Suddenly the figure disappeared and with it all my self-control. I ran back and forth along the rampart wall like a madman until I regained my senses, slapped my forehead and told myself I was behaving like a lunatic.
Feeling uneasy, I continued on my way home. As I walked, I hummed to myself, and words suggested themselves which, I don’t know how or why, I tried to fit to a tangled melody in the rhythm of my footsteps:
From out of the waning moon,
From the silver black of the night,
Look down on me,
Look down on me
Lady, bless me with Thy dark light,
Come to me, Lady, o come to me soon
...
This meaningless doggerel pursued me all the way to my room and it was only with a great effort that I managed to clear my mind of the monotonous singsong. But now I feel it has some strange significance.
From out of the waning moon ...?
The words are offering themselves to me, I can feel it, they come up and rub themselves against my skin like – like black cats.
Much of what has happened to me of late has this sense of strange significance. Or is it all in my mind? It all began, so it seems to me, with my work on the papers of my cousin, John Roger.
What on earth has the waning moon – a tremor runs through me as I realise what put those last three words into my mouth: they appear in the warning written in another hand on the fly leaf of John Dee’s notebook, the little tome bound in green morocco!
And yet I repeat: What on earth has a mysterious warning from some superstitious inhabitant of the seventeenth century about Scottish satanic rites and the terrors of initiation to do with my evening stroll and a picturesque moonrise over the ramparts of our respectable old town? What concern is it of mine, what has it to do with me, a man of the twentieth century?
My body still aches with the events of yesterday. I slept badly, plagued by nightmares. My Lord Grandfather made me ride-a-cock-horse on his knee and kept whispering two words in my ear, two words which I have forgotten but which were in some way connected with “ring” and “spear”. Also, I saw the “other face” behind me again; it had a wideawake, I am almost tempted to say warning, expression. But I cannot remember what it was warning me against. The Princess appeared in my dream vision, as well – naturally! – but, again, I cannot remember in what connection. Anyway, it’s nonsense to talk of connections in such dream fantasies.
The end result is that I have a muzzy head and I am glad to have an undemanding occupation for today which means I will not have to exercise my brain. Rummaging around in old manuscripts is about all I am fit for today. And it is all to the good that from the point where I left off yesterday John Dee’s notebook seems to be undamaged. I will carry on translating and copying out:
The Silver Shoe of Bartlett Greene
The first weak rays of the early morning sun had just penetrated to our cell when a man, scarcely of middle height and all in black, entered alone. In spite of his corpulence his gait, indeed, his whole body, betrayed a supple agility. I was immediately struck by the pungent smell given off by his cassock as it fluttered out behind him in a gust of air: the cell was filled with the stench of a beast of prey. This chubby-faced, red-cheeked man of the cloth – one would have taken him for a jovial wine-soak of a monk had it not been for the strangely fixed, half imperious, half furtive look in his yellow eyes – this man in the garb of a simple priest and without any bodyguards – if there were any, they kept well out of sight – was, I knew straightway, none other than Edmund Bonner, the Bloody Bishop of London, in person. Bartlett Greene remained squatting on the ground in silence opposite me; only his eyeballs swivelled slowly back and forth, attentively following our visitor’s every move. Strange to relate, at the sight of my abused fellow prisoner all my fear left me and I followed the example of the Captain of the Ravenheads and sat quietly on my stool, as if completely indifferent to the presence of our visitor pacing up and down between us.
Without warning he whirled round on Bartlett Greene, gave him a light tap with his toe and, like a panther pouncing, suddenly bellowed at him in a parade-ground voice:
“Up!”
Greene scarce raised an eyebrow. With a smile in his eyes he squinted up at the man who had ordered his body to be broken, drew a deep breath into his broad chest and roared back his mocking reply:
“Too soon, o
