The Bones of Avalon

VI

The Holy Heart

The oarsmen had been bidden to take it slowly, and our progress downriver was smooth. Fireshined by the unexpected afternoon sun, the Thames looked near-serene. Legend has this as a holy river, and I’ve seen it written that the Romans considered it sacred to their solar deity, Apollo.

River of the Sun. I liked that and could believe it, even though today’s sun, being yet a winter sun, was shamed by my companion’s gold and burgundy slashed doublet. The kind of doublet which, on a summer’s day, must needs be viewed through smoked glass.

‘Where are your thoughts gone now, John?’

Sprawled in the stern of his low barge, regarding me with that old amusement.

‘I was seeing the river as a lake,’ I said bitterly. ‘Imagining a woman’s hand emerging holding a magical sword. The sun’s rays spraying from its blade.’

The eyes of Robert Dudley were theatrically wide.

‘God’s bollocks, John… any woman’s arm protruding from the Thames would, for a start, be brown to the elbow with shite!’

My former student’s reputation as a great romantic figure is, in my view, ill-founded. Doubtless the Queen sees a different side of her Master of the Horse. But then, how much of Dudley the Queen sees is something I try not to think too hard about.

‘Perchance we might all go to Glastonbury.’ He sank into the cushions, lifting a soft-booted foot to the seat opposite. ‘Good idea, do you think?’

‘All?’

‘You… me… the Queen?’

When he’d told me he’d be lying with her at Richmond this night, I’d taken him to mean simply that he would be accommodated, as Master of the Horse, in his apartment at the palace. They’d been friends since children. But who knew? Who really knew?

‘You really don’t understand, do you, Robbie?’

‘Of course I understand. I’m merely thinking how best to loosen Cecil’s bowels.’ Dudley smoothed his moustache over a malicious smile. ‘Apart from the rest of it, the very last thing Uncle Willie wants is for Bess to descend upon some God-forsaken Somerset ruin and set up a round table with a… what did they call that fucking chair at the round table where you planted your arse if it was your lot to pursue the holy cup?’

‘The Siege Perilous?’

‘That’s the one. And the thing is – ’ he sat up – ‘she’d do it, you know. She’d have a board made and assemble her knights all about her, in splendour. So loves her heroes – men of adventure, soldiers, seamen. And you, of course, John, you above all.’

‘Go to!’

‘I’ll admit it foxed me for quite a while, why the Queen should go so often out of her way to visit a pale scholar in a hovel on stilts in dreary Mortlake. And then it came to me – is not John Dee the greatest adventurer of them all? A man prepared… to venture beyond this world. Woohee!’

Dudley’s laughter ringing like cathedral bells across the water.

With his trusted chief groom, Martin Lythgoe, he’d been awaiting me downstairs in Cecil’s yet unfurnished entrance hall, jesting there with the guards. His own appointment with the Secretary had been two hours earlier than mine, which explained why he and his attendants had been on hand to witness the incident of the pamphlet-seller. And make their move.

His barge had been ready at the riverbank, with a hamper of midday meat. I shall see you home, John, lest the pamphlet-man and his uglies are awaiting you in some back alley. Shaking his head, incredulous. However you survived in the cesspits of Paris and Antwerp without me around to save your sorry arse, I shall never know.

Insisting on taking me all the way back to Mortlake. After which he was to return to the Queen at Richmond. His wife, meanwhile, being sequestered in the country.

‘When do we leave?’ he said now.

‘I’ve not yet decided… whether to do it.’

‘Oh, you’ll do it, John, you know you will.’

‘And deceive the Queen?’

The word deceive hissing like a new-forged blade slid into cold water. Me thinking I was out of that world at last. And to deceive the Queen, who’d saved my reputation, and who was, after all… the Queen.

‘That may not be necessary,’ Dudley said. ‘We may find the bones. That’s certainly my intention. I should love to see the relics of Ar-’

Me glaring at him, glancing at the oarsmen and his attendants at the front of the barge. He lowered his voice.

‘Has anybody ever really attempted to find them? I think not. We should easily get to the truth within a few days. Beat the shit out of some duplicitous ex-monk.’

