The Bones of Avalon

by Phil Rickman

  That 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.

  A quest for some manner of redemption? Could not think on this. Not now.

  ‘You’re a sick man,’ I said. ‘Get some sleep.’

  ‘It’s day.’

  He ripped a hand irritably across his forehead, as if wiping off the dust of some battle he was being denied. I stood up.

  ‘Even you can’t fight sickness. Let it run its course. I’ll pull the curtains.’

  ‘Leave them.’

  I was at the door when he called me back.

  ‘John.’ He rolled onto his side to face me. ‘Martin’s body…’

  ‘Yes, I… Should I find a carpenter to make a coffin? Will we take him back to London?’

  Dudley’s eyes had closed. ‘His heart,’ he said. ‘We’ll take his heart home.’

  At the foot of the stairs, I found Cowdray with a young man of about eighteen years who, he said, had ridden from Bristol, with a letter.

  ‘From London, sir,’ the young man said.

  I recognised the seal at once, told Cowdray to give him a good breakfast and ale and charge it to Master Roberts.

  ‘I’ve also found Joe Monger for you,’ Cowdray said.

  ‘Forgive me… who?’

  ‘The farrier. You asked me last night?’

  Last night: another age. ‘He’s out back now, Dr John. Summoned to trim the hooves of my old ass.’

  ‘Thank you. I should pay for that, too, then. Please… add it to our bill.’ I nodded to the messenger. ‘Thank you, also.’

  ‘No letter for return, Master?’

  ‘It’s possible. Go and eat. Take your time.’

  My head was aching. Found my way through the ale-smelling passage to the rear door, a small cobwebbed window above it. Leaned my back against the door and broke the seal on the letter.

  Blanche Parry. She must’ve written this not long after we’d left London, to get it here so soon. I unfolded the paper, held it up to the glass.

  Odd. Written not with Blanche’s customary distant formality. Had an immediacy not of her usual character, and it addressed me in a familiar way I’d not known before from this severe and cautious woman.

  Cousin,

  All is not well with our good sister.

  Her nights are tormented, and

  daytimes fraught.

  This is what I have learned: our sister

  hath been informed of dire prophecies

  and is told she will have no peace from

  Morgan le Fay until such time

  as her heroic forefather be entombed in

  glory. I therefore pray you speed to a

  resolution in this matter and send early

  word to me of your progress.

  For obvious reasons of security, it was unsigned, but the references were clear.

  …she will have no peace…

  Mistress Blanche. Born not far from my own family in countryside ravaged by the Glyndwr wars, Wales against England, castles burning. And then the great war Lancaster against York, local families changing their allegiance one to the other, neighbour against neighbour.

  Cautious like no others, these Border people, and would never show their hand until the direst peril loomed. But Blanche’s devotion to Elizabeth would smash all barriers before it.

  I therefore pray you speed…

  I read it twice more. The use of the word prophecies put me at once in mind of a man with peacock feathers in his hat shrieking, Know how the world will end.

  Prophecy. Most of it is based upon empty air. It preys on the night-terrors of the subject and the desires of the prophet himself. Never, never confuse it with the ancient discipline of astrology, which charts the movements of the cosmos, from which estimates of probability may be drawn.

  How wrong my neighbour, Jack Simm, had been when he suggested that all monarchs would grow skin like to a lizard’s. Royal skin, in truth, was pale and petal-thin and bruised if you blew on it, and the wind of a prophecy blew colder than blizzard snow.

  Fear not prophecy, I would say, fear only prophets. Not least the ones who speak in such specifics as: until such time as her heroic forefather be entombed in glory.

  The forefather: Arthur.

  And Morgan le Fay?

  The witch queen of Arthurian lore, leader of that dolorous sisterhood which, in legend, had conveyed Arthur by barge to the Isle of Avalon. There seemed little doubt that Blanche was here making reference to the Queen’s own mother. And my feeling was that this was not Blanche’s own coded reference – she had little imagination – but came from the orginal wording of the prophecy.

  Anne Boleyn. Poor bloody Anne Boleyn, no more a witch than Mistress Borrow. Whose mother…

  Oh God, what did I know? What did any of us know? Witchcraft – white witchcraft, at least – oft-times would be no more than a condition of belief, an approach to more or less the same spiritual ends we sought as Christians. And, to a Catholic, Anne Boleyn’s notorious Lutherism had been the worst kind of witchery. And not considered white.

  So was this how it had begun, our quest for what remained of Arthur? Some ‘prophecy’ the Queen had read? She has a rare appetite for learning, but also a thirst for trivia and gossip and, as I’ve said, is ever prey to night fears and uncertainties, moving this way and that way and watching always for signs.

  And under the new freedom, London teems as never before with false prophets and tricksters, men and women intent on weaving whole mystical tapestries to achieve ends far removed from the expansion of human knowledge.

  Why had she not consulted me?

  I stood with my back to the yard door, shadowed by a sense of isolation like the onset of night. Was there something I was missing, something so blindingly clear that everyone else had been laughing over it for years? Was I, in truth, trusted by no-one, respected by no-one? A man lauded abroad but in his own land either feared as a conjurer or scorned as a mere book-learner in this age of adventurers in golden doublets which shone like the sun. A poor clerk who charted starry patterns and made cautious estimates of probability. Not good enough. Little wonder that this man had been rewarded with neither land nor title.

  Are you yet equipped to call upon the angels, John?

  Says she who sometimes visits me at my mother’s house but never comes in.

  I felt watery in my spine. Did the Queen, in fact, have some other secret and more potent adviser in matters of the hidden? Why had she told me nothing either of the prophecies or the perceived omnipresence of her mother’s shade?

  And what was the provenance of the predictions she was taking so seriously? Who was doing this? Who in England had such access to the royal chambers? I wondered about Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, ambassador to France, with whom Blanche had said the Queen was spending discussion time.

  How dangerously do you want to live, John?

  Unlike Robert Dudley, I had no love of danger – seldom compatible with study. However, with Carew likely to return before nightfall, time was against us.

  I went up to my chamber for paper and sat down at the board there and wrote a note to be delivered to Blanche Parry. Nothing cryptic, nothing hidden. I asked if she could supply me with a full script of this and any other recent prophecies seen by the Queen and any ideas she might have as to their origins.

  Then I stowed Blanche’s letter inside my doublet, next to the dagger.

  XXI

  What Constitutes Sorcery

  FYCHE, IT SEEMED, would not be waiting for Carew. Stepping outside the yard door, under a low and foaming sky, I could at once hear the criers from the street.

  It was all we needed…

  The town of Glaston was being informed that the Justice of the Peace had formally proclaimed the hue and cry and every man was now to make himself available to hunt the unholiest of bloody murderers who, this night just past, in the s
ervice of Satan himself, had mutilated and slain a pious officer of the Queen.

  A silence now. The air would be fouled with fear – not so much, I was guessing, at the thought of a killer in the town as of what penalty might be imposed upon the townsfolk if he were not caught.

  ‘Not the most useful exercise,’ the farrier observed. ‘No man’s obliged to inquire into a crime where there’s no known felon.’

  This was true in London also. The hue and cry, whilst effective on occasion, was a blunt instrument and limited and would oft-times create the kind of mass panic and confusion which would only make it easier for an unidentified offender to escape.

  ‘It’s a black day for you and I’m sorry,’ the farrier said.

  A sad-eyed, willowy man with thin grey hair at shoulder length. His working apparel, the colour of dark earth, was evidently made from his old monk’s habit cut off at the knees. He resumed his trimming of the ass’s hoof, like peeling an apple. Like he had no curiosity about me or why I should want to speak with him.

  ‘Master Farrier,’ I said, ‘if I may ask… our servant who’s murdered, did he come to you yesterday?’

