The Bones of Avalon

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Relics

On the rim of nightfall, sudden sleet had tossed us, with a stinging contempt, back into the worst of winter. Still some miles to go, and my cloak was a sodden rag.

Dudley, riding ahead, looked out toward middle-distant trees as bare as fishbones and hills still ermine-furred with snow. Then up at the spattering sky and back at me, over his shoulder.

‘Can’t you do anything about this, John? Change the weather? Shift the skies to France?’

He was rearing up from his saddle, and my horse took fright and I leaned forward to calm her. I was better with horses than with women, just about, but Dudley, as usual, made me feel a feeble creature.

Still, I was glad he’d spoken so – a hint of the old Dudley in a man who, since we’d left London, had been uncharacteristically silent, almost reserved. Something on his mind.

There were six of us, including the big northerner Martin Lythgoe. Lythgoe was Dudley’s chief groom, a man he’d known all his life, whom he’d taken with him to court.

‘Call yourself a magician,’ Dudley said.

‘I don’t.’ Bending my head into the blizzard. ‘As you know. Can we not find an inn?’

‘There isn’t an inn. Can you see an inn?’

‘I can see very little.’

‘Is there an inn near here, Carew?’ Dudley shouted.

‘There is. ’ Sir Peter Carew riding up alongside him. ‘But spend the night there and by morning you’d have scratched off your balls. As for this poor fellow…’

Carew glancing back at me, as if unsure whether I possessed balls. He was a stocky and muscular man, older than Dudley by a good twenty years, but his long beard was still as dark and thick as tarred rope.

‘Well, perchance we could rest there at least until the sky shows some mercy,’ Dudley said. ‘Is the food fit to eat?’

‘Press on, my advice, you want to reach Glaston tonight. You and I, we’ve known a fucking site worse than this – and with a battle on the morrow.’ Carew turned briefly to me, eyes slitted against the sleet. ‘I gather you’ve not served your country as a fighting man, Doctor?’

Behind me, Carew’s two men were, I suspected, sniggering. I made no response. Could not, in truth, speak, for the cold. As Carew pulled ahead, Martin Lythgoe, the groom, was alongside me, low-voiced.

‘Yon bugger’s fought for too many countries, you ask me, Dr John.’

Smiled and turned away, urging his horse back on to the whitening road.

My tad had talked of Carew, who’d found favour at Harry’s court when little more than a boy. A far-travelled boy, however, who had already seen much action in Europe.

Sent by his father, Sir William, as a page to France after years of truancy and rebellion at his grammar school in Exeter, he’d ended up with the French army and then, after his master was killed, changed sides to join the Prince of Orange. Still only sixteen when he’d returned to England, with letters of introduction from the royalty of Orange to the King. Impressing the Great Furnace with his horsemanship and finding a place, two years later, as a gentleman of the Privy Chamber. A great individual, my father had said. Sir Peter goes his own way.

Certainly knew his way through the west of England, having risen to become MP for his native Devon and Sheriff of that county. Now he was its senior knight and, as such, wielded power in Somerset, too.

And also – the reason he was with us – Carew was the present owner of Glastonbury Abbey. Safe pair of hands, Dudley had assured me. He wasn’t sure precisely how the Queen had come to place the holy ruins in Carew’s hands, and wasn’t sure the Queen knew either. But no one better to keep the papists out.

It was very near dark when we rode at last into the hills above Glastonbury but, by then, the sleet had turned to rain and then ceased, and a fragment of moon was visible, and we soon could see why those pleas for restoration had fallen upon muffled ears.

Carew had told us that, because of its history, a strong Protestant presence at the abbey had been deemed essential. In Seymour’s time as Duke of Somerset, it had been given over to a community of Flemish weavers – followers of the insane Protestant John Calvin – who’d set up a flourishing industry within its precincts. Thus had the town’s economy been sustained through the years of the boy Edward. But when Mary came to power and the Bishop of Rome was reinstated, through fire and blood, as our spiritual leader, the weavers had fled back to the low countries.

As we rode down the last hillside, the moon’s sickle cut through the cloud. In its cold light the abbey was a grey ghost with stony arms raised as if to clutch us to its cracked ribs.

The George Inn, in the well of the town, had been strong-built of stone to accommodate pilgrims of status and must once have blazed with welcoming candlelight. Tonight… well, there must be light in there somewhere, but the ground-floor windows facing the road were as black as hell’s privy.

