The Angel of the West Window

myself again and again, for there is something within me that quells all doubt. It may well be that my father, Rowland Dee, in the manner of noblemen who have come down in the world and foresee a miserable end to their line, often praised the rank and reputation of his forebears with high-sounding words and made much of our relationship to the Boleyns and the Greys. But he principally did so when the royal bailiffs had once more come to distrain another meadow or patch of woodland. It can hardly be the memory of these humiliations that fed the fires of my dreams of future glory.

And yet the first token and the first prophecy of my future came from within myself, namely from the glass in which I saw myself, filthy and befuddled with drink, after the celebration of my degree. The words that the ghostly image spoke to me on that occasion still ring in my ears; neither the image nor the words seemed to come from me, for I saw myself in the glass as a separate person from the one I was, and I heard the words coming not from my own lips, but from my companion in the glass. There is no delusion of the senses in this, nor of the memory, for I suddenly went stone cold sober from head to toe when the jack i’the glass addressed me.

Added to this is the strange prophecy the witch of Uxbridge spoke to Lady Elizabeth. Later the Princess herself sent me a secret copy through the mediation of my friend, Robert Dudley, to which she had added three words, which today as then I bear inscribed on my heart: verificatur in aeternis. And then there were the even clearer hints and promises of my destiny that Bartlett Greene revealed to me in the Tower and confirmed by unmistakable signs – Bartlett Greene who, as I well know today, was an initiate of the mysteries whose adepts are still to be found in the Scottish Highlands. He greeted me as the “Royal Youth”; often I am gripped by the notion that this expression can, nay must, be interpreted in terms of alchymical symbols, and that the “crown” that was promised me is other than a physical earthly crown. Greene, an ignorant butcher, opened my eyes to the significance of the Nordic Thule, Greenland, as a bridge to the immeasurable lands and treasures of the Indian Continent of which the adventurers, Columbus and Pizarro, had discovered but the smallest and most worthless part and subjected it to the Spanish throne. He showed me the riven crown of the Western Sea, of England and northern America, that is to be made whole, and the King and Queen, conjoined and united on the thrones of the Islands and the New Indies.

And again I am seized by the thought: is all this to be understood in an earthly sense?

And it was he – not only in the Tower but twice since when he appeared bodily before me and spoke to me face to face – who planted Rhodri’s motto in my breast and fixed it there, as if with an iron clamp: “Do or die!”

And he it was who shook me out of my lethargy for one last endeavour, one supreme exertion, and it was he who, with all the silver-tongued power of an eloquence as clear as the fountainhead of all knowledge and as refreshing as an icy spring on a fevered brow, lured me on and tempted me to prevail upon my Queen whenever the irresolute side of her nature seemed to draw her back trembling from the brink of decision.

Yet again the thought seizes me: is all this to be understood in an earthly sense merely?

But as it is here my purpose to relate everything in its true time and place, I will return to my scrutiny of my past life to see if I can find the cause of the failure of these my most fervent endeavours.

After the death of Queen Mary, which fell in my thirty-third year, my time seemed to have come. At that time, too, I had drawn up in great detail all my plans for a military expedition to take Greenland and to station there a garrison which would serve as a bridgehead for the conquest of the northern regions of America. Not the least circumstance – geographical, navigational or military – that might serve to prosper or hinder such a great enterprise had been forgotten and all had been prepared for an immediate expansion of the power and sovereignty of England.

The beginning was most propitious. In November of the year of her accession, 1558, the young Queen commanded me through my friend Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, to prepare a horoscope for the day of her coronation in Westminster Abbey. I took it as a sign of her friendship for me and was fired with zeal to seek in the configurations of the stars and constellations testimony both of her ascent to power and glory, and of our joint royal destiny, vouchsafed me by the prophecies.

This horoscope, whose miraculous configurations did, indeed, presage a matchless blossoming and harvest for Elizabeth’s reign and for England, brought me, beside the warmest praises and a considerable gift of money, hints of an even greater reward from my royal mistress. The purse I tossed aside to a servant, but I hoarded the many secret tokens of her favour which she repeatedly sent to me through Leicester and which confirmed in me the assurance of a speedy fulfilment of all my dreams.

But – nothing was fulfilled!

Queen Elizabeth began to play with me and to this day there is no end to the cat-and-mouse game in sight. At what cost to my energy, to my peace of mind and trust in God and the eternal powers, to my strength of purpose, to all my lower and higher faculties, this account can never reveal. A force strong enough to