Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘May not have been necessary,’ I said. ‘Cromwell only sought evidence of the abbot’s treachery. Who better to plant it than a monk at the abbey?’

Thinking back to the night of Nel Borrow, her conviction that Fyche had betrayed his abbot, and then…

It was more than betrayal.

‘It seems likely,’ I said, ‘that Cromwell was satisfied enough with evidence of Whiting concealing a chalice and possessing documents critical of the King.’

‘Fyche thinking to learn the greater secret and keep it for himself?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I’m not sure I’d torture an old monk to get it.’

‘He hanged an innocent woman,’ I said, ‘and he wants to hang another.’

‘And Lythgoe? Was Lythgoe…?’

‘I think I’ve said enough.’

The twisting of a knife in a new wound. And if a charge against Fyche were needed…

A few moments of silence. Even the crows had fled the tower. Then Dudley’s shoulders relaxed and he turned and gazed over to where the sun, if there’d been one, would be setting.

‘Is this the centre of the wheel of stars?’

‘No. I’ve not yet worked that out. But I will.’

‘How do you think Leland heard of it?’

‘Don’t know.’ I sighed. ‘Unlikely we’ll ever know. But he, more than any man of his time, had an eye for the patterns in the land. He travelled constantly. He spoke with divers people – noblemen and yeomen and peasants. He also had access to every book in the abbey’s library.’

Awe and stupor, I remembered. Awe and stupor, indeed. ‘Both Nel and Monger the farrier attest that Leland approached various monks who’d been at the abbey. According to Monger, the only ones who might’ve known are long gone from here… but Leland may have found one. He moved around.’

But betwixt times he’d been to talk to Cate Borrow, close friend of Abbot Whiting. Prompting the thought that Whiting, knowing he might otherwise be taking the intelligence of the Zodiac to his grave, had imparted at least some of it to Cate.

It seemed not improbable.

But Cate to Leland? From what I knew of her, she’d never have betrayed the abbot’s trust.

‘John…’

‘Mmm?’

‘Someone coming.’

Voices. Laughter.

‘If this is Fyche, I’ve’ – Dudley wore no sword, but I saw his hand moving to where it usually hung – ‘not yet met the man.’

‘Nor should you. Not now.’ I looked around for the best way down. ‘He’ll ask why we’re here. We don’t want to give him any inkling of what we know. Until we’re ready.’

It was clear the voices were coming from the Meadwell side so I motioned Dudley towards the common path. If we continued down that way, we’d be seen, so we must needs cut across the flank of the tor. Best, then, to wait a while, just out of sight of the summit. In the thickening dusk, we crouched on a shelf of turf which once had been part of the tor’s maze-like ramparts, and I listened out for Fyche’s voice.

Sounds of stress and effort. Men labouring to the top of the tor, hauling something behind them? Put me in fresh mind of Abbot Whiting on his hurdle. No wonder the old man was said to haunt this town still. Should be haunting it forever.

Men were calling to one another as they worked. Shards of it reaching me.

‘…there, is it?’

‘Bit too… out of… shadow… tower.’

‘…be no shadow then.’

‘…be seen, mind.’

Footsteps in the turf, coming towards us. Me pressing myself into the slope, head in the grass. Dudley, too, but with obvious reluctance; Lord Dudley bent before no man and only one woman. Looked up, saw a pair of shiny leather boots not five yards away, tried not to breathe.

‘Hold it.’ The voice on top of me. ‘Hold it there!’

When the boots moved away, I risked lifting my head to peer through the longer grass, saw Brother Stephen, Fyche’s son.

‘Further left,’ he shouted. ‘I said left, you fucking idiot.’

On the flat land in front of the broken tower of St Michael, two men were supporting the two stocks of a wooden gibbet.

Little Bear

I finally slept, full-dressed, my head on an arm across the board in my chamber and, at some stage, the dream began again, where I was walking the hills to follow the tolling from distant steeples. But this time my steps transcribed a careful pattern on the land which I knew to be a magical glyph that would open doors to the soul, and when I reached the summit of the tor all the bells were clanging from the empty tower.

But these bells rang in painful discord, so loud that I flung myself on the ground, covering my ears and rolling in the grass with the agony of it. Rolling over and over and coming to rest – coming to un rest – in the black, T-shaped shadow of the gibbet and awakening into the birth-tunnel of my darkest dawn, the fleshy stench of tallow, and Robert Dudley in the doorway with a candle on a tray.

‘Christ, John, you look like a week-old dog turd.’

Said with pity as he walked over to the window and opened the casement.

‘How long have you slept?’

‘Five… six?’

Dudley sighed.

‘You mean minutes, don’t you?’

I shifted, finding Leland’s notebook still under my hand, greasy with tallow.

‘I meant to get everything from this that anyone could.’

‘And if anyone could, it would be you.’ Dudley wrinkling his patrician nose at the stink from the dead candles. ‘Come on, old friend… Wells?’

The thought of it made this day harder to face than any I’d known. Harder than those long days when I was held at Hampton Court awaiting trial for sorcery. I wondered how Dudley had felt on the morning of his father’s trial, knowing how it would end. We’d never discussed it.

‘There’s bread and cheese on the board downstairs,’ Dudley said.

‘Couldn’t eat.’

Last night, I’d asked Cowdray if there’d been a hanging on the tor in recent years… any hanging.

Not since the abbot, Cowdray had said. All others, including Cate Borrow, had been hanged at Wells. He’d looked at me sorrowfully, saying nothing more. But it was clear that, even though it must have been dark before it was raised, the erection of the gibbet upon the tor had not gone unnoticed.

How could I have slept?

‘And the horses… are made ready,’ Dudley said.

‘Yes.’

‘You are still committed to…?’

‘Yes. Dear God, yes.’

I arose, aching, the weight of Wells a cannonball in the gut. Picked up Leland’s notebook. All through the night, I’d examined the notes in the smallest detail, drawing my own charts, throwing all my attention into the unravelling of it. Shaking my fuddled head, remembering what now seemed such a mean triumph.

‘Um, Robbie…’ Pulling hair from my tired eyes. ‘For what it’s worth, I think I can point you to the bones of Arthur.’

We rode out into mild rain and a silvery sky which roiled like eels in a tub, as if a dark energy were already abroad. Hardly alone on the road this day. Apart from goods carts, there were clusters of horsemen dressed as for a fair. I knew them not. Wool-merchants and minor squires, I guessed, making the assize an excuse for a day in the taverns.

Glastonbury, in the pre-dawn, had been subdued. Waiting for Cowdray’s boy to bring out the horses, I’d marked Benlow, crossing from Magdalene Street and about to approach me until he’d seen Dudley and thought better of it. I’d run after him, catching him, seizing him by the shoulders, pushing him against a house wall.

You think you can help me?

Oh I can help you, my lord, count on it…

Benlow giggling, but his voice had been hoarse, and he’d looked not well. Sweating. Maybe he’d been drinking too much, though there was no smell of it. I let him go, backed away to reason with him.