The Ballad of Edward Kelley – Part 2
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.
In case you missed it, here’s Part 1.
*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 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.
(Part 3 coming soon…)
