by Phil Rickman
‘These knives.…’
Standing now in Borrow’s doorway, shouldering out the sunlight, crisp winter in his voice.
‘See me later, please.’ Borrow buckling his leather bag, throwing it over a shoulder. ‘I have sick people to minister to.’
‘I’ll see you in hell, Dr Borrow. Where goeth all fucking liars.’
The space betwixt them throbbing like the hush before a beheading.
‘Who are you, again?’ Matthew Borrow said.
‘You know who I am.’
‘I know who you claim to be.’ Borrow’s voice was but one notch above disinterest. ‘However, a mere clerk of antiquities would be unlikely, in my experience, to employ a groom. My instinct tells me you’re clad below your status, so if we’re speaking of liars…’
No movement in his grey eyes; he’d marked Dudley’s mood, yet had no fear of it. Found it, if anything, a sign of weakness.
And, in some way, this gave me small hope, for the very last thing I wanted was for Borrow to have lied about the bloodied knives. I wanted there to be some reason for them that we’d all missed. Some reason not involving Nel.
There was a tacit suspension of hostility. Borrow unslung his medical bag, and the tension went out of Dudley, who came into the surgery and closed the door behind him.
‘Dr Borrow, tomorrow is Sunday. The day after that, your daughter goes on trial for her life, accused of witchcraft and the murder of my groom. Did she kill him?’
‘I’m her father.’
Borrow opened out his hands, two rings of dull metal on one, the kind employed to dispel cramp.
Dudley said, ‘Will you plead for her in court?’
‘If I’m allowed, I’ll give evidence as to her good character and appeal for her to be cleared of all accusations.’
‘And tell the judge and jury the truth about the bloodied surgical tools?’
Silence.
‘What is the truth, Dr Borrow?’
No reply.
‘For God’s sake, Dr Borrow,’ I said. ‘We’re on your side. Your daughter’s side.’
The look Dudley gave me implied this was not necessarily the case, but my own feelings could never be so easily discarded.
‘I swear to you,’ I said with a passion I could not quell, ‘that I’ll move all heaven to have her released.’
Borrow raised an eyebrow. I breathed in hard against a blush.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Looked at with dispassion, it seems hardly credible that such a big man was killed and butchered by a woman. Nor can credible motive be shown. But the fact remains that, with no Caesarean birth in Butleigh – no birth at all – your explanation for the blood on the knives—’
‘Is shown to be a lie.’ Borrow’s hands falling to his sides. ‘Yes. Had I been given notice, I’d’ve come up with a better one.’
Oh Christ.
Some of it was true, apparently.
What he’d said about coming home late, very tired, throwing his tools under the stairs, where both his and his daughter’s were stored.
His tools which, that night, seemed to have been unused. Borrow threw open a door to show us where they were kept. It was a cramped space, with narrow wooden stairs.
I said, ‘You had no cause to bring them out next day until—?’
‘Why would I? They needed no cleaning. No-one came to my door in need of surgery.’
‘So the bloodstained tools…?’
‘One of Fyche’s men pulled out the bag and passed it to him and he said, “What are these? Whose is this blood?” And held them up, and I could see that there was blood, and I told him… the first likely explanation that came into my head. But Fyche wasn’t listening anyway. As I told you, he had his evidence. He was satisfied.’
‘How do you know the bloodied tools were Nel’s?’
‘Mine are still here. Unbloodied.’
‘Did you see Nel’s tools there before Fyche took them?’
‘No. They were quickly passed hand to hand and out of the door.’
‘Then how do you know they were hers? And not some others brought here by Fyche as… as ready-made evidence?’
Knowing, even before the words were out, that I was grasping at dustmotes in the air.
‘In which case… where are Eleanor’s tools?’ Borrow said. ‘Dr John, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I fear your friend is right. I lied… not well enough.’
Dudley said, ‘Did she kill my servant?’
Borrow met his eyes at once.
‘Of course not. A woman?’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Could she have lent her tools to someone who brought them back in this condition?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘To whom might she lend her tools, Dr Borrow?’
‘Master Roberts, if I knew that, I would not hesitate to name them. It must needs be someone she trusted. And maybe that’s why… why she won’t talk to me. Or to anyone.’
‘She’s protecting someone?’
Borrow shrugged. This was my last hope for her innocence, but I could see that it was not much better. She was supposed to have lent out her tools and then taken them home, still smirched with a dead man’s blood?
‘Who, having done this, would not clean them afterwards to remove the evidence?’ Dudley said. ‘Taken them to the river… or any one of these local springs.’
The Blood Well, I thought bitterly. Borrow looked at Dudley, shook his head.
‘Who would she wish to protect?’ Dudley said. ‘Who would she die to protect? Does she have a lover?’
Not looking at me.
‘A father,’ Borrow said, ‘is ever the last to know. Especially a father who seldom has time for chit-chat.’
Dudley glanced at me. His eyes said that we’d learned all we could and should be away, but I could not.
‘Have you told us everything?’ I said. ‘Everything that might help?’
