Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘Did I?

‘But how well did you know Prys Gethin?’

I knew not where this question came from. Maybe I’d thought back to what Bonner had said about simony, the ordination of fifty paying candidates, a small coterie of thoroughly reprehensible followers. Or maybe it was given to me by the Archangel Michael.

‘Was he at the Abbey of Wigmore?’ I said. ‘Was he given Holy Orders?’

Smart said, ‘Gethin trusted the Presteigne boys because I’d told him he could. And because I was with them.’

‘My thanks,’ I said. ‘Now to go back to my previous question…’

Smart’s face had visibly darkened. His eyes grown still. He looked down at what I yet held: the butcher’s knife, laden with dried blood. I let go of it and it fell to my feet, bounced and slid in the slick grass towards the foot of the tump.

‘Thank you,’ Smart said. ‘This is very much not the place to keep a weapon too close.’

‘Or an obsessive killer? God’s tears, Smart, you can’t just tell me what you want me to know and expect me to take my nose out of your stinking midden and walk away.’

Smart sighed at last.

‘There were times, in the years before and during the Reform, when an abbot of the Welsh Borderlands was in need of personal protection. I was, I suppose, threatened more than most. In divers ways.’

‘You ordained him… as your guard?’

He shrugged.

‘Knowing what he was ?’

‘All right, it was not my holiest act. Look, Dee, if you’ve seen the report made to Cromwell, that was not fully accurate, but some of it… had foundation. I knew it was coming. I knew Cromwell was committed to taking virtually all of us down; the abbeys, by whatever means, and I knew there’d be no great difficulty doing it to me. I’d already journeyed to London, cwtching up to the wily bastard, offering my services…’

‘In what way?’

‘Matter of survival, Dee. I’m not proud of it. Not my behaviour then, nor my behaviour now, although old Jeremy Martin…’

‘Is a different man.’

‘And a good innkeeper, generous with his ale and cider and ever offering a night’s sleep to those in need.’

He smiled, and then it died.

‘An innkeeper hears everything. An innkeeper with a host of old acquaintances and friends in London is able to form an impression of what’s taking shape under his nose and… use it. When it came to my notice that certain men were entrusting the man now known as Prys Gethin with a task of considerable delicacy… let’s say I thought it was ill-advised and might rebound.’

‘On whom?’

‘I remember what he did, in my defence, twenty years ago when he was little more than a boy. In those days, his excuse would have been that he was doing it for the Church. Now he’s been…’

‘All for Wales?’

Smart sat down on the edge of the tump, as though the burden of his past were become too much to support.

‘Once made the mistake of going whoring with him. Learning that we had… very different needs. Later, a particular canon who sought to gather evidence of my misconduct… had an accident. After a while, even I was in dismay over the depth of the boy’s depravity. Quite relieved when our ways diverged.’

We sat in silence for a while. I knew that everything he’d told me might later be denied.

‘I wanted him to hang,’ Smart said. ‘I did not want him back in my life. And when, after he was freed, the sheriff brought him to me, as he’d apparently requested…’

‘What did you do?

‘What do you think I did? I greeted him cordially, as an old friend. With great celebration. Fed him well and gave him drink. Told him how much I was in his debt for all he’d done for me twenty years ago. Said I’d help him any way I could.’

‘Of course you did.’

‘And, in time, he told me where he wanted to go, and I took him part-way there, hidden in my cart. Saying I’d return for him in the morning, with trusted friends. Men he could rely on.’

‘The Presteigne boys.’

‘Regular customers of mine, in the lower parlour. Roisterers, street-fighters. As I said, Jeremy Martin is ever generous with ale and cider and a bed for the night, and they were the first hunting party to return to Presteigne – this was after you and your Welsh friend had left. Much competition that night over who’d find Prys Gethin. So I told them I’d received information as to his whereabouts and could perhaps lead them there. Giving them more drink before we rode off.’

‘You know where he was going. You knew his plans.’

Smart smiled and tapped his nose.

‘Best outcome, Dee. We don’t need another trial. Not for a while. And you don’t need to know any more about my role in Gethin’s demise. Just as, in the matter of Master Roberts, I have no need at all to know who he is.’

I walked with Smart to the Nant-y-groes bridge where the Presteigne boys waited with the horses and his cart.

The day was brighter now, though the sky was white. When we were in first sight of the company, I brought the shewstone from my bloodied jerkin, quite alarmed at how full of heat it was, having spent the whole night next to my lower abdomen.

Yes, I know… which is the home of the second mind where lie the deepest feelings, the unspoken perceptions. There must needs be a close bond ’twixt the crystal and the scryer, my friend Jack Simm, the apothecary, had said. I wondered if, at this moment, in its swirling depths, the sigil of St Michael would be aglow.

When I gave the stone back to John Smart, he accepted it without a word, and I was glad. The circumstance was not right. It was not the time, although in some odd way, it had served a purpose.

I said, ‘You scry, Abbot?’

‘Martin,’ he said. ‘Call me Martin. No I don’t scry. That… was another of his tasks.’

‘I— Gethin?’

‘He saw. In the stone. He saw what would come. At my house in the abbey, we’d spend whole hours before the stone.’

Thomas Jones had said Gethin was reputed to have the Sight, but…

‘God’s tears. This was his stone?’

‘No, it’s mine. But he was the scryer. A scryer need not be a spiritual man. Or so I thought.’

I also thought to ask if he had acquaintance with a certain Brother Elias, but guessed there’d be no straight answer.

He stowed the stone away in his saddlebag.

‘Should you ever have need of a scryer, Dee, I’d advise you to have a care over whom you choose.’

I did not look at the Presteigne boys. I nodded and turned away and walked back towards the river of light. I lay flat on its bank, hanging down, reaching to splash bright water on my face.

When I went back to the tump, the hole – the wound in its side – had collapsed in upon itself, and the stench had gone, leaving only the sharp, bitter essence of autumn.

ALL WIDE AWAKE now and in need of someone with whom to talk it all through, I walked up, through the cloistered oaks, to the church and sat on the step below Our Lady of Pilleth.

Her demure, chipped face shone through a dappled haze and a rediscovered beatific smile, which led me to suppose that Roger Vaughan had been back.

There was no sign of Matthew Daunce, with whom I’d nothing to discuss.

I let my head fall into my hands. It no longer bled or ached so badly, but whatever part of it enclosed my creative thoughts felt beaten thin as an old drumskin.

I’d bathed my head and eyes again, this time with water from the holy well, unable to shake off the vibrant feeling that I’d been used… had been, for a short time, part of some engine of change.