The Bones of Avalon

by Ormond House

‘Arthur, then,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, the Arthur the monks claimed to have uncovered back in the twelfth century?’

  ‘Brown with age, certainly,’ Monger said. ‘But, truly, how could it ever be proved? It must have been quite hastily done by my brother monks, but accomplished with all reverence, the bones placed on…’

  He looked at me. I felt for a moment that we were actors in a play, intoning old lines.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On a soft bed,’ Monger said. ‘To ensure they should not suffer any more damage. In fact… a sheep’s fleece.’

  An intelligent man. Maybe he’d thought of the further implications before I had. Maybe he’d picked up on my sceptic’s tone. Either way, the eyes which met mine were fogged with suspicion. And then a kind of fear.

  Fully justified. ‘Help me,’ I said.

  So we both went, and his state was pitiful.

  Crouching on the floor, in a nest of bone. He’d pulled down shelves, and the unjawed skulls and bones lay in piles like the site of some old massacre. Fresh blood on some of them now. There was a broken bottle in his bunched hands, pointed at his throat, all quivering. I think he’d already tried to cut his wrists with it, leaving bracelets of blood to the elbows.

  Still the candles burned, but the scent of incense was sharpened with piss. A brown fluid was dripping from the smashed neck of the bottle. I thought it was the bottle of potion Matthew Borrow had given to Benlow.

  ‘Too weak.’ Monger prised his fingers away from it, tossing it into a corner of the cellar. ‘Too weak to do it.’

  Tears in Benlow’s eyes.

  ‘We must needs bring Matthew here,’ Monger said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I, too, thought I should like to talk again to Dr Borrow.

  ‘I’ll get him now. Could you stay with Benlow.’ He paused. ‘One moment.’

  From his robe he pulled a metal cross on a chain, dropping the chain over Benlow’s head.

  ‘God be with you,’ he murmured. ‘Now and always.’

  ‘Take it off… ’ Benlow rolling onto his side, gasping, clawing at his throat, his fine doublet all ripped open. Making a strangled kind of bleating only approximate to laughter. ‘I’ve given up God.’

  ‘Then talk to this man.’ Monger moved away. ‘Make your peace. Don’t take it all with you.’ Grasping the ladder, he said to me, ‘Ask what you need. You may not have long.’

  I knelt on the floor, rolling away the skull of King Edgar or some other king.

  ‘Master Benlow…’

  He grinned up at me. I think it was a grin. There was blood between his sharp little teeth. I think he must have been tearing at his wrists with them before he lost the will and the very breath to do it.

  ‘They’ve finished me,’ he whispered. ‘Is that not so?’

  ‘The doctor’s coming.’

  ‘Wrap me in fleece, my lord. Put me in my grave… wrapped in good fleece, so my bones…’

  ‘May lie like Arthur’s bones?’

  There was no time no waste. Not a minute. I waited, holding his eyes, which were become still and watchful.

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I know what you buried at Butleigh.’

  He opened his mouth wide, as if he might take in more air, then shut it, and his words came feebly.

  ‘Not worth a piece of fleece, am I?’

  ‘A better fleece than Arthur’s.’

  ‘ Offered them a fleece. A good fleece. One of mine.’

  ‘They didn’t want a good fleece, though, did they?’ I said softly. ‘It was supposed to look twenty years old.’

  He tried to sniff, his eyes wide with distress.

  ‘Dis…gusting old thing. Left for me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Abbey grounds, behind… behind the abbot’s kitchen. Dis gusting old thing. I was ashamed…’

  ‘They brought you the box, first? When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday? Day before? Day before that? What’s today?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘A week ago? Who knows? Time passes quick when you’re dying.’

  ‘Who brought the fleece, Master Benlow?’

  ‘Dunno. Just lying there. They told me to collect it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tell me some secrets.’

  ‘You know all my secrets.’

  I could imagine the fleece being brought from some farm where wool-sorters’ disease had been found amongst the sheep. Brought from there at night. On the end of a very long pitchfork.

  Till she shall kiss the bones of the King of all Britons…

  ‘Whose bones?’ I whispered. ‘Whose bones did you put into the fleece. Whose bones did you bury at Butleigh?’