  ‘Maybe. What did he look like?’

  ‘Big man. Yellow hair, thick on top. A northerner’s accent.’

  He considered, examining the hoof then picking out a small pebble.

  ‘No, sir. Never recently crossed paths with anyone possessed of all of those good qualities. Also, I was out towards Somerton the whole day, shoeing plough-horses. Not back till nightfall.’

  The grey ass farted gently as Master Monger put down the hoof. He stood up, easing his knee-pads.

  ‘Why would you think I’d had dealings with this tragic man?’

  I was tired and couldn’t quickly respond. Monger put away the last of his tools in a leather satchel. Patted the ass’s rump, with affection, and the ass lumbered off into the stable.

  ‘I only ask, Dr John, because there are armed men on the street, and if you had reason to think I was the last to speak with the victim of a most savage murder, then so might they.’

  His eyes were calm, accepting. He had a stillness I’ve oft-times observed both in priests – though not Bonner, obviously – and men who work closely with animals. Seldom in men like myself who roam the world in search of learning the way other men pursue women and strong drink.

  ‘The full savagery of what was done,’ I said. ‘Is that widely known in the town?’

  ‘Known to all. Except, possibly, to Simeon Flavius, who’s said to be ninety-five years old, deaf and no longer in his mind.’

  The farrier waited in silence, perfectly still. From inside the stable, we heard the ass’s jaws at work on the straw. I sighed.

  ‘We’re sent here by the Queen’s Commission on Antiquities, as you doubtless know. Instructed to find out what has been removed from the abbey and what remains in the town. We were told some monks from the abbey were still in the area… including you. I’d asked Martin Lythgoe to go and find you. That’s all.’

  Monger raised a grey eyebrow.

  ‘You sent your servant to speak with me? Rather than come to me yourself?’

  I might take this as a statement, and so made no reply. Monger was reopening his toolbag.

  ‘I was at the abbey until the end. Until there was nothing left there that was holy. And you were no doubt wondering if perchance your servant came to me in search of valuables I’d stolen from the abbey, and I killed him?’ His hand sliding into the bag. ‘Split his ribs with this—?’

  ‘No.’ Backing off, groping for the line of the dagger in my doublet, as his hand emerged…

  …empty.

  ‘I could do it,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve tools here that could do it. And I’m stronger than I look.’

  ‘And a monk.’

  ‘Formerly a monk.’

  I nodded.

  ‘As indeed,’ Monger said, ‘was our esteemed Justice of the Peace. And he now has men hanged.’

  ‘And women.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’ He closed the bag, lowered it to the ground ’twixt his feet. ‘They’ll catch someone for this, of course. This very grievous crime involving London men. They’ll want a lid on that.’

  ‘What are you saying? Even if they have to force a confession out of someone who may not be guilty?’

  Monger shrugged.

  ‘Look, I’d merely wondered,’ I said, ‘if perchance you’d pointed our man in the direction of someone else. Maybe someone you thought might have knowledge of items removed from the abbey. Someone who—’

  ‘Killed him for fear of exposure? We keep returning to this motive. But, beg mercy, isn’t Sir Edmund Fyche, in light of the mutilation of the body, proclaiming it an act of devilry?’

  ‘He is, yet…’

  This would be a gamble; Fyche and Monger had both come out of the abbey and the JP might well be an important source of income for a farrier, but I’d grown tired of verbal swordplay.

  ‘…might it not be possible,’ I said, ‘that when Fyche insists this town has a multitude of witches and sorcerers… he exaggerates?’

  The farrier let slip the kind of smile which, along with the earthen colours of his apparel, suggested the dominance of the melancholic Saturn in his birth-chart.

  ‘Fyche exaggerates,’ he said, ‘only by his own perception of what constitutes sorcery.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Do you wish to know about this?’

  ‘Know?’

  ‘Where his problems lie.’

