Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

Geoffrey’s tales are powerfully inspiring, yet anyone with a knowledge of the histories can see that he can’t be trusted. We recognise, elsewhere in his text, stories from other sources – Nennius, for instance, and the old ballads of Wales. Tales previously unrelated to Arthur. As if Arthur is an all-purpose hero who may be borrowed to fight the Saxon or the Romans or whoever would most please the writer’s patron. Malory, as I recall, chose the Spaniards.

I moved on to some manuscripts in French, early translations of Geoffrey, and then to Maistre Wace’s account, Roman de Brut, which follows Geoffrey’s tales but mentions – probably for the first time – the round table, at which all knights sat as equals. Seeds here of the chivalry, so beloved of Dudley.

Then came upon what seemed to be the first English account, by Layamon, a priest of Worcester – a telling of Arthur’s passing, as from the King himself.

And I will travel to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens… the most beautiful of the spirit-folk and she shall make all my wounds sound and make me whole with healing medicines, and then I will come to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with great joy…

And then came this:

The Britons still believe that he is alive, living in Avalon with the fairest of the spirit-folk and they will continue to expect Arthur to come back. There is no man born… who can say for certain anything else about Arthur. But there was once a wise man whose name was Merlin. He said in these words – and his words were true – that an Arthur should yet come to help the English.

Note that phrase: an Arthur. As if Arthur was a guise to be donned like some magical armour.

As if Arthur was Britain. It was clear where the Queen’s grandfather, Henry Tudor, had found his inspiration.

I heard again the mild tones of Sir William Cecil: You are her… her Merlin, shall we say?

A status which I could hardly yet aspire to live up to. If any man had ever achieved commune with angelical spheres it surely had been Merlin. So had this been absurd flattery from Cecil, or a touch of subtle irony? For had not the Italian, Polydore Vergil, some twenty-five years ago, made ridicule of Geoffrey of Monmouth, as good as accusing him of inventing the Arthurian tales?

I let it lie and turned finally to a modern work. John Leland, the travelling antiquarian, had spent time in Glastonbury during Harry’s reign, having been charged by Thomas Cromwell with cataloguing England’s ancient wealth but, in the end, more taken with charting. I’d read all of Leland’s Itinerary years earlier but, having no pressing interest in this remote town at the time, must have missed what now came up at me like a piercing ray of light.

I was a few years ago at Glastonbury in Somerset, where the most ancient and at the same time most famous monastery in our whole island is located. I had intended, by the favour of Richard Whiting, abbot of that place, to refresh my mind, wearied with long study, when a burning desire to read and learn aflamed me afresh…

A dampness in my palms like to the alchemical dew, for I knew that desire.

I straightway went to the library, which is not open to all, in order to examine most diligently all the relics of most sacred antiquity…

Leland. Dear God, how could I have forgotten this?

Scarcely had I crossed the threshold when the mere sight of the most ancient books took my mind with an awe and stupor of some kind, and for that reason I stopped in my tracks…

And it was all there. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin. Records of St Patrick who was fabled to have spent time in Glastonbury. Had not Leland been dead these seven years or more, I should have sought him out, for I knew of his fascination with Arthurian matters and my own twin callings of astrology and alchemy. And yes, it made sense that this oldest and wealthiest of abbeys should possess unrivalled accounts of the wisdom of the ages.

Awe and stupor. Christ, I knew this feeling so well, and the tingle it aroused in me felt near to sinful. What if elements of this library yet survived in the town?

Another reason, beyond the bones of Arthur, to venture there.

I stilled my heart through a steadying of breath and laid my head upon an arm on the boardtop, all thoughts calmed now by a quiet joy, choosing not to dwell on the fact that, for several years before his death, John Leland had been mad.

A barn owl shrilled close to the window, and I lifted my head into air that seemed scented, for a moment, with summer roses.

A candle guttering.

Must have fallen asleep across the board.

And dreamed. For some time now, I’ve kept diaries of my dreams to look back on, years hence, to see what they might have foretold, what patterns they revealed.

I would set down no record, however, of this one, having dreamed of fair-haired Catherine Meadows, all naked in my arms in her pallet; who, when I gently brushed aside her hair, had become…

I stared, wide-eyed, into the frail flame, horrified at the pressure within my hose. Dear God… in my arms in all her majesty? Two hours in the dangerous company of Robert Dudley, and what am I become?

Shook myself, tried to smile. Deciding that my phantasy woman had only turned into the Queen because the Queen, more than any woman, was so far beyond the likes of me. As far beyond as Guinevere was to Merlin. And therefore, in my sorry state, safe to entertain in dream.

One of the cats was brushing my ankles and in my head the Queen still laughed, punching my arm, ginger curls on white forehead.

Are you yet equipped to call upon the angels, John?

Only in my imagination, shaped by the reading of a thousand books and manuscripts, the absorption of others’ thoughts, others’ ideas, others’ divine inspiration. Equipped, in truth, for little. I wished that Dudley had bothered to snatch a copy of the peacock man’s pamphlet so that I might at least know what visions I was supposed to be having.

The last log had died in the fireplace, and the room was as cold as a dungeon. Was a sudden cold not an indication of the impending appearance of an unquiet spirit?

Only in my dreams. Some were endowed with abilities like to the angels and some could see the dead. But not me.

I brought the base of my left fist down on the board to scare away the numbness in the arm on which I’d lain my head and to fragment the dangerous pictures lodged therein.

Dudley was right.

If the bones of Arthur were to be found upon the Isle of Avalon, then we must find them.

Without the Walls

Once you’ve smelled roasting flesh – human meat – you never forget it.

Oh, I’ve seen men burn. Held there by the frenzy of the crowd when all I wanted was to be far away. Seen the hideous moment of hell’s halo, when the hair catches frizzling fire and the mob’s fever explodes with a great bull-roar and a score of pickpockets make their move.

But even the sight of that horror has faded in the mind’s eye before the smell departs the nostrils… a smell of throat-searing sweetness which seemed to find me again this day, as I was shown in by one of the canons.

Shown not, this time, to the bishop’s sumptuous receiving room, but to a small, stone-walled chamber down amongst the servants’ quarters at his East London palace.

‘Welcome,’ Bonner said, ‘to my cell.’

He’d always laughed a lot, this roly-poly priest, who’d sent so many to the stake in the darkest of Mary’s days. Once a lawyer, a clever man, a worldly man, now… what?

There was a single high, barred window, a low and narrow bed – little more than a pallet. A chest with a ewer and looking glass. A bookshelf high on the wall bearing maybe twenty volumes. A chair and board, a jug and a stoneware cup, and the sweetness I could smell… was probably wine.