  Thought I knew. Just couldn’t recall the name.

  Benlow made no reply. I asked him again, close enough now to see the lumps on his neck, one of them an inch across, the black at its centre like a hole.

  ‘A big man,’ I said. ‘The biggest man in the graveyard.’

  ‘Arthur,’ Benlow croaked. ‘A hundred saints in the wall, and all they ever want is Arthur.’

  He tried to take a breath, and it wouldn’t come, a terrible panic flaring his eyes before he subsided against a wall of crumbling death.

  ‘Help me, Benlow. Do some good.’

  ‘What’s good?’ His eyelids fluttered like moths. ‘What’s evil? What’s in between? They all lie. Even God lies.’

  ‘And no God?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘You said… When I was here before, you said even no God was a lie. Who were you talking about? Perchance Dr Borrow?’

  Thinking now of what Mistress Cadwaladr had said. Thinking of my own feelings on leaving Borrow’s surgery the first time, when my thoughts had not been swamped by Leland’s dreams.

  ‘He filled me with an awe, my lord. I was drawn to him.’

  ‘Followed him?’

  ‘Like the Messiah.’

  ‘You said you followed people all the time.’

  ‘Folk goes to unexpected… places.’

  ‘Like? Where does Dr Borrow go?’

  ‘Church, once, at night when it was quiet. The doctor went to the Church of St Benignus, and he lit a candle, and I-’

  Benlow reached out and gripped my arms, fighting for his breath.

  ‘What else did you see?’

  ‘Heard. He cried out. He was alone in the darkness at the altar, and he cried out, like Christ on on the cross. Angry.’

  ‘ Father, why have you forsaken me?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘What Christ said on the cross.’

  ‘I… don’t know.’

  ‘Where else does he go? Where else did you follow Dr Borrow?’

  ‘Walking to the sea, once, but I… got tired. Too far. Came back. And he’d go at night to the Meadwell.’

  ‘When?’

  Feet on the ladder.

  ‘When, Benlow?’

  ‘Two times, three times…’ His eyes grew sly. ‘I’m tired of doing good. This en’t good, my lord. ’Tis all a lie.’

  ‘Gone,’ Monger said, stepping down. ‘He’s gone.’

  His face was aglow with sweat, eyes wide and bright with a bewilderment I’d never seen in him.

  ‘Matthew… he’s not there. Must be out on his rounds, can’t find him. We have no doctor.’

  Benlow moved. A noise from his throat like the thinnest, distant bird-song.

  ‘As you thought?’ Monger said, and I nodded.

  ‘You go and do whatever you must do,’ he said. ‘I’ll clean him up, make him comfortable. Can’t see a man die like this.’

  ‘Better in your hands.’ I stood up carefully, head bent under the ceiling. ‘Better a doctor of horses, than… Joe, he must be stopped.’

  Benlow’s mouth was agape, like one of his skulls, a thin finger crooked, beckoning me.

  ‘Dudley,’ I said. ‘We have to bring him back. And the bones. Bury the bones again. Somewhere no-one ever digs.’

  ‘Then
somebody has to ride like hell,’ Monger said. ‘Tell Cowdray. If he sends all his boys out… With a cart, they can’t travel too hard.’

  ‘And will have to stop somewhere tonight.’

  ‘Pray God.’

  Benlow was trying to raise himself up, and Monger went to him. Benlow kept on looking for me, looking at where I’d been a moment ago, his eyes unseeing.

  ‘They didn’t…’ His throat creaking, no laughter left in him. ‘They didn’t… call him Big Jamey Hawkes for nothing, my lord.’

  We watched the riders leave, Cowdray and I. The sky was like lead, the daylight dying without having had much of a life.

  Three of them were gone after Dudley: the stable boy, the kitchen boy and another who may have been Cowdray’s son. One had taken my horse. Each of them carrying my own copies of a brief letter for Dudley, scribed, in the absence of a fitting seal, with the symbol of the eyes I’d once made for the Queen as my signature, for a jest. Each letter inked and sand-dried and bound, conveying the message that if Dudley did not return at once, with the box of bones unopened, his only reward would be death. The worst of deaths. Hard to think how best to convey this. The grave of love, I’d written finally. Underlining it twice.

