The Bones of Avalon

by Phil Rickman

  Of which there was no evidence beyond circumstance. But then, how often in a court of law was evidence any stronger than that?

  ‘What’s this?’

  I’d scarce heard Dudley sliding down from the bed. When I looked up, he was on his knees, scrabbling under the board. Came to his feet, holding something between finger and thumb, his face at first just curious and then tipped into a crooked smile.

  ‘Well, well…’

  ‘What’ve you found?’

  He held out his open hand, displaying a damp, shrivelled, yellowish thing in his palm. Tubular. Appeared to be a piece of animal intestine, ewe’s bladder maybe. Meant nothing to me.

  ‘John, you bastard.’

  Dudley’s features displaying a mischievous delight such as I hadn’t seen upon them since he was a boy intent upon disrupting my lessons. I rose from the chair.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What is it?’ His eyes rolling. ‘Jesu, John, how long have we known one another?’

  I failed to understand. Dudley dangled the fragment of organ between finger and thumb.

  ‘Certainly, I’ve seen them in Paris. Indeed, used one there, on a certain occasion – unwise to take chances in France, but that’s another tale.’ He stared at me. ‘God’s bollocks, look at your face! You don’t remember, do you? Were you drunk?’

  ‘I’ve scarce been drunk in fifteen years, as you.…’

  ‘Not that I’m not delighted, even in such adverse times, to find you’ve had need of a Venus glove?’

  I sank back.

  ‘What?’

  Dudley placed the remains of it upon the board, pulling out a snot-cloth to wipe his hand. The smile remained, as if a weight hung from one side of his mouth. I said nothing. The thing was surely from some previous occupant of the chamber, either that or…

  ‘Who was it, then, John?’ Dudley said. ‘May I ask? One of the kitchen maids seduced by your timid good looks and courtly reticence?’

  ‘I…’

  I think there may have been tears in my eyes.

  I think maybe he saw them. A hand went to his mouth, and then he snatched it away and returned to the bed, crooking an arm around the apple-tree post and swinging lightly to and fro.

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ he said. ‘How – even with the fever – could I have missed the obvious?’

  XXXV

  Black Energy

  IT MUST HAVE taken more than an hour to enlighten him, as the sky shifted into a grey afternoon and dulled the chamber.

  I doubt I left out much, from that first meeting with Fyche atop the tor and all that I’d learned from Monger about Nel’s mother, to what had been spoken of between us last night. He interrupted not once. It was like when he was a boy and I a very young man: when the subject was of interest, like astronomy, he would sit calmly, all the facts digested slowly, savoured like a platter of sweetmeats.

  Not much here that was sweet. Least of all the tale of a monk who was said to have stood by while his abbot, a man most fondly remembered in and out of the abbey, was tortured and killed and dismembered. Because of what he would not disclose? I posed the question and Dudley posed another.

  ‘Who knows of this, John?’

  ‘Nobody knows of it. Nobody left alive anyway. Quite a few suspect. But who dares speak of it?’

  ‘The death of Mistress Borrow’s mother was contrived because she had evidence against Fyche?’

  ‘Monger the farrier thinks it was to do with the dust of vision, but that’s what Nel believes, yes.’

  ‘But it was twenty years ago. Bad things happened then. And anyway, what would Whiting not disclose to Cromwell’s heavies?’

  ‘He was said to have hidden a chalice. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Not the Grail?’

  ‘Hardly likely. The chalice is supposed to have been found anyway. Had it been the Grail, I think King Harry would’ve made something of that, don’t you? To be known as the custodian of the most sacred of all vessels… the field of the cloth of gold doesn’t begin to compete. But it could be there was something… something Cate Borrow knew, from her friendship with the abbot, that he determined to conceal. Perhaps something Fyche wanted, rather than Cromwell.’

  ‘Was there mention of Arthur’s bones?’

