus Deo, it has proved a true angelical stone which opens up at Edward Kelley's sight; very many objects, or species of objects, have been gathered through this glass, which I have no doubt were conveyed to us by God and his messengers.

The first visitation came upon us within a week of our laborious preparation and beginning. 'There is a curtain,' said Kelley, who was bowed over the crystal, 'and now it is being lifted up as if by a hand.' I was all on fire with curiosity and amazement, and earnestly entreated him to tell everything exactly as it happened. 'Now I see a young boy. He brings a little book out of his pocket. He looks upon a picture in the book.'

'Do you see what picture it is?'

'No. He turns the leaves of the book. There seems to be someone calling him, whom I cannot hear. His own garments cast a light around the stone. Now he seems to put the air over him, and so to enter into a cloud of invisibility. Now he is gone.'

The second visitation came on the following week. 'The curtain moves,' he said. 'I have something here, but I cannot come upon it yet. Yes, it is a man walking upon a white road. He is a tall and aged creature, without a hat upon his head.'

'Can this be real?'

'I see into the stone with my external eye, Doctor Dee, not with my imagination. And look, now, he walks close to the house here. He has come up to the old well.'

'As close as that?'

'He approaches the house. He makes as if to knock upon the door. But now he stops and laughs.' Kelley then moved back with a sudden jolt. 'He throws dust out of the stone towards my eyes.'

'Look back into the stone,' I entreated him. 'He is so near to us.'

'Now he has plucked the curtain, as if he had pulled it round the stone, and I can see no more.'

He fell back into his chair, trembling, and I might have joined him in his fever fit: what spirit, or demon, was about to beat upon my door? And then I recalled my father. 'Did this aged man have a grey beard, forked?' I asked Kelley, who was now leaning upon the table of practice and looking upon the stone like one in a dream.

'He had no beard. He was dressed in strange fashion.' Then his back arched, and he sat upright. 'But now I see another who is all in flame. Yes, he is divided into a great many pieces of fire. Now he is become like a great wheel of fire, like a wagon wheel, which turns within the stone. Now it is gone. Now all that show has vanished away.' He was sweating mightily, and passed his hand across his face. 'I can do no more today. These things are not granted to mortal men, except at great cost.'

'Why talk of cost,' I said, trying to revive his spirits, 'when there is a richer prize than all to be gained? There is treasure here within the stone.'

'You do not mean the secret of gold?' He seemed suddenly in a sweat again. 'I thought you knew of that.'

'No, not gold, but greater riches by far. If these spirits are sent by God, as I am firmly persuaded that they are, then they may assist us in our search for the contents of time itself.'

'But the secret of gold is known to you? You need no other assistance in that matter?'

'I know many secrets and mysteries, Mr Kelley, about which I shall speak at some later date. But now we are approaching a greater mystery, so I beg you keep to your employment. If you wish for gold or jewels or any precious thing, fix your gaze within the holy crystal.'

Two weeks following this discourse, there was a change about the table of practice. I had entered a little after Edward Kelley, being delayed by some high words with my servant for leaving my close-stool uncleansed, and found him sitting back in the chair as one amazed. 'Do you hear any noise?' he asked me.

'Where?'

'Where but in the stone? There are sounds in the stone. Can you hear them?'

I took a step back in fright, but then there came upon me a great curiosity; I approached the crystal and a very few seconds after I heard it creaking or crackling, although no hand touched it and no mortal or worldly thing seemed to move it. 'I hear something,' I whispered to him, 'like the sound of a bunch of keys, as if they had been quickly and strongly shaken.'

'You wished to hear voices, sir, but these are mere sounds.'

'Who knows what might follow? This may be the first note of an entire air.'

And so it proved in the weeks following, when Edward Kelley huddled over the stone and, through his scrying, I found myself able to talk to spirits. The first who came to us was a little girl no more than seven or eight years: he saw her clearly, sitting upon a rock in a desert place, and he questioned her as to who she might be. I could see and hear nothing, but he told all.

'I am the first but one of my mother's children,' she said to him. 'I have little baby children at home.'

'Ask her where that is, Mr Kelley.'

And she replied thus, after he had put the question to her. 'I dare not tell you where I dwell. I shall be beaten.' But then she put out both arms to him, saying, 'I pray you let me play with you a little, and I will tell you who I am.'

'Is she an angel,' I asked him, 'or some lesser spirit come to entertain us?' But at that she vanished away.

I knelt down and began to pray, while he put out the candles one by one. 'If you are interceding with the author of these beings,' he said to me as he snuffed the last of them, 'be sure that you are not deceived.'

The chamber of practice was now quite dark, since I kept a tapestry before the window and made sure that the doors were all perfectly locked. 'And what deception may that be?'

'The Devil takes strange shapes, Doctor Dee, and before we trust these spirits within the stone we must question them further.'

In the following week we were at a loss, with nothing appearing in crystallo, and we were about to quit the chamber when I heard a very great noise about the stone, as though men were beating down mud walls. Pretty soon it became a thumping and a clattering which seemed to shake the whole house. We stopped our devotions, and looked at one another in fright; then the noise ceased, and all was still.

Another week passed before we entered the chamber of presence, and immediately upon sitting down before the table of practice Edward Kelley saw a movement in the stone. 'I see two men,' he said, 'conversing with one another.'

'Can you hear their words?'

'One says that he saw the other in Harlot Street or Charlotte Street.'

'There is no such street.'

'The other groans. Now both are vanished away.'

This was marvellous indeed, but a yet greater marvel was to follow when we returned to the chamber the next week. 'It thunders in the stone,' Kelley said to me as he approached the table of practice. 'And there is something like a confused light in which I see a figure.'

'Is it one we know of?'

'It is a man,' he said. 'He has a black satin doublet, slashed.'

'What manner of creature is it? Has he been waiting for us all week long?'

Kelley repeated my questions and seemed to be listening intently to a reply. 'He that speaks to us is to be asked no such matters,' he said.