by Phil Rickman
And the next to die… the next would be me? The infamous conjuror said to trade with demons who would, if Ferrers and Legge had succeeded, have gone to ashes five years ago. Dear God, if I’d dwelt on this for long enough, I might have turned my horse around and galloped like a madman back into the heart of England.
Too late now. As if dropped from the sky, the city of Hereford was strewn about us, a damp untidiness of fenced fields and holdings and timbered shops and dwellings around a triangle of high-spired churches. A frontier town.
And a frontier in my life. I felt now, as I had these past three days, to be on an ill-made road leading not to the roots of my family but into somewhere far more foreign than France or the Low Countries, for at least I could speak their languages.
Guiding my mare between foot-deep puddles and mounds of rubble which had once been part of the old walls, I followed the train into a wide street, where people were gathered to watch us. One spired church lay behind us, the cathedral ahead, the last one in England. On the rim of twilight, its stones glowed the colour of the shewstone Elias had unveiled before Goodwife Faldo.
I thought of the Wigmore stone and could no longer understand how the desire for it had lured me here. There were surely other stones to be found, as potent as this one.
Across the famous River Wye, a long line of hills lay on the western horizon. The Mynydd Ddu – Black Mountains. Where Wales began. The light from a now-invisible setting sun had bled into a symmetry of cloud which hung above these mountains like half-folded wings. Gilded feathers in a holy light. As we rode on, they came apart.
XVIII
Transcending the Mapper’s Craft
We lodged that night with the Bishop of Hereford at his palace by the eastern bank of the Wye, deep and fast-flowing after this drear summer of persistent rain.
As ever, in a city new to me, I would have welcomed time alone to uncover its libraries and antiquities. I’d marked the once-proud Norman castle falling into ruin, as Leland had hinted in his Itinerary: greenery up the walls, parts of the tower gone to rubble, sheep grazing the one-time courtyards. Why am I ever drawn to ruins?
But no time for closer study. Salmon had been brought up from the Wye for our evening meal in two sittings in a near-monastic, white-walled refectory. As ever, it was polite but unjovial, most of us tired and aching from the ride. The talk was of little more than hunting, and, as soon as I could slip away, I did. Suppressing fatigue, I cornered one of the canons and asked if I might speak with the bishop.
His name was John Scory, once Protestant Bishop of Chichester, deprived of his status in Mary’s reign, redeemed by Elizabeth. Yet sent out here into the wilderness, which seemed not much like redemption to me.
I was received into a crooked chamber with panelled walls of dark oak but no bookshelves. Only a Bible betwixt pen and ink and a wad of cheap paper on a narrow oaken trestle. A window was fallen open to the greying river.
Scory, plain-cassocked below his station, pulled out an uncushioned chair for me and went back behind his trestle, lit not by a candle but an old-fashioned rushlight. Possibly an indication of how brief he expected our discussion to be.
‘Forgive me, Dr Dee, but do I recall you as Bonner’s chaplain, once?’
For obvious reasons, this is not something I normally include in my curriculum vitae, particularly when dealing with Protestant bishops. I sought the short answer.
‘Better than being burned for heresy, Bishop.’
‘Oh, indeed. But why would Bonner choose to employ a man so narrowly spared from the flames? Do you mind the question?’
He was a wiry man of middle years, low-voiced for a bishop. He sat back in his chair, fixing on a pair of glasses as if fully to observe the quality of my response.
‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that this was to enable Bishop Bonner to tap into what I’d learned in… what you might call the outfields of divinity.’
‘Oh… keeping a pet magician?’ In the sallow light, a wry smile was shaped in Scory’s lean face. ‘I do beg mercy, Dr Dee, but Bonner’s a man who holds fast to his beliefs. If he’d signed to the Queen he’d be back on the streets, and the fact that he didn’t and he isn’t…’
‘Suggests he feels safer living quietly behind bars,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t pretend to understand him, but behind the history of terror there’s a questing mind. I… don’t know why, given his deplorable history, but I can find things in him to like. Which makes me wonder about myself.’
