Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Your friend awoke that morning,’ Mistress Borrow said, ‘and knew not where he was. Nor who I was. Once, he called me Amy.’

‘Good,’ I whispered.

Meaning, good that he hadn’t called her Bess.

‘And then, in his delirium, he called out for you twice by name. Where’s John Dee? Send John Dee to me.’

‘Um… there must be others,’ I said, ‘of that name.’

‘Not in my knowledge. And anyway, there was something about your friend’s manner. A man used to giving orders and being obeyed, in a snapping of the fingers. But now I was less interested in him than in you. I had to find out. Obviously.’

At last I found a smile, recalling all her educated talk of astrological herbalism as we walked through the town and sat by the holy well. And all the time, she would have been charting the rising excitement in me, as we discussed the inherent power of places.

All that blithe skipping on the rim of heresy.

Heresy! Of a sudden, I wanted to cry it to the beams. Embrace it.

Or her. ‘I’ve tried to follow your work, of course,’ she said. ‘As best I could, from pamphlets left around the town by travellers. Some of them insist that you’re the cleverest man in Europe, while others…’

‘I know well what the others say. Anyway, both are distortions of the truth.’

‘Ah, but all say the Queen thinks very highly of you. That’s distortion, too?’

She sat, all serious, prim and decorous, looking down at her small hands in her lap. Why would my hands not be still? I sat on them. On the bed. Should not be sitting on the bed with a woman here, but she had the only chair.

The candles, still in a cluster on the board I’d took care to keep betwixt us, made a bright ball of light and shot golden arrows to the beams. Mistress Borrow bent and pushed aside her cloak to delve into her black cloth bag.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that you’ve seen this one.’

I rose and accepted the crumpled pamphlet, holding it close to the candles.

IMPORTANT FOR ALL THE SECOND COMING

Know that the Queen hath been served with clear warning of the ending of the world. That which was foretold in the Book of the Revelation of St John will soon come to pass. Dr Dee, the royal stargazer, hath been commanded to foretell the date when England, wherein lies the New Jerusalem, will see the Second Coming of Our Saviour…

I read no further.

‘It’s bollocks,’ I said. Then blushed. ‘Beg mercy, mistress-’

‘Jesu, I’m a doctor.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Men cry out far worse when having a foot cut off.’

This casual mention of surgery tensed me. But I would not think on it now. Handing the pamphlet back, I wondered if this could be the peacock man’s paper, or were there more? Was this one mere twig from a huge oak tree of fakery? Or – more disturbing – was there something in the stars I’d missed?

‘Where did you get this?’

‘Some wool-merchants passing through.’

‘Well, you should know that no-one in this world has ever asked me to name the date of the apocalypse or the time of the Second Coming of Christ.’

‘No?’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘ Tush, Dr John, you’re the Queen’s astrologer.’

‘So they tell me.’

She fell silent. At some point she would be asking what the Queen’s astrologer was doing here in Glastonbury. And in the light of what had happened since we arrived, this no longer seemed like a secret worth preserving.

So I waited for the next thunder to fade, and then told her. Told her, without identifying Robert Dudley, about our hitherto discreet mission to recover the bones which, whoever’s flesh had once been upon them, had lain in the tomb of King Arthur.

Something like relief was at once apparent in her eyes, a tightness departing her body. Evidently, she’d feared worse.

‘But the bones are gone,’ she said. ‘Gone from the abbey, yes.’

‘Gone from the town.’

I settled back on the side of the bed.

‘How do you know that?’

‘I…’ She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. ‘My mother told me once.’

‘Oh?’

‘And now you’re about to ask how my mother knew.’

I said nothing. Mistress Borrow took breath.

‘She was close to the abbey. Always. That is, to the abbot. When I told you I remembered the abbot, that was because he was oft-times at our house. Which my father, though he’d little time for men of God, would tolerate because the abbot had an interest in healing.’

‘But it was only your mother who had the abbot’s confidence?’

‘And whatever he told her always remained in the most sacred confidence. She told neither my father nor me, and we learned not to ask. It was just that, one night my father was reading to us from Malory, while scorning his version of the tales…’

‘With good reason.’

‘It was read for amusement only. And we talked of Arthur in Avalon and his burial, and my father remarked on the tomb being plundered for the marble and my mother said to me later that it was of no import because it was empty by then. The tomb was empty.’

‘You think the abbot had the bones removed, knowing what was to come?’

‘Someone must have.’

‘But your mother said they were not in the town.’

‘I think her words were, it’s no use anyone looking for them in Glastonbury.’

‘Thus suggesting that she knew where the bones were hidden.’

‘I don’t know. I truly don’t know. She never spoke of it again, though sometimes, when we were alone, I thought she came close.’

Which didn’t take us much further but was a start. But Mistress Borrow hadn’t finished – hesitating a moment, as if considering how sacred a confidence might be when both parties were dead.

‘My mother… knew, I think, where many secret things were to be found. Other remains of Arthur.’

I sat up, recalling what Monger had said about hidden wonders. But her smile was regretful.

‘I don’t mean the Holy Grail. Anyway, most people say the Grail’s not real. That it’s only a vision.’

‘Only-’

‘But there was once mention of King Arthur’s round table.’

‘Your mother believed King Arthur’s round table remains? Here? In this town?’

‘It was just a passing- What’s the matter?’

I told her about Benlow, the bone-man and his piece of oak in a wooden box which I might have taken away but, in the end, had bade him keep. She laughed.

‘Did he suggest you stow it away inside your codpiece, and then offer to help you?’

‘Um…’ I sighed. ‘I gather that Benlow is not regarded as one of the seekers of Avalon.’

‘You gather right.’

‘So he’d not be trusted with secrets…’

‘Dr John, that man would sell his own mother’s bones to flavour a Christmas stew.’ Her face sobered. ‘When my mother spoke of the round table, I felt it was in a more spiritual sense, in the way that mystics speak of the Grail. She was a rare woman. I think she knew much of what happened under the surface.’

‘You mean underground?’

‘I truly can’t say, Dr John,’ Mistress Borrow said. ‘But I do believe that’s why-’

She broke off at the white spatter of lightning, and we waited for what followed. Very soon afterwards, this time, and the whole frame of the window was atremble.

‘I do believe that’s why she was murdered,’ Eleanor Borrow said.

The Great Unspoken

A pale mound of lustrous candlefat had spread upon the boardtop betwixt us. Tallow. Smelled like a butcher’s slab.

I leaned back, hands as in prayer, thumbs pressed into my jaw, thinking: when does execution become murder?

An answer: when the deed has an expedience beyond justice. When the cords and strands of the law have themselves been stretched and twined to devise a death. Ask yourself: was not King Harry guilty of the murders of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard?