The Bones of Avalon

XXII

Black as Pitch

Sometimes I’d think that, for all my learning, I was still like to an infant, milky-eyed and unknowing. That, being sent early to college and raising my eyes but rarely from printed pages, a whole part of my being was yet undeveloped, leaving me with little understanding of a world so carelessly traversed by the less-educated.

A child of two and thirty. Dudley knew that. However you survived in the cesspits of Paris and Antwerp…

The plain truth being that I’d never been in the cesspits of Paris or Antwerp, only in their lecture halls and libraries.

Now I was walking numbly through the streets, as if naked, following the farrier into a mean, cramped drinking hovel on the upper edge of town.

Huddling in its dark, cider-smelling belly, beside a sooted inglenook with a fire of peat, while the stained ceiling sagged threateningly betwixt beams and my head was swelled with questions I had not the will to ask.

Cowering into the shadows, I watched a wench of about fifteen serving cider from an earthenware jug. Watched Monger waiting in line behind two farmer-looking men, four others sitting around the room on stools. The only talk I could hear was of sheep-prices until Monger returned, setting down two mugs upon the board and himself on the low, three-legged stool opposite me, pushing his thin hair behind his ears.

‘It was Nel,’ he said. ‘What?’

Monger drank some cider with the same restraint that William Cecil had displayed over a glass of fine wine.

‘People here follow your career with interest. Through pamphlets and such passed around amongst the seekers.’

Pamphlets. God help me. ‘Still,’ Monger said, ‘as you must have gathered by now, for a good many in this town, the word conjurer is far from a term of abuse.’

The fire coughed out weak yellow flames. My mouth was dry but I couldn’t drink.

‘A man deep into fever,’ Monger said, ‘is seldom aware of his indiscretions. And is even, in his fuddled state, apt to call out for his friend by name.’

‘Oh.’

I drank some of the strong cider.

‘A name alone being not, of course sufficient,’ Monger said. ‘Many men have the same name. Indeed, poor Nel was at first reluctant to believe her own ears.’

‘Who else has she told?’

‘Only me, after much havering… in the hope that I might be able to confirm it.’

‘Which you seem to think you have.’

‘At some risk, I may say, if you’d turned out, after all, to be an agent of the Queen.’

‘I am an agent of the Queen.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s what we like about you.’

I sensed a smile which it was too dark in here to see.

‘And what, after all,’ Monger said, ‘would a mere clerk know about Agricola the dowser?’

In better circumstance, I might have even been laughing. It was all so clear, to me now, all the traps laid out in my path. The daring talk of Mistress Eleanor Borrow:

’Tis best to sow under a new moon and then to harvest under a full moon… It has a power… Oh, am I stepping close to heresy?

And Monger… would he have revealed Emmanuel Worthy’s magical library to someone who might have regarded the books as heretical? Would he have fingered to me every penny-a-poke street-seer in the Glastonbury market, if not sure of his ground?

‘While both Nel and I accept,’ he murmured, ‘that Dr John Dee is a man of science rather than a procurer of spirits, we still find it curious that someone renowned for the breadth of his learning should arrive in a little town much reduced in its fortunes… merely to make account of what miserable antiquities remain there.’

Now here was trouble. If I failed to quench the farrier’s curiosity, he could expose me to whoever he liked. Might, indeed, choose to enlighten Sir Edmund Fyche, for whom the distinction ’twixt science and sorcery would be a line not so much fine as imperceptible.

‘It’s not so far removed from the truth,’ I said.

And, in the hope that the fevered Dudley had not announced himself as the Royal Master of the Horse, was about to tell him more of the truth… when the door of poor planks creaked and opened to a slit of light.

A shadow fell across the crack, as if an eye was peering in, and then the door opened just wide enough for a woman to slip inside.

Shutting it rapidly behind her, pushing it tight with her arse, wild grey hair springing from a ragged coif.

‘Pour’s a big one, Sal! Us could be deep in the shitty yere, girl.’ Eyepatch.

Monger raised himself from his stool.

‘Joan. Over here.’

‘Zat you, Brother Joe? Be hard enough to zee in this hole with both fuckin’ eyes.’

‘Mug of strong cider for Mistress Tyrre!’ Monger called out, as she came bundling herself towards our board, bony white hands groping the air like it was muslin. ‘Something amiss, Joan?’

‘Constables. Zo-called. They’ze everywhere. Big bazzards on big ’osses. Weren’t good to trade n’ more today, Joe, we come outer there damn quick, look.’

I dragged over another stool for her and she peered around the room with her one eye and then lifted her skirts and sat down with her knees shamelessly apart.

‘Normal thing, they comes nozyin’ around, you offers ’em a readin’ for free or a feel o’ your tits, and they’s sweet as you likes. But not today, not today, boy.’

‘Man was murdered, Joan,’ Monger said. ‘That’s probably-’

‘Howzat tie up with the likes of us? I never kilt ’im.’ She stiffened at the sight of me in the recess. ‘Whozis?’

‘A friend. Dr John, over from London.’

‘Wozze do?’

‘Works for the Queen, Joan.’

‘ Do he? Well, that’s all well and fine, Joe, but I en’t gonner truss no bugger today. There’s a funny air, look. Dark as you likes.’ Wrapping her twig-thin arms around herself as if all warmth were fled from the room. ‘Black as pitch over the tor. Somethin’ a’ comin’. You zee it a’ comin’? You zee- Oh fuck and buggery…’

A flash of brightness as the door shuddered open. At once, a couple of the farmers were putting down their mugs, shambling quietly to their feet, placing themselves flat to the wall.

Two men black against the light.

‘Joan Tyrre?’

‘Shitty,’ Joan breathed. ‘Coulder sweared they fuckers en’t follered me.’

‘Over there.’

One of the men was pointing at our board. Now the other was coming over slowly and Joan Tyrre was rising, putting the legs of her stool out in front of her.

‘Now then, you boys, you juss keep away, yer knows I en’t done nothin’, look-’

‘Only led us a merry bloody chase, you old puttock.’

Throwing out his arms as a barrier, Joan skipping from side to side, laughing, jabbing the stool at him until he snatched it away from her.

‘Enough! Don’t you think to go nowhere, Joannie. You know what we wants.’

‘What? Front of all these folks?’

Joan cackling, dodging nimbly as he hurled the stool at her, and it splintered on the wall behind.

‘Where’s the woman calls herself a doctor?’

I went rigid.

‘ You was with her earlier, we knows that. Where is she?’

‘How’ze I gonner know that?’ Joan Tyrre said. ‘How’ze a poor ole bag like me gonner pay for a doctor?’

‘You’ll talk fuckin’ civil to us or I’ll-’

Making a lunge for her, and Joan was leaping back, but not quite quick enough.

‘Get yer gurt hands off of me, you- uh!’

Her head whipping to one side as the second man struck her with full fist on the side of the face.

Joan’s head hanging now like a broken doll’s, and I came to my feet, but Monger grabbed my arm, hissing into my ear.

‘Don’t make this worse…’