The Bones of Avalon

XLVII

Little Bear

I finally slept, full-dressed, my head on an arm across the board in my chamber and, at some stage, the dream began again, where I was walking the hills to follow the tolling from distant steeples. But this time my steps transcribed a careful pattern on the land which I knew to be a magical glyph that would open doors to the soul, and when I reached the summit of the tor all the bells were clanging from the empty tower.

But these bells rang in painful discord, so loud that I flung myself on the ground, covering my ears and rolling in the grass with the agony of it. Rolling over and over and coming to rest – coming to un rest – in the black, T-shaped shadow of the gibbet and awakening into the birth-tunnel of my darkest dawn, the fleshy stench of tallow, and Robert Dudley in the doorway with a candle on a tray.

‘Christ, John, you look like a week-old dog turd.’

Said with pity as he walked over to the window and opened the casement.

‘How long have you slept?’

‘Five… six?’

Dudley sighed.

‘You mean minutes, don’t you?’

I shifted, finding Leland’s notebook still under my hand, greasy with tallow.

‘I meant to get everything from this that anyone could.’

‘And if anyone could, it would be you.’ Dudley wrinkling his patrician nose at the stink from the dead candles. ‘Come on, old friend… Wells?’

The thought of it made this day harder to face than any I’d known. Harder than those long days when I was held at Hampton Court awaiting trial for sorcery. I wondered how Dudley had felt on the morning of his father’s trial, knowing how it would end. We’d never discussed it.

‘There’s bread and cheese on the board downstairs,’ Dudley said.

‘Couldn’t eat.’

Last night, I’d asked Cowdray if there’d been a hanging on the tor in recent years… any hanging.

Not since the abbot, Cowdray had said. All others, including Cate Borrow, had been hanged at Wells. He’d looked at me sorrowfully, saying nothing more. But it was clear that, even though it must have been dark before it was raised, the erection of the gibbet upon the tor had not gone unnoticed.

How could I have slept?

‘And the horses… are made ready,’ Dudley said.

‘Yes.’

‘You are still committed to…?’

‘Yes. Dear God, yes.’

I arose, aching, the weight of Wells a cannonball in the gut. Picked up Leland’s notebook. All through the night, I’d examined the notes in the smallest detail, drawing my own charts, throwing all my attention into the unravelling of it. Shaking my fuddled head, remembering what now seemed such a mean triumph.

‘Um, Robbie…’ Pulling hair from my tired eyes. ‘For what it’s worth, I think I can point you to the bones of Arthur.’

We rode out into mild rain and a silvery sky which roiled like eels in a tub, as if a dark energy were already abroad. Hardly alone on the road this day. Apart from goods carts, there were clusters of horsemen dressed as for a fair. I knew them not. Wool-merchants and minor squires, I guessed, making the assize an excuse for a day in the taverns.

Glastonbury, in the pre-dawn, had been subdued. Waiting for Cowdray’s boy to bring out the horses, I’d marked Benlow, crossing from Magdalene Street and about to approach me until he’d seen Dudley and thought better of it. I’d run after him, catching him, seizing him by the shoulders, pushing him against a house wall.

You think you can help me?

Oh I can help you, my lord, count on it…

Benlow giggling, but his voice had been hoarse, and he’d looked not well. Sweating. Maybe he’d been drinking too much, though there was no smell of it. I let him go, backed away to reason with him.

Please… come with us to Wells. Tell the assize how you provided the bones to be scattered on Eleanor Borrow’s herb garden.

In court? In front of Sir Edmund? I may be a sick man, my lord, but I’m not a madman. What’s the matter with you?

He’d shaken his head and I’d said, We can protect you.

My lord, I wouldn’t even get out of Wells alive.

Then… you can’t help me.

I can tell you where to find more relics of Arthur. I can tell you where to find his bones.

I doubt that, Master Benlow.

I swear to you.

You can swear all you like.

Me turning away, frustrated, and Benlow fading back into his own darkness.

When the other travellers were ahead of us and we were able to ride side by side, Dudley slowed his horse.

‘What’s your plan?’

I’d thought of little else this past hour, and there was no light in my head.

‘Can only see who they produce as witnesses. See how they might be examined. Who, for example, will they have to testify about the bones found in the herb garden? Who, in the absence of Matthew Borrow, will be the doctor who’ll describe the injuries inflicted on Martin Lythgoe?’

‘If you’d officially been her lawyer you’d know all this,’ Dudley said. ‘What if she publicly refuses to have you represent her? Have you thought of that? Tells the court she doesn’t want you?’

‘Conducts her own defence? Not allowed. She can only call witnesses.’

‘And if no witnesses are come forward… I mean, even if she does accept you, how could you turn it around? ’

‘I may know enough now to discredit the lies of the witnesses they have.’

‘Discredit before whom? For that to work, you’d need a sympathetic judge. An unbiased judge. An unbiased jury.’

‘It would help.’

