Then Kelley told me what preparations were necessary that the Green Angel might be revealed to us in a physical body, according to the laws of the of the invisible world. As well as the two of us and, most important, my wife Jane, who was to sit close by Kelley’s side, two of my friends should assemble at a given hour of a particular night during the waning of the moon, in a room that had a window giving onto the west.
Straightway I sent a messenger to two of my trusted friends, Talbot and Price, to beg them to come to me that the conjuration of the spirits might take place at the appointed hour acording to Kelley’s instructions: the time ordained was the night of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, the 21 November, at two o’clock.
The Conjuration of the Angel of the West Window
O the night of the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin! How deeply it is engraved on the memorial of my soul! Now all those hours of waiting, of feverish expectation are behind me, past and forgotten. A miracle, an unbelievable miracle has been vouchsafed me from the world beyond. I am dumbfounded with wonder and amazement at the might and power of the glorious, thrice blessed Angel. Deep within my heart I have made apology to Kelley that I ever thought ill of him and that I saw the mote in my brother’s eye and not the beam in mine own. He is an instrument of providence, that I now know and I shudder at the thought of it.
The days that preceded the night were a torment to me. Every day I sent servants to London to enquire of the craftsmen that had contracted to make, according to Kelley’s precise instructions, the table around which the five of us – Jane, Talbot, Price, myself and Kelley – were to sit when we conjured the Angel. It had to be made of pieces of costly sandalwood and laurel and greenheart and in the form of a five-pointed star. In the middle there was to be a large hole in the shape of a regular pentagon. Set in the edges were cabbalistic signs, seals and names in polished malachite and brown cairngorm. Now I am ashamed to the depths of my soul when I think of my miserable, mean-minded concern at the thought of the enormous sum of money this table would consume. Today I would tear out my eyes and use them as jewels to decorate the table if it were necessary.
And always the servants would return from London saying, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. The table was never ready, there seemed to be a spell on it; for no reason this or that journeyman would suddenly fall ill and whilst working on it three had already died a sudden, inexplicable death, as if seized by the ghost of the plague.
I strode restlessly round the rooms of the castle, counting the minutes until the morning of the 21 November broke, dull and grey.
Price and Talbot were sleeping like winter marmots, a strange, heavy, dreamless slumber, as they later told me. Jane, too, had been nigh impossible to wake and she shivered with inner cold, as if taken by a fever in her sleep. My eyes alone were unresting; heat, unbearable heat coursed through my veins.
Days before, Kelley too had been seized with a mysterious unease; like some shy animal he avoided the sight of men; I saw him wander round the park in the twilight and start like a guilty thing surprised when steps approached. During the day he sat brooding on the stone benches, now here, now there, murmuring absent-mindedly to himself or shouting in an unknown language at the empty air, as if someone were standing there. When he awoke from this state it was but for minutes, and then he would ask breathlessly if all were prepared at last; and when I told him, despairing, that it was not, then he began to berate me with curses, which he would suddenly interrupt to return to his soliloquy ...
Finally, shortly after midday – I had not been able to force even one mouthful down, so wrought was I with the impatience and unrest of the long wait – I saw, on the brow of a distant hill, the carts and waggons of the London craftsmen approaching. In a few hours the parts – for it would have been impossible to bring it through the doors in one piece – had been assembled in the room prepared for it in the castle tower. As Kelley had ordered, three of the windows – to the north south and east – had already been bricked up and only the high, arched west window, a good sixty feet above the ground, remained open. On my orders the walls of the circular chamber had been hung with the pictures of my ancestors, dark with age; chief among them was to have been a portrait of the legendary Hywel Dda, from the brush – and the imagination – of an unknown master, but we had had to remove it, as Kelley flew into a wild rage the moment he saw it.
In the niches of the walls stood my tall silver candelabra with sturdy wax candles in them in preparation for the solemn conjuration. Like an actor memorising his part, I had spent much time walking up and down in the park to commit to memory the
