“I have always sought what is best for thee, my son.”
“Then give me the key and the Stone!”
“St. Dunstan’s book is lost. What use is the key?”
“Yes: Kelley – your instrument – lost it. If the key is no use to me any more, you must know what I am in need of.”
“That I do know, my son. But how can a thing be found that has been lost for ever?”
“With the help of Him Who knows.”
“That is not within my power. We are all subject to the Book of Fate.”
“And what is written in the Book of Fate?”
“That I do not know. The Book of Fate is sealed.”
“Then open the Book!”
“If thou wishest it; give me thy knife to loosen the seal.”
Realisation, understanding and despair strike me like lightning bolts. I collapse to my knees at the hearth, as if it were an altar with the Blessed Sacrament on it. I beseech the stone guest. Futile! – Yet wait. He is smiling. A gentle, kindly smile lights up his pale green, jade face:
“Where is the spearhead of Hywel Dda?”
“Lost ...”
“And still thou takest me at my word?”
Futile rebellion flares up within me once more; I cry out in impotent fury:
“Yes, I still take you at your word!”
“What is thy courage? What is thy right?”
“The courage of the martyred soul. The right of the sacrificial lamb.”
“What dost thou want of me?”
“The fulfilment of the promises made through the years.”
“Thou demandest the – Stone?”
“I demand the Stone!”
“In three days thou shalt have it. Use the time to prepare thyself to set off on a new journey. The time of trial is over. Thou art called.”
I am alone in the darkness. The glow of the sheets of lightning reveals the yawning emptiness of the grate.
Day breaks. Wearily, wearily I drag myself round the blackened ruins to gather together whatever leftovers of the former wealth of the Dees are still to be found. My back – every limb – aches whenever I have to bend down, as if red-hot knives were being jabbed into my muscles. I pack my rags and tatters into a bundle, ready for the journey.
Talbot Price suddenly appears. Without a word he watches me. Then:
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Prague, perhaps.”
“Did He come? To you? Has He commanded it?”
“Yes, He was here. He h – has com – manded it.” – I feel myself slowly fall into a swoon.
The neighing of horses. The rattling of a carriage rolling up. A strange coachman comes into the kitchen and looks at me questioningly. This is not the neighbour who promised to take me to Gravesend. For one third of all that I possess. I have never seen the man before.
It matters not! I try to stand up. I cannot. It will be difficult to make my way to Prague on foot. I gesture to the man, trying to make myself understood:
“Tomorrow ... perhaps tomorrow, my good man ...”
I cannot set out on a journey. I can hardly raise myself from the bed of straw they have laid me on. The pain in my back is ... much ... too great.
Good that a doctor, Talbot Price, is here. He bends down over me and whispers:
“Courage, John old boy, it’ll soon be over. Human frailty, old boy, natural human frailty. It’s the gall-bladder, it’s the kidneys. That damned stone’s the trouble, the stone, old friend. It’s the stone that is causing you such pain.”
“The Stone!?” I gasp, collapsing back onto the straw.
“Yes, John, the stone. Lots of people suffer from the stone and we doctors can do nothing to relieve it as long as we are not allowed to cut into the flesh.”
The excruciating pain sets piercing rays of light flashing before my inner eye:
“O wise Jew of Prague, o Rabbi Low!” the cry seems to be squeezed out of me like the cold sweat from my chest. So that is the “Stone”?! A cheap trick. I feel all hell is mocking me: “The Angel brought you the stone of death and not the Stone of Life. Long ago. Did you not know?”
I seem to hear the Rabbi calling to me from a long way away in time:
“Beware when you pray for the Stone. Beware that your prayer-arrow is not caught by the Other One!”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I hear Price ask me.
Alone, wrapped up in rags and mangy furs, I am sitting in my old armchair. At the fireside. Now I remember: I asked Price to set my chair so that I face East – so that I can receive my next visitor, whoever that shall be, looking in the opposite direction from the one I spent my whole life facing: with my back to the green West.
The visitor I am waiting for is death ...
Price has promised to come in the evening to see how I am; he will make death easier.
I am waiting. Price has not come.
I have been waiting like this for hours, impotent against the tormenting pain and hoping Price will appear to release me. The night passes; Price, my last friend, has failed me.
All promises, whether from mortal men or immortal beings, have left me stranded, alone.
Nowhere is there help. That I have learnt. Nowhere is there pity. God is in His heaven and sound asleep in a soft bed, like my doctor. None of them suffers the torment of the stone cut with seven times seventy razor-sharp edges in his side. Why is not Hell here to savour my suffering? Lost! Betrayed! Abandoned!
My mind is benumbed by pain; my hand gropes over the surface of the hearthstone; it stumbles on something cold: a scalpel. Price left it here so that he could bleed me. Blessed chance! May you be rewarded for it, Talbot Price! This little blade is worth more to me at this moment than the blunt Spearhead
