The Bones of Avalon

XLVIII

Black Hearts

My laughter, if laughter it was, must have sounded half crazed. Half in this world, half in purgatory, that same purgatory the Protestant reformers told us no longer existed. They could rearrange the structure of the universe on a whim, the reformers, demolish a cathedral at a stroke.

Back at the George, a letter had awaited me, evidently from Blanche Parry, and I’d torn it open at once, in front of Dudley and Cowdray, in the alehouse.

It began, Anwyl Sion…

The look on my face making Dudley sigh.

‘What’s wrong now?’

Pushed the letter in his face. My father, as you know, was Welsh to the bone; far more useful, he’d say, far more useful, boy, the Welsh tongue, than Latin or Greek, with all the living people speaking it, that wealth of oral, bardic tradition…

‘You mean you don’t speak this language?’ Dudley said.

‘Blanche evidently assumes I do.’

Anwyl Sion. My dear John. I knew that much.

‘God’s bollocks, John, there must be someone here who reads it.’

‘Like the bastard vicar at St Benignus?’ I might have screamed it. ‘Not exactly a man who I’d have know the content. Which I’d guess to be of singular significance, else why send it in this… old British cipher?’ I turned on Cowdray – could we trust him? I hardly cared. ‘Is there anyone here who speaks Welsh and is not shackled to Fyche?’

‘I’ll think on it,’ Cowdray said.

‘Think not too long, Master Cowdray.’

Shutting my eyes, flinging back my head, squeezing my fists. When I straightened, Cowdray was staring bleakly at me, his eyes tired, his skin the colour of lead. God knows how I looked to him.

‘I should tell you,’ Cowdray said hesitantly, ‘what they were saying here last night. Fyche’s hirelings. About a… hanging.’

‘I’m assuming they don’t plan to delay it,’ Dudley said.

‘Next dawn.’

Choked on my own breath.

‘Not leaving much time for the royal pardon,’ Dudley said sourly.

Bent over, coughing, I struggled to think what time it was now, how much we had left, Dudley not looking at me as I struggled for some semblance of emotional restraint.

‘Town’s divided,’ Cowdray said. ‘Times of crisis, there’d always be leadership from the abbey. Taken as the word of God without a thought. But now the vicars…’

Looking worriedly at Dudley, doubtless the most confirmed Protestant in the room.

‘Go on, man,’ Dudley said.

‘All the people cured by Nel, her father, mother. Now they’re told she stands for all that needs purging. Two minds, Master Roberts, is the answer. The one thing that’s sure is they en’t gonner band together and raid the Meadwell. Word is there’s more weaponry in there than the royal armoury.’

‘I can’t believe,’ Dudley said, ‘that they intend an execution on the tor, rather than with… discretion.’

‘Jesu!’ I cried. ‘She’s to be an example. Just as Whiting’s killing was for the papists. An example to all who dare to think outside of the Bible, whichever version of it’s favoured these days, and we… we have the rest of a day and one night to get it stopped.’

‘Only Carew can get it stopped, John. Well, not stopped, but maybe he can have it delayed long enough for us to organise intervention… at a higher level. If he feels moved to it.’

‘But Carew-’

Cowdray was glancing beyond my shoulder; I turned and saw Monger was at the doorway, nodded, bidding him enter.

‘-Carew knows the trial was a travesty.’

‘Of course he does, but where witches are concerned he’ll accept rude justice. It’s the seaman in him. Hang them from the high mast, throw them in the sea. To sway him at all, we must needs challenge the very foundation of it. If… if… we can show who really killed Martin Lythgoe, then that…’

‘And tortured him,’ I said. ‘Forget not that.’

‘You think I fucking could? You think I’m ever going to forget that?’

Dudley’s eyes were inflamed, the humour in this place choleric and inside me lay the cold black bile of autumn.

‘In the first instance,’ I said, ‘if Carew can be shown, beyond doubt that the bones were planted in the herb garden…’

‘Beat the truth out of this bloody bone-man, you think?’

Monger cleared his throat. Dudley looked at him.

‘The bone-man’s sick,’ Monger said.

‘How sick?’

‘Maybe mortally.’

‘Spit it out.’

‘We think wool-sorters’.’

Cowdray drew breath. Monger shrugged.

‘Truly, there’s not much doubt. Matthew’s seen him. He has the lumps with the black hearts.’