He peered at me through his glasses, then snatched them off, and a full smile at last broke through.
‘You’re clearly an honest young man, Dr Dee. As I’d heard. Also, it’s said, wondrous with numbers, more than conversant with the law, expert in geography, the arts of navigation…’ Scory’s eyebrows rose a fraction, and then he came forward, both elbows on the board. ‘So what are you doing in such alarming company?’
‘Alarming?’
‘Biggest bloody hanging-party I’ve ever seen in this part of the world.’
Scory fumbled in a locker under the board and produced a good candle which he held to the dying rushlight until it flared. Evidently, the discussion was not to be as brief as I’d expected.
Bishops have never been chosen for their nearness to God, but – unless, like Bonner, their working lives are over – most have kept close to prominent sinners. They’ll bully harmless parish priests without mercy but, in dealing with influential laity, ever walk on eggshells.
Not Scory. Curiously, he was proving to be a man who gave not a shit for status.
‘They’re hardly going to offer him an amnesty, Dr Dee.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Erm… whom?’
‘Believed to be a certain Prys Gethin.’
‘Truly?’ I said.
I’d never heard of this man, though the similarity of his name to that of Owain Glyndwr’s general had not passed me by.
Scory was silent for quite a while. Through the opened window, I could hear a rising night-breeze on the river. Scory moved back from the candle to study me.
‘Why do I have the feeling that you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about?’
‘Ah…’ I shrugged uncomfortably. ‘That’s because I’m not part of the judicial company. Just a fellow traveller.’
‘More and more mysterious. So what do you want from me, Dr Dee? Why would the Queen’s advisor on all manner of extraordinary matters want to keep a tired old cleric from his bed?’
‘Well, assuming your diocese includes the town of Wigmore, in the west, I wanted to ask what you knew about the abbey there. Whatever might be left of it.’
‘Not much. Gone to ruin since the Reform, like most of them. The abbot’s house is become a private home.’
‘The abbot, yes,’ I said. The former abbot was called John Smart? What of him?’
‘I’ve only been here a year, therefore never encountered the man in person. Only by reputation.’ Scory wrinkled his nose. ‘Why do you want to know about Smart?’
‘I gather that after the Reform, he was reported to the late Lord Cromwell for a number of crimes.’
‘And that’s unusual?’
‘Simony, I heard. And lewd behaviour with local women. And misappropriation of abbey treasure?’
‘And which of these might interest you?’ Scory said slyly. ‘Perchance… oh, let me think… the treasure?’
‘Bishop,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you have your own ideas where my particular interests lie. However—’
‘Well, yes, I do, Dr Dee, but if what I’ve heard’s correct we’re not necessarily talking of gold plate. On that ground, it may well be that our definitions of treasure would, to an extent, correspond,’ Scory said. ‘Would you like to see some of mine before you retire?’
‘Treasure?’
‘A very rare treasure, to my mind, and I’d certainly welcome your opinion… as an authority in geography, navigation… and other matters.’
Response from the clergy to what I do falls into tw
o groups: those who damn me as a sorcerer and those who wonder if my work and theirs might one day converge. Men like Bonner, this is, even though he kept his interests secret while publicly damning sorcerers and Protestants to hell.
And Scory?
Carrying a ring of keys, he led me out through a back door of his house and across the shadowed green to the cathedral itself… and into this vast red-walled oven of a building. Simpler in form and less-adorned than some I’d been into. A few lanterns were lit, and Scory unhooked one and I followed him across the misty nave and out through another door and into a cloister, where another lamp met us.
‘Who’s—?’
‘Only me, Tom.’
‘My Lord Bishop,’ a shadow said.
‘Taking our visitor to see the treasure.’
‘Treasure, my Lord?’
