Until that point I had kept Lipotin’s green Florentine mirror covered with a cloth and turned to the wall, for fear of seeing Assja step out of it towards me, as Theodor Gärtner once had. Now, overcome with burning, sensual desire, I tore off the cloth and looked into the glass:
She stood there as clear as life, thrusting her naked breasts towards me and at the same time pleading for mercy with the sweet expression of the Holy Virgin. In horror I thought this must be the end.
In one, last, desperate effort I raised my fist and hit out in wild fury at the mirror, smashing the glass into a thousand splinters.
But with each tiny splinter her image ripped through the flesh into my veins, burning in my blood like stinging nettles; and looking up at me from each gleaming fragment on the floor: Assja, Assja, the naked, devouring succubus, Assja, Assja, Assja. Then, like a swimmer from the sea, she rose from the images, and came towards me, a whole army of smiling sirens, enveloping me in the warm scent of her hundred naked bodies.
The air all around me was permeated with the smell of her skin and it was the sweetest, most intoxicating odour I can ever remember inhaling, more intense even than the odours of a warm spring night. – Every child knows how smells can benumb the senses and transport one into contented dreams.
And then Assja-Isaïs began to envelop me in her aura, in her astral body. All the while she gazed at me with the bright, innocent eyes of a reptile that kills because it is the law of the species. She injected the essence of her being under my skin and grew around me, grew through me. What defence had I? How could I resist?
Once more I was bewitched by the melody that wound in and out of my ear:
From out of the waning moon,
From the silver black of the night,
Look down on me – – –
I felt it was a dirge for me ... then a sudden thought pulled me back from the edge of the grave that initiates call the threshold to the “eighth world” and which means complete annihilation – I remembered that I still had the ancestral dagger, the spearhead of Hywel Dda.
Can a thought on its own create fire? There is fire sleeping all around mankind, hidden, invisible but everywhere. A magic word, perhaps, and in an instant it ignites and consumes the whole world.
As if it was the mere thought of the dagger that called up the fire, a huge flame spurted up from the floor in front of me, sizzling like an explosion of powder, so that the whole room was bathed in a flickering glow. I plunged through the middle of it; I must go through the fire, even if I am burnt alive, I must find the dagger and hold it!
I cannot remember how I came through the wall of fire, but come through I did and found myself in my study. I opened the silver box and snatched up the dagger. I clutched the handle just as John Dee did when he was in the coffin, and when Bartlett Greene appeared towering over me and tried to wrest it from me, I repulsed him with one blow in the wall-eye which sent him tumbling back. I raced down the stairs in a shower of sparks and a suffocating blanket of smoke and threw the whole weight of my body at the door so that it gave way with a thunderous crash ...
I felt a waft of cool, fresh night air. My hair and beard were singed, my clothes still smouldering.
Where? Where can I turn?
Behind me I heard the crash of beams collapsing, consumed by the unquenchable supernatural fire. – Away, away from here! I kept the dagger clutched tight in my hand, it was worth more than anything in this world or the next. Suddenly, in front of me, stopping my wild rush, there appeared a vision – the gentle, majestic lady I had seen in the overgrown park at Elsbethstein. I was filled with rejoicing:
It is Elizabeth! The Queen of my blood and John Dee’s Elizabeth, Elizabeth who has patiently awaited this hour! – I sank to my knees before her, oblivious of the fire of the Dugpas that was stretching out its fingers towards me ... Then, as if the blade in my hand had transmitted its sharp clarity to my brain, I saw through the apparition: it was a disguise, a subterfuge, an image stolen by the dark deceivers and projected to drag me down to perdition ...
I close my eyes and dashed through the phantom. I ran as if all the demons of the wild hunt were on my tail and suddenly – my running had direction: Elsbethstein was the goal that lit up my whole being – away to Elsbethstein! I was drawn, held, protected by invisible hands; the blood pounding in my temples blinded me, but wings sprouted on stumbling feet as my headlong rush finally took me to the highest tower of the castle.
Behind me – a bloody sky as if the whole city was burning with the fires of hell.
Thus too did Mortlake burn as John Dee, my restless ancestor, left behind him his past life with its honours and dignities, its errors and enmities: that was the thought that came to my mind.
But I possessed one thing that he had lost: the dagger! Hail to thee, John Dee, that thou shouldst rise again to live on
