The house of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Modern fiction, Fantasy, General, English fiction, General & Literary Fiction, Alchemists, Fiction, Astrologers
ISBN: 9780241125007
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 1993-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

'One and One is all alone, and ever more shall be so.'

Yes, ever more first and pre-eminent. By my art I shall be sublimed and exalted, brought to the third region and then returned in such a high state of grace that I need not heed the revolving world. Then, fear, I would bid you good day. No longer would I be held down by some man's first tripping of my feet, and by others afterwards overlying me with worldly policy and subtle practices. I would have no terror of mutability because I would know all, and the pygmies who now surround me would be spiteblasted away. I would fear no one. I would envy no one. So I must be like the iron drawn to the adamant: I must come closer every day to the great secret. Was I not already on the way to making new life without the help of any womb? And if I can create an everlasting creature, then will I have found the divinity within, that soul, that spark, that fire which drives the spheres. See. I spit upon the world. And in so doing I cleanse the last traces of vomit from my mouth, as London comes before me once again.

*

I was hard at my work on the following morning, considering the moist element in which the homunculus must breathe, when my wife's servant came to me. She called out, 'Are you up, sir?' and then knocked hard upon the door of my chamber.

'I have been up these past several hours, Audrey Godwin. What is it o'clock?'

'It is not so late as you think. It is but half an hour past seven. But come quickly, sir. It is your father.'

I turned pale for an instant. 'My father here?'

'No. A messenger has come from the alms-house, saying that he is ready to give up the ghost.'

'So. It is time.'

'Make haste, sir, or it may be too late.'

Yet I dressed myself with care, before I rode out with the messenger to my father's latest and last lodgings upon this earth. It was a day more bleak and bitter than the one before, so I wound a cloth around my mouth and nose to keep off the cold as we came out on to the Uxbridge way. Mr Holleyband was not within sight as we rode past the gatehouse, but I knew my path: I crossed the cloister and, having mounted the stairs which led to that dormitory of the dying, I advanced towards the wooden partition behind which my father was closeted. But he was not upon his bed, and for an instant I had a vision of him lying already within his grave; then I saw him. He was standing against the opposite wall, next to the tree of life, as pale as a corpse and naked unto his paps and privities; his hands were folded across his breast, and then he stepped across the floor towards me. I flinched away, but he passed

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