Scory’s laugh mingled with the jingle of the keys as he unlocked a door to our right and held the lantern high. I followed him into a square cell with one shuttered window and no furniture except for a wide oak cupboard on the wall facing us.
‘I’d show you our library, too,’ Scory said. ‘If I wasn’t too ashamed.’
‘How so?’
‘Disordered. One day we’ll raise the money to pay someone to examine and list the books.’
‘I’d do it for nothing.’
‘If you had two years to spare.’ He handed me the lantern and reached up to unlock the cupboard on the wall. ‘Meanwhile, anything you can tell me about this…’
At first the doors jammed and then yielded and sprang open together and, by God, it was treasure. Couldn’t take it in at first.
‘Hidden away for years,’ Scory said. ‘Thought to be papist magic.’
‘My God…’
The whole world was spread before us.
‘How old?’
‘At least three hundred years. Have you ever seen its like before, Dr Dee?’
He held the lantern close, slowly moving the lights around a thousand figures and images, etched in black upon a skin stretched over a wooden frame. I saw what seemed to be biblical figures surrounded by a monstrous bestiary of birds and fishes, serpents and dragons. Horned creatures and haloed men, robed and naked, amid a maze of towers and rivers and seas, hills and islands, all of them neatly labelled in Latin and enclosed by wedges of text.
‘A map… of everything?’
‘Of the world. As it was then known.’
‘Was it made here?’
‘Nobody knows where it was made or who made it or how it came to be in Hereford. Admittedly, a world that’s less than the one known now.’
‘Or more,’ I said, thinking I could spend weeks in study of it. ‘The knowledge we’ve gained is more than equalled by the knowledge we’ve lost.’
I stood transfixed, marking the figures of a mermaid and a lion with a man’s crowned head and symbols I did not understand. Yes, primitive compared with Mercator’s globe, yet I felt in the presence of something far transcending the mapper’s craft. Evidently, the Welsh border had more secrets than I’d imagined.
‘You should know that it does inspire a level of fear, even amongst some of the canons here. They say too much contemplation of it invites madness. I’m told there’ve been attempts over the years to burn it to a crisp. I’d guess there is an element of the occluded here. So for the present, I keep it locked away. Does it speak to you?’
Scory moved the lantern and the shapes on the map seemed to shuffle like playing cards into different patterns.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I doubt it was made by one man. More likely some closed monastic order. Look.’
I pointed at the centre of the map, where something of evident importance was represented by a cogged wheel.
‘The centre of the world,’ Scory said.
‘Jerusalem.’ I nodded. ‘That could be of significance.’
I stepped back, half-closing my eyes, and new configurations began to form in the candlelight.
‘Bishop, were the, um, Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon… ever active in Hereford?’
‘The Knights Templar?’ Scory’s eyes widened. ‘Well… not in the city itself but, yes, there were several Templar communities within ten miles of here. My God, Dee…’
‘Jerusalem obviously was the centre of the Templar world. They guarded the city against the Saracen for many years, had their headquarters on the site of the Temple and, it’s said, had access to its most ancient secrets. Some of which might well be…’
I glanced at the map.
‘Enciphered here?’
‘I’d put extra locks on this cupboard… and on the door. That’s assuming you do not consider the Templars to have been, um, satanic?’
Scory smiled.
‘Part of my duty here, Dr Dee, is not to condemn but to protect what exists until such time as it might be interpreted. Well…’ He let out a breath. ‘What you say makes remarkable sense. I’d never thought of the Templars. This is, ah, better than papist magic, I think.’
‘Potentially, beyond value,’ I said. ‘Which is why I’d recommend you make it even more secure.’
‘I will. And, ah… some men, if I may say so, might have chosen to keep such a deduction about the map’s origins… to themselves.’
‘Why would they? It’s in the best place.’
He put out his hand.
‘Thank you, Dr Dee,’ he said.
As we walked back to the palace, Scory’s mood was far more open. He told me he’d once been a Dominican friar. Possibly a reason he’d been given Hereford where, until the Reform, the Blackfriars had been popular residents in the heart of the city.
