DAEMONOMANIA: Book Three of the Aegypt Cycle (17 page)

—But they are not mine own, Jane said.

He could not look into her eyes, looked at his own hands folded in his lap as though he had already done her wrong.

—You think it wickedness, he said. And well you might. I too …

—I do not. You would never do wickedness. I think it foolishness. If angels speak to you …

—If? he said. If?

—When they speak to you. I think it is like the children, in their play, when they whisper words each to each, one to other.
What the last hears is not at all what the first said.

—Yes. I know.

—They laugh at it, she said. Laugh and laugh.

—Yes. Wife I am certain we have been commanded to this by God His holy angels, for purposes only they know, but with this
result—this one among others—that we will be made rich.

He regarded her then frankly.

—Rich, he said. Rich beyond counting.

She crossed her arms before her. She had known no other man but he. She asked him:

—When we are rich, then may we go home again?

The book that contains the records of John Dee and Edward Kelley’s dealings with the spirits ends forever on the day of May
23, 1587. Its light has now gone out, of course; it can no longer be understood; it can hardly be read. But those last entries—not
the later printed version of them but the actual manuscript pages in the British Museum—begin with one that has been heavily
erased and is barely legible; it seems to record an exchange between the two friends and an angel-spirit, who asks Kelley
Was thy brother’s wife obedient and humble unto thee?
To which Kelley answers
She was
. (It is John Dee’s hand, his writing.) Then this spirit—gratified, presumably—asks of Dee the same question about John Dee
and Joanna, and is given the same answer:
She was
.

That, anyway, is what one scholar or investigator claims was there on that page, on a certain day some years ago, in the Manuscript
Room of the old museum, the high windows casting the light into bars, dust of ages, the odor of disintegrating paper. Maybe
in that year it was. Maybe it still is.

May 22, 1587 had just turned to 23, cusp of Gemini the Twins, moon passing into Scorpio; John Dee in his nightgown heard footsteps
mounting toward the tower room where he sat. Heard a gasp or sob too: Kelley. There was a candle lit in the room, burning
out; Dee lit another at it, and pressed it down into the candlestick.

—Well? he said. How is it with thee?

—I, said Kelley. I have scotched.

—Was she not obedient to thee? If she was not …

—No, Kelley said. No it was I.

They sat close and whispered, though there was no one there to hear. On the table of practice the globe was dark, gone out.

—And Joanna? Kelley said. What success, what …

—I spoke long with her. But she was in no receptive frame.

—No?

—I could not force her.

—No. No.

Limp as a poppet when he strove to embrace her, tears on her cheeks that he could feel on his, she was just the age Dee’s
firstborn would have been, the daughter of his first marriage, who died of a fever. Her wide frightened eyes. Unresisting.
For an awful moment a sort of rage possessed him, he knew the soldier’s awful freedom, given liberty to sack and despoil.
It so frightened him his male part failed him.

—The willingness is all, said John Dee. If they be perfectly obedient, but the act not done, it is no matter. If it offend
not God it offends not me.

Kelley seemed unreconciled. Twisted in his chair. His head lifted as though his ears pricked up; he chewed his beard.

—I pray God, Dee said, that it offend not Him.

Noises chased one another through the tower with unearthly speed. They felt airs on their faces, touching them, buffeting
them sometimes. They heard what seemed to be quick steps on the stair that circled up from this room toward the tower’s top;
then as they looked, their eyes wide and arms linked, a child’s ball came bouncing down from above into the room: a ball striped
red and white, capped with blue and stars. It rolled across the little chamber’s floor and out the wind-opened door and down.
Little footsteps receding.

—Let’s go in to them again, Kelley said. We will see if they be in better frame.

—Very well, John Dee said. Pray we be stronger too.

—We’ll go down together. No. I will go, then you.

—Play the man, Edward. God be with thee.

May dawn lay along the flags of the halls, when John Dee returned to his own bedchamber. Servants and men-at-arms were up;
horses laughed and clattered in the yards. He had lain long with Joanna Kelley in her chamber and knew her heart as he had
not before, but she was still a virgin; would still be one when her brothers came to Prague at last to take her back to the
Cotswolds, away from the strange man the angels had inflicted on her.

At first it seemed his door was locked against him, but it was not; he opened it. Smelled spilt wine. His feet encountered
the shards of a jug, which chittered across the floor. The curtains of the bed were drawn.

—Jane.

She made no answer, and for a moment he imagined her gone. Then he heard something, the pillow struck. He waited. He thought:
I am a thousand miles from home.

—Jane, I would know how it is with thee.

He drew aside the curtain. There was an outrush of night odor, familiar, familiar. She lay with her face to the wall, her
dark curls escaping from the white cap on her head, her shift about her shoulders.

—He is a little withered root, she said. And once again she struck the pillow.

—Did you, John Dee began. Did he …

—We did as we did, she said. But you need have no fear for your line.

She turned to face him. He thought that she laughed, or was trying not to; her eyes were alight in the dark of the bed.

—My line?

—There will be no issue.

—How, no issue.

—He was too quick, she said. And spilled beforehand.

—Spilled?

—As we, she said, as we … set out.

