From that point on I am calm and ready to accept my fate, whether it lead me to victory or cast me down before the eyes of the steadfast.
Quietly I ask:
“What must I do?”
“Do? – Do what you must.”
“How can I?”
“In the realm where your destiny is decided you do not ask to know. You must act without knowing.”
“Act without knowing what I must do? That ...”
“That is the most difficult part.” Theodor Gärtner stands up, shakes me by the hand and says, as if his mind is on other things:
“The moon is above the horizon. – Take the dagger that you have won back. Go down into the park. There you will meet with one who would drive you away from Elsbethstein. If you step through the outer ring of walls you will never find your way back to Elsbethstein and we will never see each other again. – But I hope it will not end in that way. Go now. That is all I have to say to you.” He turns from me and does not look back as he strides off into the darkness and disappears behind the flickering candles. I think I hear a door close in the distance. Then it is deathly quiet around me; I can hear my heart beating wildly.
The moon has just risen above the castle roof, opposite the great window.
I am in the garden, clutching the dagger tight in my hand, although I do not know what use I am to put it to. I gaze at the stars. They hover in the still air with a clear light, not flickering at all, and I can physically sense this imperturbable calm of the cosmos settling on me. My mind is empty, relaxed – unquestioning.
“Magic is to act without knowing.” The significance of these words of my friend flows through me and brings an immense calm.
How long I stood there I do not know; the meadow seemed spellbound by the moonlight. In the distance – or nearby, it is difficult to tell in the emerald half-light – is the dense, black mass of a group of huge trees.
Suddenly a wavering glow approaches from the trees.
It is like a thin mist rendered translucent by the fluctuating moonlight. My eyes fix on the apparition. It is a figure stepping lightly through the bushes, now pausing a moment, now moving more rapidly – it is the same figure I once glimpsed far off through the shimmering midday heat haze: regal, mysterious, majestic – it is the long awaited Mistress of Elsbethstein, the enigmatic Queen Elizabeth.
And as if drawn by my burning desire, the apparition approaches; all remembrance of the purpose of my presence here in the nocturnal meadow has been erased from my mind in an instant. Inwardly rejoicing, and with a heart-splitting intensity which I am only half conscious of, I hurry towards her, then hesitate for fear the fair apparition might withdraw at my approach, evaporate into the air, turn out to be a hallucination.
But she does not disappear.
She hesitates when I hesitate, hurries on when I hurry, and at last she stands before me in all her majesty – the Mother, John Dee’s goddess, destined for me from beyond the bonds of blood. Her smile promises the fulfilment of primordial longings.
She spreads out her arms and smiles and beckons me to follow; her slim, silvery hand lightly touches the dagger in mine and my fingers slacken their grip to give her the gift that is her due.
But at that moment another radiance than that of the moon flashes in the sky above me. Instinctively I know the Baphomet is there and the crown jewel. It does not blind me, but bathes everything in a cool, clear, sharp light. A smile flits across the features of the mysterious Lady close in front of my face, but I sense the secret struggle between this smile, promising unknown delight for aeons to come, and the icy radiance of the crystal above me. At that fleeting shadow of an exultant smile my spirit checks in its headlong flight for an infinitesimal, angel’s wing-beat of time – and I awake from my trance and see that my vision has thrown off the shackles of space and that I can see both before and behind, like the double-faced Baphomet. I see before me Dame World with her tempting smile and the mask stolen from the Holy Lady – and I see her from behind, ripped open from the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet, her whole body teeming with vipers, toads, worms and loathesome vermin. And whilst from the front her whole figure breathes the sweet fragrance and majesty of the Goddess, from the side she keeps turned away from me comes the stench of rotting flesh, filling the soul with nameless horror at the ultimate mystery of decay. –
My fingers grip the dagger more tightly and my eye is bright and my heart of good cheer. My words to the ghost are gentle and friendly:
“Go, Isaïs, I dismiss you from this place. You will not deceive one of Hywel Dda’s line a second time with the form of our chosen mistress. Give up and be satisfied that once in the park of Mortlake Castle you prevailed. That error has been expiated.”
And while I am still speaking a sudden gust of wind moans through the grass and the moon disappears behind leaden clouds. At about knee level a grimacing face is blown hither and thither across the meadow, baring its teeth and glowering at me in raging fury; by the red beard streaming in the wind I recognise John Dee’s comrade and first tempter, Bartlett Greene.
A wild dance begins:
