My head is clear again, but I feel it is about to burst whenever I think of last night and of what happened! It needs cool reflection and a precise account. A servant led me home from the carousal with which Guilford Talbot had celebrated my elevation to the degree of Master of Arts, though God knows how he managed to bring me here. If that was not the noblest quaffing since England began ... Enough, it is enough that I was drunk as never before in my life. Noah himself cannot have been worse drunk.
The night was mild and damp. That added spice to the wine. I must have crawled home on all fours, my filthy garments bear eloquent witness to that.
When I was back in my chamber I sent my servant about his business, for I do not care to be coddled like a child when I wrestle with the wine demon, nor do I suffer another to cover my nakedness as did Father Noah.
I tried to undress myself and succeeded. It was with pride that I stood before my mirror.
There, grinning out at me was the most vile, most wretched, most filthy face I have ever encountered: a fellow with a high forehead but with his hair straggling down in greasy locks, as if to make manifest the base desires that proceed from a degenerate mind. Blue eyes that were not regal and commanding, but glazed over with alcohol, narrow and insolent; a loose, drunkard’s mouth hanging open over the grimy goatee beard instead of the thin, imperious lips of a descendant of Rhodri the Great; a fat neck, sagging shoulders – in brief, the very travesty of a Dee, Lord of Gladhill.
I threw my shoulders back and screamed in fury at the fellow in the looking-glass:
“Thou filthy cur, soiled from head to toe from the midden, art thou not ashamed to show thy face to me?! Hast thou never heard it said: Ye shall be as gods? Look at me; dost thou in the least resemble me? Me, the scion of the line of Hywel Dda? No! thou misbegotten, misshapen apology for a noble knight, thou blown-up scarecrow that would be a Magister liberarum artium, no, I will stand thy insolent gaze no more. I will smash thee and thy mirror in a thousand fragments before me!”
I raised my arm to deliver the blow. And the figure in the mirror raised his. To my heated mind it seemed like an appeal for mercy, and I was seized with sudden pity for this Jack i’ the glass so that I said:
“John – if thou still deservest that name of honour, thou cur – John, I beseech thee by St Patrick’s Purgatory, examine thy soul. Thou must repent thy ways, thou must be reborn in the spirit if thou value my companionship! Pull thyself together, thou wretch – – –!”
And at that instant the figure in the mirror stood erect with a proud toss of the head, just as any sober man would have expected. But in my drunken state I took my Jack i’ the glass’s abrupt straightening up for a sign of his desire for improvement and, much moved, I addressed him thus:
“Ah, my Lord of the Midden, at least thou dost acknowledge that things cannot go on in this manner. And right pleased I am, Sir, that thou seekest spiritual rebirth, for” – tears of heartfelt pity were coursing down my cheeks – “what would otherwise become of thee?”
And now the one I thus addressed was also shedding tears, which only served to strengthen my foolish belief that I had said something of the utmost significance. And so I called to the repentant sinner:
“Truly, Heaven has favoured thee, my fallen friend, that it hath caused thee to reveal thyself to me this day in all thy wretchedness. Awake now and do what thy innermost soul desireth; for – this I tell thee now – I will – from this day forth – no more – – no more – – –”
– I gasped and choked as a retching fit brought on by the over-indulgence in wine smothered my voice.
But then – Oh! the icy terror of it – I heard, as if through a long tube, my Jack i’ the glass speaking in soft tones:
“... shall know neither rest nor repose till the coasts of Greenland, where the Northern Lights glow, shall be conquered, – till I have set my foot on Greenland and Greenland is subject to my power. He who holds the Green Land in fief, to him shall the Empire beyond the sea be given, to him shall be given the crown of England!” -
With that the voice fell silent.
I no longer know how, in my drunken state, I managed to get to my bed. Thoughts poured over me in a wild frenzy; there was no resisting them, but they poured over me and rushed on, without entering my mind, it seemed. I could feel them above me and yet I could not direct them.
From the mirror on the wall a ray shot down – that was what all these milling thoughts were at heart, shooting stars! – the ray struck me and continued along the track of the future, shining on all my descendants. A fountainhead is created for centuries to come! – – – My mind grasped a fragment of the message and my trembling hand committed it to my diary. Then I carried off the long line of kings – all of my blood and in some mysterious way hidden within me – to my sleep.
Today I know: should I become King of England – and what can hinder me from turning this miraculous revelation, incorporeal and yet plain to my senses, into reality? – should I become
