Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘The creatures…? Oh, the constellations.’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Go on.’

‘Her just talked, and I seen ’em in my head. The ole voices… I could still hear the voices, but they was a long way away. I felt real peaceful, look, and all I remember after that was the dawn a-comin’ up, and the mist, look, a big white mist, thick as you like, all round the hill, and when we looks down we can’t see nothin’ but white, and it’s like we’re on…’

‘An island? The way it used to be.’

I was with her, dear God, I was there.

‘But the sky’s all bright like gold over us, what I could see of it through the weepin’. Oh, I wept ’an wept, Master Lunnonman. All the tears that come out o’ my one eye, ’twas like the Blood Well in full flow. Never wept like that, not even when I was a babby, and Mistress Cate, she got her arms round me, and I’m broke up, broke into bits. And then her says, “Look… look, Joan”.’

Joan half risen from her chair, looking down at the fire.

‘All the mist was a driftin’ away, and her’s goin’, “See, Joan, see the fishes, see the eagle. See the stars ”.’

‘Looking down?’

I felt the building turning about me like a great millwheel, a grinding of the mind.

‘And did you? Did you, Joan?’

Joan Tyrre gazed up at the smoke spiralling up the hole in the ceiling.

‘No, Master,’ she said. ‘But I d’zee most everythin’ else.’

I could scarce restrain myself from running out, down the street, back to the George, to seize Leland’s notebook.

Out of the mouths of mad women and children.

There’s a hound… and a bird, with tail fanned?

Yes, and even noblemen. My God!

‘Wazzat?’ Joan had sprung up again, scuttling across to the door and flinging it open. ‘Come out! Come outer there, you evil bazzard!’

I was up and at the door. Benlow stood there in the middle of the outer stable, the chickens flying up, Benlow’s hands up to protect his face as Joan threw something at him.

‘Spyin’ again!’ Joan screamed. ‘You fuckin’ shitlicker. Out!’

Benlow had retreated to the doorway, straw sticking to his green and yellow slashed doublet.

‘I been waiting for you to come back to me, my Lord. I can help you, see, I can help you find what you want.’

‘He’s a lyin’ bazzard,’ Joan said. ‘You don’t want nothin’ to do with him.’

‘I can help you.’ Benlow’s voice was hoarse. ‘I know who you are, and I can help you.’

‘Out! Get your sorry arse out of my house!’

There was a wafting in the air, and I saw that Joan Tyrre gripped a rusting sickle. Took another slash at Benlow and he ducked out of the door.

‘I mean it, my lord. You come see me.’

When he was gone, Joan turned back to me, in the doorway, the sickle held to her chest.

‘You stay away of him, Master. Snitchin’ bazzard, he is. Anybody lower in this town than me, then surely ’tis he. Stay away.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I probably will.’

A mistake. Though how could I have known it, all alight as I was then, with vision?

Quelling my excitement for a while, for I’d come here for information.

‘Cate Borrow,’ I said.

‘Gived me my eye back, look.’

I nodded.

‘Her and the Lord Merlin. Sees all now, this eye. Him’s better’n two eyes.’ Joan’s good eye glittering in the gloom. ‘A holy saint, that woman. Gived me my eye back, lost her own life. A holy martyr!’

‘And never gave you the dust.’

‘No need for it. Had her own magic.’

‘What did Matthew Borrow say?’

‘The doctor? Her said not to tell him.’

‘But he’d know anyway, if he was there. Would he not?’

‘Doctor weren’t there.’

‘But Joe Monger said- did not the three of you go up?’

‘Doctor weren’t there. Just us two and the Lord Merlin.’

‘Mistress Tyrre,’ I said. ‘What did Nel know of this? Does she know you were not given the dust of vision? Has she known from the beginning?’

‘Mistress Cate, her said to tell nobody. So I never did. Not till the storm come, and I knew ’twas all changed.’

‘The storm? The storm of last week?’

‘Her come to me.’

‘Nel… she came?’

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

I’d thought, the way things had turned out, that she’d gone at once to her father’s house, but Joan told me now that she hadn’t left here till close to dawn.

‘How was she? How was her mood?’

‘Mood? Oh, happy. For all they was lookin’ for her, her was happy as I’ve seen her since her was a young ’un. We sat and we talked for two hour or more…’

‘And you told her about the tor.’

‘Her said why wasn’t I out a trailin’ ole Gwyn, and I telled her ’bout Merlin and Mistress Cate.’ Joan laughed. ‘Her thought when I said Merlin I muster meant the doctor.’

‘And did you tell her… about Merlin’s secret?’

She looked at me, her head cocked on one side.

‘Merlin’s treasure,’ I said. ‘The vision of heaven.’

But she had no understanding of what I meant.

I patted her arm.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Joan.’

She beamed.

‘’Twill come, Master! Never fear.’

‘Um…?’

‘You be a late starter, but you’ll make up for that, look. You’ll marry…’ She began counting on her fingers. ‘Once… twice… thrice? Holy Lord, thrice it is! And the third – listen to me now – the third will be the finest match of all, and you know some’ing?’ She leaned forward, her exposed eye seeming to gather all the light in the place. ‘Her en’t barely born yetawhile. En’t barely born! Fine young flesh! Think on that, Master Lunnonman.’

The Vision of Heaven

The distant sea was lit the dull metallic grey of a discarded breastplate upon a battlefield, and all the land… was it changed forever?

And me?

I’d not slept for over a day, eaten not even communion bread. And now something was set out before me that I was not sure I could believe. Either I was at the heart of a great delusion or at my life’s turning point.

Dudley and I standing atop the tor. I was in no doubt that Fyche could see us, and cared not a toss if he did.

‘I see the fishes,’ Dudley said. ‘ Do I see the fishes? Whereas the eagle… made more sense in the notebook.’

‘It’s also described as a Phoenix, in some way representing Aquarius the water-carrier. Follow the lines of the hills, how they curve. Not so much the carrier as the vessel.’

He couldn’t see it. Neither, in truth, could I, though already it burned in my soul. To know the truth we’d have to be higher, far higher. Flying like…eagles.

I’m flying.

Come, she’d said. This may be too much too soon.

The vision of heaven. Glimpsed when I was made of air and walked in my night garden, tending the stars with my hands. In the moments when I felt I almost knew His mind. Had I? Had that happened, or was it a false memory?

‘John?’

‘Mercy,’ I said.

There were few men of his status likely to be more receptive than Dudley to this intelligence, yet I wished to heaven that it were she who was with me now. She who, on hearing that stormy night what Joan Tyrre had to say, would surely have understood, forged the links. And then, heedless of the dangers, would have gone to her father, slipping through the dawn streets to ask what he knew of the great secret… Matthew Borrow, atheist, practical man who, if he knew at all, had thought so little of it that he’d buried it with his wife, considering it more trouble that it was worth. Merlin’s secret. Buried.