Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Where?’

‘Here in London.’

‘You want me to go to Glastonbury… locate the bones of Arthur… and fetch them back here?’

His nod was almost imperceptible. He was asking me to go out with a spade and muffled lantern.

‘Alone?’

‘You’ll be accompanied by someone both of us can trust.’

‘Who?’

Sounding as if this had already been organised. I had a dismaying thought.

‘Not Walsingham?’

Cecil’s gaze hardened.

‘I met him when-’

‘I know when you met him.’

‘Does he work for you, Sir William?’

‘Francis?’ He leaned back. ‘Not officially. Let’s say I’m trying him out. As he’s not the man who’ll go with you to Glastonbury, he needn’t worry you.’

Could not quite explain my relief. There’d been a close-hung darkness around Walsingham, and not only in his dress. Whatever he’d done after we’d parted that morning in the alley near the river, not a word about the effigy seemed to have leaked out. No pamphlet had published even a hint of it.

But within the relief, there was still trepidation.

‘What if they’re not to be found? The bones.’

‘Oh, they’ll be found,’ Cecil said. ‘Not necessarily the full set. A leg bone may suffice, and a ribcage. And of course a skull, suitably shattered.’

‘And you think the Queen will be convinced that these are indeed the remains of her… ancestor?’

‘That would depend… on who assures her of their authenticity.’ The thin, grey light of Cecil’s gaze settling upon me.

Here would be the bones of Arthur, formally presented to Her Majesty the Queen by her Merlin. And oh, dear God, as you can imagine, I liked this not at all.

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.’