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a trick of his own.
When Field looked into the darkness that the stone seemed to contain, however,
he did not do or say anything. His eyelids drooped slightly, and his rigid
body slumped in the chair, but not as if he had suddenly become sleepy more
than that, in fact: as if he had suddenly become heavier
. His features were devoid of expression, but his stare did not waver.
 Don t be afraid, Master Field, Kelley said, softly but the Church
Militant s ambushers were as quiet as mice now, and every word was audible.  A
man like you has naught to fear from Heaven. But you can hear the angels, can
you not? They are not singing, as the Romanists imagine they might, but
jabbering in a language unknown to humankind, which was not included in the
legacy of Babel. Only be patient, and they will deign to address you in
English, although your ears might have to be better than my poor mutilated
organs to interpret what they say in smooth and eloquent sentences.
Field would surely have cut him off before he got half way through this
speech, had he been able to but he was not. To his own followers, and to all
but one of Kelley s companions, it probably seemed that Field was holding the
stone voluntarily, looking into it of his own volition, but Kelley knew
better. The stone had Field captive, just as securely as the net held the
automaton but that was all. Field was not going to speak, even if he did
contrive to hear English spoken by the angels. The next step was up to
Kelley.
 The angels are inaudible and invisible to the eyes of ordinary men,
Kelley continued, raising his voice as he always had during his past
performances as a false oracle,  but you and I are extraordinary, in our
different ways, Master Field. We can hear the voices of the angelic host, and
we can see them about their work, not merely as messengers but as guardians.
We can see them in the dark realm that is theirs, but we can also see them
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reaching into our world, and making themselves felt as beings made of matter
might. They are not material themselves, of course, and there is something
subtle and vaporous about their most urgent manifestations but they can make
themselves felt, can they not, Master
Field?
Unready to leave that particular challenge entirely to the power of
suggestion, Kelley tried with all his might to make his words true: to use
whatever mysterious potential was expanding out of him to manage the
sensations of the watcher who could not help but look into the stone. Kelley
imagined an angel emerging from the stone, like some angry ghost not an angel
from one of the Church decorations of which the Puritans disapproved so
strongly, but an angel such as he had seen, at such a vast distance, within
the void suggested by the stone s black depths.
And something did emerge, although Kelley did not suppose that anyone but he
and Field could see it.
It had wings, of a sort, but it did not have a humanoid body. Nor were its
wings a dove s or an eagle s wings; they were the wings of some hasty buzzing
insect. Insofar as the angel had a face, he supposed, it would have a face
that was more like a locust s than a human s, but not so very like a locust as
to resemble the Lunar horde that had already started work on an
Armada of ether-ships with which to invade the Earth ... because the angels
were angels, after all.
Kelley had no idea how to make a face beautiful that was not at all human, or
even to make it imperious, but he had to suppose that the angels did, and that
his role here was merely that of a facilitator, like the philosopher s stone
that turned base metal into gold without itself being altered.
The angel was magnificent, after its fashion. It was huge, and dazzling, and
unmistakably, undeniably, indubitably an angel. Kelley knew that John Dee,
Giordano Bruno and the twelve brutal apostles of the Church
Militant could not see it, but he knew that John Field could. Kelley even felt
free to wonder whether this might, after all, have been the purpose of his
mission that the stone had sent him into Brother Cuthbert s trap in order that
it should finally be delivered, by cunning and mysterious means, into the
hands of John Field, even though it would not remain there for long.
It was obvious that Field could see the angel towering over him, because he
was no longer peering drowsily into the stone. He was looking up now, with his
eyes wide open and his irises closing against the dazzling glare that only he
and Kelley beheld. He could see the angel, and he knew the angel for what it
was. He could also hear the angel.
What the angel commanded John Field to do, as Moses had once commanded
Pharaoh, was to let his people go. The angel meant far more by that, however,
than that John Dee and his companions should be released and allowed to make
their way to Wilton unhindered. The angel meant that John Field s Church
Militant should respect the principle of tolerance that Queen Jane s
parliament had incorporated into English law.
The angel meant that the Puritans should desist from stirring up a holy war in
reflection of the long and fragmentary war that had been raging in Europe and
the Americas for decades as petty prophets played into the hands of secular
ambition by providing justification for oppression and conquest.
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The angel meant that John Field must see the truth, and realize that the
demons that his life was dedicated to combating were not what, or where, he
thought they were.
And John Field, like Saul of Tarsus on the road of Damascus, accepted that
revelation for what it was.
Edward Kelley, who knew that he was part and parcel of the instrumentality of
the revelation, could not help but share in it. His own ideas and beliefs were
not turned upside-down quite the reverse. They were put on a firm foundation
for the first time. He not only heard the voices of the angels, but understood
them, for they were now more eloquent than ever before. His consciousness
expanded much further than it already had, and much further than he had ever
imagined possible. He felt, in fact, that he was being taken far beyond the
bounds of human imagination, borne on angelic wings. He felt that he was being
taken up to the summit of a paradisal mount, there to look out upon the whole [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]