‘On the facing page,’ Kelley continues, ‘he traces another mark – this time, the sign of Saturn.’ This he also draws on his paper, a cross with a curving tail, the quill scratching slowly as if time has thickened while he watches this unfold in the depths of the stone. Dee’s breathing quickens as he takes the paper and taps it with two fingers.
‘Jupiter and Saturn. The Great Conjunction. You understand, I think, Bruno?’ Without waiting for a reply, he turns impatiently to Kelley. ‘Ned – what does he now, the spirit?’
‘He opens his mouth and motions for me to listen.’
Kelley falls silent and does not move. Moments pass, Dee leaning forward eagerly, poised as if held taut on a rope, balanced between wanting to pounce on his scryer and not wishing to crowd him. When Kelley speaks again, his voice is altered; darker, somehow, and he proclaims as if in a trance:
‘“All things have grown almost to their fullness. Time itself shall be altered, and strange shall be the wonders perceived. Water shall perish in fire, and a new order shall spring from these.”’
Here he pauses, gives a great shuddering sigh. Dee’s grip around my arm tightens. I know what he is thinking. Kelley continues in the same portentous voice:
‘“Hell itself grows weary of Earth. At this time shall rise up one who will be called the Son of Perdition, the Master of Error, the Prince of Darkness, and he will delude many by his magic arts, so that fire will seem to come down from heaven and the sky shall be turned the colour of blood. Empires, kingdoms, principalities and states shall be overturned, fathers will turn against sons and brothers against brothers, there shall be turbulence among the peoples of the Earth, and the streets of the cities will run with blood. By this you shall know the last days of the old order.”’
He stops, sinks back gasping on to his heels, his chest heaving as if he has run a mile in the heat. Beside me, I can feel Dee trembling, his hand still holding my wrist; I feel him hungry for more of the spirit’s words, silently urging the scryer not to stop there, unwilling to speak aloud for fear of breaking the spell. For myself, I reserve judgement.
‘“Yet God has provided medicine for man’s suffering,”’ Kelley cries in the same voice, sitting up suddenly and making us both jump. ‘“There shall also rise a prince who will rule by the light of reason and understanding, who shall strike down the darkness of the old times, and in him the alteration of the world shall begin, and so shall he establish one faith, one ancient religion of unity that will put an end to strife.”’
Dee claps his hands gleefully, turning to me with shining eyes and the excitement of a child. It is hard to believe that this is his fifty-sixth autumn.
‘The prophecy, Bruno! What can this be, if not the prophecy of the Great Conjunction, of the ending of the old world? You read this as plain as I do, my friend – through the good offices of Master Kelley here, the gods of time have chosen to speak to us of the coming of the Fiery Trigon, when the old order shall be overturned and the world made anew in the image of ancient truth!’
‘He has certainly spoken of weighty matters,’ I say, evenly. Kelley turns then, his brow damp with sweat, and regards me with those close-set eyes.
‘Doctor Dee – what is this Fiery Trigon?’ he asks, in his own, somewhat nasal voice.
‘You could not know the significance, Ned, of what your gifts have revealed to us this day,’ Dee replies, his manner now fatherly, ‘but you have translated a prophecy most wondrous. Most wondrous.’ He shakes his head slowly in admiration, then stirs himself and begins to pace about the study as he explains, resuming his authority, the teacher once more. While the séance occurs, he becomes dependent upon Kelley, but it is not his habit to be subservient; he is, after all, the queen’s personal astrologer.
‘Once every twenty years,’ he says, holding up a forefinger like a schoolmaster, ‘the two most powerful planets in our cosmology, Jupiter and Saturn, align with one another, each time moving through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Every two hundred years, give or take, this conjunction moves into a new Trigon – that is to say, the group of three signs that correspond to each of the four elements. And once every nine hundred and sixty years, the alignment completes its cycle through the four Trigons, returning again to its beginning in fire. For the past two hundred years, the planets have aligned within the signs of the Watery Trigon. But now, my dear Ned, this very year, the year of Our Lord fifteen hundred and eighty-three, Jupiter and Saturn will conjoin once more in the sign of Aries, the first sign of the Fiery Trigon, the most potent conjunction of all and one that has not been seen for almost a thousand years.’
He pauses for effect; Kelley’s mouth hangs open like a codfish.
‘Then it is a momentous time in the heavens?’
‘More than momentous,’ I say, taking up the story. ‘The coming of the Fiery Trigon signifies the dawn of a new epoch. This is only the seventh such conjunction since the creation of the world and each has been marked by events that have shaken history. The flood of Noah, the birth of Christ, the coming of Charlemagne – all coincide with the return to the Fiery Trigon.’
‘And this transition into the sign of Aries at the end of our troubled century has been prophesied by many as signifying the end of history,’ Dee agrees, thoughtful. He has arrived in front of his tall perspective glass in its ornate gilt frame that stands in the corner by the west-facing window. Its peculiar property is that it reflects a true image and not the usual reversed image of an ordinary glass; the effect is unsettling. Now he turns to face us and raises his right hand; in the glass, his reflection does the same.
‘The astronomer Richard Harvey wrote of this present conjunction, “Either a marvellous fearful and horrible alteration of empires, kingdoms and states, or else the destruction of the whole world shall ensue”,’ I add.
‘So he did, Bruno, so he did. We may expect signs and wonders, my friends, in the days to come. Our world will change beyond recognition. We shall bear witness to a new era.’ Dee is trembling, his eyes moist.
‘Then – the spirit in the stone – he came to remind us of this prophecy?’ Kelley asks, his face full of wonder.
‘And to point to its special significance for England,’ Dee adds, his voice heavy with meaning. ‘For what can it signify but the overthrowing of the old religion once and for all in favour of the new, with Her Majesty as the light of reason and understanding?’
‘I had no idea,’ Kelley says, dreamy.
I watch him closely. There are two possibilities here. One is that he truly has a gift; I do not yet discount this, for though it has never been granted to me, in other countries I have heard of men who speak with those they call angels and demons through just such showing-stones, or else a speculum made for the purpose, like the one of obsidian that Dee keeps above his hearth. But in my years of wandering through Europe I have also seen plenty of these itinerant scryers, these cunning-men, these mediums-for-hire, who have a smattering of esoteric learning and for the price of a bed and a pot of beer will tell the credulous man anything they think he wants to hear. Perhaps this is snobbery on my part; I cannot help but feel that if the Egyptian gods of time chose to speak to men, it would be to men of learning, philosophers like myself or John Dee, the true heirs to Hermes – not to such a man as Ned Kelley, who wears his ragged cloth cap pulled down to his brow even indoors, to disguise the fact that he has one ear clipped for coining.
But I must be careful what I say to Dee touching Ned Kelley; the scryer has had his feet firmly under Dee’s table since long before I arrived in England, and this is the first time Dee has allowed me to take part in one of these ‘actions’, as he calls them. Kelley resents my recent friendship with his master; I see how he regards me from under the peak of his cap. John Dee is the most learned man in England, but he seems to me unaccountably trusting of Kelley, despite knowing almost nothing of the medium’s history. I have grown fond of Dee and would not like to see him hoodwinked; at the same time, I do not want to fall from his favour and lose the use of his library, the finest collection of books to be found in the kingdom. So I keep