The Bones of Avalon

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?

‘But what about the abbey’s place in the very foundation of Christianity in these islands. Joseph of Arimathea, the boy Jesu… the Holy Grail.’

‘God forbid, John! Nobody of any church cares for that one. Even the Lutherans will demand where it may be found in the Bible.’

‘You happen to know any significant names from the monks’ petition to Mary?’

‘I never saw it.’

‘Nobody you can think of in Somersetshire?’

‘There are men I can think of, but they may not be the main proponents. I’m sorry, John, this was never a big issue for Mary. It went quiet very quickly and was never raised again. I rather suspect this has been a wasted journey for you, though a great pleasure for me. I’m so glad I didn’t have you roasted.’

‘You just wanted to know about alchemy, you old bastard. You thought I had the secrets.’

My own position had still been fraught in the extreme that memorable day when Bishop Bonner had bustled into my cell.

Casting horoscopes for Mary and her husband, who would be King of Spain, had not, with hindsight, been the wisest of undertakings, but she’d not long been enthroned at the time, and none of us could have known how bad it would all become and how swiftly.

Nearly five years now, since I’d been arrested to appear on charges of the lewd and vain practices of calculing and conjuring. A fine May morning. My quarters sealed off and searched, my books taken away as evidence of a dangerous interest in the techniques of sorcery and witchcraft.

Don’t know why I’d thought that this would never happen to me. Many of my associates had already fled the country in fear of an indictment for heresy or treason. Anyone, at this time, might be seen as a threat to the reintroduction of the Roman Church to England and I, as a known conjuror, was an obvious target for all those at court who would win some favour with Mary.

Therefore, on the evidence of the horoscopes – which included one for Elizabeth, whose very existence was a threat to Mary’s rule – I’d been taken away and thrown into prison. It seemed like madness. Apart from anything, my forecast had been a good one for Mary and Philip of Spain, with Libra rising on the day of the marriage, promising well for their union. And no, before you ask, I don’t know what went wrong.

The practice of astrology, even then, was not the strongest of evidence for devilry. The charge was enough to hold me for a time, but they knew they’d need more to take me to the stake.

There had followed some loose accusations that I’d tried to kill the Queen by sorcery. But there had been no real evidence that I’d ever used spells, black or white.

Then came a down-at-heel lawyer called George Ferrers, whose finest moment had come during his period as the Lord of Misrule, planning London’s Christmas festivities, introducing his company of jesters and ‘magicians’, who specialised in illusion and festive fakery. Somehow, the merry custom had survived even into the drab and humourless years of Mary’s reign.

So Ferrers, of a sudden, steps up and accuses me of blinding one of his children and trying to kill another, some kind of magical assassin for hire. It might have been out of jealousy. He would have heard of my flying beetle, my owls. Either that or someone had paid him to have me stitched up.

The point of defence being that I didn’t know the man – or his children.

‘Even though you conducted your own defence with some aplomb,’ Bonner recalled, ‘the judges would not have wanted to be seen to extend leniency to someone who might well be in league with the devil.’

‘Thanks.’

Although the charges against me had been ridiculous and ill-founded, breaking them down, in public, into shards of malice had not been easy, and I’d been in a sweat at the end, awaiting a verdict.

And when it came at the end of August of the year 1555, it had not been good. I was to be bound over to keep the peace until Christmas of the following year, stripped of the rectorate of Upton-upon-Severn and – the most sinister aspect – to be sent for religious investigation to Bishop Bonner himself.

A burning matter.

He’d come in person to my cell, with a question. Signalling the guard to leave us alone.

‘Tell me, Dr Dee… do you believe that the soul is divine?’

Friendly, even then. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered he’d been interested in me and what I did for quite some while.

I’d given his question serious thought before replying. It was obviously a trap. If I agreed that the soul was divine I would put myself in God’s stead. If I said no, I was challenging His Majesty, so would needs be in league with the devil. Either answer could lead to the stake.

‘The soul is… not itself divine,’ I said after tense and endless seconds, ‘but it can acquire divinity.’

His eyes had connected with mine and in them, at this moment, I thought I could see the flicker of an unexpected delight.

And then it had vanished.

‘Tell me, then, Doctor, how can the soul acquire divinity?’

