For our final excerpt from Prague Unbound, we were fortunate to be granted permission to publish, in its entirety, The Ballad of Edward Kelley — of course, it helped that the author is unknown and the poem has been so long out-of-print that it may well have never existed.

*SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read COMPLICATION, you may want to skip this ballad and come back to it later.

*  *  *

When moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets

Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock 

* * *

Once long ago in Mortlake dwelt

Esteemed Doctor Dee

Astronomer and mathematist,

Subject of Queen Mary

Dr. John Dee

Rhadomancer, cleromancer,

Crystallomancer, he

A mapper of Atlantis,

Keen on astrology

Hermeticist, Divinator,

Hepatoscopist, Dee

Conversed in languages of birds yet

Sought the Angelic Key

Key to unite the Sciences,

And yield Philosopher’s Stone

Key to unlock forbidden truths,

And Nature’s great unknowns.

Earthly teachings he’d exhausted

And so Dee sought to learn

From those who dwelt in realms beyond;

With knowledge costly earned

But Dee was not by birth gifted -

Or cursed! – With piercing sight,

And so he sought skilled skryer

To crystal gaze by night

Whence came swindler Edward Kelley,

Irishman lowly born,

A forger and necromancer

Oft pilloried and scorned

Edward Kelley

With untamed hair and long of beard

He wore a cap pulled low

To hide the scars upon his head

Where once his ears did grow

“A skryer I declare myself!”

The charlatan told Dee

“With your shewstone I will reveal

Wonders revealed to me.”

In midnight dark the seekers met

At Chapel of Mortlake

But little did they countenance

Their mortal souls at stake

Kelley commenced to mislead Dee

Counterfeit vision true

But Lo! The spirits heard his call

And to his side they flew

Spirits by name were summoned,

And one by one awoke —

Jubanladec and Uriel

And Nalvage invoked

But one appeared unbidden,

Swathed in crimson flames

The little spirit Madimi

Who goes by many names

“A girl am I,” said she,

“Lo, but six years of age.

Yet have I been six thousand years

Locked in fiery cage.”

Vexed by this apparition

Kelley beseeched Dee

“This intruder be no Angel,

A Demon must she be!”

With scholar’s scoff Dee did reply,

“Fear not, simple magus —

Tis humbly God’s truth we seek, the

Spirits shan’t betray us.”

Yet fearsome visions she did show,

Images much tangled,

Coal black mouths of the damned

By serpents being strangled

Ensign bearers sounding trumpets

Thrice upon castle high,

Sun the red of new-smitten blood

Against a churning sky

A bishop naked to his paps

Writing forbidden names

In black wax dripped upon

A dying lion’s mane

Such scenes from shewstone conjured

Thrilled sagacious Dee

But in fear Kelley cowered

At what his eyes did see

“Demonic portents!” Kelley cried.

“Nonsense!” the scholar said.

And nightly forced his skryer

To skrye despite his dread

One moonlit night Madimi told,

“Your friends at court aspire

To see your heads upon the pikes

Against ye they conspire.”

“Whispered tales of sacrilege,

Black masses, sorcery.

They say you seek to necromance

Through consorts unholy.”

The crystal gazers fled Mortlake

As wrathful mob descended

And set aflame Dee’s high estate

Where God had been offended

To Bremen, Lubeck, Krakow, Lask

Cloaked in night and fog

Madimi bade them easterly

Toward golden city Prague

Where conjurors found audience

With the pale, wanton king,

The Holy Emperor Rudolf

A mind-sick, frail being

Where soothsayers and occultists,

Astronomers and clowns,

Wrested the king’s attention

From matters of the crown

Dee’s knowledge held no currency

With Rudolf on the throne

To win King’s favor he did pledge

To transmute gold from stone

And in promise rashly given

Was their damnation sewn.

(Part II coming soon…)