Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Might it be worth you speaking with this farrier, Master Roberts?’ Carew said.

‘Oh, yes.’ Dudley shook himself. ‘Doubtless we should.’

The points had been lopped from his moustache and his doublet was the colour of a stagnant ditch. As Master Roberts, his clothing must needs be more humble and muted, and it seemed to be constraining his manner. Even at the inn last night his moves toward the chambermaid had been cursory, as if he’d felt no more than obliged to keep topping up the levels of his lust. He sighed, raised himself up and drank some ale.

‘This is… not bad.’

‘Brewed to a recipe the Flemish weavers brought to us,’ Cowdray said. ‘Good people, on the whole. Some folk accused ’em of bringing the wool-sorters’ disease but, hell, ’twas here before they come.’

‘Much of that about now?’ Carew asked.

‘A few deaths. Likely we just notices it more, now all the money’s from sheep again. Folk’s in fear of the black scabs, but more of starvation.’

‘Our understanding, Master Cowdray,’ Dudley said, ‘is that certain items may have been removed from the abbey by the monks. I’m thinking items that are not necessarily what might be considered treasure. I’m thinking documents – of which Dr D- Dr John has knowledge. Also sacred relics.’

‘Many a saint’ – Carew was pulling his long black beard into stiffened plaits – ‘and many a king has been entombed at that abbey over a thousand years or more. Or so you tell the pilgrims.’

‘’Tis a fact,’ Cowdray told him. ‘And many of their relics removed by the King’s men.’

‘My information,’ Dudley said, ‘is that some were removed beforehand, in anticipation of the Dissolution of the abbey. It being hardly the first establishment to go. They could see the darkness on the horizon.’

I saw that Cowdray shifted, for the first time uneasy, Carew watching him, head on one side. Carew had been summoned by Cecil and told, in the strictest confidence, what it was that we sought in Glastonbury, but I wondered how much he already knew.

‘Look, masters.’ The innkeeper slumped back in the settle, head sinking betwixt his shoulders. ‘Times are hard for this town. For all of us. A few bad things been done, out of desperation.’

‘A town which grew fat on superstition and idolatry in place of honest work can hardly expect much sympathy,’ Carew said. ‘What bad things were done?’

‘Things taken. Stone and lead, mainly. Glass.’

‘And?’

‘And… that’s it. What was left. We were given to understand a blind eye…’

Yes. You could see that, once all conspicuous treasures had gone to the Crown, it would be deemed expedient for local people to be permitted, within reason, to help themselves. Thus involving them in the destruction of the abbey. Buying their complicity.

‘I’d heard that some fine houses had been built from stone from the abbey,’ I said.

‘More the case that houses already built were repaired,’ Cowdray said.

‘Well, that’s all over now.’ Carew straightened up. ‘They’ve had their pickings. Now it’s in my charge, they want stone from there, they’ll pay. Or anyone caught stealing masonry might find his knuckles crushed ’twixt two slabs of it on the way out.’

‘No-one goes there,’ Cowdray said quickly.

‘I bet they don’t.’

‘No,’ Cowdray said. ‘They don’t. Apart from anything, Sir Edmund Fyche hands out a stern sentence to anyone caught taking stone.’

He looked down, one hand rubbing the back of the other. I’d thought of something and was raising myself in my chair, my inner thighs much aching from the ride.

‘You said that some of the monks were gone. Where did they go?’

‘Dispersed. Some to seek sanctuary at those monasteries allowed to continue. And some-’

‘Hah.’ Dudley smiling at last, if thinly. ‘Offering… gifts to these monasteries in return for sanctuary?’

‘Relics, you think?’ Carew was back at the fireside, easing off his boots. ‘A sackful of holy bones? Aye, I suppose that makes a degree of sense.’

‘I know naught of that,’ Cowdray said. ‘And the ones still here, ’part from the farrier, they’re all gone to work the land, or teach at the new college.’

A silence.

‘College?’ Candle flames going horizontal as Carew sprang up. ‘What fucking papist shit’s this?’

‘The college to be started up by the tor,’ Cowdray said. ‘Nothing papist. Meadwell, Sir Peter. Sir Edmund Fyche’s charity?’

‘Ah.’ Carew subsided, turning to Dudley. ‘Fyche was a monk – a bursar – at the abbey. After the Dissolution, an inheritance gave him the wherewithal to establish a farm. Employed a few monks as labour. But a college, now?’

‘Where gentlemen’s sons may be educated,’ Cowdray said. ‘The Bishop of Wells gave sanction for it, but nothing-’

‘Bourne? He’s gone. Papist bastard’s banged up.’

‘He’s still in Wells.’

‘Not for long,’ Carew said. ‘He’ll be in the Tower by spring.’

And he probably was right. I didn’t know Bishop Bourne, but I knew he’d refused, like Ned Bonner, who’d consecrated him, to swear the Oath of Supremacy.

‘Nothing papist, though,’ Cowdray said. ‘Sir Edmund-’

‘Is a survivor,’ Carew told Dudley. ‘Fyche found it expedient to revert to Rome during the last reign, when it looked as if the abbey might live again, but he’s a JP now and knows which side of the hearth won’t singe his beard. All the same, I’ll make a point of inspecting the place when I get back from Exeter.’

And doubtless he would, but I was glad that Carew would be gone from here on the morrow; it would hardly help our inquiries to have him raging around making wild accusations against plans for some entirely legitimate college which just happened to be administered by former monks.

‘Need to get some sleep.’ He gathered up his boots. ‘Cowdray, tell my men we’ll leave at seven.’

‘I’ve ordered a brick to be put in your bed, sir.’

‘Well, take the fucker out,’ Carew said. ‘I’m not a woman.’

Cowdray nodded, making for the door, me wondering if Carew would have rejected the hot brick with such alacrity had Dudley and I not been present. I thought not.

‘But underneath it all,’ Dudley said wearily, ‘he’s a sound enough man. A solid Protestant.’

He was hunched hard over the fire now. His face looked narrow and starved – this emphasised by the selfless butchery of his moustache.

‘From what my father told me of Carew,’ I said, ‘I’d thought him little more than a mercenary. Perhaps you’re right, but it’ll still be easier for us to function without him. What’s the plan for the morrow?’

‘Kicking arses can sometimes cut a few corners. However… I think we’d best begin by surveying what’s left of the abbey. Then, if there’s a tame ex-monk…?’

‘The farrier.’

‘Yes. Talk to him.’ Dudley shivered. ‘I hope the bugger’s put bricks in our beds. He looked at me. ‘What are you thinking, John?’

It was the first time since leaving London that we’d had a chance to talk, and I’d hoped to approach with him the problem of Elizabeth and her mother and the hares. Maybe tomorrow.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘I’m thinking, what if this is a wild goose chase? What if the bones are already in London? What if they were taken, on specific instruction, by Cromwell’s people, at the time of the Dissolution?’

‘We’d know. Or at least Cecil would know.’

‘Or if they were simply destroyed?’

‘That’s more of a possibility. To Fat Harry, they might just have represented some old Plantagenet scheme to demolish the myth of an immortal Welsh hero. Harry might even have seen it as symbolically grinding up any final hopes of a Plantagenet return to the throne. I…’ Dudley drew a hand across his forehead, then looked at the sweat on it. ‘I don’t know, John, I feel… I was seized by the romance of it – the Isle of Avalon, the Grail Quest. But when you see what a shithole the place is…’