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.

When moon is high in autumn sky 

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

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 

* * *

Dee’s fool promise of gold from stone

Tickled Rudolf so

Wealth, estates, and entitlements

On them he did bestow

“Thou hath five years,” Rudolf decreed,

“And five years alone,

To produce your Magnum Opus 

The Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Yet should thou fail,” Rudolf warned,

“A future have thee not.

I’ll have thee clapped in irons

In dungeons thou shalt rot.”

Emperor Rudolf II

But intemperate Kelley found

A kindred soul in Prague

The city of a thousand spires

Reaching into the fog

A thousand taverns too he found

With wine enough to drink

A thousand whores, a thousand ways

In oblivion to sink

Dee beseeched his skryer,

“Five years have near run out!”

“Yet nights you spend in low carousel

And days you lay about!”

“You must consult the shewstone to

Madimi’s counsel win.

She’ll tell us how to make gold

Rudolf’s patience wears thin.”

“Ye learned fool,” Kelley said,

“The girl has played a prank.

We’ll end upon the gallows pole,”

Kelley drank, and laughed, and drank.

Edward Kelley

Lo suddenly Dee understood

What Kelley’d always known

About their little angel

In flowing crimson gown

“Madimi is a demon true!”

Lamented Doctor Dee

“I tried to warn ye,” Kelley said,

“But ye refused to see.”

With no gold to fill his coffers

Rudolf’s mind did turn

Against the English charlatans

Whose keep remained unearned

The melancholy king cried out,

“Goldmakers to the noose!”

Dee fled Bohemia

But Kelley could not shake Prague loose

The ruined scholar Dee returned

To his burnt English home

Never again to knowledge seek

Outside the bounds of known

A quiet, simple life Dee led

‘Tis true, in poverty

Far worse proved the fate

Of his skryer Kelley

With halberds drawn troops descended

On Edward Kelley’s house

In manacles they dragged him out

An abject, drunken louse

At far-flung Castle Křivoklád

Kelley now made his home

In a dungeon tower

Among contravener’s bones

Krivoklad Castle

Rudolf sent Jan Mydlář

With instruments of truth

The Master Executioner

To his vengeance soothe

Down to his earless chalk white scalp

Kelley’s locks were shorn

Stretched he was upon the rack,

Until his skin was torn

“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said the black masked man,

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or suffer by my hand.”

Notch by notch the rack it turned

Like some infernal clock

While Kelley screamed and cursed

“There is no magic rock!”

Each night the scene was repeated

Torture lasting three days

‘Til Kelley could endure no more

And tried to end his stay

From high window he descended

On crudely fashioned rope

Pathetic his conveyance be

But thinner proved his hope

The rope snapped and Kelley fell

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night

At castle’s foot in filthy heap

Poor Kelley prayed for Death

His left leg crushed and three ribs broke,

No strength nor spirit left

Yet in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of unrepentant glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi

“Pray not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”

And so as Kelley lay in pooled

Blood and micturcation

The demon her plan revealed

For his false salvation.

Thus on moonless night was born the

Rudolf Complication.

*  *  *

When moon is high in autumn sky

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

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

* * *

In the morrow Kelley was found

In a pile of debris

With shattered leg they couldn’t save

But severed at the knee

The prisoner’s dismal escape

Much amused his captors

But the Executioner’s whip

Cut clean through their laughter

“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said fearsome Jan Mydlář

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or die within the hour.”

Jan Mydlar

“Good sir,” Kelley beseeched,

“I know its secret not.

But I can grant His Majesty

What he hath so long sought.”

“In vision was revealed to me

As I coughed and bled

A miracle contraption

To stand time on its head.”

“Back and forward it runs at once,

Suspending the true hour,

Such device to bestow the King

An immortal power.”

“Speak plain,” barked executioner,

Sword poised at Kelley’s crotch,

“Ask His Majesty,” Kelley said,

“Would he care for a watch?”

The strange proposal much amused

The feckless, feeble King

“Set free the Irish dupe,” said he.

“Let’s see him make this thing.”

They cut for him a leg of wood,

Dressed his bloody wounds,

The gaolers all wagering

They’d again see him soon.

