The Bones of Avalon

XXXIV

Venus Glove

‘You could be a dead man.’

Thickbuilt, uncompromising, beard like strings of peat. Sir Peter Carew, senior knight, seeking to wither me with his contempt.

‘You could be lying like offal in the mud. You realise that?’

I made no reply.

‘And all for an old cunning man and a witch,’ Carew said. ‘Tales of your learning would appear to be exaggerated. Your brains are soft as shit.’

He and his company had ridden in, mid-morning, from Taunton where they’d passed the night. He and Dudley and I were alone in the dimness of the panelled room at the George, flagons of rough cider before us. I hadn’t touched mine. Carew spat out a mouthful of his onto the stone flags.

‘You think this shithole’s like London. Do you?’

‘Observing its present condition,’ Dudley murmured, ‘I doubt that’s a mistake anyone would make.’

‘The law here comes with rough edges, Lord Dudley, that’s all I’m saying. Rough edges.’

The sweat was cooling on me. Clothed in what remained of the fraying fabric of delusionary vision, I’d run blindly through the streets, from the foot of the town to its summit, past the Church of the Baptist, until the tor was swelling up ahead of me. Half convinced that if only I could catch them I could stop them. Bring her back.

But they were gone. She was gone, and now I wanted to throw myself at Carew, rip out his beard, strand by strand.

Felt Dudley’s warning gaze upon me. Dudley thinking, no doubt with some reason, that Carew would welcome any opportunity to batter me into the flags.

I effected a calmness.

‘Before the dissolution of the abbey, Sir Peter, I understand justice was administered by the abbot. How many witches did he arrest?’

Dudley frowned at me.

‘This is not the answer,’ I said. ‘Fyche sees himself as appointed by God to control the practice of religion in this town, and that’s a dangerous-’

‘Control the spread of sorcery,’ Carew said. ‘Surely?’

I could not this day face another futile argument on what constituted sorcery.

‘Look, Doctor, ’ Carew said. ‘In my experience, nobody tried for witchcraft is ever entirely innocent.’

‘That’s-’

‘Hear me out. They ask for it. Can’t keep their fingers out of God’s pot.’ He eased back, hands on his thighs. ‘From where I sit, Doctor, life and religion, since we ditched the Bishop of Rome, are simple and equitable. You go to church on the Sabbath, spend an hour or so on your knees thinking about your next night’s jelly-jousting and – unless you’re a vicar or a bishop – that’s it. I’ve no time for any man or woman for whom this world, so long as they’re yet in it, is not enough. And in the case of this bitch…’

He turned away in disgust. Dudley’s expression, eyelids lowered, said, Do not rise to this. He shifted in his chair as a roar went up from the street, glanced up at the window but didn’t move.

‘All I’d say, Carew,’ he said mildly enough, ‘is that if it were demons this woman employed to chase away my fever, it beats leeches any day of the week.’

He meant well, but talk of demons was no help. Voices were still raised in the street and I rose to peer out of the window, but the glass was poor and milked. Neither of the other two moved.

‘Wasn’t thinking of you so much as this fellow,’ Carew said. ‘Truly, how helpful would it be for a man with a conjurer’s reputation to be seen attempting to intervene on behalf of a proven necromancer?’

I sat down, hard.

‘No-one here knows who John is,’ Dudley said with menace. ‘And if his true name were to become common knowledge, I’ll know that it would’ve come from only one-’

‘Why necromancer?’ I said.

Carew faced me at last, a gap-toothed smile blooming in the murk of his beard.

‘You know nothing of this, Doctor?’

‘Neither of us knows of it,’ Dudley said quickly.

‘Even though it centres on the slaughter of your servant? Ah, but… you’ve been unwell, haven’t you, my lord?’

‘Well enough now, Carew.’

‘Necromancy,’ I said.

Carew sat up, folded his arms.

‘I’m not such an expert as you, Doctor, but if the use of a newly murdered corpse to procure spirits-’

‘What proof is there that this woman was in any way concerned with that?’

‘They have the fucking murder weapons, man! The blood still on them!’

‘Yes, but whose blood? These were her father’s tools, were they not? And he’d done surgery that night.’

Carew looked at me with curiosity.

‘Tell me, why does it concern you so, Doctor?’

This was dangerous ground, but I didn’t care any more.

‘I’ll tell you why-’ I began, but Dudley broke in.

‘No, I’ll tell you why, Carew. Because this is a new age. Because both the Queen and Cecil are wary of religious persecution.’