‘Dr John…’ A first sign of impatience in Borrow. ‘How would I know what might help?
I thought back to the stormy night in my chamber, enclosed in what seemed to me now like a golden orb.
‘All right… think on this. Nel remains convinced that her mother’s death was engineered because she was believed to possess evidence against Sir Edmund Fyche… maybe evidence that he was responsible for the betrayal of Abbot Whiting.’
‘You must have come to know my daughter very well indeed, in a very short time, Dr John.’
‘Do you believe that?’
He was silent for a moment.
‘No… I don’t. Whiting’s death, and the manner of it, would have been ordered by Thomas Cromwell. Fyche was irrelevant. Nor do I think Cate was in possession of any so-called evidence. In the papers she left behind, there was nothing… worthwhile. And she certainly never spoke to me of anything of that—’
‘But you are, as you say, a man who works day and night. A man with little time for chit—’
‘Don’t insult me,’ he said mildly. ‘She would have told me. I might not have shared much with Whiting in the way of religious belief, but I respected the abbey as a centre of learning.’
‘Your wife and the abbey…’
‘She owed a debt to them, Dr John, and it was a simple one. She had no education as a child. The monks… taught her to read and write.’
‘When was this?’
‘When she was a young woman. She sought to repay them by growing herbs for them. Whiting had an interest in healing, Cate had a rare ability… for making things grow. I’m talking about herbs and fruits which had never been grown here before. Seeds would be brought to the abbey, oft-times from abroad, and she’d sow them and nurture the plants. She seemed to know, by instinct, what conditions would suit them.’
‘So the ground.. the herb garden.’
‘Given to her by the abbot. The abbot was impressed by her abilities. Thought them –’ Borrow’s lips turned down – ‘God-given.’
‘They’re gone.’
‘What was in them?’
‘If she’d wanted me to see them, she’d have shown them to me.’
‘You weren’t curious?’
‘There are matters,’ Borrow said, ‘about which I have no curiosity whatsoever. For I know it to be a mess of myth to keep the vulgar people in their place. There was a middle ground on which we’d talk all night, Cate and I – the curative properties of plants, the quantities in which they…’ He slapped a hand at the air. ‘Tchah! The idea that these curative properties were instilled into each plant by some god… as part of some divine plan for the great cathedral universe…’
I saw Dudley blink. Saw what Monger had meant when he’d said that Dr Borrow’s science was of a different canon to mine.
‘Yours is a lonely voice,’ I said, ‘in this town.’
‘Which is why I stay silent much of the time. I seek no conversions. I wouldn’t wish, Dr John, to start a religion.’
‘But you must know… that the legends here have a power. And if it were felt that your wife was party to some secret knowledge—’
Like the rope tethering a boat to a storm-battered harbour, his restraint snapped at last.
‘Knowledge? You call this superstition knowledge? The belief that there’s a great secret here, preserved by the monks… that while the abbey might be left in ruins, the secret yet remains…? As if Cromwell and King Harry were not the winners because they never learned the secret? You truly think that’s any more than balm for the dispossessed? It’s like the foolish resentment of Wells because Wells has its cathedral and all the wealth that brings, and Glastonbury has only ruins.’
It was my turn to hold the calm. One way or another, I’d pursue this matter to an end.
‘What do you know of this so-called secret?’
He took a steadying breath and then let it out.
‘Dr John, how can I best convey my contempt for such talk? Except to say that if she hadn’t been drawn into this nonsense, Cate would be alive today.’
‘Drawn into it how?’
‘The abbot… all these people. They led her into areas of madness and then abandoned her.’
‘Which people?’
‘All of them. Everyone who ever trod these hills in a robe. She was an expert grower of herbs, like no-one else, but she had to let herself be led down blindingly foolish pathways. And then people died.’
‘The dust of vision? That’s what you’re—’
‘You think she wasn’t encouraged in that venture? As if every damned, deluded monk who ever lived didn’t aspire to some visionary experience… whether it’s from whipping his own flesh raw or fasting to the point of starvation. All the years she spent trying to gratify their impractical urges… it sickened me.’
He half rose, both hands on his board, his breathing harsh. Dudley was silent, intent.
After she was hanged,’ Borrow said, ‘Fyche came with his men – as I knew he would – to turn over the house, take possession of all her potions.’
‘In search of the dust?’ I said.
‘So that all the ingredients of the mixture that caused the burning might be destroyed, was how he put it.’
‘And what do you think he was most scared of – the burning or the vision?’
‘He didn’t see it as vision. He saw it as opening people to possession by demons. So he took everything away, everything he could find in her workshop, the flasks, the weights, potions, papers, recipes – once she’d learned to write, Cate took great pleasure in committing everything she could think of to paper. I like to think of Fyche and his scholars spending many fruitless weeks poring over them in search of… secrets.’
‘Secrets…’ I looked hard at Borrow. ‘The secrets she’d learned from the monks?’
‘This is what you’re here for, is it?’ he said. ‘These antiquities. The Queen, or someone close to her, has heard of secrets here and must, therefore, possess them.’
