by Phil Rickman
‘Which neighbours? Not Goodwife Faldo?’
‘No, they’re… not people I know by name. Do you not notice the looks we get?’
I thought of the men who’d stared at me in the tavern where I’d been in search of Jack Simm. And of what he’d said. I wanted to say something reassuring and could only think of Cecil’s offer to have my mother guarded – knowing what her reaction would be.
‘I don’t want it. I have to live here. I don’t want us to be seen as… strange.’ My mother came into the room and shut the door behind her. ‘I thought it would all be different, when you were given the rectorate of Upton-upon-Severn.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Not so very long.’
‘Mother, it was another era. The boy Edward was king, Seymour was protector, the Act against witchery was withdrawn, I was—’
‘Untainted,’ my mother said, ‘by rumour.’
‘Unknown,’ I said. ‘I was unknown then, there’s the difference.’
There’s ever been a thin line ’twixt fame and notoriety.
Couldn’t deny that the eighty pounds a year for Upton had been useful, but I was never going to be a minister of the church. The cure of souls – the very idea of such responsibility was terrifying to me.
‘I don’t know what you do,’ my mother said, in a kind of desperation. ‘I no longer understand what you do.’
‘I study. Collect knowledge. Calcule.’
Couldn’t see her expression, but I could feel it. Must needs do better.
‘Studying mathematics’ – I closed my book – ‘I’ve become aware of universal patterns. Ordered patterns, which I feel could enjoin with something within us. Allowing us to… change things. I hope eventually to understand something of why we are here. To know, in some small way, God’s purpose—’
‘How does that change my life? Who pays you to know of these things?’
I closed my eyes. She was right. The Queen had oft-times spoken of making my situation more formal, but nothing ever happened. No income, no title, not even the offer of a new rectorate. Men had been awarded knighthoods or peerages and estates for smaller services than my work on navigation, while I was yet a commoner.
But, then, who honours a conjurer?
I should not feel bitter. What was a title worth? It made you known to the world in ways I care nought for, only wanting to be left alone to get on with my work. Although, yes, I agree that it would have been pleasant not to have to worry about money.
‘Please thank the Secretary for his concern for me,’ my mother said, ‘but assure him that I shall be quite secure here.’
‘You don’t think that. You said—’
‘I’ve never lived entirely without servants. Indeed, I’d thought you’d be married by now, and there’d be another woman here to—’
‘Mother—’
‘Still… perchance the very fact that you are not here… will make the difference.’
‘Yes,’ I said softly. ‘Maybe it will.’
The candlelight flickered like soft lightning on my coloured charts of the planets, glimmed in my hourglass, brought the eyes of the owl to life. I felt like a man hanging onto a stunted tree bent over an abyss. No firm situation, no wife, no siblings. No family but my poor mother, who only wished for me to be a normal man, and respected as such.
‘Don’t stay up too late,’ my mother said. ‘You’re not so young any more.’
The cats. Maybe the rustling in the shelves had been the cats, who liked to prowl the library when I was working here.
Or maybe it was the matter of Arthur, calling to me. I sighed, put away my cosmology and reopened the collected manuscripts of Giraldus Cambrensis.
Gerald of Wales, a respectable chronicler who had travelled widely in these islands and attempted accurate descriptions of what he found there. You might almost have thought that Gerald was present himself when the discovery was made of the bones of Arthur at Glastonbury in 1191, such was the detail.
The thigh bone, when put next to the tallest man present, as the abbot shewed us, and placed on the ground by his foot, reached three inches above his knee. And the skull was of a great, indeed prodigious capacity, to the extent that the space betwixt the brows and betwixt the eyes was a palm’s breadth. But in the skull there were ten or more wounds which had all healed into scars, with the exception of one which had made a great cleft and seemed to have been the sole cause of death.
Gerald probably was not there when the bones were uncovered, but it seemed unlikely that he could have invented any of this. It was a report. The bones had been shown to him. The bones were real. But whose?
If, perchance, I was able to bring some of them back here, to examine them closely, it would be possible to determine something of their antiquity.
I read of the inscription upon the cross which had been found above the remains.
Hic iacet sepultus inclitus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia.
Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon.
Succinct enough, but a little too perfect. I had seen it suggested that the description ‘King’ Arthur had not been in use at the time of the burial. It was also in Latin, when it would surely have been more convincing in old Welsh.
The cross might, however, have been put into the earth long after the burial, to mark the place rather than as a memorial. It was possible. Anything was possible.
For, truly, I did not want this to have been a deception. Knowing, all the same, that I could not turn away from any evidence of fabrication.
Unless commanded to?
Dear God, what a wasps’ nest this was. I turned to The History of Kings of Britain by the less-reliable Geoffrey of Monmouth and the account of Arthur’s final battle with his treacherous nephew, Mordred. Geoffrey claims this happened in Cornwall, with much mortality on both sides.
After which, Arthur is conveyed to the Isle of Avalon, for his wounds to be cured.
Geoffrey’s tales are powerfully inspiring, yet anyone with a knowledge of the histories can see that he can’t be trusted. We recognise, elsewhere in his text, stories from other sources – Nennius, for instance, and the old ballads of Wales. Tales previously unrelated to Arthur. As if Arthur is an all-purpose hero who may be borrowed to fight the Saxon or the Romans or whoever would most please the writer’s patron. Malory, as I recall, chose the Spaniards.
I moved on to some manuscripts in French, early translations of Geoffrey, and then to Maistre Wace’s account, Roman de Brut, which follows Geoffrey’s tales but mentions – probably for the first time – the round table, at which all knights sat as equals. Seeds here of the chivalry, so beloved of Dudley.
Then came upon what seemed to be the first English account, by Layamon, a priest of Worcester – a telling of Arthur’s passing, as from the King himself.
And I will travel to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens… the most beautiful of the spirit-folk and she shall make all my wounds sound and make me whole with healing medicines, and then I will come to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with great joy…
And then came this:
The Britons still believe that he is alive, living in Avalon with the fairest of the spirit-folk and they will continue to expect Arthur to come back. There is no man born… who can say for certain anything else about Arthur. But there was once a wise man whose name was Merlin. He said in these words – and his words were true – that an Arthur should yet come to help the English.
Note that phrase: an Arthur. As if Arthur was a guise to be donned like some magical armour.
As if Arthur was Britain. It was clear where the Queen’s grandfather, Henry Tudor, had found his inspiration.
I heard again the mild tones of Sir William Cecil: You are her… her Merlin, shall we say?
A status which I could hardly yet aspire to live up to. If any man had ever achieved commune with angelical spheres it surely had been Merlin. So had this been absurd flattery from Cecil, or a touch o
f subtle irony? For had not the Italian, Polydore Vergil, some twenty-five years ago, made ridicule of Geoffrey of Monmouth, as good as accusing him of inventing the Arthurian tales?
I let it lie and turned finally to a modern work. John Leland, the travelling antiquarian, had spent time in Glastonbury during Harry’s reign, having been charged by Thomas Cromwell with cataloguing England’s ancient wealth but, in the end, more taken with charting. I’d read all of Leland’s Itinerary years earlier but, having no pressing interest in this remote town at the time, must have missed what now came up at me like a piercing ray of light.
I was a few years ago at Glastonbury in Somerset, where the most ancient and at the same time most famous monastery in our whole island is located. I had intended, by the favour of Richard Whiting, abbot of that place, to refresh my mind, wearied with long study, when a burning desire to read and learn aflamed me afresh…
A dampness in my palms like to the alchemical dew, for I knew that desire.
I straightway went to the library, which is not open to all, in order to examine most diligently all the relics of most sacred antiquity…
Leland. Dear God, how could I have forgotten this?