‘The Queen,’ Carew said heavily, ‘is yet a young woman. Who one day will learn that what you call persecution and I might call an element of discipline is the only way to keep the lid on the kind of insurgency that could yet unthrone her. Added to which, this is an investigation of murder.’

‘A murder used to instigate a witch hunt. Witchcraft being such an easy charge, much exploited in past times, as we all know. But these are enlightened times, and the broadening of human study makes what once would have been dismissed as devilry…’

Dudley broke off to drink some cider, winced at its bitterness, wiped his mouth.

‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d die, and I was healed through this woman’s knowing of herbs. So you may say it’s me. Me who finds concern about her arrest.’

I looked to Dudley in gratitude, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

‘Then what if I were to tell you there’s more?’ Carew said. ‘What if I were to talk of other corpses – dug from graves?’

‘Where?’

‘Behind St Benignus, so I’m told. Corpses dug up by night.’

I remembered that Fyche had spoken of this. Also using the word necromancy. I liked not the sound of this, but must not show it.

‘And how is this linked with the woman?’

‘You’d need to talk to Fyche.’

Dudley said, ‘The abbey’s in your charge, Carew.’

‘And the law’s in his,’ Carew said. ‘You’ll pardon me – I believe I have a cadaver to inspect, in my abbey.’

We went with him to the outhouse. I didn’t go in. Carew had appeared to treat his inspection of the corpse as a formality, and Dudley told me later he’d decided to say nothing about the suspected marks of torture. He was now agreeing with me that we should not make simple assumptions about this man’s allegiances. I couldn’t help recalling poor Lythgoe’s own comments as we rode through the bitter weather to Glastonbury and Carew had belittled me as a man who’d never borne arms for his country. Yon bugger’s fought for too many countries, you ask me, Dr John.

Later we went upstairs to my bedchamber to talk, Dudley having demanded of Cowdray that his own be stripped and purged of all that remained of his sickness. It lingered still, though, in the glaze of sweat that shone on his face in the window light.

‘All right, tell me,’ Dudley said. ‘Leave nothing out.’

I shut the door, stood with my back to it.

‘The surgeon’s tools are her father’s, used that same night to deliver twin babes the Caesarean way. That accounts for the blood.’

‘And that can be shown?’

‘He’ll tell you.’

‘He’s her father. ’

‘She’s no witch.’

Who was I seeking to convince? Witchcraft: what was it? Where were its boundaries?

Dudley crooked an arm around one of the bedposts, the loose one which, just a few hours ago, the dust of vision had turned into an apple tree.

‘John, if this Fyche is determined to show she deals with demons, he’ll do it. He’s a JP. He knows the courts, he knows the judges. He’ll get what he seeks. She’ll hang.’

‘Unless someone-’

I broke off, feeling almost nauseous as I recalled my own words to Nel last night: We live in enlightened times – relatively. What happened to your mother, that’s not going to happen again.

‘People hang for less every week,’ Dudley said. ‘ She must know that. Why the hell did she walk into their hands? Why didn’t she just move to another town? She has skills which would surely-’

‘Because of her father.’ I moved, in agitation, to the window. ‘It’s why she went home last night. She fears for her father. Her mother was hanged by Fyche, for reasons no more solid than…’

But we’d dealt with that. I stood gripping the window sill, looking down into the high street, where people had gathered around the bakery where fresh mutton pies were sold on market days and the baker studied old magic and dreamed of making gold from lead.

‘Carew’s a crude bastard,’ Dudley said, ‘but he knows how the world works. His warning to you… there’s clearly some substance in that. If you’re seen to be pleading for a witch’s life and your true identity should ever be disclosed, then you’re in the shit, John.’ He shrugged. ‘Both of us, for that matter.’

It was true. May have been because of his known association with me, but his own name had been placed more than once, in gossip and the pamphlets, on the threshold of sorcery. Something which men at Cecil’s level made light of.

Had made light of. It came back to me what Dudley had said last night about Sir William Cecil, who was his friend yet deplored his intimacy with the Queen. How far would Cecil risk his own position by protecting Dudley if he were seen to be implicated in a scandal involving witchcraft and the murder of his groom?

Traps everywhere. I sank into the chair by the window. In the space of a few hours, my life had been lifted up higher than I could have dreamed and then brought down and smashed before my eyes.

My life – that scholar’s dim-lit, book-lined existence. I lowered my head into my hands, and green eyes stared up at me through the fingers. Dudley was my friend, the best I had at court, through whose support and influence I’d won the Queen’s approval. Should I now further complicate his life by reporting what Nel Borrow had told me last night about her suspicions that Fyche had obtained wealth and position through the betrayal of his abbot?

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?’