The Bones of Avalon

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Our understanding, Master Cowdray,’ Dudley said, ‘is that certain items may have been removed from the abbey by the monks. I’m thinking items that are not necessarily what might be considered treasure. I’m thinking documents – of which Dr D— Dr John has knowledge. Also sacred relics.’

  ‘Many a saint’ – Carew was pulling his long black beard into stiffened plaits – ‘and many a king has been entombed at that abbey over a thousand years or more. Or so you tell the pilgrims.’

  ‘’Tis a fact,’ Cowdray told him. ‘And many of their relics removed by the King’s men.’

  ‘My information,’ Dudley said, ‘is that some were removed beforehand, in anticipation of the Dissolution of the abbey. It being hardly the first establishment to go. They could see the darkness on the horizon.’

  I saw that Cowdray shifted, for the first time uneasy, Carew watching him, head on one side. Carew had been summoned by Cecil and told, in the strictest confidence, what it was that we sought in Glastonbury, but I wondered how much he already knew.

  ‘Look, masters.’ The innkeeper slumped back in the settle, head sinking betwixt his shoulders. ‘Times are hard for this town. For all of us. A few bad things been done, out of desperation.’

  ‘A town which grew fat on superstition and idolatry in place of honest work can hardly expect much sympathy,’ Carew said. ‘What bad things were done?’

  ‘Things taken. Stone and lead, mainly. Glass.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And… that’s it. What was left. We were given to understand a blind eye…’

  Yes. You could see that, once all conspicuous treasures had gone to the Crown, it would be deemed expedient for local people to be permitted, within reason, to help themselves. Thus involving them in the destruction of the abbey. Buying their complicity.

  ‘I’d heard that some fine houses had been built from stone from the abbey,’ I said.

  ‘More the case that houses already built were repaired,’ Cowdray said.

  ‘Well, that’s all over now.’ Carew straightened up. ‘They’ve had their pickings. Now it’s in my charge, they want stone from there, they’ll pay. Or anyone caught stealing masonry might find his knuckles crushed ’twixt two slabs of it on the way out.’

  ‘No-one goes there,’ Cowdray said quickly.

  ‘I bet they don’t.’

  ‘No,’ Cowdray said. ‘They don’t. Apart from anything, Sir Edmund Fyche hands out a stern sentence to anyone caught taking stone.’

  He looked down, one hand rubbing the back of the other. I’d thought of something and was raising myself in my chair, my inner thighs much aching from the ride.

  ‘You said that some of the monks were gone. Where did they go?’

  ‘Dispersed. Some to seek sanctuary at those monasteries allowed to continue. And some—’

  ‘Hah.’ Dudley smiling at last, if thinly. ‘Offering… gifts to these monasteries in return for sanctuary?’

  ‘Relics, you think?’ Carew was back at the fireside, easing off his boots. ‘A sackful of holy bones? Aye, I suppose that makes a degree of sense.’

  ‘I know naught of that,’ Cowdray said. ‘And the ones still here, ’part from the farrier, they’re all gone to work the land, or teach at the new college.’

  A silence.

  ‘College?’ Candle flames going horizontal as Carew sprang up. ‘What fucking papist shit’s this?’

  ‘The college to be started up by the tor,’ Cowdray said. ‘Nothing papist. Meadwell, Sir Peter. Sir Edmund Fyche’s charity?’

  ‘Ah.’ Carew subsided, turning to Dudley. ‘Fyche was a monk – a bursar – at the abbey. After the Dissolution, an inheritance gave him the wherewithal to establish a farm. Employed a few monks as labour. But a college, now?’

  ‘Where gentlemen’s sons may be educated,’ Cowdray said. ‘The Bishop of Wells gave sanction for it, but nothing—’

  ‘Bourne? He’s gone. Papist bastard’s banged up.’

  ‘He’s still in Wells.’

  ‘Not for long,’ Carew said. ‘He’ll be in the Tower by spring.’

  And he probably was right. I didn’t know Bishop Bourne, but I knew he’d refused, like Ned Bonner, who’d consecrated him, to swear the Oath of Supremacy.

