The Angel of the West Window

it was as if each note ran down my spine to my feet as they walked, and from there into the womb of the earth. And once, at midnight – the first of May, the night of the Druids’ feast, and the moon was on the wane – an invisible hand rose from the ground and held me fast by the foot, that I could not move forward nor back. Straightway I stopped my piping and stood as if rooted to the spot. An icy blast – from a chasm in the earth before me, so it seemed – blew over me and froze me from head to toe; and as I also felt it on my neck I turned round and saw standing behind me One in the garb of a shepherd, with a crook in his hand that was forked at the top like the letter Y. He was followed by a herd of black sheep. But on my way there I had seen neither sheep nor shepherd, so that I thought I must have walked past him with my eyes closed and half asleep, for he was not like an apparition, as one might think, but of flesh and blood; so too were his sheep, as I could tell from the smell of damp wool their coats gave off – – – (scorch marks) – – – He pointed to my wall-eye and said, ‘Because thou art called’. – – –” (scorch marks).

This must be a description of some deep esoteric mystery, for written in red ink by another hand at the top of the half-burnt page was:

If Thy Heart be faint, read not on! If Thou trust not in Thy Soul’s strength, choose now: ignorance and peace, or Lust for knowledge and damnation!

There follow pages that are utterly ruined. The fragments of script that are still legible suggest that the shepherd revealed to Greene mysteries that seem to be connected with the cult of a dark goddess of antiquity and the magical influences of the moon; there appears to be reference to that terrible rite that is still known in Scotland today as the Taghairm. It further appears that at the time of his imprisonment in the Tower Bartlett Greene was still a virgin, which is all the more remarkable as chastity is not a quality one normally associates with brigands. The text is too fragmentary to tell whether this was from deliberate choice or from an inborn aversion to women. From then on the text is relatively undamaged:

“– – – only understood the half – but at that time I was only a ‘halfling’ in such matters – of what the shepherd told me of the gift that Black Isaïs would give me, for how could it be that a tangible object should come from the incorporeal realm. When I asked him how I would recognise that the time had come, he said, ‘Thou shalt hear the cock crow.’ That made no sense to me – the cocks crow every morning in the village. Nor could I see that it should be a special boon not to know fear or pain on earth; it seemed of little account to me, that thought myself bold and fearless enough. But the fruit ripens on the bough, and when its season came I heard the cockcrow the shepherd talked of, but within me. Until that time I had not known that everything must first come to pass in the blood before it can take on corporeal shape. Then I received the gift from Isaïs – the ‘Silver Shoe’. In the long years of waiting I was subject to strange visions and visitations: damp, invisible fingers touched me; I felt a bitter taste on my tongue, a burning sensation on my head – as if a hot iron was branding me with a tonsure – and stabbing, shooting pains on the palms of my hands and soles of my feet; I could hear a sound as of a cat crying in my ear. Strange characters, which I could not read, but which looked like those in Jewish manuscripts, appeared like a rash on my skin, but vanished as soon as the sun shone on them. Sometimes I was hot with desire for a woman, which then did seem strange to me, since I had ever felt disgust at the daughters of Eve and their lewd dealings with men. – – –

“Then, when I felt the cock-crow rise up my spine and, as had been foretold, a cool shower sprinkled my head in baptism, although there was no cloud to be seen in the sky, I went on the first of May, the night of the druid’s ceremonies, to and fro across the moor; I sought not, but I found, of a sudden, a chasm opened up in the ground before me. – – – (scorch mark) – – – drawing the cart with the fifty cats, as the shepherd had ordained. I made a fire and carried out the rite of the cursing of the full moon – the horror of it sat deep in my heart and my blood was like icy needles coursing through my veins. Then I took out the first cat, impaled it on the spit and began the ‘Taghairm’ by slowly roasting it over the fire. Its dreadful screaming pierced my ears for many minutes – they seemed like days to me and time itself seemed to stretch until it was nigh unbearable. How could I bear the same horror repeated fifty-fold? For I knew that I must not stop until the last cat was roasted and I knew that I must not let the screaming be interrupted. Soon those still in the cage lent their voices to the chorus and I felt the spirits of madness, that slumber in every man, begin to stir and tear my soul to shreds. However, they did not stay inside me, but poured