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘We know for a fact that the bones disappeared during the Dissolution,’ Dudley said. ‘Possibly removed on instruction of the abbot to a place of safety. If he suspected the King himself wanted them either removed or destroyed, to improve their mythic status… support the legend that Arthur lives on in the Tudors…’

  ‘Then he would certainly have hidden them. The presence of the bones of Arthur being central to the status of Glastonbury Abbey since the twelfth century.’

  ‘And if Whiting knew where they were, he didn’t reveal the hiding place, even under… torture.’

  Torture. As soon as that word was out, I knew what he was thinking. I saw in my head that rusting point under Martin Lythgoe’s blackened fingernail.

  ‘Even facing the worst of deaths, Whiting kept quiet.’ Dudley looked hard at me. ‘Are you listening, John?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You seem… not here.’

  I shook my head to try and clear it. It must needs be recorded in any future notes on this experience that the effects of the dust of vision do not depart from the body and mind as swiftly as the imbiber might assume. Several times I’d returned to an otherworldly condition, losing my hold on circumstance.

  This scared me – would it go on happening for the rest of my life? Maybe Fyche was right in wanting to suppress its use.

  And now I must needs tell Dudley of this experience. What would his reaction be? I recalled him on the barge: is not John Dee the greatest adventurer of them all? A man prepared… to venture beyond this world.

  ‘There’s an air here,’ I said. ‘Unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. An air of both a dark trepidation and… an expectancy of wonders. It’s what some people here cling to and what Fyche fears may ultimately undermine his control.’

  ‘Could say that of the whole country, John. Hopes and fears.’

  ‘It’s stronger here.’

  ‘But then you’re a mystic.’

  ‘And not the only one. Magi travel here from distant places. Here. Not to England, to Glastonbury. Avalon. There’s something. I know it. I’ve… felt it.’

  ‘Felt it how?’

  I sighed.

  The final act… I said nothing of that. Some things are too intense and personal to be shared even with a trusted friend.

  But the circumstances leading to it, even though they whispered hoarsely of witchcraft, needed to be related, and in doing this I began to see the pattern of a rite which would have made sense to thrice-great Hermes himself: an initiatory journey from darkness into light.

  The palms of my hands grew damp.

  Daring to think that something here had cast out the demon of all my midnights – that fear of an ashy death, the final explosion of gases in the head. The memory of something which had never happened to me yet had tormented my nights for years. Gone. Burned out of me, and then…

  A heat sped up my spine.

  …out of fire into water. The sun finding the moon, with all its female qualities. I was aware now of all the cabalistic parallels here, as well as those less esoteric, like the journey out of books and into life.

  And earthly love. No avoiding that.

  By the time I finished, I was pacing circles. Dudley had barely moved.

  ‘This is the dust that causes St Anthony’s Fire?’

  ‘I believe it is, yes.’

  ‘God’s bollocks, John, What the hell were you about?’

  ‘I believed it might also open passageways to the soul. And that… may well have been right.’

  Or had I been possessed by the black energy of the storm in unholy union with my own base urges? Were the places I’d been, in truth, closer to the devil than to God? Was I, in fact, bewitc
hed? The borderline was so close and so fine.

  Shutting my eyes in uncertainty and anguish, until Dudley spoke. Something in his voice that was close to compassion.

  ‘First time, John?’

  Little point in throwing up a curtain.

  ‘As good as.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And I’m guessing that now you believe yourself… in love?’

  A poet’s phrase.

  ‘I…’ Shifting uncomfortably. ‘From the moment we first spoke. I… didn’t know at the time… how certain sensations might translate.’

  Dudley laughed.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘a woman who’ll cook your meat and yet take it upon herself to see you won’t have to lay a third place at the board… is a rare find indeed. How do you prefer to play this?’

  ‘Play?’

  ‘A bad word. Still…’

  ‘I didn’t think,’ I said, ‘that you’d want to play at all.’

  ‘After what happened to Martin Lythgoe? After what we saw this morning?’

  ‘You think Fyche is behind it?’

  ‘If he is, he’s a dead man.’

  ‘After due process of the law,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Or not.’

  ‘You’re Lord Dudley.’