  ‘Nothing papist, though,’ Cowdray said. ‘Sir Edmund—’

  ‘Is a survivor,’ Carew told Dudley. ‘Fyche found it expedient to revert to Rome during the last reign, when it looked as if the abbey might live again, but he’s a JP now and knows which side of the hearth won’t singe his beard. All the same, I’ll make a point of inspecting the place when I get back from Exeter.’

  And doubtless he would, but I was glad that Carew would be gone from here on the morrow; it would hardly help our inquiries to have him raging around making wild accusations against plans for some entirely legitimate college which just happened to be administered by former monks.

  ‘Need to get some sleep.’ He gathered up his boots. ‘Cowdray, tell my men we’ll leave at seven.’

  ‘I’ve ordered a brick to be put in your bed, sir.’

  ‘Well, take the fucker out,’ Carew said. ‘I’m not a woman.’

  Cowdray nodded, making for the door, me wondering if Carew would have rejected the hot brick with such alacrity had Dudley and I not been present. I thought not.

  ‘But underneath it all,’ Dudley said wearily, ‘he’s a sound enough man. A solid Protestant.’

  He was hunched hard over the fire now. His face looked narrow and starved – this emphasised by the selfless butchery of his moustache.

  ‘From what my father told me of Carew,’ I said, ‘I’d thought him little more than a mercenary. Perhaps you’re right, but it’ll still be easier for us to function without him. What’s the plan for the morrow?’

  ‘Kicking arses can sometimes cut a few corners. However… I think we’d best begin by surveying what’s left of the abbey. Then, if there’s a tame ex-monk…?’

  ‘The farrier.’

  ‘Yes. Talk to him.’ Dudley shivered. ‘I hope the bugger’s put bricks in our beds. He looked at me. ‘What are you thinking, John?’

  It was the first time since leaving London that we’d had a chance to talk, and I’d hoped to approach with him the problem of Elizabeth and her mother and the hares. Maybe tomorrow.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘I’m thinking, what if this is a wild goose chase? What if the bones are already in London? What if they were taken, on specific instruction, by Cromwell’s people, at the time of the Dissolution?’

  ‘We’d know. Or at least Cecil would know.’

  ‘Or if they were simply destroyed?’

  ‘That’s more of a possibility. To Fat Harry, they might just have represented some old Plantagenet scheme to demolish the myth of an immortal Welsh hero. Harry might even have seen it as symbolically grinding up any final hopes of a Plantagenet return to the throne. I…’ Dudley drew a hand across his forehead, then looked at the sweat on it. ‘I don’t know, John, I feel… I was seized by the romance of it – the Isle of Avalon, the Grail Quest. But when you see what a shithole the place is…’

  ‘It’ll look better in the morning.’

  ‘And now my throat’s gone dry and my head aches. All I need’s a cold. You were right. We should’ve stopped at an inn until the storm was over. That bloody Carew with his harder-than-thou blether.’

  ‘Get some sleep,’ I said.

  Because the inn had been empty, we were able to have separate chambers on the upstairs floor, while the attendants were accommodated below. Mine had a ruined four-post bed with one post hanging loose, all acreak, and the drapes so dense with dust that I dragged them down. Close drapery around a bed can be suffocating when you awake in the night from some smoky dream.

  I’d brought a few books with me, in my bag, and laid them out on the board before the window – some stained glass in it, I noticed, but it was only a murk in the light from my single candle.

  Kneeling before the window, I asked for God
’s blessing for our mission, then prayed for mother’s welfare. Scarce remembered climbing into the bed, dragging the pulled-down drapes across it for more warmth. Hadn’t been given a hot brick.

  What I next remembered seemed more in the nature of a dream.

  Ever responsive to noises in the night, I must have slept no more than an hour when there came the creaking of a door.

  Lay for a moment listening, aware of slow footsteps on the stairs, but it was the sliding of bolts that brought me out of bed and across to the window, clutching the drapes around me, for the room had no fire and was shockingly cold now.

  The window was next to the inn sign, which bore the red cross of St George, drained to grey by the night. Below me I saw the outline of a man stepping down from the cobbles to the mud. In the thin moonlight, I saw him stand for a moment, leaning back, hands pushing against the bottom of his spine.