  I sought his eyes but he turned away, shouldering his toolbag.

  ‘It’s market day. If you walk with me into the town, it may all become apparent.’

  He walked away and I could only follow him, a thin wind whistling through my head. Not for the first time since arriving here, I had the feeling of events being in some way beyond my powers. As if I were a chess-piece and there were only certain directions in which I might proceed.

  The main problem being that I knew not which piece I was, nor who – or what – was moving me.

  MARKET DAY IN Glastonbury was not the event it might once have been – certainly not this day – but still colourful enough. Cart-top stalls hung with rabbits, sheepskins and fresh fish. Barrels of cider and ale. A pieman and a blacksmith selling spades and mattocks. Mainly essentials in these, for Glastonbury, worn-down times.

  Yet there was also a board offering lurid-hued foreign sweetmeats for those who could afford them, as well as local preserves. And a band with battered lutes and skin drums played some country dance tune outside the Church of the Baptist.

  No-one danced, though. Small groups stood in wary silence under a sky of roiling cloud. Shouts of arousal could be heard in the distance, the criers and constables summoning a rabble.

  Monger nodded toward a thin little woman in a doorway. She wore an eyepatch and was purveying jams from a tray.

  ‘Joan Tyrre,’ he said. ‘Moved here about three years ago from Taunton. Used to do the market there until she was taken in for questioning about her relations with the fair folk.’

  ‘The fair…’

  I looked at him. A soured gash of watery sunlight leaked between the clouds like pus from a poisoned wound.

  ‘Met a strange man at the market one day who sought her friendship,’ Monger said. ‘And she followed him to his… dwelling place. When they found her, she’d lost the sight of both eyes.’

  I blinked. Memories. A legend I’d heard in my childhood: if you saw what men and women of this world were not supposed to see, you might be robbed of your sight. Don’t you go wandering away, my mother would say, or you might go where you’re not wanted and come back blinded.

  Must needs admit I’d never before encountered one on whom this punishment had been inflicted.

  ‘By the time she was brought before the church court,’ Monger said. ‘She had some sight back in one eye.’

  ‘Accused of…?’

  ‘I don’t know the exact nature of the charges. Discourse wi
th the faerie? Is that a charge, or does it all come under the gross heading of witchery? Someone probably reported her to the local vicar. I imagine she was lucky to escape prison at the very least. And knew it, which was why she moved herself over here.’

  ‘I don’t follow you. Why here?’

  ‘I guess she thought it best to leave Taunton for a place where such peculiar talents might be not wholly condemned. ’Tis said that if she takes off the eyepatch what she sees through that blinded eye is not of this… Ah… now… observe that woman over there.’

  A gentlewoman in a grey cape was bending to speak with a younger woman with a faded red shawl over her hair and shoulders, sitting on a step with a basket of pink ribbons in her lap. As I watched, she stood up with her basket and the gentlewoman followed her into an alleyway.

  ‘In the bottom of the basket,’ Monger said, ‘under the ribbons, lies a much-prized skrying crystal.’

  I said nothing. Back in Mortlake I had five of them. From a stall, I bought two winter-withered apples and gave one to Monger, and we moved towards the top of the town, where he pointed out a woman who, he said, read the mystic cards from France which foretold destiny. Then he nodded to a man with two terrier dogs.

  The man grinned.

  ‘Just off home for my ole stick, Joe. Case I runs into a feller with horns and claws drippin’ blood.’

  He was short, with a cloud of hair and a beard white as a napkin to his chest and eyes that glinted like chips of quartz. Monger smiled thinly at him.

  ‘A touch more discretion may be called for this day, Woolly. Even for you.’

  ‘Oh ar? I’m supposed to join the hue and cry in pursuit of whoever they decides cut up this Lunnon feller? Well, you know what I says to that, Joe, man? I says they can piss off.’

  He nodded, patting his thigh, and the terriers followed him into the throng.