Dudley pulled down his hat.

‘I think it was Carew who said, this is not London.’

Half a dozen miles to Wells. So not like Glastonbury, they said, with its fine and functioning cathedral and its moated bishop’s house. It was full light when we at last came in sight of it.

Or as full as it would ever be this drab day. Dudley reined in his horse on the edge of watery ground, maybe half a mile from the city.

‘The assize court, according to Carew, is one half of a building overlooking the market place. The other half ’s apparently a wool store.’

‘At least they have their priorities right.’

‘Yes. Um… John… assuming we’ll have little time or opportunity to talk… I…’

‘You want to know about the bones of Arthur.’

‘It’s why we’re here.’

‘Yes.’

All flat land here, the colours of mould and enchannelled with dank water. We dismounted at the roadside and I laid upon Dudley the results of three, maybe four hours’ work.

‘It’s about the centre of the earthly Zodiac. You asked last night if it was the tor. I thought it wasn’t, and that’s true. And then realised the possible significance of finding the centre. Set myself the task of working it out, with the help of the existing charts.’

‘And?’

‘As far as I can judge, the centre is in or close to the village of Butleigh. Where you… seem to be a popular figure. A wood’s been marked on Leland’s chart. A skull drawn, looks like.’

‘Go on.’

‘The centre of the celestial Zodiac is the northern star. The axis on which the great wheel turns. A place of considerable cosmic significance. Lying in the star group of Ursa Minor.’

I look up at the sound of hooves. A couple of riders coming towards us, more of them behind. Outriders, it looked like, for a company of horsemen and a cart.

‘The Little Bear,’ Dudley said.

‘Exactly.’

‘And?’

The outriders slowing as they marked us. I saw that one of them was the grey-haired fellow with cracked teeth who’d supervised the arrest of Nel Borrow and the battery of her father before holding forth in the alehouse on the subject of hanging. He rode across to us, and I turned quickly back to Dudley.

‘What’s the Welsh for bear?’

‘How would I know that?

‘ Arthur, ’ I said. ‘The Welsh for bear is Arthur.’

‘ Jesu.’

‘See?’

‘At the centre of his own round table?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Holy shit…’

‘Clear the way, you fellows,’ the cracked-teeth man said.

Dudley strode out.

‘I can’t see that we’re in the way. Fellow.’

Cracked-teeth leaned down from his horse as if he would slap Dudley across the face.

‘Well, don’t get in the way.’

I marked the tightening of Dudley’s gut, his right arm making that familiar diagonal across his body toward where the hilt of the sword might have been. But cracked-teeth turned his horse away, and we stood at the side of the road as the main body of men drew level. About a dozen of them before, behind and alongside the cart.

On the cart, a broken statue.

In my chest, a feeling like to a collapsing mountain.

The cart kept on moving, and I started towards it, and then a black energy possessed my legs and I was running alongside it, with a fury, through the slanting rain. Arms reaching for me, and I elbowed them away with the pulsing strength of desperation.

Some man demanding, ‘Who are you, fellow?’

‘A clerk from London.’ Cracked-teeth from his horse. ‘Thinks himself-’

I howled at the cart, ‘Where are you going?’

Panting now, as the company increased its pace.

Seeing that she was in chains, with a fat woman beside her. Grey-faced, still as stone. No cloak, hair in draggles. Bare arms. Freckles and goosebumps.

‘Stop!’

For whom?’

‘I’m her advocate.’

A rattle of laughter in the rain.

‘Bit late now, fellow. We’re taking her home.’

For one uncertain moment, I thought there might be hope of her release and then saw the weight of those chains and that the horseman looking down on me was Brother Stephen, son of Fyche. Clad not in monkish robes this day but a wine-coloured doublet, a short cape, a wide-brimmed black hat.

I clutched at the wooden side of the cart, meeting, just for an instant, the widening eyes of Nel Borrow, the only movement I’d seen in her, before my hands were dragged behind my back and a swordpoint was at my throat, just tickling, and Stephen Fyche was dismounting.

‘No, no.’ Waving the sword away. ‘He’s but a harmless clerk. You’ll frighten him to death.’

I was thrust back, panting, and the cart lurched away, leaving Stephen Fyche standing before me, his eyes without expression.

I said, ‘I don’t understand. The trial can’t be over.’

‘What trial?’

A thin face made more vulpine by a new beard, and his eyes and voice were lazy with power. He was all of eighteen years old.

‘Obviously, I’m aware, Dr John, that you have a certain interest in this woman, in relation to the ailment of your colleague. But I see he’s fully recovered now. For which I’m sure you’re grateful.’

I said nothing.

‘There’s no issue to be made of this,’ he said. ‘The woman decided yesterday to save us all the inconvenience of a trial and made a confession. Appeared before the judge for sentence at first light.’

Stephen Fyche cast a glance at the cart rumbling away behind him.

‘As you can imagine, it took not long.’