  Dudley?

  On the other side of the street was the abbey wall; beyond it, those great, lonely fingers of stone. After a while, he began to walk along the street, close to the wall until he vanished into shadow. The man of action who, sleeping alone, was restless.

  .…a man who brings to his Queen such an irrefutable symbol of her royal heritage… something which bestows upon her monarchy’s most mystical aura. That man… he may expect his reward.

  My own reward would be the discovery of any ancient books quietly removed from the abbey and hidden away. Books that Leland had seen, leaving him in a condition of awe and stupor. But it was unlikely they’d be secreted within the precincts of the abbey itself.

  So I didn’t spend long wondering if I should go down and join Dudley. He didn’t need me, and I was cold and aching from the ride. John Dee, the conjurer, returned to his musty blankets.

  Ever the observer, separated from life by the screen of his own learning.

  It was probably fatigue and aching that turned the sudden dread I felt into something as real as another person in my bedchamber.

  XI

  Delirium

  IT WAS LIGHT when I awoke to heavy footsteps and a banging on my door. Before I could speak, it had been thrown wide and Dudley’s attendant, Martin Lythgoe, stood there, his wide face creased with anxiety.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘Can tha come at once. Me master…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Took severely ill, sir.’

  Me rolling out of bed, forgetting how high it was and stumbling foolishly to my knees. Looking up at the straw-haired Martin Lythgoe from the floorboards.

  ‘Ill?’

  ‘A fever. Sweats and moans and rolls in his bed.’

  Should not have been shocked. Had it not been obvious last night that something was coming?

  ‘Have you sent for a doctor?’

  ‘But I thought thee…’

  He stood looking at me, hands on his hips, like if I was not a healer what was the use of me?

  ‘No.’ Groping for my old brown robe. ‘I’m not… that is, my doctorate’s…’

  It was in law, if you must know, another of the pools I’d paddled in. I sighed.

  ‘I’m coming now…’

  The door of Dudley’s chamber was directly opposite mine across the narrow landing. A bigger room with a bigger window and more stained glass oozing reds and purples.

  He was not lying in his bed but sitting hunched on the edge of it, the curtains thrown back. Wrapped in blankets like a sweating horse, hair matted to his forehead.

  ‘John.’

  Hardly more than a sigh. The piss-pot was on the boards at his feet. A weighty shiver wracked his body, and the eyes turned to me were marbled with fear.

  ‘Lie down,’ I said.

  ‘John, get Lythgoe to prepare the horses. If I’m to die, I’m buggered if it’s going to happen here.’

  ‘You don’t need a horse. You’re not going anywhere, Robbie, least of all to the next—’

  I stepped back. Of a sudden, he’d bent over the empty piss-pot, hands either side of his head, retched. Looked up betwixt his fingers.

  ‘God’s bollocks, John… this task of ours – cursed, or what?’

  Rolling back on to his pillow, his back arched, face full-oiled with sweat. Martin Lythgoe throwing mute pleas at me from the doorway. Never, I would guess, having seen his famously elegant master so vulnerable.

  And God help me I knew not where to start.

  Born under Cancer, Dudley, like me – a water sign and thus ruled by the moon. If I’d had my charts and the necessary hours to spare, I’d no doubt be able to calcule how the planetary aspects might be affecting the organs of his body and the balance of its humours. And if I’d had Jack Simm here, we might, betwixt us, have come up with some remedy. Not for the first time I wished I was a doctor of physic.

  ‘When did this begin?’

  ‘Whuh…?’

  ‘I saw you go outside last night.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Dudley was struggling up again, as if he might overcome this malady through strength of will. ‘Nose blocked, couldn’t breathe. Thought just a head cold. Hadda… gessome air.’

  Which would have made it worse, chilled his blood.

  ‘This a plague town, John? Might as well tell me. Has the air of it, no question.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t.’

  ‘Just me, then, is it?’

  ‘Lie down.’

  ‘John, that place is… wretched and…’

  ‘What place?’

  ‘…colder than the night. Colder than all the night.’

  A shiver coursing through him again, like a bolt of wild lightning, his head nodding, teeth clenched as he hugged himself under the blankets, moisture shining on his flushed cheeks.

