The House of Doctor Dee (29 page)

I could see which way the wind blew. 'You wish to approach the philosopher's stone? You wish for gold?'

'Yes, in fit time.'

'Or is it more? Is there other knowledge you wish for?'

'All in time.'

'Well then, so be it. I can deny you nothing.'

He put out his hand. 'I shall not forsake you, not now or ever.'

'You are one with me?'

'One with you, Doctor Dee.'

It was the week following this, our latest compact, that my wife fell ill of a fever. At first she had nothing more than some wambling in her stomach, but when she tried to break her fast with sugar sops, she vomited them up speedily enough; a hot sweat then came upon her, so I put a poultice of eggs and honey, blended with the nuts of a pine tree, upon her breast. Yet I knew very well that this sickness was her fantasy, a fond foolishness brought on by the loss of her rings and by our hard words together. So I went to work as eagerly as before, and was in a great study at my desk while she kept to her bed. 'How does my wife?' I said, entering her chamber two nights after she was first despatched there.

'Well, sir, I feel some grievous pangs and pains.' She was still in a sweat, and moved her head from side to side.

'It is the rheum,' I replied. 'Be patient, and take the mineral physic I have prepared for you. It is no dangerous sickness.' Then I went out of her closet with a light heart, and spoke with Kelley about the next day's scrying.

It was arduous work indeed, with the action of that day, and on the following night I sat in my chamber and studied the responses which had come out of the stone. It was my practice to note down everything as it occurred, so that I had a full record of each week's proceedings, and I was bent over my papers half the night long.

Thus:

Spirit.
    
4723 is called the mystical root in the highest ascendant of transmutation.

Dee.
      
These phrases are dark.

Spirit.
    
It is the square of the philosopher's work.

Dee.
      
You said it was the root.

Spirit.
    
So it is a root square, the square thereof is 22306729. And the words are, by interpretation,
Ignis vera mater.

Dee.
      
What does this signify?

Spirit.
    
Enough. It is at an end.

I was puzzling out the meaning of this within my chamber, when I heard a strange noise of knocking; and then there was a voice, ten times repeated, somewhat like the shriek of a man in pain but softer and more long-drawn. I was strangely troubled at that – and yet more so, yes, close to fainting away, when I thought I saw a spiritual creature standing upright in the corner, with its hands stretched out towards me. Very quickly it stepped across my chamber until it came to a halt, its back to me, in the corner opposite. Then it turned its face to me with the same long call of pain: it was my father, dead more than a year since, as fully drawn and delineated from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head as if he wer