Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (26 page)

One night in February of the year of Our Lord 1586, as I was sitting with Master Kelley at our lodgings in Prague, there came a messenger who wished to take me to meet someone for a private conversation. At this Kelley became very angry and haughty, as he is wont to do, and threatened to throw the man out.

‘If you come from the Emperor Rudolph, he had best talk with me. It is to me that the Spirits speak. The Doctor merely writes down these communications. My knowledge of the alchemical arts is greater even than his.’

The man, who was very small, and dressed in the long gabardine robe of a Jew, shook his head. ‘I do not come from the Emperor Rudolph,’ he said. ‘It is my master the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel who wishes to converse with your master, Dr John Dee.’

When Kelley heard the man refer to me as his ‘master’, he picked up a bottle to hurl at the little man, and would have done so if I had not stepped between them. Then Kelley, as he usually does, subsided as suddenly as he was aroused, and lapsed into a sulk.

‘Very well then! Go and see your Jew, and much good may it do you. See if I care!’

‘Must it be tonight?’ I asked the man.

‘It must. The Rabbi is spending only a few days in Prague.’

As we made our way through the dark streets of Prague my companion explained to me that the Rabbi Loew (as I shall call him) was here on a brief visit from Moravia to which he had fled to escape the Emperor’s persecutions. I myself already knew that the Rabbi was a very great leader of the Jews and wise in all aspects of the Torah and the Cabbala. It flattered me, I confess, to think that he had heard of me.

By a long and winding route, through dark passages and courtyards lit only by a glimmer of starlight from above, the little man brought me to a tall and ancient house in the Jewish Quarter. There he knocked three times in quick succession on the front door. This presently was answered in turn by three rapid knocks from within. I heard a sliding of bolts and a turning of keys and at last the door was opened. Once we had entered the house I was conducted in silence by the light of a single candle up a series of wooden steps. The entire building was made of wood and seemed to creak and groan like a living thing. Once a draught of air whistling through a crack threatened to extinguish the candle and plunge us into darkness.

Finally I was ushered into a tall room at the top of the building under the roof gables. It was furnished entirely in dark wood and around the walls were many shelves and cabinets containing innumerable scrolls, some plain, some elaborately encased in silver after the Jewish fashion. The room was well lit by several menorahs, the seven branched candelabrum of the Jews, which were ranged down the length of a great oak table in the centre of the room. At one end of the table in a carved wooden armchair like a throne sat a giant of a man with a long beard streaked with grey. He rose to greet me and introduced himself as the Rabbi Loew.

It is not my business to record the long and interesting discussion we had on many points of philosophy and the Cabbala. The Rabbi had heard of my intercourse with angelic beings and was anxious to hear of my researches. I told him things that I have told few others: namely, how I had been granted by the spirits the forty eight Angelic Keys, written in the original Adamic (or Enochian) language. These I knew to be instruments of great power and wisdom, but they were useless to me as I did not know the meanings of the language used and the Spirits would not vouchsafe them.

The Rabbi considered what I had told him for some moments in silence, as if he were making up his mind. Then he rose from his chair.

‘My knowledge of the language of Adam is still very imperfect. But I know a man who is well versed in it. Come, let me show you something.’ He took up one of the menorahs and led the way to one of the shelves. He turned a small wooden lever in the shelf and a part of it swung back, revealing another large room, this time almost totally shrouded in darkness. Then he said: ‘But first I must swear you to secrecy. You may record what you hear and see, but it must be for your eyes alone.’

I laid my hand on a copy of the Torah bound in silver and swore a solemn oath.

The room into which the Rabbi led me was, like the other, all of wood with a high pitched roof. It was quite bare of furniture but in the middle of the room stood something the like of which I had never seen before or since.