  Cowdray, the innkeeper, came in with a wooden tray bearing a jug and a cup.

  ‘Cider. Ain’t much that good cider don’t help.’

  Me nodding thanks as Cowdray lowered the tray to a board, next to the ewer of water, backing swiftly away into the doorway – understandable enough: who knew what contagion a Londoner might have brought out of his filthy, overcrowded city?

  ‘Awful dreams, John.’ Dudley pulling his hands from the blankets to clutch at his head. ‘Awful bloody dreams.’

  ‘Dreams mean nothing,’ I said.

  Knowing that to be untrue, although I believe that the meaning of dreams is oft-times obscured.

  ‘If dreams they were,’ Dudley said.

  ‘It’s the fever.’ I turned to Cowdray. ‘Is there a doctor here?’

  ‘Used to be,’ Cowdray said, ‘but he died.’

  Dudley laughed sourly into his hands.

  ‘There’s a couple of them in Wells, for the cathedral,’ Cowdray said. ‘Proper doctors. One trained in London. Long cloak, one of them pointy masks and all. I could get one of my boys to ride over. ’Twould… cost you a bit, mind.’

  ‘Cost isn’t important.’ I looked hard at him. ‘But time is. Who do you go to?’

  ‘I tries not to get ill, sir.’

  ‘You know what I’m asking.’

  His lips tightened. Men from London, he’d be thinking. Who from London could you trust not to have you arrested for the use of alternative healing by witchcraft?

  ‘Sir Peter Carew,’ I said. ‘Is he…?’

  ‘Gone. Left over an hour ago with his men. Before we knew about Master Roberts.’

  ‘Good. Help me. You wouldn’t send all the way to Wells, if someone in your family were sick.’

  He made no reply. I poured some of the cider into the cup and gave it a sniff.

  ‘Perhaps you could water this down a little. He’s delirious enough already. That’s if your water is drinkable.’

  Cowdray accepted the jug, stood for a moment looking into the clouded ferment.

  ‘There’s a feller we go to. Herbalist and surgeon.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘We reckon so.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Up by St Benignus. Two minutes’ walk?’

  ‘What are we waiti
ng for, then?’

  Well, of course, it would be the local cunning man.

  The kind of hedge-healer possessed of an ancestral knowledge of plants and herbs. The kind of practitioner of whom, in London, Jack Simm had been a touch afeared lest he became known as one. Afeared because of the persecution urged upon such people by the beak-nosed piss-sniffers with papers from the Royal College of Physicians.

  It would be a safer life, however, for a cunning man out here, where there’d be fewer registered doctors. And also fewer criminals and foreigners to degrade the healing crafts with so-called magical powders ground from stones and animal bones.

  I stayed with Dudley, having asked Martin Lythgoe to go with Cowdray to this healer, describe the symptoms and give him whatever money he demanded to come at once. At least I knew enough from my own studies, my astrology and my work with Jack to be able to assess, to some extent, the cunning man’s abilities.

  ‘Carew?’

  Dudley shifting in his bed, turning hunted eyes to me and trying to rise.

  ‘Gone.’ I pushed him gently back. ‘Gone to Exeter.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. He’d think me weak as a woman.’

  He began to cough. He’d left most of the watered cider, saying it made him feel sick.

  ‘Women are not all weak, Robbie,’ I said. ‘I’d expect that you, of all people…’

  ‘I know it.’ He rolled onto his side, his face mottled as a cockerel’s in the light from the stained glass. ‘I do know it. Jesu, do I know it. But tell me… you tell me this… how’s it possible for someone to rule a country well and keep the ways of a woman?’

  ‘It might help if there’s a good man to share the burdens of power.’

  I meant Cecil, but Dudley almost cried out.

  ‘Should’ve been me…’ His eyes full of hot tears. ‘Would’ve been so right. Everything my father died for, John, and if I should die this hour…’

  ‘Jesu, you’re not—’

  He raised a limp hand to forestall me, then closed his eyes and took in a hollow breath. Shut his mouth and tried to swallow, but his throat must have been too dry, and when his eyes flickered open again they were empty, defeated.