Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

Vaughan slumped in a corner of the parlour settle.

‘You think?’

A cattle raid one full-moon night in the Irfon Valley, the other side of Radnor Forest. This was how they’d caught him.

Been a few raids, and all the talk was of Plant Mat, so the local squires banded together and had all their men out – farm hands and shepherds, pigmen and rickmen. Long nights waiting in the woods, all armed with axes and pitchforks and clubs. The Plant Mat raiders, when they came, were badly outnumbered and taken by surprise, for once, and fled into the hills.

Except for their leader who caught his foot in a root and twisted his ankle, and the farmers’ boys were on him. Two of the squires were summoned from their beds and came out and beat him about before having him tied, hand and foot, to a cart.

‘They know who he was?’ Dudley asked.

‘They did when he told them. Stood there all bloody and told them his brothers would pay them well if they let him go. He’d get a message back and they’d arrange an exchange, and they’d be rich men and their stock would be safe forever.’

‘Tempting,’ I said, ‘for a border farmer.’

‘But an insult to a squire,’ Vaughan said. ‘These two, they both knew what had happened over at Rhayader, when Plant Mat were taking a slice of the farmers’ meat in return for not firing their buildings. Forever’s no more’n a year in Wales. You make a deal with these brigands, they leave you alone for a few months, then they’re back, and worse.’

‘Never bargain with scum,’ Dudley said.

All they did, Vaughan said, was to have Prys Gethin tied tighter and gagged him so they didn’t have to listen to any more of his babble. And then… a triumphal torchlight procession through the hills of Radnor Forest.

‘The new sheriff, Evan Lewis, he lives at Gladestry, which was along the route, and they sent ahead to have him roused. And Evan Lewis joined them on the road to New Radnor Castle, where Prys Gethin was dragged down from the cart. Standing there, under the full moon, they were in high spirits, mabbe a bit drunk. As you might well be if you’d brought the bane of Radnorshire to justice.’

One of the squires, Thomas Harris by name, had stepped up and spat in the prisoner’s eye. Well, not in his eye, exactly, as Gethin only had the one. What Harris spat into was the shrivelled skin around the empty socket of the eye that was gone.

Prys Gethin had not wiped it away. Although he could have done. They saw his hands were freed from their bonds. How was that possible?

Vaughan drank some beer and was silent for a moment, as if unsure how the rest would be received.

‘Stood there, blood and spit on his cheeks. Pointed at the two squires who’d beaten him, tied him down, spat into his eye socket. Stood there in the light of the full moon and cursed them by turn, low in his voice, pointing with a curled finger.’

‘Cursed in Welsh?’ Dudley looked unimpressed. ‘Terrifying.’

But I noticed Vaughan’s eyes and the bleak way he was staring into his beer.

‘Within a month,’ he said, ‘Thomas Harris was dead of a fever that came overnight. And the other, Hywel Griffiths, he drowned in the river, when a new footbridge collapsed in high wind.’

I hoped Dudley would not laugh, and he didn’t. I’d be the last to deny the power of a curse, especially if the victim knows he’s cursed.

‘This wind,’ Vaughan said, ‘was sudden, fierce and unnaturally short-lived. Came and went in a matter of minutes. Taking with it the little bridge and a man’s life.’

‘And another myth was born,’ Dudley said sourly.

‘ Myth? ’ Roger Vaughan, for all his schooling in London and Oxford, was a man of the border yet, his accent strengthening with his anger. ‘That’s how you sees it, is it, Master Roberts?’

‘So’ – I broke in – ‘the charges will be cattle-thieving…’

‘And witchcraft,’ Vaughan said. ‘Murder by witchcraft.’

Ha. So this was where Scory came in. What evidence, I wondered, would he give to strengthen the case against this felon?

‘Not easy to prove,’ I said. ‘Not these days.’

The last Witchcraft Act, introduced by King Henry, having been repealed after his death. Everyone had expected it to be replaced by something less random, but it hadn’t happened yet, whatever Jack Simm might say about the Queen’s need to prove that she was not like her mother. Goodwife Faldo had been on firm ground when she’d said, in Mortlake Church, that she no longer feared imprisonment for inviting a scryer into her house.

But where a death was involved… well, I’d heard of cases where evidence of circumstance had been enough to hang a woman – it was usually a woman – where proof of dark threats had been given. And fear of witchcraft would never go away. Even in London, there would have been unrest under these circumstances. Out here, with all the terror of the Glyndwr war yet within local memory, it would have a considerable power to disturb.

‘Glyndwr studied magic,’ I said.

Vaughan was nodding.

‘And is said to have used it with clear intent, Dr Dee. As you likely know, it was said he could arouse spirits to change the weather – arouse storms and the like – to gain advantage on the battlefield.’

‘So a sudden wind blowing down a footbridge,’ Dudley said. ‘would suggest this man was simply calling on the same dark powers?’

‘Not too difficult to make out a case for it, Master Roberts.’

‘Especially before a man of Legge’s abilities,’ I said. ‘ Was Rhys Gethin said to have dark powers?’

‘I don’t know. He was killed in battle three years after Pilleth.’ Vaughan drained his cup. ‘But what a victory that was. Against all odds. And he was Glyndwr’s best general. And they did burn down the church of the Holy Virgin before the battle. Oh God, it’s all a nest of wasps.’

‘So you’re saying the local judges… might be in fear for more than their lives?’

‘Like I said, Dr Dee, this en’t England. And it definitely en’t London. Although Plant Mat’s never been known to work so far east, the guard’s yere to make sure Sir Christopher Legge stays safe before and during the trial. And the hanging, if he stays for it.

‘As for any kind of danger that don’t involve physical attack…’

‘Legge has fairly advanced Lutheran leanings, as I understand it,’ Dudley said. ‘The Lutheran scholars are in the process of effecting a severe reduction of what we’re allowed to be afraid of.’

‘Aye, and the handful of men who own this town now are all firm reformers, too.’ Vaughan stood up, peered at the window. ‘It en’t stopping, is it? Better face the wrath of Sir Christopher. Tell him his trial en’t gonner start tomorrow.’

He flinched, as did I, at a sudden cracking of glass. The loose pane had fallen from its leading, or been blasted out by the force of the rain, and now smashed on the flooded stone flag. Shards of glass were skittering through the spill, as a second pane fell out.

‘I’ll send the innkeeper,’ Vaughan said. ‘If I can find him.’

None of us had commented on the uncommon ferocity of the rain which looked like preventing the sheriff bringing Prys Gethin from New Radnor this night.

It had, after all, been a wet summer.

COLD IN THE parlour now, with that jagged hole in the window and water beginning to pool around Dudley’s fine riding boots. When we were alone, he stood up, regarding me sideways, dark eyes aslant.

‘I don’t think… that should we get involved in this, John.’

‘Did I suggest we might?’