I held the gaze. Surmising by now that he had been briefed to look for any theological indications of a Protestant allegiance. That surely was what it had all been about. Mary’s people were looking for a plot, with Elizabeth at its centre.

‘By prayer,’ I said. ‘And suffering. And perchance… through learning.’

‘And what learning would you suggest?’

‘The Bible…’ I could see that he wanted more and I’d taken a chance. ‘And the sacred knowledge of the Jews.’

He’d been unable, then, to conceal his interest, drawing in a sharp breath.

‘And how could one become privy to such secrets?’

In the months that followed, many a long candle had been melted into a pool of wax over this question. I’d expected a butcher and found a man with a genuine sense of inquiry into the condition of the human soul.

Saved from the stake by Bonner’s interest in the hidden, and an unexpected friendship had developed. Even made me his chaplain, for a time, and many nights had been spent in discussion of alchemy and the Cabala.

I stood and walked over to the chest and picked up the looking glass. Saw a pale man with mid-length dark brown hair and, in the eyes, what some had seen as kindness, others as sorrow and I, now, as… lost.

‘Tell me, Ned… as a man who hears things…’

‘I’m growing increasingly and wilfully deaf, John.’

‘Have you become aware of any rumours of sorcery… against the Queen?’

‘What, like yours against Mary?’

Bonner’s laughter was like collapsing masonry.

‘In the shape of a wax effigy in a coffin. Done with some attention to detail. Do you know of anyone, or any group, which might seek to…?’

‘What are you getting at, sorcery or popery? The French don’t fear sorcery as we do. If they think it’ll get Bess out and Mary Stuart in, they’ll use it with abandon.’

‘Did I mention the French?’

‘It’s always the fucking French. They hate her with a passion. And with Scotch Mary wed to the boy king… Look, talk to a Frenchman, he’ll tell you the English Queen’s a witch. Like mother like daughter. Spawn of Satan. England, under Elizabeth, is therefore a cesspit of sorcery.’

‘Who believes that?’

‘You mean you don’t?’ Bonner half rose. ‘You’re telling me there hasn’t been an unimaginable increase in superstition – charms, talismans, fortune-telling, what-have-you, since we stopped burning people? Since little Bess decided to live and let live?’

‘Ned, that’s simply-’

‘No less than the unwaxed truth! Cannot believe a man of your peculiar talents goes around with his eyes shut. It’s everywhere, John. That’s not, of course, to say that the common folk in England don’t live in constant fear of it… but that’s part of the spell. And therefore anything which links the Queen into that world – little effigies, what you like – ain’t good. And that’s why she shouldn’t be meddling with the faerie myths of Arthur. You go and tell her that.’

‘I’m not being given the chance.’

‘Of course -’ Bonner beamed – ‘she shouldn’t be meddling with the likes of you, either. ’

‘Um…’ I’d had enough. ‘Doesn’t the French court have its own, um, interpreter of the hidden?’

‘Who? Nostradamus? Good Catholic, and a prophet in the Old Testament tradition. The French are in morbid thrall to his every word – and prophets in general, since their last king’s untimely death was forecast in detail.’

I’d never met Nostradamus, a physician by trade, whose sudden, spectacular fame as a prophet seemed largely founded upon his adoption by the French court and the pretentious use of poetry in his predictions. However, although his use of astrology was perfunctory and inaccurate, I’d felt obliged to keep notes on his career and had, in my library, several of his almanacs and a few actual manuscripts I’d bought quite cheaply in Louvain, where the man had been regarded with an academic disdain.

Bonner leaned back. He looked happy.

‘You know, John… I intend to enjoy prison. Time and a place to attone, through prayer, for all that I’ve done which has offended God. Prayer and silence. And self-denial.’

‘Self-denial?’ I lifted the jug from the board and sniffed. I was not an expert on fine wines.

‘Word of advice,’ Bonner said. ‘Let the bones of Arthur lie. They’ve ever been trouble.’

‘I don’t truly think I have a choice.’

‘As for Glastonbury, they say that, since the abbey went down, it’s like to the Bedlam… only without the walls.’

The mirror rattling on the chest as Bishop Bonner’s merriment came crackling back, a firing of dry kindling.