The Heresy of Dr Dee

by Phil Rickman

  I felt Vaughan’s shudder.

  ‘Something unearthly about this.’

  ‘He’s happy, that’s all,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘He’s walked free from the highest court ever held in Presteigne. And he’s on his way to do a killing.’

  ‘Something even more than that.’ I marked how his hands seem to gather-in the bright night. ‘He feels himself entranced.’

  The arms of the figure on the road were opening and hands reaching out, as if he might clasp the hill to his bosom.

  ‘We might simply go down to him,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘Present ourselves. Three against one and we have… this.’

  The blade of the butcher’s chopping knife was near two feet long. Stephen Price had handed it to me as we left and I’d unloaded it upon Thomas Jones at the earliest opportunity. He held it point down behind an apple tree so that its blade should not reflect the moonlight.

  ‘A scholar,’ he said, ‘a lawyer… and a man who, since his pardon, has become rather too fond of his meat. Against a man of considerable strength who’s driven to kill. Yes, I suppose we could do that. Demand he tells us where they have your friend. And, when he refuses, lop off one of his hands.’ He ran a tentative thumb along the blade. ‘Sharp enough, certainly. Will it be you, John, to do the first hand?’

  ‘We’ll follow him,’ I said.

  Nearly halfway up Brynglas, not far below the church, Prys Gethin stopped and sat down on a small tump in the grass. To gain the cover of the last stand of pine before the church wall, we’d had to creep, one by one, to higher ground and so looked down on Gethin now.

  Both Thomas Jones and Vaughan had been able to verify to their satisfaction that this was Gethin. And there was confirmation for me, too, when he turned his head and the moon lit the grim cavity where an eye once had lodged.

  I looked at Thomas Jones in frustration. He shrugged. There was nothing we could do but wait. After several minutes, Gethin had not moved, sitting quite still, as though in meditation. Or was he waiting for someone? I leaned against one of the pines, fatigue weighting my legs. The only warmth came from the new blood on my brow, the deep gash in my head having opened again, tributaries channelled either side of my nose.

  Vaughan raised a hand, making motion towards the church. I looked at Thomas Jones and he nodded: we might as well take this opportunity to leave the pines and reach the cover of the church wall, for if Gethin rose now and moved ahead of us, he’d have an open view of the whole valley and might well mark us.

  We moved, as before, one by one. I waited another minute before running in a crouch, half blinded by the blood-flow, to join the other two behind the low trees and bushes which enclosed the church on three sides. Below us to the left, the village lay lightless and silent.

  We approached the church itself with greater caution this time, but a window of plain glass showed that there was still no one inside, only a sheet of moonlight over the altar. The raised churchyard gave us a plateau from which we could watch Prys Gethin, still as a monument and far enough away for us to commune in whispers as we crouched among outlying tombs behind a loose wall of bushes.

  ‘You might almost imagine that he knew he was watched,’ Roger Vaughan said.

  ‘I doubt that.’ Thomas Jones prodded the earth with the butcher’s blade. ‘It seems more likely that he’s waiting for someone. We could be here until sunrise. Let me think on it.’ He sat down on a low tomb, the blade across his knees. ‘Go and bathe your head in the well, John. If he moves we’ll come for you.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ Vaughan said. ‘It’s on the dark side of the church, and the steps to the well are worn.’

  An owl’s call across the valley was returned, as I followed Vaughan around the body of the church. The area of the well was darkened not only by the tower but the line of tall pines on the other side. Vaughan stopped, stood with his back against the church wall. I could not see his face, only hear the desolation in his voice.

  ‘The truth is, I must needs pray to the holy mother.’

  ‘Vaughan—’

  ‘I’ve no confidence in surviving this night.’

  I stopped under the grey diamond panes of the steep end window, and sighed.

  ‘Because of what you saw down by the tump.’

  ‘And felt. And smelled.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Mabbe. Came and went. In a blinking.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Sometimes we throw pictures from our thoughts into the night air, and in some places the air is more receptive. If the ancient Greeks and the Egyptians before them were so far ahead of where we are, even now, in matters of the Hidden… then we mustn’t be too quick to dismiss the ancient Britons with their standing stones and their rough, earthen monuments. More than just graves.’