I said nothing.
‘My own belief, for what it’s worth, is that any secret ever supposed to have been held by the monks of Glastonbury was a secret invented for the creation of wealth.’
I was in no mood to dispute it.
‘So Fyche took everything?’
‘Everything he could find. Some documents I removed from the house. I had no interest in them, but they were close to her heart and head. All that, in my opinion, reduced her. I had no wish to see any of it again, but I wasn’t about to hand them to Fyche.’
‘And what was this?’
‘Something I neither understood nor would wish to. Too many lives wasted.’
I stared at the shelf of apothecary’s jars. The sun gone now, the jars did not shine. I listened to Nel’s voice in my head.
All the treasure was long gone.
But treasure did not simply go, transformed to vapour like the dew. It merely changed hands.
I said, ‘Whatever it was… did you not think to give it to Nel?’
‘Why would I…?’ He looked at me as if I were mad. ‘Put the source of my wife’s downfall into the hands of my daughter?’
‘Someone did.’
‘The dust?’ he said. ‘Are we talking of the dust?’
‘She knows how to make it. I’d guess not many people do. The various outbreaks of St Anthony’s Fire seem to have been caused by accidental ingestion of the mould. Someone who knows what amounts may be used and mixed with whatever other ingredients, to produce the visions without the bodily harm… that would be valuable knowledge, would it not?’
‘She worked it out for herself,’ Dr Borrow said. ‘But it’s dangerous knowledge.’
‘Then, is this one of the secrets? Is this something which may have been known here for many years, passed down? But perchance the factoring of it… the practical details… had been forgotten. Did she help the monks rediscover what had been lost?’
‘Proving that the legendary magic of the place is no more than a form of intoxication? An appealing idea, Dr John.’
It wasn’t at all what I’d meant to imply; I would never have wished to see the spirit of this place so diminished. But I’d give him no argument, being afraid that we’d lose him… that he would see us as no more than vulgar treasure-seekers.
‘So this was not the formula for the dust?’
No reply.
‘Dr Borrow,’ I said, ‘I’m looking for something – anything – to give me leverage on Fyche.’
‘Fyche has ambition. Understand that about him and you have the measure of the man.’
I said nothing.
‘I’ve tried to hate him,’ Borrow said, ‘but I’m not sure I have the right. Fyche looks around and sees the same madness that I see. The difference in us being that I see all religions conspiring to destroy any hope of mankind’s progress in this world… while Fyche believes that if all men were bent to a single religion and all knowledge guarded by men of his own class—’
‘His own class?’
‘That is, not the—’
‘Maggots?’
‘He’s an intelligent man, in his way, the abbey bursar once, who would probably have become abbot had Reform not come.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘He sought it. As I say, he’s ever had ambition.’
I tried again.
‘So if not for the dust of vision…?’
‘Nothing so useful,’ Borrow said. ‘She was a friend of John Leland’s, you know, the…’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘When he died, he left some of his papers to her. Of course, he died insane, leaving a mess behind him, and it was years before someone thought to send them.’
‘And what… what were they?’
‘Shit. Worthless. Occultism. The man was a slave to all that drivel. Astrology, alchemy… I’m afraid she seemed to set great store by them. Poring over them for hours in her last… few weeks.’
> A tingling in me.
‘You know what they’re about.’
‘I’m afraid I have better things…’
‘Could I see them?’
‘Hardly.’
Borrow laughed bleakly. Dudley leaned forward.
‘Dr Borrow… this is what’s thought to be the treasure… is it?’
‘It’s shit.’
‘If neither Fyche nor your daughter possesses this… treasure… then who does?’
Borrow shook his head sadly, then sat down again, clasping his long hands together as if in parody of prayer.
‘Cate,’ he said, ‘Cate has it yet.’
XLI
Who Fears For His Immortal Soul…
THE THIRD TIME I awoke, I lay staring at the ceiling until its oaken beams were full manifest in the moonlight, like the bars of a prison.
The prison of this world.
I lay thinking for long minutes, until the weight of it was all so intense upon my chest that I thought a seizure were come upon me and almost cried out, throwing myself from the bed into the merciless cold.
Wide awake, now. Standing at the window, looking out over the empty street and the night-grey ghost of the abbey just barely outlined under a misted moon. Then I was sinking to my knees and praying that, if only this once, I might know the mind of God. Asking, in essence, if I should take it that this third awakening was a dark summons into a deeper dark.
The idea of it filling me with such dread that it could only be countered by thoughts of Nel Borrow lying sleepless in some stinking, half-flooded dungeon, with the damp and the cold, the scurrying and the despair.
Having been, just once, consigned to such a place, I could not bear this and felt that I’d do anything. Wept over my praying hands before the abbey’s shell, the tears pouring out of me like lifeblood.
Blood.
What are these? Whose is this blood?
Fyche, gleefully, to Borrow, holding aloft his bag of clanking evidence.
All bloodied. Could be pig’s blood, chicken’s blood. Dear God.