It stood some twenty feet high and its head nearly touched the roof. The colour of it was grey and the surface of it was rough and mottled, but not like stone. It seemed to be made of some kind of mud, or possibly clay, and its shape was human, I suppose, though more like some inhuman beast that stood on two legs than a man. The head was squat with a heavy brow below which what looked like two black spheres of obsidian had been stuck where the eyes should be. The mouth was no more than a shapeless hole in which lolled a great grey tongue, and there was no nose to speak of. The right arm possessed a hand with four crude fingers on it, but the right was still only a lump of grey matter. I guessed it to be a half-made sculpture, but why should anyone want to carve such a hideous thing, unless he wanted to represent a demon?

‘That is to be the saviour of my race,’ said the Rabbi.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘An idol?’ Rabbi Loew laughed.

‘Do you think so little of my people that you imagine we worship a thing like that? No, it will be our servant and protector. Some call it the Golem.’

‘How can you use such a monstrous thing?’

‘To fight a monstrous thing. The persecution of our race.’

I could no longer bear to look at the object which filled the room and, despite being only half formed, seemed on the point of breaking into life. It was then that I noticed a shadowy figure of a man crouching in the far corner of the room. The Rabbi gestured to him and he came forward, his eyes fixed on me the whole time. He wore the simple robes of his race rather like the rabbi and he made no sound as he walked towards me over the wooden boards.

Though he was of middle height, there was something shrunken about him. His cheeks were hollow, his pale grey eyes very deep set. His long hair and beard were black and he did not show any signs of infirmity, but I felt somehow that he must be very old. When he spoke it was in perfect English, if not quite perhaps in the modern style.

‘Dr Dee,’ he said, ‘I am honoured to make the acquaintance of one of the most learned and ingenious men of your generation.’

I bowed low, not knowing what to say in reply, because I had not been introduced. Then the man said to me:

‘Can the wings of the wind understand my voices of wonder which the burning flames have framed in the depth of my jaws?’

At these words I was greatly astonished because they were the very words that the angelic spirit Madimi had spoken to me through my assistant Edward Kelley only a few nights before. I turned to my friend Rabbi Loew who was smiling:

‘This is Issachar,’ he said. ‘He is helping me with my work on the Golem. You must know that his presence here, like this room, is a deadly secret, because he is an outcast among us Jews. An outcast of outcasts, you might say. But I know of no outcasts. It is he whom I told you of. He alone of all men can safely interpret the Adamic language.’

I bowed low, and a thought occurred to me. Just then there was a small noise from outside. Rabbi Loew reacted instantly. ‘You must go at once,’ he said. The next moment he had hurried me out of the room and shut the concealed door on Issachar and the grey monster. Then I was being led down flights of stairs to the front door. Before he pushed me out into the street, the Rabbi said to me: ‘If you wish to talk further with Issachar, then send a message addressed to Isaac de Laquedem at the
Sign of the Golden Plover
in the Street of the Alchemists. It will reach him there.’

The next moment I was blinking under the stars in the black street. I had barely recovered my sense of direction when I heard the tramp of feet on cobbles. Then round the corner came a small posse of the Imperial guard carrying torches, the firelight gleaming on their breastplates and halberds. At the head was Rabenthal, a captain of the guard whom I had met during a visit to the Emperor.

‘Master Dee, you are late abroad tonight.’

I explained that I had been visiting a sick friend, and pointing vaguely off into the distance, I said that I appeared to be lost.

‘This is not the place to be on a dark night,’ said Rabenthal and detached two of his men to escort me home.

It was some days before I could see Issachar again, as I very much wanted to, because I wished to converse with him without fear of interruption from Master Kelley. But by good fortune Master Kelley was beginning to acquire a reputation as a transmuter of metals by virtue of his famous ‘transforming powder’. When Count Rosemberg, a renowned enthusiast for the alchemical arts, invited Kelley to his castle, I urged him to go. Perhaps I urged him too hard because he looked at me with suspicion, but still he went. On the morning that he left I despatched my message to the
Golden Plover
, and that night, under cover of darkness, Issachar came to my door. He refused all refreshment. When we were sat down in my inner room, he said:

‘You know who I am?’

I replied that I did.

‘Must I tell you my story?’

‘You must.’