Scarcely had I crossed the threshold when the mere sight of the most ancient books took my mind with an awe and stupor of some kind, and for that reason I stopped in my tracks…
And it was all there. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin. Records of St Patrick who was fabled to have spent time in Glastonbury. Had not Leland been dead these seven years or more, I should have sought him out, for I knew of his fascination with Arthurian matters and my own twin callings of astrology and alchemy. And yes, it made sense that this oldest and wealthiest of abbeys should possess unrivalled accounts of the wisdom of the ages.
Awe and stupor. Christ, I knew this feeling so well, and the tingle it aroused in me felt near to sinful. What if elements of this library yet survived in the town?
Another reason, beyond the bones of Arthur, to venture there.
I stilled my heart through a steadying of breath and laid my head upon an arm on the boardtop, all thoughts calmed now by a quiet joy, choosing not to dwell on the fact that, for several years before his death, John Leland had been mad.
A barn owl shrilled close to the window, and I lifted my head into air that seemed scented, for a moment, with summer roses.
A candle guttering.
Must have fallen asleep across the board.
And dreamed. For some time now, I’ve kept diaries of my dreams to look back on, years hence, to see what they might have foretold, what patterns they revealed.
I would set down no record, however, of this one, having dreamed of fair-haired Catherine Meadows, all naked in my arms in her pallet; who, when I gently brushed aside her hair, had become…
I stared, wide-eyed, into the frail flame, horrified at the pressure within my hose. Dear God… in my arms in all her majesty? Two hours in the dangerous company of Robert Dudley, and what am I become?
Shook myself, tried to smile. Deciding that my phantasy woman had only turned into the Queen because the Queen, more than any woman, was so far beyond the likes of me. As far beyond as Guinevere was to Merlin. And therefore, in my sorry state, safe to entertain in dream.
One of the cats was brushing my ankles and in my head the Queen still laughed, punching my arm, ginger curls on white forehead.
Are you yet equipped to call upon the angels, John?
Only in my imagination, shaped by the reading of a thousand books and manuscripts, the absorption of others’ thoughts, others’ ideas, others’ divine inspiration. Equipped, in truth, for little. I wished that Dudley had bothered to snatch a copy of the peacock man’s pamphlet so that I might at least know what visions I was supposed to be having.
The last log had died in the fireplace, and the room was as cold as a dungeon. Was a sudden cold not an indication of the impending appearance of an unquiet spirit?
Only in my dreams. Some were endowed with abilities like to the angels and some could see the dead. But not me.
I brought the base of my left fist down on the board to scare away the numbness in the arm on which I’d lain my head and to fragment the dangerous pictures lodged therein.
Dudley was right.
If the bones of Arthur were to be found upon the Isle of Avalon, then we must find them.
VIII
Without the Walls
ONCE YOU’VE SMELLED roasting flesh – human meat – you never forget it.
Oh, I’ve seen men burn. Held there by the frenzy of the crowd when all I wanted was to be far away. Seen the hideous moment of hell’s halo, when the hair catches frizzling fire and the mob’s fever explodes with a great bull-roar and a score of pickpockets make their move.
But even the sight of that horror has faded in the mind’s eye before the smell departs the nostrils… a smell of throat-searing sweetness which seemed to find me again this day, as I was shown in by one of the canons.
Shown not, this time, to the bishop’s sumptuous receiving room, but to a small, stone-walled chamber down amongst the servants’ quarters at his East London palace.
‘Welcome,’ Bonner said, ‘to my cell.’
He’d always laughed a lot, this roly-poly priest, who’d sent so many to the stake in the darkest of Mary’s days. Once a lawyer, a clever man, a worldly man, now… what?
There was a single high, barred window, a low and narrow bed – little more than a pallet. A chest with a ewer and looking glass. A bookshelf high on the wall bearing maybe twenty volumes. A chair and board, a jug and a stoneware cup, and the sweetness I could smell… was probably wine.