  ‘And might soon be an earl. Indeed, Cecil gave strong intimation that on my return from this…mission… the possibility of appointment to the Privy Council might become… more than a possibility.’

  ‘On your return…’

  I think that neither of us wanted to approach the possibility that Dudley’s return to London – and the Queen’s bedchamber – might be seen, in certain quarters, as less than desirable, let alone the thought that…

  That he was not meant to return from here.

  ‘Some matters can’t easily be resolved here,’ Dudley said. ‘But others can. And, as things stand, Dudley was never here and can’t be held accountable for whatever… act of primitive justice… is carried out by Master Roberts.’

  For a moment, all before my eyes was drained of colour, and I’d swear that I could see around Dudley a living blackness.

  ‘Your witch, your… enchantress…’ Dudley said. ‘She’ll be in some ratinfested dungeon now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Awaiting an assize judge.’

  ‘Who’ll be corrupt.’

  ‘Inevitably,’ Dudley said. ‘So, I ask again: what will you do?’

  The idea that I might simply turn away from this… did not arise. When I first thought that something of this place had begun to live inside me, I knew not the depth of it, the ways in which the structure of my being was altered.

  ‘My mother and father,’ I said tonelessly, ‘were overjoyed when I came home with a doctorate in law. Thinking I’d left other matters behind. Come to my senses at last. Found a solid trade.’

  ‘Solid enough,’ Dudley said, ‘when you were accused of trying to damage Mary. Displaying, it’s said, a rare eloquence before the hardest judges in the land.’

  ‘And Bonner. Himself a lawyer, once.’

  ‘What a cunt that man is,’ Dudley said.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Yet, by some means, you outfoxed the bastard.’ He sat back against the wonky bedpost. ‘You’re saying you want to be her advocate?’

  ‘If she’ll have me in that… capacity.’

  ‘I take it she knows who you are.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Fyche?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘You’re still on a blade’s edge, John.’

  ‘Maybe always will be.’

  The chamber was grown dim, even though it was not long past three. Neither of us had eaten this day, and I recalled what Dudley had said that Candlemas afternoon in the barge about every great quest beginning with prayer and fasting.

  He arose and stood with his back to the window, and I was aware that something had caused change in him, also. He’d combed his hair and beard, but the old arrogance was gone. His arms, in drab dark green, hung limply by his sides.

  ‘When you’d left to find the doctor,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t stay with Martin, knowing what had been done to him while I lay there, useless. I went out to the abbey gates to wait for you. That was when I heard a commotion and had to stand and watch it. Saw them bringing her up, through the town.’

  ‘Nel?’

  My fists clenching of their own volition.

  ‘Must’ve been nine of them,’ Dudley said. ‘They had her in chains. It was like a… festive occasion. A mob arisen from nowhere. Men jeering. Rotten apples thrown at her by women. Screams. Murderer, witch. Well… if you say to a crowd of uneducated peasants, if you say, this is a murderer, this is a witch… Even if it’s their own sister, nobody challenges it. I’ve seen it before.’

  I shut my eyes and saw it. Made myself watch the procession he described.

  ‘Her head was bare. Her dress was torn at one shoulder, pulled down toward her breast. She moved with… with dignity, I suppose – as dignified as you can, in chains. Her head held up, not looking to either side. Yet they… behaved as though she might be ready to escape at any moment, and they’d keep touching her—’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Men are men,’ Dudley said. ‘Particularly out of London.’

  It felt like all the muscles in my body were contracting, making me cramped and knotted inside. When I opened my eyes, Dudley was looking down at the boards.

  ‘Tell me, John.… did I talk about Amy?’

  ‘You oft-times talk of Amy.’

  Not true.

  ‘I mean in my fever.’ Dudley looked up, no sign of fever in his eyes now. ‘I think I may have spoken of Amy, and I know not if it was a sick man’s dream… or if I spoke some things to you.’

  There was a silence, even in the street, but it was a silence that howled like a hound at the moon.

  ‘Must have been a dream,’ I said. ‘I’ve no memory of it.’