Carew had sent one of his men ahead and, by the time we arrived in the yard at the rear, two boys were on hand to look after the horses we’d ridden from Bristol.

‘Cowdray!’ Carew bawled out. ‘Where the fuck’s Cowdray?’

‘I’m here, Sir Peter, I’m here.’ A man stumbling down from some wooden steps, leaving pale flame hissing from a pitch-torch on a wall-bracket. ‘Having fires built for you, sir, the big ovens lit.’

‘Why were the bastards not already lit?’

‘Sir Peter, we’ve had no travellers here for a fortnight or more. ’Tis February, man.’

‘Told you, didn’t I?’ Carew turning to Dudley, coughing out a laugh like a pellet of phlegm. ‘Arsehole of the west, this town.’

Town? Even though its main street was on the road to Exeter, I’d noticed no more than a dozen buildings of any substance, including a tall-towered church. And the abbey in all its smashed splendour.

‘Bring in plenty logs, Cowdray,’ Carew said. ‘First light tomorrow, I ride to Exeter, but these gentlemen will be staying for several days. This is Master Roberts and Dr John, of the Queen’s Commission on Antiquities.’

It had been Cecil’s insistence that we should conceal our identities. I was not sorry to obscure mine, but I guessed that Dudley already was feeling naked without his panoply of privilege. At the Bristol inn where we’d spent last night, his mild advances to our chambermaid had been quite scornfully rebuffed. A mere civil servant… small beer.

Carew, however… even in Bristol, Carew had oft-times been recognised. A famous man of the west, it seemed, his legend widely circulated. A favourite tale dated back to his Exeter youth when, escaping school, he’d scaled a turret of the city wall and threatened to jump off if pursued further… his father eventually leading him home, it was said, on a dog-leash.

After we’d dined passably well on broth and mutton, in a small, oak-walled room, Carew summoned the innkeeper.

‘Shut the door, Cowdray. Sit the fuck down. We have need of your local knowledge.’

The innkeeper was a bulky man with sparse ginger hair, a good week’s uneven growth of beard and the air of one resigned to disappointment. Wiping his hands on his apron, he lowered himself to the end of a settle near the door. Four candles spread a creamy glow over the oak board, and a fragrant wood was burning in the grate – apple logs, I guessed. No shortage of these in the one-time Isle of Avalon.

Carew stood with his arse to the fire, his eyes, under wide black brows, aglitter in the candlelight.

‘These good men, Cowdray, are appointed by the Queen to inquire into the disappearance of certain documents and artefacts from the abbey.’

‘Bit late now, sir,’ Cowdray said, ‘if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Say what you like to me, but if a word of it gets beyond these walls I’ll have this fucking hovel closed down by midweek. We understand each other?’

‘We do,’ Cowdray said mildly, not appearing too oppressed. ‘We always have.’

‘Full twenty years since the abbey was removed from the greasy fingers of corrupted monks,’ Carew said. ‘Now we’re in fairly settled days, the Privy Council feels it’s time for a reassessment of what remains.’

‘Monks are long gone.’

‘Good fucking riddance. All of them?’

‘Well… mostly gone from the town. They had good pensions, about five pounds a year.’

‘What are they now then?’

‘One’s a farrier. We use him here.’

‘A more useful life, certainly,’ Carew said.

‘And you gets to marry.’

‘Everything has its downside.’

Carew glanced at Dudley, who made no response. I’d thought Dudley’s marriage was for love, but of course my friend was renowned for having love to spare.

‘Might it be worth you speaking with this farrier, Master Roberts?’ Carew said.

‘Oh, yes.’ Dudley shook himself. ‘Doubtless we should.’

The points had been lopped from his moustache and his doublet was the colour of a stagnant ditch. As Master Roberts, his clothing must needs be more humble and muted, and it seemed to be constraining his manner. Even at the inn last night his moves toward the chambermaid had been cursory, as if he’d felt no more than obliged to keep topping up the levels of his lust. He sighed, raised himself up and drank some ale.

‘This is… not bad.’

‘Brewed to a recipe the Flemish weavers brought to us,’ Cowdray said. ‘Good people, on the whole. Some folk accused ’em of bringing the wool-sorters’ disease but, hell, ’twas here before they come.’

‘Much of that about now?’ Carew asked.

‘A few deaths. Likely we just notices it more, now all the money’s from sheep again. Folk’s in fear of the black scabs, but more of starvation.’

‘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.