Issachar sighed but whether from weariness or relief I could not say. Then he began:

‘My family lived in Jerusalem. My father was a shoemaker and I followed his trade. My mother sometimes brought in extra money by her gifts of divination and the casting of horoscopes. Her gifts in that direction were genuine but not outstanding. Frequently she lost all inspiration and was forced to resort to trickery. But though I followed my father’s profession my inclinations sided with my mother. I studied all the tricks and subterfuges (which some have called magic) by which the human brain is forced to yield up its secrets. All men and women carry an uncharted universe about in their heads. In us lies Africa and all the firmament of stars. Only this wall of flesh stands between us and the infinite.’ And here he struck himself such a vicious blow on the chest that I was astonished he did not cry out with the pain of it.

‘Even as a young man I was oppressed by the thought of time which takes away our will and ambition before we have had an opportunity to venture them. There is so much to know and see and enjoy that even a full term of seventy years unoppressed by sickness or disability is not sufficient to gain much understanding. The wisdom of age, even when we achieve it, is nearly always dissipated by its debilities. All these thoughts passed through my mind as I made shoes at Jerusalem, or as I studied the minor means of divination, through the tossing of coins and the examination of entrails, the study of stars and the patterns and hues in decaying cheeses.

‘Then I heard of a new preacher who came from Galilee and is talking about eternal life. “Believe in me,” he would say, “and you shall have eternal life.” At first I paid no heed. There were scores of preachers and teachers in Judaea at that time. But the phrase “eternal life” kept returning to me. So one day I set out to see this man.

‘That day he was sitting in a boat and teaching. I remember my first sight of him vividly even now, that small, insignificant little man with the long straight hair and the straggle of beard, sitting upright in the fishing boat. His clear voice rang out to us and echoed faintly against the mountains behind. He spoke of the time having come, the kingdom, repentance, renunciation. I do not remember the exact words. He spoke, as has been said, with authority. The manner was not insistent or bullying, and was almost without emphasis. He seemed to invite us as equals to accept his words. It was as if he so believed in the absolute truth of what he was saying that he needed no arts of persuasion to convey it. For this reason I was at once convinced.

‘My belief in him was so strong that I gave up everything to join the group, thirty or so (ten of whom were women), who followed him about the country. But this is a curious and unsatisfying period, because he was constantly protected from too much familiarity by a group of a dozen or so men, commonly called “the twelve”, who claimed to be his intimates. I could see no special merit in them, except perhaps that most of them come from Galilee like him. When he was not surrounded by crowds he would often withdraw by himself, or, occasionally, with the twelve. The rest of us were little more than camp followers—I repaired shoes—with all the griefs and none of the privileges attached to those who go after a penniless prophet. He knew who I was, but I remember the small frown that always furrowed his brow whenever he spoke to me.

‘It was we—the camp followers—who had to beg for food to feed us all, we who got the smallest share. Sometimes there was a feast for us if the Nazarene had healed the sick in a village, but we had the lowest place in it. Our Master would sometimes look at us questioningly as if he wondered why we were there. The twelve for the most part treated us with indifference, sometimes even contempt. The only exception, as far as I was concerned, was Judas Iscariot. His name is reviled now, but he was a friend to me and I will not betray him. He came to me more than once for divinations, but in that time I had almost lost the art I inherited from my mother. One day the signs would be bright and favourable and the next day they would be dark, and there was no reason behind it all. It was as if some power, infinitely stronger than mine, were turning everything around it to confusion. But in spite of my failure, this Judas would talk to me as an equal which the other disciples, for all the meanness of their upbringing, would not.

‘I once asked Judas why the Master chose these fishermen as his closest familiars.

‘ “He speaks in such a way,” replied Judas, “that the simple understand what those with greater minds fail to grasp. But what the Master does not see is that after he is gone—yes, he will die in the end like the rest of us—if his teaching and example is to endure it will need men of intellect to form it into a coherent body of thought. The survival of belief and truth is dependent on organisation. The truth may be diminished by it, but that is in the nature of things.”