She laughed aloud, looking at her husband’s face; he could see his own puzzlement in her look.

—Spilled, she said, spilled, you foolish old man! He is a little withered root and he was as hasty as a boy stealing a pie
from the sill, and try as I might I could not get him in his right place before he.

—You’re certain of it?

—I catched it, she said. She held up her big red hand in the dimness. Strong hand, flat fingertips like an old tailor’s, the
thumb (he knew) with a double joint. She grinned and said:

—The Widow Palm, her daughters five.

A ring on her third finger, little glint of gold deep in the fold of flesh. Worn thin after twenty years; it would not though
wear away.
Pronubus
that finger’s name.
Index, medicus, pronubus, minimus
. Ringman, from which a vein ran delicate as a thread but growing thicker,
procedens usque ad cor
, running right to the heart.

—I think he knew not, she said. Poor little forked stick. So choleric that his flesh burned to my touch.

John sat down on the bed’s edge.

—I hope we have done aright, he said. I hope by this we have done what was asked.

—I care not if we have, Jane Dee said. Come husband, come in bed. I have somewhat to show thee.

—What dost have.

—Well come in. Give me thine ear and I will tell thee what. And thou canst tell me of thy sins too. Tell me all.

He looked down at her, and she pulled her cap from her head, and shook out her hair.

—Oh Lord, John Dee said. More fire in the bedstraw.

In Radnorshire where he was raised it only meant
More trouble to attend to
, but his wife laughed at it.
Fire in the bedstraw
: he laughed too, helpless not to, and she drew him into the bed. They heard their children at the door, forbade them to come
in, the children complained, the parents called for the nursemaid, banged against the wall (the wall of her chamber) to rouse
her, and drew the bedcurtains tight.

On that morning (by John Dee’s later reckoning) was conceived the fifth of their eight children, Theodore, gift of God, born
at T
ebo
in the year the world ended. It must have been that morning he was made, for immediately afterward Jane Dee turned
to the wall again, and wept, and would not answer his entreaties; and he was banished from her side until past the summer
solstice.

But yes it was enough. When day came it was day in the glass too, brilliant blue sky such as Edward Kelley had never seen
before; a field of green, May morning, and a great knight approaching on a milk-white steed, armed with a fiery spear, a long
sword, a shield whereon a thousand cherubim circled. A champion, but whose? And Madimi came, and followed that knight away;
looked back once to smile, but made no farewell; gone, dew upon her feet. And another woman came instead, all in green, bare-breasted;
she hath a girdle of beaten gold slackly buckled
, Kelley said,
with a pendant of gold down to the ground
.

She spoke: that is she opened Kelley’s mouth and spoke. John Dee wrote the words she spoke through Kelley, the last he ever
took down.

—
I am the daughter of Fortitude and ravished every hour from my youth
, she said.
For behold, I am understanding, and Science dwelleth with me, they covet and desire me with infinite appetite; few or none
that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stone and covered with the morning Clouds. My
feet are swifter than the winds and my hands are sweeter than the dew. My garments are from the beginning and my dwelling
place is in myself. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beasts of the field understand me. I am deflowered yet
a virgin, I sanctify and am not sanctified
.

On she came, this great whore goddess they had awakened, who could she be; Kelley trembled violently, speaking in her piping
dreadful lovely voice.

—
For lo
, she said,
I am loved of many, and a lover to many; as many as come unto me as they should will have entertainment. Cast out your old
strumpets and burn their clothes; abstain from the company of other women that are defiled, that are sluttish, and not so
beautiful as I
.

Kelley, as though divided into two, himself and her, tried to draw away from the burning glass, yet at the same time went
on talking, talking, unable not to:
I will play the harlot with you, I will enrich you with the spoils of other men, I will make a dwelling place among you, I
will be common with the father and the son, for my youth is in her flower, and my strength is not to be extinguished with
man. But disclose not my secrets unto women, neither let them understand how sweet I am, for all things belongeth not to everyone
.

Then she altered:
She turneth herself into a thousand shapes of all Creatures
John Dee wrote: Kelley, knuckles white on the arms of his chair and his eyes like saucers, chin on his breast as though he
had been taken by the throat, stared at the globe.

Tabby kitten, stick of elmwood, wriggling trout casting rainbow drops of water; Kelley flinched. Burning ember shedding sparks,
gray pigeon, drop of blood on its beak, he could hear the flutter of its wings. Then more things, all things, and all representations
of those things, dogs, stars, stones, and roses, cities, towns, and roads; his childhood home, his mother, himself; the Queen
and her knights, a picture of the Queen and her knights, a picture of the picture. Beasts and birds, tiger cubs rolling in
the dirt, mountain where deer walked, eating apples; wide white lake where longleg dawn-colored birds like herons rose up
in their thousands. She became the little spirit Ben that had visited him, and then a hundred other spiritual creatures, and
all their names began with B. She became John Dee and Joanna Kelley grappling naked; she became herself, herself and her lover
coupling, he the one and she the many, unitary sky coupling with multiform earth; he saw her become the generation of all
things that have names, a huge limitless fucking, the noise and crying-out of it, the shame and triumph of it.