  ‘Whatever you were thinking to charge,’ I said now to Cowdray, ‘you should double it.’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head.

  ‘I’ll take nothing for this.’

  He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But he was a good man.

  I nodded in the direction of the tor, tried to speak evenly.

  ‘Where will Nel pass the night?’

  ‘Meadwell, I reckon. Used to be an old gaol up town, but they wouldn’t rely on that now. There are cells at Meadwell. ’Tis almost fortified, that house. Well… so they say. I’ve never been.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Not since it was rebuilt.’

  ‘Will Carew be there?’

  ‘Most likely, aye.’ He cast eyes on me and winced. ‘Dr John, man… you’re in sorest need of sleep. You’re like the walking bloody dead. You en’t eaten… In truth I don’t know how you’re still on your feet.’

  ‘I’m well. And must needs talk to Carew, without delay.’

  Better it were Dudley, but who could say when, or if, we’d see Dudley again this night. I told Cowdray what Benlow had said about Stephen Fyche and the murder of Martin Lythgoe.

  ‘Let this come out, Master Cowdray. Let it be spread far and wide. Too late now to rebound on poor Benlow.’

  A weary disbelief on Cowdray’s face.

  ‘You think it en’t known? What that boy is. Folks might’ve chose to forget the tales about Fyche, in view of his charity, but they’ve seen what his boy’s like, loose in the town of a summer night, well into his cups.’

  ‘Where’s the mother?’

  ‘Long gone. Fyche and the boy, ’tis said they goes whoring together in Wells.’

  ‘Carew knows of this?’

  ‘It would alarm Carew?’

  ‘No. I suppose not. Look, what’s the quickest way to Meadwell? I only know it’s the other side of the tor.’

  ‘No, Doctor.’ Cowdray sighed. ‘’Tis only the other side of the tor when you’re on the tor. The Meadwell’s a mile or so out of town. If you follows the track after the one to the tor, keep heading east, you’ll come to the gates.’

  I nodded. I was thinking of Borrow, where he might be. Where he’d been educated thirty years ago or more.

  ‘You’re thinking to go there on your own?’

  ‘No-one else. No, no…’ I held up a hand. ‘ Thank you. Look to your inn.’

  Cowdray shook his head. I wanted to say, Cowdray, they want to kill the Queen. They’ve poisoned her heritage. Yet, if he’d asked who, I could not have told him with any degree of certainty.

  ‘I assume… there’s no-one left to watch for me, is there?’ I said. ‘Carew’s guard?’

  ‘You never was the one they was guarding, you must know that.’ Cowdray laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘You just watch out for yourself, hear me?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  So much now to watch out for. The sky was all the colours of mould, but wild lights were blazing in my head as I walked into the street. I’d go to Meadwell, but not yet.

  The darkening town was silent, streets deserted, the air laden with comforting smoke as I walked down towards the church of St Benignus. The doctor’s surgery was sinking into the gloom of early dusk, and I was just another shadow at the top of the steps as I took out my dagger.

  I’m no expert at this, but it was an old lock and the wood splintered around the blade.

  Inside, the fire in the grate was near dead, but I managed to light a couple of candles from it, setting them on the trestle board. Not yet sure what I was looking for but I’d know when I found it.

  LII

  Abominations

  What had I expected? Maybe not the severity of it.

  For those of a certain wealth, as I’ve said, this is the first age of light. Big houses have big windows.

  Not like the mean mullions at Meadwell. I stood in the gateway. Noone in attendance, the house rearing before me, like a cliff face in the dusk.

  The gates were open. I’d not expected that either, imagining myself accosted by some surly jobsworth and having a message sent to Carew who, in his own good time, would emerge before me, angry or sneering. But he’d be forced to listen. By Christ, I’d make him listen. And an execution would, by God’s good offices, be halted pending an inquiry which might take many weeks and end with different necks in nooses elsewhere.

  I wanted Carew, not Fyche. Out here.

  But only the owls were out. Fluting across the valley behind me, in a sky which, perversely after such a day, was clearing.