Freed at once from Křivoklád

And hastened unto Prague

Kelley set to fashioning

Springs, hands, gears and cogs

Madimi aided its design

So clever and infernal

To grant the frail Emperor

Life lasting eternal

Engraving heraldic lion white,

And snake self-consuming,

Watchmaker did little know his

Own soul he was dooming

Secret symbols etched on the key

In language of Enoch

Gave hint of needed sacrifice

To wind infernal clock

But Kelley understood them not,

No arcane scholar he,

And like a fool he gave his trust

To demon Madimi

Quickly hour was at hand to

Render unto the King

The Rudolf Complication which

Would Kelley’s pardon bring

To castle upon hill he was

Ushered in dead of night

To fabled Kunstkammer

Where shadows swallowed light

Where for days Rudolf would wander

Gazing at his treasures

Numbered in vast thousands,

Yielding maudlin pleasures

All torches were extinguished there

The windows bricked up all

Mounted birds and beasts stared out

As Kelley walked the halls

When suddenly the Sovereign

There materialized

An eerie, pale presence

Spoke at the skryer’s side

“Are ye a ghost?” asked the King,

Eyes clouded and confused

“Nay, loyal Kelley with your gift,”

Anxious skryer enthused

Emperor Rudolf II

In velvet cloth was swathed the watch

A thing of beauty, true

But one which had a fatal flaw

Only Madimi knew

The King with haste did snatch the watch

And draped it round his neck

And tried to wind the winding key

But the watch would not tick

“It makes no sound!” said angry King.

“Its hands they moveth not

Again you attempt to trick me

On pike your skull shall rot!”

From cloak the King withdrew a bell

And then but two chimes rung

From dark emerged the royal guards

And on the skryer sprung

In Hněvín Castle Kelley found

Himself again detained

While with the Executioner

His end was arranged

Hnevin Castle

Failed clock draped around his neck

He’d hid the winding key

For fear its eldritch symbols spoke

Of blasphemed sorcery

Inside hollowed leg it nested

Where it could not be found

And bring Kelley further torture

To misery compound

His death he thus accepted, true

There was no turning back

But he wished to avoid further

Sessions upon the rack

And so his spirit descended

His subterfuge in vain

Feared Jan Mydlář was coming back

To question him again

The rack, pear, hot iron poker

He had not strength to stand

Kelley determined to end his life

That night by his own hand

From castle window Kelley jumped

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night

But again the fall did not perish

Kelley, not by Death blessed,

His other leg now broken

In fate’s cruel twinning jest

And in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of remorseless glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi

Madimi

“Aim not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”

“Accursed demon!” Kelley cried out,

“Ye’ll torment me no more.

“Satan’s tortures will prove fairer

“Than my life heretofore.”

But she then showed him vision

Of what in Hell he’d find

And star-crossed Edward Kelley

Abruptly changed his mind.

Madimi gave unto Kelley

Diabolic potion

To counterfeit the skryer’s death

Ceasing his heart’s motion

In pauper’s grave was Kelley tossed

But in three days would rise

Along with the infernal watch

In parody of Christ

What clamored forth from cold earth

In black congealed night

Was no longer Edward Kelley

Lime dusted, glowing white

Burnt with alkaline, in tatters

Crawling on his belly,

Shaking like infant newly born

Was undead Was-Kelley

He crawled for days ‘til strength returned

Then with hobbling walk

He made his way along the road

To golden city Prague

Madimi had revealed at last

The secret of the clock

To wind its key and bring to life

Nefarious tick tock

Once each year the watch must be wound

By dead hand severed fresh

Only then will dials turn,

And twinned gears enmesh

Whoever about their neck dons

Rudolf Complication

By time will be untouched

Despite earthly rotation

But should tribute remain unpaid

And watch hands cease to turn

Madimi would come claim his soul

And in Hell it would burn

In a terrifying vision

To Was-Kelley she showed

Grisly future laid before him

With gift she had bestowed

Murders foul and degradation

Faces of the dying

Dead children’s hands held with his own

Fingers intertwining

In killings she would guide him

Down a blood-soaked path

Until such day he’d fail and bear

Brunt of her hellish wrath

Was-Kelley hence by many names

For centuries will go

When his time runs out he’ll spend

Eternity below.

Now moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

In cover of night Was-Kelley walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets

Condemned to wander till his end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock.

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.