  It seemed a rare madness, delivering a lecture on antiquities to a gathering of one in a moonlit churchyard. But it was clear to me now that the skin of this valley and the fabric betwixt the spheres must be rendered muslin-thin.

  ‘It would have…’ Vaughan held his back against the church wall. ‘If I’d died from the fear of it… I felt it would’ve relished that. Do you see?’

  No, I did not see.

  But I nodded.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Pray to the Lady. If you dip your sleeve in the holy well and wipe the grime from her brow, she might even respond.’

  If his glance at me was in search of irony, he’d find no sign of it this night.

  ‘Roger,’ I said. ‘Don’t dwell on it and it won’t reach you.’

  He nodded and picked his way to where the sad, smirched Virgin stood atop her ridge of rubble-stones, watching over the stone-lined vault in the earth which held the holy well. A well older than Christianity, where the heads of dead enemies would have been sunk in veneration of some forgotten druidic deity later, perhaps, invoked by Owain Glyndwr and Rhys Gethin.

  And then Prys Gethin, too, on one of his dark pilgrimages to Pilleth, betwixt cattle raids. No one more likely to have murdered and mutilated the man twice buried by Stephen Price, in grotesque and would-be magical re-enactment of the events of 1402. What I could not yet imagine was how the unknown man’s unquiet spirit had been invested with the base instincts of his killer.

  My split head could hold no more. All logic and learning was collapsed into the midden of superstition, as we returned to the tomb. Watching Prys Gethin, so still on the hillside below us, small as a toad from here, as Venus gleamed, first signal of the coming dawn.

  In my old life, which surely had ended this night, ghosts were neither good nor bad, and all they could give me was the knowledge of their existence. Fear had no role to play, for I’d not been able to understand fear of the unknown which, to me, was a wondrous thing which I’d approached eagerly with my arms spread wide.

  I looked at Thomas Jones, the butcher’s knife betwixt his knees, his hands on its string-wound wooden hilt.

  He leaned back, stretched, sighing.

  ‘He doesn’t know, boy. Doesn’t know where they are. He’s waiting for them to find him. That’s why he made no attempt to conceal his arrival. When they know he’s free, they’ll know it’s not a trick and their side of the bargain can be met without fear of reprisal.’

  ‘Meaning Dudley yet lives?’

  ‘Who can say? We don’t know where they might have him. We don’t know how many of them are holding him. If we wait for them to find him and take him to the place, yes, we can follow them. But how do we stop them putting an end to it? Prys’s moment of blood-drenched triumph. What do we do about this, John?’

  ‘Can only wait,’ Vaughan said, returning from his prayers. ‘What other choice do we have?’

  ‘The other choice is to make sure they never find Prys. Go down there now, three against one. And this…’

  Thomas Jones thumbed the butcher’s blade. Roger Vaughan drew back in alarm with a rattling of bushes.

  ‘I’m a man of the law.’

  ‘So’s Legge.’

  ‘Master J
ones, it’s one thing for a man to be legally hanged—’

  ‘Heroes we’d be, in Presteigne.’

  ‘Jesu!’

  Only a hiss from Vaughan, but it was too loud, and I thought I saw Gethin’s head move, though he was too distant for me to be sure.

  Thomas Jones held out a dagger to me. I took it. I saw Roger Vaughan’s eyes close momentarily.

  ‘Roger, you know this place. Go around the church, into the pines, wait for a while to be sure you’re not seen, then quietly follow the path back.’

  ‘To Nant-y-groes?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Thomas Jones said, catching on. ‘Fetch Price and however many sons he has over the age of six.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Just do it, eh?’

  Vaughan hesitated for a moment and then turned and was gone. Thomas Jones took a long breath, parted the bushes separating us from the pale hillside, peered through for a moment then let the bushes swing back and picked up his butcher’s knife from the tomb.

  ‘This is it, then, boy. Don’t forget your magic.’