He gestured me to the only chair, lowering himself to a corner of his bed. Clad this day like to a friar in humble brown habit, and yet the girdle of his robe had cloth-of-gold strands within it which drew the light betwixt the iron bars.
‘What’s this place, Ned?’
‘Purgatory!’ A great fart of laughter exploding out of him. ‘Preparation, my boy. Getting into practice.’
‘But you—’
‘Marshalsea, I gather. I’ve been before. Could be worse. Could be the Fleet.’
‘Why don’t you just swear the oath? You’re no enthusiast for Rome.’
‘No, indeed,’ Bonner said.
‘And the Queen… you don’t dislike her, do you?’
‘Admire her enormously, John.’
‘And she’s made her concession. She’s not head of the Church of England, merely its supreme governor. There’s no persecution, Catholics can still worship, there are private masses in country houses and nobody’s been executed for it since she’s been Qu—’
‘Get thee behind me Satan!’
Bonner bouncing to his feet, pudgy forefinger outstretched. Then he plopped down again, dissolving into giggles and looking around his simulation of a cell with something approximating to a perverse delight. I wondered, for a moment, if perchance he was dying of some malady and knew it, yet he appeared in his usual rude health.
‘So…’ He beamed. ‘Your message says you’re come to speak with me about Queen Mary and King Arthur.’
‘I am.’
Told him about my mission to Glastonbury. Told him nearly the whole of it, more than I’d told my own mother.
How could I confide in him thus, you ask? This man who, as the Catholic Bishop of London, had threatened and bullied and brow-beaten and choked the city’s air with the greasy smoke of religion gone bad, leaving what once had been men in small piles of twitching, blackened limbs. How could I trust this monster? God help me, I don’t know. Yet trust him I did.
When I’d finished, Bonner sat there nodding slowly, hands placidly enfolded across his not-inconsiderable gut.
‘Tell me,’ he said at last. ‘Young Dudley. Is it true he’s dicking the Queen?’
‘I’ve never asked,’ I said.
‘No.’ Bonner smiled, with affection. ‘You are the only man in the realm who, yet being close to the boy
, would not ask.’
He observed me for a few moments, then threw up his hands.
‘All right, yes, there was a petition to Mary. Not calling for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, as such, merely asking for the site and what remained of the buildings to be handed over to a group of monks. Therefore it might have been done at almost no expense… and I believe it had the support of more than one bishop, as well as many of the gentle-folk of Somersetshire, if only because it would have planted the seeds of a recovery.’
‘So why didn’t Mary—?’
‘Hard to say, John. Maybe the Privy Council was against it. Or maybe if Mary had lived longer it might’ve happened. After all, the place was a treasure house of saintly remains, not all lifted by Cromwell, and that’s not something which someone as devout as Mary could easily overlook.’
‘Was mention made of the bones of Arthur?’
Bonner’s eyes widened.
‘If it was, then someone was not thinking.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The bones of even a Celtic saint would be holy relics. Was Arthur a saint?’
‘Better than that,’ I said, ‘in the eyes of some.’
‘No, no, no.’ His head shaking. ‘What does Arthur represent but… magic… enchantment? The king who does not die but waits in some misty spiritual realm until he shall be summoned? Ferried in a barge to Avalon by beautiful black-clad totties? A fine legend for Henry Tudor, when he needed to involve the Welsh, but can you not see poor little Mary shuddering?’ Bonner leaning forward, hissing. ‘The S-word, John, the S-word.’
Sorcery. I thought about Mary – a kindly woman at heart, everyone said that, but her religious stronghold had been kept high and firm around her, patrolled by guard-dogs like Bonner. However, it had become clear quite early in our relationship that Bonner, who had publicly professed a hatred of all sorcery, in fact found wizards far less noxious than Lutherans. For did not magic lie at the heart of the Roman Church?