I replied that he would do well to trust me and that it was my opinion that it was worth making a trial with the book and the substances in the two spheres. After we had discussed the terms of a contract to regulate our work together and vowed to trust each other, I asked him how he had come into possession of these things. In reply he recounted the following remarkable story:
Both book and spheres came from the grave of St. Dunstan, of that he was sure. When, thirty years ago now, the mob of the Ravenheads under their captain, a certain notorious Bartlett Greene, broke open the tomb, they found the body of the holy Bishop untouched by putrefaction, as if he had been buried that same day; the book, it was said, he held in his folded hands and the spheres were fixed to his mouth and forehead in some mysterious manner. The plundering heretics were sore disappointed to find no jewels about the corpse, as Greene had dreamed, and in their rage they had cast the body of the Bishop into the flames of the burning church. But the spheres and the book had been sold for a few pence to a Russian by the plunderers as they had no use for them.
“Aha! Mascee!” I thought to myself and questioned my visitor with mounting excitement:
“And you? How did they come into your possession?”
“Before myself, the last owner of these objects was an old man, formerly a secret agent for Bloody Bishop Bonner, who died in madness many years ago. He kept a bawdy-house in London” – which, the stranger added with a cynical laugh, he had often visited and slept at. “I had seen them there and immediately decided I must have them, for I had long known that St. Deniol had been a great adept with knowledge of alchymy. And it was just in time that I managed to procure them, for in the self-same night the secret agent was – – – that is, he died all of a sudden,” the stranger swiftly corrected himself. “I learnt from a wench who resided in the bawdy-house that the old whoremaster had been charged by the Bloody Bishop to seek the spheres and the book, but that when he had discovered them he concealed his find and kept them for himself. For a time the spheres had mysteriously disappeared, but then just as mysteriously reappeared.
“Strange!” I thought to myself, for I remembered exactly how I had thrown the two ivory spheres out of the window before my arrest.
“And you bought them from the secret agent before his death?”
“N-no” – the stranger avoided my eye and looked to the side, but quickly recovered his composure and said, louder than need be, “he gave them to me.”
I was sure the man was lying and I was beginning to rue the contract we had drawn up. Had he murdered the old bawd himself to get possession of the book and spheres? And I swithered and swayed, for the vision I had had in the night of a man without ears now seemed to be a warning. But I calmed my fears and told myself that my suspicion must be unfounded and that at the worst the stranger had stolen the two objects – and that from a dishonest finder. Moreover, the temptation to share possession of such rarities was so great that I could not bring myself to show my visitor the door, as a scholar and one of my station should properly have done. Rather I persuaded myself that Divine Providence had sent this man to me so that I should be blessed with the Stone of immortality. I further told myself that my own path in my youth had not always been straight and narrow and that I thus had no right to play the judge to this bold rascal. And so, after a short reflection, I resolved to accept my fate and welcomed the stranger, who told me his name was Edward Kelley, to my house and gave him my hand on our agreement to test the objects in his possession for their true value. He had been, I learnt, a lawyer’s clerk in London, and had then become a travelling apothecary and quacksalver after he had had his ears cut off by the public executioner for forging documents.
God grant that his arrival will bring blessing on my house!
I have taken him in despite the objections of my wife Jane, who from the very start has taken a strong dislike to this man with the cut off ears.
A few days later we made the first trial with the two powders in my laboratorium and were successful far beyond expectation: even with a very small projection we produced almost ten ounces of silver from twenty ounces of lead and from the same quantity of tin no less than ten ounces of pure gold. Kelley’s mouse’s eyes took on a feverish glitter and I was horrified to see how greed can transform a man. I told him that we would have to use the powder extremely sparingly, especially as there was only a little of the “Red Lion” left; Kelley would have preferred to turn everything into gold immediately.
I, however, vowed to myself by all things holy – and I told Kelley in no uncertain manner – that for my part I would not use even one grain of the valuable powders to enrich myself, but would endeavour to extract the secret of the preparation of the philosopher’s stone from St. Dunstan’s book; and when I knew how the red tincture was to be projected onto the incorruptible body of the resurrection I would use them for no other purpose. At this I presume Kelley secretly turned up his beak of a nose in disgust.
Inwardly I still could not rid myself of my unease that these treasures