  White and amber strands in the east suggested that the moon’s dominion would end before long, and I was glad of this. The moon might be your friend on a night ride, but it meddles too much with your mind and senses.

  We’d moved about fifty paces to the other end of the churchyard before easing ourselves through the bushes, so that he would not at first see us. Walking slowly towards him, for a swifter pace might have implied an attack.

  Thomas Jones plucked off his green hat.

  ‘Bore da, Prys.’

  Good morning.

  A thin white line on the horizon, but the morning must be more than an hour away.

  L

  Courtly Dance

  A SILENCE FORMED, allowing me to observe Gethin for the first time.

  He was perhaps a little over medium height with long, tangled, greying hair and a face like from a misericord, its lines chiselled deep in varnished oak.

  My gaze was drawn inevitably to the open cavity where the left eye had been, a knot hole in the wood.

  ‘Twm Siôn Cati,’ he said. ‘Well, well.’

  His wide lips fell easily into a loose smile, and then he spoke in Welsh so rapid that I could understand not a word of it.

  Thomas Jones nodded.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘However, in the presence of an Englishman, I ever think it polite – for those who can – to use his language. Indeed, I’m told that Owain Glyndwr himself, when he was at the English court, was oft-times mistaken for an Englishman.’

  ‘While Elizabeth of England, who claims descent from Arthur’ – Prys Gethin speaking rapidly, as though his mastery of the neighbouring tongue had been impugned – ‘speaks not a word yn Gymreig.’

  His voice was unexpectedly high and surprisingly melodious, like to a bladder-pipe.

  ‘Not entirely true,’ I said.

  Foolishly. In truth I was far from sure that, for all her linguistic skills, the Queen had more than a few words of Welsh, but I’d always instinctively take her side.

  ‘Is it not?’ Prys Gethin glanced across at me. ‘And who are you to say, sirrah?’

  Thomas Jones threw a swift warning look in my direction, but I caught it too late.

  ‘John Dee.’

  ‘Oh.’ Prys Gethin’s one eye lit up and, for a moment, I had the disturbing sensation that I was also viewed by some organ of perception behind the empty socket of the other, a secret sight which might penetrate my thoughts. ‘Her conjurer.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘So the Queen of England saw fit to dispatch her sorcerer to Wales… along with the father of her bastard child.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a—’ I shook my head, and my lips tightened with the pain. ‘No matter.’

  No matter, indeed, for I knew that in one sentence he’d confirmed what, until that moment, had been only an elaborate theory.

  ‘Where is he?’ I said.

  He glanced briefly at me then looked away.

  ‘Where are you holding Lord Dudley?’

  No reply.

  ‘We know why you were freed,’ I said. ‘We know about the agreement.’

  Gethin spoke in Welsh to Thomas Jones, who at once translated.

  ‘John, he invites us to kill him.’

  Gethin smiled.

  Thomas Jones raised the butcher’s knife. Gethin did not flinch.

  The whole texture of the night was altered. I watched the start of a dangerously delicate courtly dance in the remains of the moonlight: Prys Gethin tossing a question in Welsh at Thomas Jones, who gave no answer, Gethin then addressing him at length, still in Welsh, Thomas Jones listening without a word, hands on hips, then turning to me, his voice mild.

  ‘Prys wonders, John, why I’m working with the enemy.’

  ‘And he is not?’

  Realising, too late, my possible mistake. If Gethin believed his task had been assigned by Cecil, then he might see it as some peculiarly Welsh alliance between the two of them. How much he knew of Cecil’s reasons for not wanting the Queen wed to Dudley, an Englishman, I could not say. Nor whether, from a Welsh standpoint, a Spaniard or a Frenchman would be preferable as a consort.

  More Welsh from Gethin, Thomas Jones listening, then slowly shaking his head.

  ‘No, boy. Myself, I’ve never considered that accepting an English Queen’s pardon was any kind of treachery. But equally, I’m under no illusion about the continuing Welshness of the Tudor line.’

  Silence for a while, only the call of a distant owl at night’s end. Then Gethin brought his attention to me.

