Once more his half-muffled laughter sent a chill down my spine. Then he went on:
“So; I have played my part in denying the Romish priests the pleasure of discovering we make common cause. But I did it not for love of thee, my noble companion, but because that which I know and cannot change compelled me. For thou, Doctor Dee, art the royal youth of this age and to thee is promised the crown in the Green Land and the Mistress of the Three Kingdoms awaits thee.”
These words from the mouth of a common outlaw struck me like a lightning bolt and I was hard put to it to keep my composure. Quickly my mind coupled the possible with the probable and at once it seemed to me I perceived the connection between Greene, a vagabond and necromancer, the witch of the moor of Uxbridge and Mascee.
As if he could read my thoughts, Greene went on:
“The weird sister of Uxbridge I know well, and the Tutor to the Czar of Muscovy, too. Beware him! He is a gambler; but thou, my Brother, shouldst rule of thy own design! The red and white globes, which thou threw out of thy window – – –”
I laughed defiantly:
“You are well informed, Greene; is Mascee, then, one of the Ravenheads?”
“If I say ‘thou’rt wrong’ or if I say ‘it may be’ thou art none the wiser for it. But what I will tell thee is – – –” and the brigand detailed, by hour and minute, everything I had done in the night when the Bishop’s men had taken me and he described the very place where I had all my writings hidden, the place I dare not even confide to this diary. With a laugh, he told me things I had done which no man could know, as if he were me myself, or a spirit that had ever been about me.
I could no longer keep back my astonishment and my secret horror of the mutilated leader of the brigands, the condemned man who laughingly commanded the most mysterious arts and powers; I stared at him and stammered, “You know no pain; you – so you say – enjoy the powerful aid of your mistress and goddess, that is named Black Isaïs, who can see the most secret doings of man, – how comes it then that you lie here in chains your limbs all torn and soon to be consumed by flames, and do not walk out through these walls by thy magical power?”
Whilst I spoke Greene had taken from within his jerkin a small leathern purse which he held loosely in his hand so that it swung to and fro like a pendulum. He said with a laugh:
“Did I not tell thee, Brother Dee, that my time is up according to our Law? As I consecrated the cats to the fire, so must I now consecrate myself to the fire, since today my years number three and thirty. Today I am still that Bartlett Greene whom they may torture, tear apart and burn, and it is that son of a priest and a whore that speaks to thee; but on the morrow I shall put that off and the Son of Man shall be the groom in the House of the Great Mother. Then shall the time of my reign be come, and all of you, Brother Dee, shall feel my rod as I rule in Eternal Life! – – – That thou shalt alway be mindful of these words and shalt follow my road, take this, my earthly wealth for thine inheritance – – –”
The text of the diary has once more been deliberately damaged. It looks as if it was destroyed by John Dee’s own hand. But the nature of Bartlett Greene’s gift to him is clear from the first lines of the next passage preserved in the diary.
(Scorch mark) – – – so that towards the fourth hour after noon all the torments that the Bloody Bishop could think up for his revenge had been made ready.
When they had taken Bartlett Greene away and I, John Dee, had been alone for an half hour, I took out the gift yet again; it was nothing remarkable, a piece of black coal, about the size of my fist and polished in the form of a regular octahedron. I looked closely to see if there were not, according to the instructions of its former owner, images of present events in distant places to be seen on its gleaming faces, or even whether future happenings from my own life might appear as in a mirror. There was nothing of the like to be seen because, as I suppose, my soul was troubled, which Greene himself had said was detrimental to any such operation.
Finally I caught the sound of the bolts being drawn back and quickly hid the mysterious coal in the innermost lining of my jerkin.
Hardly had I done so than a troop of the Bishop’s heavily armed guards entered and my first thought was that they had come to execute me on the spot and without trial. But their purpose was otherwise; in order to break my obdurate spirit, I was to be taken to the fire to see Greene burn at the stake and be brought so close that that it would singe my beard. Perhaps Satan himself whispered in Bonner’s ear that Greene, in his mortal anguish, or I myself, confused by the terrible sight, might yet be brought to confess our complicity or some other deception. But he deceived only himself. I will not waste many words describing something that has been branded on my soul for life; I will briefly tell how the roasting of Bartlett Greene made a very different dish for the Bishop to swallow than the
