Log-book of my first voyage of discovery to the only true Greenland, to the everlasting throne and crown of England. The 20th day of November in the year of Our Lord, 1582.
It is now plain that my misgivings were well founded, that beset me when I believed that Greenland, which I thought to subject to the temporal power of Queen Elizabeth, was to be found here on earth.
From the very first day of our collaboration, when in a vain delusion I threw in my lot with the Ravenheads, that villain and arch-deceiver, Bartlett Greene, has led me most treacherously astray and drawn me with his devilish wiles into the path of error. It is so with most men, that they take upon themselves a heavy burden here on earth because they do not see that our task is on the other side, and not here and now; they have not understood the curse of the Fall. They do not understand that our labour here is that we might be rewarded “over there”. Bartlett Greene set me on the road to spiritual ruin when he whispered in my ear that I should seek the fruit of my ambition here on earth, so that I should not discover that the crown is “on the other side”. My road was to be one of adversity, disappointment, sorrow and treachery that I might become grey before my time and tired of life.
Great was the danger for my soul’s true destination, but as well as that he wanted to prevent the fulfilment of what was foreordained for our bloodline, namely that we it should be who would reach man’s highest peak in his rise from the Fall. His counsel – that the path to this glory led through earthly power and majesty – was utterly wrong. Today I know for certain that it is ordained that I shall seek my Greenland, my Crownland, “on the other side”, and that my whole life has had no other meaning: on the other side, where the undamaged crown of the mysteries and the “virgin queen” await their king.
For three days now an apparition has appeared to me, early in the morning but when I was wide awake, so that it has nothing of a dream or suchlike imaginings. I never knew before that there is something beyond waking or sleeping, dreaming or madness; a fifth way, a mystery: a clear vision vouchsafed of things that are beyond this world. And the apparition that came to me was quite different from those that Greene showed me in the polished coal in the Tower.
I saw a green hill and I knew it was Gladhill, the glad hill of our ancestral home that stands proudly in the arms of the Dee family. But there was no silver sword thrust into the top; instead, its gentle summit was crowned with a green tree, like the one in the left-hand field, and a living spring bubbled out of the ground at its foot. The sight was pleasing to my eye and I hurried from the dusty plain toward the hill to refresh myself from the old wellspring of our line. It was a miracle how I could see everything as real and yet symbolic at the same time.
As I made my way towards the hill I realised with piercing clarity that I was that tree myself and that I wanted to stretch up with its trunk – that is with my spinal cord – to heaven and spread all its twigs and branches, that were my branching nerves and veins become external and visible, in the free air. I felt the sap and the blood and the sensations and joy pulsating through the tree of veins and nerves before me and at the same time I was proudly aware of myself within it. The silver spring at my feet became my children and my children’s children, a never-ending stream, returned from the future to celebrate an approaching, and yet already present, resurrection to Eternal Life. The features of each one were different and yet they all bore similarity to me; it seemed to me that it was I who had impressed upon them the stamp of our line, to preserve them for ever from Death and destruction. It filled me with a sense of reverent pride. – As I came closer to the tree I saw, framed by the highest branches as by a crown, a double face appear: the one as of a man, the other of a woman, and the two were grown together as one. And in the golden light above this double head there hovered a crown beneath a crystal of ineffable splendour.
Straightway I recognised in the woman’s face my Lady Elizabeth and would have cried aloud for joy but that a sudden pain did stop me, for I saw and felt the man’s head not as my own, but as that of a younger man; it was in every feature more carefree than the one I have borne on my neck since the days of my innocence. I would fain have been deceived by a regret for my lost youth that whispered to me that this scion of the tree was myself in days gone by, but I refused to let pity dim my eye and saw that it was not myself in the double head but one far off, one who rose out of the spring at my feet, one beyond my reach – Another! – –
And pain raged within me that it was not I but Another of my blood and seed, One from the latter days, who should inherit the crown and be conjoined indissolubly with my Elizabeth. And in my anger and fury I raised my arm against the tree – against myself – as if to fell it. But, from the marrow of my backbone, the tree spoke:
“Thou fool! Dost thou still not see thyself? What is
