The Bones of Avalon

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.

Stood up, moving slowly at first and then in a frenzy, pulling on my old brown robe.

Going at once to Dudley’s chamber.

Not even thinking, in my haste, that he might have his sword at the ready again.

Not this time, though. This time he slept.

‘Robbie…’

If not deeply.

‘Well, well.’ No movement in him. ‘John Dee. What took you so long?’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The surgical knives. They didn’t bring the knives with them.’

‘Knives?’

‘Fyche. He didn’t bring them. The knives were Nel’s knives, and the blood… the blood might even have been Martin Lythgoe’s, but they-’

‘Where’s the point of this?’

‘They didn’t bring the knives… they brought the blood. They brought the blood that it might be spread on something… anything… during their search. Clothing – who can say? A bottle of blood. And the discovery of the knives… that must’ve seemed like a Godsend.’

‘John-’

It’s what he does. Stitches people up – the abbot and the chalice, Cate Borrow and the false witness and the grave dirt… Fyche contrives evidence. ’

‘When did this come to you?’

‘Just now. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘So you thought to share the burden of it. So generous.’

‘In case I… should forget.’

‘Oh, go to,’ Dudley said wearily. ‘You know you’ll never prove it, and we both know why you’re here.’

Heaving himself up in the bed, the cover falling away, and I saw by the thin moonlight that he was full-dressed in his day apparel.

‘Get your coat, you mad bastard,’ he said. ‘If it must be done, best t’were finished before sunrise.’

Not asking you to go out with a spade and a muffled lantern, Cecil had said.

It took us a while to find a spade. Cowdray must have locked up all the best tools. The only one we could lay hand on was old and rusted, with a split in the shaft. Short of breaking into one of the outbuildings, it was the best we were going to get, and it made a certain poetic sense that this should not, in any way, be easy.

But there could be no more poetry in this.

‘You could at least have made preparation,’ Dudley said.

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Yes you bloody did. We both did. We just dared not speak of the unspeakable.’

And spoke not again until the houses were behind us, the sweet scent of apple-smoke gone from the air. I’d found an oil-lantern and lit it from the alehouse fire before we left. Kept it muffled until we’d left the town for higher ground, with the waxing moon all wrapped in mist and the air alive with moisture.

We found the stile without difficulty.

Dudley set foot on it and then came down again. Laughter on his breath.

‘Know you what hour this is?’

‘It’s a long way from dawn, that’s all that matters, but if you press me…’ I looked up at where the moon stood. Few stars were visible, but I made out Jupiter in the south. ‘I’d say approaching midnight.’

Thinking that if this was London the Watch would be out, with his staff and his dog.

Twelve of the clock, look well to your locks

Your fire and your light and God give you goodnight.

Goodnight. A comfort. In Glastonbury, there was only the owls and us, and I drew no comfort from anywhere. I was a city man, particularly after dark, when even Mortlake…

’Tis said that no man who fears for his immortal soul oughta go past your place beyond sunset, nor walk in Mortlake churchyard lest graves be open.

My God, if Jack Simm could but see me now, all ready to embrace the taint of necromancy.

‘We’re upon the cusp of Sunday, is what I meant,’ Dudley said. ‘We’re doing this on the sabbath.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d ask for God’s blessing, but I rather fear that would be a blasphemy in itself.’

The wooden cross was not quite where I’d remembered it, but the eyes cannot be trusted at night. I looked down upon it and wondered how often Nel had knelt here and the horror and revulsion she might feel if she knew what we were about to do.

The high-born gentleman and the low conjurer. God forgive me.

Knowing that I should be the one to begin this, I set the lantern upon the grass, reached down the bars of the cross and pulled. It was not deeply embedded and came away easily, with a small squelch.

‘Water down there?’ Dudley said.

‘Water everywhere, here.’

I laid the cross beside the grave. Looked around. The woods round the herb garden were like the shadow of an army in the hushed moments before a battle. I could hear stirrings. Animals hunting, or the restless spirits of the people whose bones had recently been scattered over this land like horseshit? I lifted the spade and stood looking down at the grass in the greasy lamplight.

‘What if he’s lying?’ I said. ‘He’s lied before.’

‘Oh, he lies well,’ Dudley said. ‘One of the skills of his profession. Of course I’ll make you better… The important question is, what kind of man buries his dead wife’s most private documents without even finding out what they contain?’

‘A man who knows what’s inside. Or thinks he does. An embittered non-believer. A man who’s both stricken with loss and cold with anger. A man blaming his dead wife for her own misfortune.’

‘And what do we think we might find in them?’

‘We might find nothing of consequence,’ I said. ‘Or we just might find the true reason for Fyche’s persecution of Cate Borrow and Eleanor Borrow.’

From a neighbouring field came the barking cough of an old ewe. Might be interpeted as encouragement or outrage.

‘Do it,’ Dudley said.

I stabbed the spade into Cate’s grave.