  No stars yet, though. I was on my own. Kept on walking.

  It had not entered my mind that Carew himself might be party to any of this. He was not, in essence, that complicated. True, he’d served different kings in Europe, fought at different times with opposing armies. But since returning to England he seemed solely committed to England’s interests, Protestant to his spine, an adventurer, not a conspirator.

  Not that I could ever like the oaf. But he’d been given the abbey by the Queen or Cecil, and the owner of the abbey was yet the owner of this sorry town.

  I thought to call out for Carew but, in the end, simply walked up to the house, until I came to a door of green oak, set into the stone wall without porch or overhang. Hardly the main entrance, but it would do. I banged upon it with a fist, twice.

  No response. No echo within.

  Standing there, unsure, for some moments before twisting the iron ring above the keyhole, somehow knowing that it would not be locked.

  I’d gone back to Cowdray. Nobody knew more about a town than its principal innkeeper, observing who came and who went, listening to all the careless words which fell nightly from lips loosened by drink.

  First, I’d taken the letters I’d found in Borrow’s surgery and hid them under a beam high in the ass’s stable. Asses could keep secrets.

  Then I’d beckoned Cowdray from the alehouse – filling up now, much talk of the execution on the morrow.

  You couldn’t find Meadwell, Dr John?

  Not even tried yet. We don’t have much time. Dr Borrow – when did he leave the town, as a boy?

  Which was how I’d learned about Borrow’s father, a wealthy wool-merchant and prominent Catholic, who’d done much of his trade in France and found the humours there more to his liking.

  In the ’20s, this was, when there was no inkling of Reformation and King Harry was safely wed to his brother Arthur’s widow, Catherine.

  The only one who came back was Matthew, as a qualified doctor. A fine doctor, as he soon proved. Glastonbury had been grateful to have him. And many of the wealthier merchants and landowners in the area, Cowdray said, would have been grateful to have him wed their daughters.

  But, to the dismay of the mer
chants and their daughters, Borrow took up with an orphan who’d become a kitchen maid at the abbey.

  She was beautiful, mind, Cowdray said. But, obviously, she had no money. Nobody could understand it.

  Some houses, whatever the season, are colder inside than the open air. Without coat or cloak and or even food that day, I stiffened at the chill of Meadwell.

  No candles or lamps, no flicker of fire or scent of woodsmoke.

  Only a passage. I stood, quiet and without obvious direction, while the foolish lower mind was conjuring its own steps down to the dungeons, which would, of course, be unguarded, a bunch of keys hanging, in full view, from a nail.

  And then what? Run away from here with Nel Borrow, hand in hand? Flee the country together?

  Life would never be that simple any more, not for anyone. I turned to the left, there being more light that way, from high slit windows. I surely could not be alone in here and thought to call out. But what if it were Fyche? What I needed was a servant whom I could bid fetch me Carew.

  The passage ended in a T and a door was facing me, so I simply opened it. As far as it would go, which was not far. I thought at first that the resistance was someone pushing from the other side and sprang back, and there was a toppling sound which I recognised at once.

  Books. A long room full of books. A smell of old leather and damp.

  Not a library, though. All the books, none of the shelves. Books in squalid piles on the floor. Good books, well bound, in incredible quantity. At the far end, a window gave into a high-walled yard, and almost the first title I was able to discern through its meagre light was at once familiar.

  Euclidis Elementa Geometrica

  My God.

  Within a few minutes, I’d happened upon Alberti Magni Minerarium and then Aquinas’s Quaestionum Disputartarum and divers other scientific and philosophical volumes, copies of which were in my own humble collection at Mortlake.

  All of these leaving me in little doubt that I’d found a large part of the library which had aroused such awe and stupor in Leland at Glastonbury Abbey in the days of Abbot Richard Whiting.

  Yet unshelved, uncatalogued. Haphazardly stored, mainly uncared for, some thick with dust and eroded with damp. A veritable charnel house of knowledge.

  With all the books, I’d failed to notice that the room also contained divers items of furniture: chairs and screens and chests, all of an ecclesiastical appearance. I opened the nearest chest and found there, wrapped in cloths, two silver platters and a cup with handles.