Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

Shutting my eyes in uncertainty and anguish, until Dudley spoke. Something in his voice that was close to compassion.

‘First time, John?’

Little point in throwing up a curtain.

‘As good as.’

He nodded.

‘And I’m guessing that now you believe yourself… in love?’

A poet’s phrase.

‘I…’ Shifting uncomfortably. ‘From the moment we first spoke. I… didn’t know at the time… how certain sensations might translate.’

Dudley laughed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘a woman who’ll cook your meat and yet take it upon herself to see you won’t have to lay a third place at the board… is a rare find indeed. How do you prefer to play this?’

‘Play?’

‘A bad word. Still…’

‘I didn’t think,’ I said, ‘that you’d want to play at all.’

‘After what happened to Martin Lythgoe? After what we saw this morning?’

‘You think Fyche is behind it?’

‘If he is, he’s a dead man.’

‘After due process of the law,’ I said carefully.

‘Or not.’

‘You’re Lord Dudley.’

‘And might soon be an earl. Indeed, Cecil gave strong intimation that on my return from this…mission… the possibility of appointment to the Privy Council might become… more than a possibility.’

‘On your return…’

I think that neither of us wanted to approach the possibility that Dudley’s return to London – and the Queen’s bedchamber – might be seen, in certain quarters, as less than desirable, let alone the thought that…

That he was not meant to return from here.

‘Some matters can’t easily be resolved here,’ Dudley said. ‘But others can. And, as things stand, Dudley was never here and can’t be held accountable for whatever… act of primitive justice… is carried out by Master Roberts.’

For a moment, all before my eyes was drained of colour, and I’d swear that I could see around Dudley a living blackness.

‘Your witch, your… enchantress…’ Dudley said. ‘She’ll be in some ratinfested dungeon now.’

‘Yes.’

‘Awaiting an assize judge.’

‘Who’ll be corrupt.’

‘Inevitably,’ Dudley said. ‘So, I ask again: what will you do?’

The idea that I might simply turn away from this… did not arise. When I first thought that something of this place had begun to live inside me, I knew not the depth of it, the ways in which the structure of my being was altered.

‘My mother and father,’ I said tonelessly, ‘were overjoyed when I came home with a doctorate in law. Thinking I’d left other matters behind. Come to my senses at last. Found a solid trade.’

‘Solid enough,’ Dudley said, ‘when you were accused of trying to damage Mary. Displaying, it’s said, a rare eloquence before the hardest judges in the land.’

‘And Bonner. Himself a lawyer, once.’

‘What a cunt that man is,’ Dudley said.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Yet, by some means, you outfoxed the bastard.’ He sat back against the wonky bedpost. ‘You’re saying you want to be her advocate?’

‘If she’ll have me in that… capacity.’

‘I take it she knows who you are.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Fyche?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘You’re still on a blade’s edge, John.’

‘Maybe always will be.’

The chamber was grown dim, even though it was not long past three. Neither of us had eaten this day, and I recalled what Dudley had said that Candlemas afternoon in the barge about every great quest beginning with prayer and fasting.

He arose and stood with his back to the window, and I was aware that something had caused change in him, also. He’d combed his hair and beard, but the old arrogance was gone. His arms, in drab dark green, hung limply by his sides.

‘When you’d left to find the doctor,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t stay with Martin, knowing what had been done to him while I lay there, useless. I went out to the abbey gates to wait for you. That was when I heard a commotion and had to stand and watch it. Saw them bringing her up, through the town.’

‘Nel?’

My fists clenching of their own volition.

‘Must’ve been nine of them,’ Dudley said. ‘They had her in chains. It was like a… festive occasion. A mob arisen from nowhere. Men jeering. Rotten apples thrown at her by women. Screams. Murderer, witch. Well… if you say to a crowd of uneducated peasants, if you say, this is a murderer, this is a witch… Even if it’s their own sister, nobody challenges it. I’ve seen it before.’

I shut my eyes and saw it. Made myself watch the procession he described.

‘Her head was bare. Her dress was torn at one shoulder, pulled down toward her breast. She moved with… with dignity, I suppose – as dignified as you can, in chains. Her head held up, not looking to either side. Yet they… behaved as though she might be ready to escape at any moment, and they’d keep touching her-’

‘No…’

‘Men are men,’ Dudley said. ‘Particularly out of London.’

It felt like all the muscles in my body were contracting, making me cramped and knotted inside. When I opened my eyes, Dudley was looking down at the boards.

‘Tell me, John… did I talk about Amy?’

‘You oft-times talk of Amy.’

Not true.

‘I mean in my fever.’ Dudley looked up, no sign of fever in his eyes now. ‘I think I may have spoken of Amy, and I know not if it was a sick man’s dream… or if I spoke some things to you.’

There was a silence, even in the street, but it was a silence that howled like a hound at the moon.

‘Must have been a dream,’ I said. ‘I’ve no memory of it.’

Enough had been said. Dudley and I went down to the alehouse to be served bread and Mendip cheese by the kitchen wench. There was no sign of Cowdray, and the farmers were not yet in from the fields.

All the same, we ate without conversation, and then walked out into the dusk to find that a man was newly dead.

What’s Coming

The high street was gloomed in its own shadows. No shops were open; two, I noticed, had been boarded and probably not against the elements.

Three people remained outside the baker’s shop under the dusken sky. I made out Joan Tyrre and Woolly, the little dowser, but at first failed to recognise Monger, for his body movements, once languid and gliding, were now taut and rigid like some engine worked by ropes and pulleys.

It soon becoming apparent that this was a stricture caused by inner rage. The first time I’d seen it in him and this, together with the absence of both light and laughter, made the whole evening tense as drumskin.

Monger held a book I recognised at once: the Steganographia of Trithemius. Or what remained or it – little more, in truth, than the hide in which it had been bound. Monger’s hands shook. He rammed the book under an arm and led us into a small yard behind the shop.

‘Tell them,’ he said to Woolly. ‘Tell them everything.’

Woolly’s wild, white beard was shining like the moon in the blue-grey dusk.

‘They come for bread,’ he said. ‘Bangin’ on the door, demandin’ bread. Hungry men ridden from Taunton to swell the ranks.’

‘I would never have thought Taunton had so many constables and bailiffs to spare,’ Monger said. ‘But what do I know of the recruitment of a mob? I’m but a farrier.’

‘Baker had to let the bastards in, look. While they was waitin’ for bread, pokin’ all around the shop, in comes Master Stephen Fyche.’

‘Fyche’s son,’ Monger said.

‘Beg mercy,’ I said. ‘ Brother Stephen?’

‘An occasional conceit. Monastic apparel’s favoured at Meadwell to convey the impression that all men there are men of prayer and learning in the great tradition of the abbey. The boy’s brutish violence makes mockery of the robe. I think you saw him kicking Joan Tyrre.’