‘Hereford might seem a lowly post after Chichester. But more important for being on the rim of Wales. The significance of which was made clear to me from the start – the importance of keeping Wales on the Queen’s side.’
‘The Queen’s proud to be a descendent of King Arthur of the old Britons.’
‘A descent beyond dispute, Dr Dee,’ Scory said with what might have been mock gravity. ‘Her grandfather’s progress from out of Wales to the English throne is surely confirmation of the prophecy that Arthur would rise again. And all’s been quiet on the border ever since.’
‘It has?’
‘More or less. Still recovering from the damage inflicted during the Glyndwr wars. And yet now… they’re sending a small army to convict and hang one man. One Welshman. Curious, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know enough about it.’
‘No.’
He stopped, looking out over the river, moonlit now, and then walked down towards its bank.
‘The Wye flows through a strange and individual place, Dr Dee – more so over the border. They have their own beliefs which continue regardless of the Church, whether it be Catholic or Protestant.’
‘Oh?’
‘It seemed to me that one could either respond with a Bonner-like ferocity or with a tolerance bordering on the spiritually lax.’
‘Towards what?’
I followed him down to the edge of the river, a strip of silvery linen unrolled from the hills.
‘I chose tolerance,’ he said. ‘Which is why I suspect that the behaviour of your Abbot Smart reflected no more than his own response to his bucolic situation. He feasted, he hunted, he chased after women. And caught some. Well… I’d be a fool to say that’s not how some of my fellow bishops have behaved.’
‘And the abbey treasures?’
‘Such an extravagant way of life will ever demand a certain wealth,’ Scory said.
‘Do you know what they were, these treasures?’
‘Never gone into it. What’s the treasure you seek?’
‘A gemstone. Said to have been at the abbey.’
‘And you think you’ll find it now?’
‘A gemstone which is now, apparently, for sale.’
‘Ah.’ Scory smiled. ‘Now that sounds like Smart. What kind of gemstone?’
‘We think a beryl.�
��
‘We?’
‘The friend who’s travelling with me.’
‘And that would be…? Come now, Dr Dee, think yourself into my situation. Here I am, leading my quiet life, learning my Welsh to talk to the neighbours… when, of a sudden, I’m invited to accommodate a company including a prominent judge, the Queen’s astrologer… and another man who, despite his dull apparel, I recognise from my time in the South as none other than the Queen’s Master of the Horse…’ Scory leaned into the candlelight ‘… at the very least.’
I sighed.
‘It is who you think, yes. Not the most popular man in London at the moment, for reasons you’re doubtless aware of. But, I believe, falsely accused.’
Did I believe that? The candle in the lantern had gone out and I was glad of the relative dark.
‘Nevertheless, a man not short of gemstones, I’d guess,’ Scory said.
What choice did I have? I told him the beryl was famous as a spiritual device and heard him laugh.
‘The magician arises. You’ve come all this way for a fortune-telling stone?’
‘In the cause of, um, scientific study.’ I was beginning to feel like a prating prick. ‘The way such stones have been studied in Europe.’
He shrugged.
‘I’ll grant you that. I’m hardly in a position to dismiss miracle and magic when we have here in the cathedral the shrine of one of my distant predecessors, whose boiled bones seem to have cured thousands and still draw pilgrimages.’
He meant St Thomas Cantilupe. My library had several manuscripts on the tomb of this most famous bishop of Hereford and other healing shrines where tapers were lit and the bodies of the sick measured to the saints.
‘Indeed,’ Scory said. ‘So a small brown stone dedicated in the names of several prominent angels which not only foretells the future but gives off healing rays—’
‘So you know of it.’
‘I’ve heard of it. But it’s all gossip and myth and legend and I know not where it might be found. But I can tell you that if Smart has it, it won’t come cheap. Unless you – or more likely Lord Dudley – are in a position to, ah, apply some physical pressure?’