Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

I saw that she was shivering freely. She had no real evidence against Fyche and knew it, but the last thing I wanted was to appear to be turning away from her at such a time. Nevertheless, another matter must needs be approached – questions that Robert Dudley would be asking when, on the morrow, I would have to put all this before him.

‘When Fyche talks of witchcraft at the tor, sorcery and the sacrifice of new-born babes-’

‘He said that?’

Her eyes were wide.

‘Spoke of people massing like maggots on the hill,’ I said, ‘chattering and screaming to the moon. Babes with their throats cut.’

‘Christ help us all.’ She bent to the cloak folded on top of her doctor’s bag. ‘All right, yes, I know where this comes from. A babe was found there last year. Still-born. One babe. It happens. And yes, obviously there has been old worship to the sun and moon, if you can call it worship. Usually no more than superstitious pleas thrown out in poverty and desperation. But not blood rites, Dr John. Not any more. I swear to you.’

‘Except,’ I said, ‘in the abbey?’

The thunder now was like to a blind giant blundering around in the high street. Nel was shivering freely.

‘No, look…’ She pulled her cloak around her shoulders. ‘What happened to your servant… yes, that was terrible almost beyond belief, and more so because he seemed a most decent man. But all this talk of devil magic, sacrifice…’

‘It’s said that there’s no more effective place for the summoning of devils than a holy place in ruins.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Dr John, we’d know! I tell you, if there were people like that here, we’d know. ’

‘ We? ’

‘There are those here’ – her eyes were cast away towards the window -

‘who would know.’

‘But none of them,’ I said, ‘is Justice of the Peace.’

Now she was tightening her fists.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘ I know it’s nothing to do with you. This hounding of you… this is all madness.’

‘ Not madness.’ A sudden fury. ‘Were you not listening to me? This is contrivance. Fyche spreads these lies – this smoke – only to cover something darker. He shows this picture of himself as a Godly man in combat with the forces of Satan, and at the core, I’ll swear… that’s where you’ll find the real evil.’

I didn’t understand. ‘Nel, we live in enlightened times – relatively. What happened to your mother, that’s not going to happen again. Burnings, even hangings, for heresy and witchcraft are to be avoided. That’s the policy now. The Queen’s ever mindful of the way such retribution gathered pace during the last reign. She won’t go down that dark road, and this is being made known throughout the realm.’

Nel Borrow opened her eyes as the thunder resounded, and I saw that her eyes were weeping and my heart strained in my breast.

‘We’ll get help for you!’ Hoarse with desperation. ‘I’m schooled in the law…’

She looked at me through the screen of her tears, and it was not scorn, but it was not faith either and who could blame her? I wanted to tell her that my companion was – potentially, at least – one of the most powerful men in the realm. That we were in a position to call down support from the very highest quarter.

Yet were we? I thought of Robert Dudley and his growing suspicions of the motives of Sir William Cecil. He has his own script. Thought of the Great Unspoken.

And then, worst of all, I thought of those surgeon’s knives all conveniently coated with gore, as if circumstance itself were bending to contrivance. I doubted that Nel Borrow even knew about the bloodied knives, not having seen her father since last night, and I did not think it would help to tell her.

‘You said there was a chamber made ready for you here,’ I said. ‘For the night.’

‘If I need it. But if I’m found there, it’ll come down on Cowdray. Don’t want that.’

She rose. I wanted to cry out to her: Stay here and let it all come down on me! But said nothing and dared not even stand, for fear that my basest desires would be insufficiently concealed by the threadbare robe across my knees.

She began to lace her cloak together at the neck.

‘Perhaps it were best if I left.’

‘Where will you go? They’ll be watching your father’s house.’

‘Joan Tyrre will take me in. It’s no more than a hovel, but better than a dungeon.

‘It’s late. She’ll be abed.’

‘Oh, no.’ Nel smiled. ‘Not tonight, Dr John. Not in a storm. Joan will be in her doorway looking out over the tor… watching for the King of Faerie and his hounds.’

‘The Wild Hunt?’

Remembering my tad terrifying me as a child with his tales of the Hounds of Annwn. The faerie king and his white hounds with red ears, reputed to ride the storm in search of lost souls.

Nel said, ‘Joan has ever hoped that one stormy night he’ll take her to his hall, to be his earthly bride.’

She laughed, the crossing of her teeth disclosed like a confidence as she began to draw up her hood.

‘Don’t go,’ I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

I said, ‘Stay here.’

She looked up at the ceiling ’twixt the oaken beams, her half-smile rueful now.

‘It was kindly of Cowdray to offer, but I’d rather not. The attic chamber here…’

‘Is probably cold and damp. However-’

‘And most severely disturbed. Or so they used to say, the pilgrims and the travellers. Doors which go banging in the night when there’s no wind. A babe’s whimpers. Boards that creak as if someone walks across them, though there’s no-one there.’

‘Haunted?’

‘So ’tis said.’

I must have thought on this for all of a second.

‘Then you should stay here in this chamber,’ I said, ‘and I shall see out the night up there.’

The Storm

The wall was lit white again, and new thunder seemed to break before it had faded into shadow, huge and exultant in its violence and loud enough to be directly above us.

Maybe in the attic. Always one floor beyond me, these manifestations of the spiritual. It was ever thus. I felt like a clown, and all of it was apparent, all my folly lit by the unsparing sky.

‘And you wouldn’t be afraid,’ she said, ‘to pass the night up there all alone?’

‘My life’s experience tells me that ghosts tend to avoid me.’

She looked at me, with her hands hidden inside her cloak and her doctor’s bag at her feet. The hood had fallen away and her head was tilted to one side, as if inspecting some rarity.

‘Perchance, because you try too hard to know them?’

In my head, Dudley’s voice: I think if I were a ghost, the very last man on earth I’d want appear before would be John Dee.

‘It’s rather,’ I said sadly, ‘because I’m a dull and bookish man who has not the sight.’

Standing up at last, for the shame of it had diminished me. I recalled Dudley sprawled in his barge: is not John Dee the greatest adventurer of them all? A man prepared… to venture beyond this world!

The unwaxed truth was that I was a sham, a hollow man with a big library, and the only time Dudley had spoken with any real honesty was when, in faking my arrest, he’d hissed, Take this fucking impostor away!

‘There,’ I said, wearied. ‘The secret’s out. A man oft-times accused of conjuring who can’t even see what he’s supposed to have conjured. Others might be witness to the seepage ’twixt spheres. Not me.’

I suppose it was the first time I’d disclosed this directly to anyone and, in the silence which followed, I regretted it. Although doubtless mumbled miserably, it had sounded to my ears like strident organ chords swelled with bitterness.