‘This is just another small diversion for you, isn’t it, Robbie?’

Someone both of us can trust, Cecil had said. Well, this was true, to a degree. I’d known Dudley since, as a very young man, I’d been employed as tutor to him and his siblings, by his late father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Robbie had fast developed an interest in maths and astronomy, but other subjects that interested him had been beyond me at the time and were, I suppose, beyond me still.

‘I was in thrall, as a boy, to Malory’s histories,’ he mused. ‘The sword in the stone… the gathering of the knights – Gawaine, Galahad, Bedivere, Bors. And of course Lancelot, who made off with Arthur’s wife… I could well admire his nerve.’

Dudley grinned. His beard was close-trimmed, his hair styled like he was ready to pose for a new portrait. He, too, had been close to a public death, feeling the wind of the axe that dispatched his father after the Jane Grey affair. But what had made me wary seemed, in some way, to have liberated his spirit.

‘As I tried to explain to you more than ten years ago,’ I said, ‘Thomas Malory… never trust the bastard and his ridiculous modernisation. Arthur was some tribal warlord.’

‘Matters not. Within those tales lies the very essence of knightly chivalry.’ Dudley leaned forward. ‘Whatever you say about the origins of Arthur, I revere what I perceive of him, and I’ll be honoured to bring back his bones. To London – the new Camelot.’

‘Streets full of thieves and whores and beggars, and a river full of shit?’

‘John, he belongs here – at Westminster, or St Paul’s. The Queen will be delighted beyond words.’

‘How will she? The Tudor line is he’s not dead.’

‘Ah, the body may be dead, but the spirit lives. His tomb shall once again be a monument to the golden age to which we aspire. For Bess, in particular. She’ ll be the one to bring Arthur home in glory. John, we have to give her this.’

Downriver, I could already see the tower of Mortlake Church. I didn’t have much time.

‘This big boys’ adventure,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has the time for that. And there has to be something more to it.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cecil said he thought the Queen was spiritually troubled.’

‘Did he say how?’

Dudley’s eyes narrowing; I saw caution there.

‘He said she didn’t often speak to him of such matters.’

‘But you think,’ Dudley said, ‘that she might’ve spoken of them… to me?’

‘Has she?’

Dudley caught the eye of the thatch-haired Martin Lythgoe and moved a hand up and down to convey that he wished the oarsman to further slow our progress towards Mortlake.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look into history. Beginning, if you like, with the death of Arthur – not the king, the Queen’s uncle, Prince Arthur, who would’ve been King Arthur the Second. Born in Winchester, which Malory had identified as Camelot. His early death meant some salvage was required, lest it be thought a sign that God did not, after all, wish Arthur to be reborn as a Tudor. And then comes Harry…’

‘Yes.’

How different life might have been, for all of us, had Arthur not died so young, bequeathing his crown and – most fateful of all – his bride, Catherine of Aragon, to his brother, Henry.

Dudley gazed out over the river.

‘The Queen, as we know, admires her father. And indeed may be said to possess some of his… resolve. But she’s also aware of his very conspicuous failures. Failure, despite six marriages and the resulting division of the churches, to produce a surviving male heir. Bess considers the short life of Edward and the longer but hardly happy reign of her half-sister. Fears a resumption of the decline.’

‘Inevitably.’

‘And she’s superstitious.’

Well, no-one knew that more than I. The Queen, needing to believe she’s chosen by God to rule this land, looking always for signs and portents to reinforce her confidence.

One of my own roles being to point them out to her. And Cecil had said she might speak to me of her inner problem – while ensuring there was no chance of this happening in the near future by making himself the intermediary in the matter of Arthur’s bones.

‘Here’s the point,’ Dudley said, ‘Arthur’s linked by Malory and others to the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire – forget that he might have been no more than a heathen, go with the lore. What does Harry do? Breaks with Rome and fills his coffers with the treasures of the Church. Finally sacking Glastonbury Abbey… where lie Arthur’s bones.’

‘Someone’s suggesting Harry dishonoured King Arthur?’

Dudley shrugged.

‘Thus bringing down a curse upon his line?’

‘If the curse was not already there. A few years ago, an appeal was made to Mary to put Glastonbury Abbey back together. Much as she’d have wanted it, there was little money to spare then. Even for God.’

‘So now something – or someone’ – I began to see it – ‘has put it into Queen Elizabeth’s mind that she has much to redeem if her reign’s to be fruitful.’

‘Or even avoid disaster. Glastonbury, John – it all comes together in Glastonbury. Arthur and Jesus Christ, all bound together. The holy heart of it all.’

‘Who put this into her mind, Robbie?’

‘I don’t know. Not me.’

‘Cecil speaks of visions. What’s that about?’

Dudley shook his head. A shadow fell betwixt us. Martin Lythgoe stood there, a stocky, amiable man, and patient.

‘Mortlake, my lord.’

Dudley sighed.

‘Get them to row in circles, would you, Martin?’

William Cecil had a certain genius for putting together the right men for a particular task. Here were two fellows of contrasting skills, committed to the same woman, if not for the same reasons. Dudley it was who had introduced me at court, Dudley who had commanded me to select a date for the coronation.

Two men committed, by bitter history, to the watching of each other’s backs.

‘So when do we leave?’ he said.

‘After I look into the history of this. For instance, if an approach was made to Mary for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, was mention made of the bones then?’

‘Does Cecil not know?’

I shook my head.

‘Bonner might,’ Dudley said. ‘You still a friend?’

‘Needs all the friends he can get at this moment. It’s a wonder he still lives.’

‘A tribute to Bess, who refuses, bless her, to resort either to the axe or the taper.’

‘Thus far.’

Dudley snorted.

‘Bloody Bonner. Be a queue of people a mile long ready to set light to his pile.’ He regarded me for a moment, tongue probing a cheek. ‘Thinking about it, you must be the only man he ever spared. Fellow you shared a cell with… he was burned. Are you still Bonner’s friend?’

‘For my sins. And his.’

‘Have to admire the old bastard’s nerve. Still refusing to recognise the Queen as head of the church, even when she offers a compromise.’

‘That mean prison?’

‘Marshalsea. For good this time, unless he changes his song. If you feel it worth visiting him, I wouldn’t waste any time.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That might be worthwhile.’ I watched a gull wheeling over the remains of our midday meal, which seemed still to be following in our wake. ‘How is Amy?’

‘Amy’s well.’ Dudley’s expression unchanging. ‘She ever prefers the country life.’

‘There’s fortunate,’ I said.

For a moment, he almost frowned. He swung his feet to the deck and stood up.

‘And what of you? Still dipping it in the mercury?’

‘Dudley, if a man can barely afford to support himself…’

‘That excuse, John, wears thin.’

‘So we ride out,’ I said, ‘with banners held high-’

‘That’s not how a great quest is undertaken. We fast for several days, perform three nightly vigils until dawn and then ride out silently, and with humility. We take few men with us, if any, and each church we chance upon, we stop and pray.’

‘Unlikely to get there before midsummer, then.’

Dudley stretched his arms.

‘Taking few men – that’s certainly part of it. I rather like the idea, to be honest – a rare freedom to move around as a common man, unencumbered by the trappings of high office.’

I may have blinked. Robert Dudley shorn of the trappings of high office was like Hampton Court with no glass in the windows and a flock of sheep in the gardens.

‘Cecil intends that we travel as lowly servants of the Crown,’ he said. ‘Undertaking a survey of historical remains. We’re to be accompanied by someone with knowledge of the country. Cecil’s organising that, too. Leaves nothing to chance.’

‘No.’

‘Thinks to remove me from court for a while,’ Dudley said.

‘Surely not.’

‘Doesn’t realise that a man who brings to his Queen such an irrefutable symbol of her royal heritage… something which bestows upon her monarchy’s most mystical aura. That man… he may expect his reward.’

He was not smiling.

‘It isn’t a quest for the Holy Grail,’ I said.

‘Maybe not for you. But for me… possibly.’

Dudley was gazing out, in noble profile, across the broad water, then up at the sky where a buttermilk moon bided its time.