  Enough had been said. Dudley and I went down to the alehouse to be served bread and Mendip cheese by the kitchen wench. There was no sign of Cowdray, and the farmers were not yet in from the fields.

  All the same, we ate without conversation, and then walked out into the dusk to find that a man was newly dead.

  XXXVI

  What’s Coming

  THE HIGH STREET was gloomed in its own shadows. No shops were open; two, I noticed, had been boarded and probably not against the elements.

  Three people remained outside the baker’s shop under the dusken sky. I made out Joan Tyrre and Woolly, the little dowser, but at first failed to recognise Monger, for his body movements, once languid and gliding, were now taut and rigid like some engine worked by ropes and pulleys.

  It soon becoming apparent that this was a stricture caused by inner rage. The first time I’d seen it in him and this, together with the absence of both light and laughter, made the whole evening tense as drumskin.

  Monger held a book I recognised at once: the Steganographia of Trithemius. Or what remained or it – little more, in truth, than the hide in which it had been bound. Monger’s hands shook. He rammed the book under an arm and led us into a small yard behind the shop.

  ‘Tell them,’ he said to Woolly. ‘Tell them everything.’

  Woolly’s wild, white beard was shining like the moon in the blue-grey dusk.

  ‘They come for bread,’ he said. ‘Bangin’ on the door, demandin’ bread. Hungry men ridden from Taunton to swell the ranks.’

  ‘I would never have thought Taunton had so many constables and bailiffs to spare,’ Monger said. ‘But what do I know of the recruitment of a mob? I’m but a farrier.’

  ‘Baker had to let the bastards in, look. While they was waitin’ for bread, pokin’ all around the shop, in comes Master Stephen Fyche.’

  ‘Fyche’s son,’ Monger said.

  ‘Beg mercy,’ I said. ‘Brother Stephen?’

  ‘An occasional conceit. Monastic apparel’s favoured at Meadwell to convey t
he impression that all men there are men of prayer and learning in the great tradition of the abbey. The boy’s brutish violence makes mockery of the robe. I think you saw him kicking Joan Tyrre.’

  ‘Damn – thought I knew the face, but it was dark in there.’

  ‘Typical JP’s son. Drink inside him, he’s prowling the streets like a rabid mastiff,’ Woolly said. One of his eyes was half-closed, the skin around it turning black. ‘I’d followed the buggers in, not liking the looks of this, then they had the door shut, and one’s going, Hoo! What we got here? En’t no Holy Bible. Another’s fingerin’ the pictures and all the symbols, and Fyche goes, ’Tis a grimoire, boys! ’Twas all they needed.’

  ‘All they’d come for,’ Monger said.

  ‘They’ve got the baker up against a wall, screamin’ at him as he’s a fuckin’ wizard, and Fyche is rippin’ pages out the book, one by one, wavin’ ’em in his face and then casting ’em into his oven. Two of ’em holding him back, and he’s a sobbin’ and a howlin’ like they’re slaughterin’ his babes.’

  ‘They were his babes, those books,’ Monger said. ‘It was even his hope one day to learn to read them.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Too late now,’ he said.

  ‘He couldn’t read?’

  ‘His old feller had the books off the abbey,’ Woolly said. ‘Worthy, he was brought up to think there was some’ing mirac’lous about ’em. If he kept ’em warm in his bakery, kind o’ thing, their secrets’d be yielded to him… and he’d one day find gold, I s’pose.’

  ‘Had them nigh on twenty years,’ Monger said, ‘and all he knew was that the title was an extremely long word and therefore extremely magical and…’ His jaw wrenched away. ‘God’s bones, Dr John, what are we come to?’

  Woolly tapped his eye.

  ‘When they starts knockin’ him around him, look, I couldn’t hold back no longer. Makes a rush for the book, thinkin’ I’d snatch it and run like soft shit – wouldn’t’ve took me long to lose ’em. But Fyche grabs me, bangs my face, side of the oven, and likely they’d’ve done more, if… if Worthy…’