  ‘Do you know where you are standing, Dr Dee?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  I took an instinctive step back, down the hillside, for Prys Gethin, even after walking from Presteigne, gave off such animation, such an energy. Perhaps the energy of freedom after a long captivity. Or perhaps something more. There was little doubt he knew where he was standing. Did he believe the spirit of the man whose name he’d borrowed had come into him while he sat waiting on the hill?

  A spirit now burning inside him?

  Not possible. An occupying spirit could not be of human origin, only demonic.

  Christ.

  I felt my own energy seeping away into the ground. I was near exhaustion and, despite the extreme danger here, felt I might fall to sleep on my feet like a horse. We were in Gethin’s hands and he knew it.

  Time passed, the voice piping on, as if delivering a sermon, the Welsh rising and dipping like a liturgy, and then Thomas Jones replying, this time also in Welsh, still now, looking beyond me down the hill, his eyes black. I felt like a watcher from another, smaller world.

  Thomas Jones was nodding now, a faint smile upon his plumpen features.

  ‘Da iawn,’ he said.

  Very good. Both men smiling.

  All three of them.

  Jesu.

  The third man was unknown to me. He was a large man. His hair was short and crinkled, his beard grey, his arms bare and muscular. Silver sweat shone from his face and a dagger from a fist.

  Thomas Jones nodded to him.

  ‘John, this is Master Gerallt Roberts.’

  Oh God, he must have moved silently out of the pines, lower down the hill from where we stood, and simply walked up, silently over the sheep-cropped turf.

  We were equal in number now, but you only had to look at Gerallt Roberts to know that, in truth, we were outnumbered.

  A long silence, and then Prys Gethin spoke again, in Welsh.

  ‘John…’ Thomas Jones looking down the slope at me. ‘Prys tells me we are upon the very spot at which the Welsh archers hired by the English were caused to turn and loose their arrows into the English army. Thus redeeming their heritage.’

  ‘And how can he know that?’

  Nobody replied. Having retreated a little way down the hill, I had my back to those first pale lights of pre-dawn, looking up at two men who were still in night.

  ‘
A place of redemption indeed.’ Thomas Jones approached me, looking sorrowful. ‘It’s been conveyed to me that this may be my last chance to regain my honour.’

  ‘Honour?’

  ‘After my cowardly acceptance of mercy from a woman who will never be Queen of Wales.’

  I looked for a smile, but his face was empty.

  ‘We’ll never be part of that. Of England. Owain, with his English education and his smooth English speech, made that all too explicit.’

  ‘My father achieved it,’ I said.

  ‘Traitors don’t count, John.’ Thomas Jones sighed. ‘Prys says that redemption requires of me one simple, perfect act.’

  I heard his kindly voice as if from a great distance.

  ‘Your decapitation,’ it said.

  I said nothing. It was a play. I was not part of it. The only reality was the ache in my head and even that was dulled now.

  ‘How can we let you live, knowing what you know?’

  We?

  I saw that he’d plucked the dagger from my belt. I stared into his eyes, but they would not meet mine.

  Look at me, boy – fallen Welshman, recipient of an English pardon. See what it does to me, this place.

  Thomas Jones brought up the butcher’s knife, ran a thumb along the blade.

  It was a play. It could not be happening. I must endeavour not to make him laugh. I turned to Gethin.

  ‘The sheriff’s men will be here soon. You do know that?’

  ‘The sheriff.’ He smiled patiently. ‘The sheriff, at whose behest I was comfortably accommodated for a few hours, until all the hotheads waiting to kill me had dispersed. In whose covered cart I was safely conveyed beyond the boundaries of Presteigne. That sheriff?’

  ‘How many murders do you want to be tried for this time?’

  ‘This is murder?’ Gethin spread his hands. ‘Oh, I think not, Dr Dee. Not in my country.’

  I saw that only he and Thomas Jones were standing on the higher ground. The big man, Roberts, was gone.

  And then I heard his slow breathing from behind me, even smelling it. Foul. The reek of betrayal. Or did that come from the ground, where a history of it glittered in the very dew?