‘God-damned fleeces, this is,’ Cowdray said. ‘Likely some farmer sold him some cheap skins from a flock rotten with it. You’d think he’d know better by now. Hell, we don’t want that in town again.’

‘Anyway, if you want to speak with him,’ Monger said, ‘I’d not delay. Just keep your distance.’

There was a silence. Benlow had looked unwell this morning, and I’d thought it was the drink.

‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘He wanted to talk to me earlier. Said he could point me to the location of the bones of Arthur. Which I thought was a try-on, not least because-’

I looked at Dudley, who opened out a hand to convey that it was a little late for circumspection. I turned to Monger.

‘We have reason to think Arthur’s bones could be reburied at Butleigh. A wood? Near a church?’

‘There is a wood near Butleigh church,’ Monger said. ‘But ’tis not an old wood.’

‘Wouldn’t need to be. We’re only talking twenty or so years ago, if the bones were removed before Whiting’s arrest. Maybe they planted the wood around the grave?’

‘Can you help with this, Farrier?’ Dudley asked.

‘No, but I know people in Butleigh who might, if they thought there was good reason. ’Tis not a big place.’

‘You could persuade them? Come with us?’

‘Us?’ I said.

‘If they’re there, we should find them quickly,’ Dudley said. ‘Deal with this now, I say. Waste no more time. For tomorrow…’

He looked at me and then looked away, as if far from certain that tomorrow I would not do something foolish enough to render our mission an abort.

‘Let’s have a dozen men,’ he said to Cowdray. ‘Don’t bother Carew with this. I’ll see him later.’

A dozen? I stared at him and then at Cowdray. Cowdray nodded.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, John…’ Dudley slumping down into a chair, looking pained. ‘You don’t think I’d bring us here without shielding our spines?’

‘What?’

‘Why do you think Carew displays such antagonism? Because he resents having to spare so many trained soldiers, working under cover to guard the arses of men he-’ Dudley blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, me he merely dislikes, it’s you he despises.’

‘How many?’

‘Men? I don’t know. Twenty at the most. I mean… not an army.’ Whatever had made me think this man and I inhabited the same world?

‘Let me get this right… You’re saying there’s been armed men watching our backs since we arrived?’ Whirling on Cowdray. ‘ You knew of this?’

‘The guard… it got doubled after your man’s murder,’ Cowdray said. ‘Even Sir Peter was alarmed. Hadn’t expected that.’

‘But he was expecting trouble?’

‘He didn’t know,’ Dudley said. ‘None of us knew. A few men had come here ahead of us, orders of Cecil. It appears I am, after all… considered of some value to England. And maybe even you, in your peculiar way.’

‘Half a dozen sleeping in my cellars,’ Cowdray said. ‘Come out to watch the entrances at night. Nobody noticed the extra, with all the lowlife in town for the hue and cry.’

‘And, um, when Carew went to Exeter,’ Dudley said, ‘in fact he went no further than Wells. Now you know.’

‘Good of you.’

‘John, look… if ever a man spends his days looking over his shoulder, it’s you. You must know how you are.’

‘Unstable in my mind?’

‘It was simply considered unwise to… trouble you with this.’

‘ Who considered it unwise? You? Carew? Cecil? You going to tell me Fyche knows?’

‘Fyche knows nothing of this,’ Dudley snapped. ‘You see? There you go again. That ’s why you weren’t told. Would you have dug up a grave knowing you were being watched? Not that we-’ Dudley raising both hands. ‘No more than two of them, on that occasion. Instructed to come no closer than the bottom of the hill. They were not to see what we were doing.’

For me, the humiliation was as solid as an another person in this cider-stinking cell. I thought to leave. Then, at the door, recalled what Dudley had said that afternoon in his barge on the Thames, turned and threw it in his face.

‘A rare freedom to move around as a common man, unencumbered by the trappings of high office…?’

‘Figure of speech,’ Dudley said. ‘You’re right. You’re my friend, and I should’ve told you. Blame the fever.’

‘Go and look for your damned bones.’

Turning away, walking out of the alehouse, into the grey afternoon. Still hadn’t eaten, but there was no time. At least I’d fulfilled my purpose, decoding Leland’s notebook. If Arthur’s bones lay not at Butleigh then the monks of Glastonbury had not the wit I’d credited to them.

At least I was free now to apply what remained of my energies to that which was most important to me. The rain had stopped and, though the sky was cold, the day was unseasonably warm.

Wild lights were blazing in my head as I walked down the high street.

Half in purgatory, half in the Bedlam.