Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Maybe. Liquid… evaporates. Goes to air.’

‘Yes.’

A silence, then he told me.

‘Stephen Fyche… is a cruel boy. Likes to cause hurt. He had three men with him. They took your big fellow into the wood. Couldn’t hear too well, but they knew who he was and how he’d come here with you. They were demanding he should tell them who you were and what your business was here. He refused, of course. Not knowing whom he refused. For a long time, he refused. Too long. I’d’ve told them what they wanted without a thought. But then I know what Stephen Fyche is like. What he did to animals in the fields as a boy. Horses. For his diversion.’

Benlow said that once they’d starting trying to make Lythgoe talk, they wouldn’t stop till he did. It went too far. Too far, too quick.

‘Stephen was in a frenzy. Do this to him, let’s try this… move away, I’ll do it. By the time he’d given them your name, he was so cut about, real cut about – I couldn’t stand to watch no more. And Master Stephen said it was best to finish him. I didn’t stay for that, but his screams, before they were stifled, were pitiful.’

‘How close were you?’

‘Hidden in some brambles, which was torture enough for me. Yet I can be still for long periods. Still as the dead.’ He smiled. ‘I’m real tidy, my lord. I can dig up a grave and put it all back and no-one knows I’ve been. Except when they want me to, like Big Jamey Hawkes.’

I remembered Big Jamey Hawkes. ‘By the church of St Benignus? Benlow… How can I persuade you to tell all of this to Sir Peter Carew? What they did to Lythgoe. What happened to the bones of Jamey Hawkes.’

He tried to laugh. It would not come, He clutched at his throat, distressed.

‘You’re ill,’ I said.

‘So quick… In full health, not a week ago I was in full health. God help me…’

‘Come with me.’

‘That man’s a pig.’

‘Do you want to see Nel Borrow hang?’

‘I won’t see it.’

He leaned forward, and some small breath came into him, strained through the wheezing.

He put a hand on my knee. I tried not to cringe away.

‘Never thought I’d meet a man as famous as you, my lord. I would’ve asked you to take me to London. That’s what I planned. A bargain. Would’ve told you anything if you’d take me to London.’

‘You could have gone to London anytime.’

‘But not with… with introductions. You don’t just go to London. You go as someone. Or you go with someone. Too late now.’ He peered at me, closer, as if I were going faint in his sight. ‘Will I see King Edgar when I die? If I die holding him, will he be waiting for me?’

He’d seem to have forgotten this was not King Edgar, that none of the bones were likely to be the remains of anyone of note.

‘In the celestial sphere,’ I told him, ‘all is… possible.’

‘Do you truly believe that? Do you know these things, with all your science and your magic?’

‘Some believe,’ I said, ‘that living here helps. I didn’t quite see how that were possible, but… today I’ve seen evidence that this place is blessed by the heavens like no other. But you know this. When I was here before, you said death came easier here.’

Where the fabric between the spheres is finer than muslin. The most memorable thing he’d said.

‘Do you know why this is?’ I said. ‘I can tell you.’

And told him – why not? Time was running away from me – the secret which the monks had guarded and John Leland had tried to chart. Bringing the notebook from out of my doublet. Showing him the drawings. Explaining about the Zodiac. The mirror of heaven.

‘Ah.’ Benlow smiled at me. ‘So that’s what it is. Where did you find this, my lord?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Where did you unearth it?’

His fingernails clawing my hose as I sprang up, my head bumping painfully against the boarded ceiling, and I could see the lumps now, on his neck. The lumps all black at the centre of them.

‘Someone had to bury it,’ Benlow said. ‘Pity they wouldn’t let me take the bones. I could’ve cleaned her up real nice. Made her look pretty again.’

Within minutes, I was out of that temple of death and running back to the George as though pursued by all the demons of hell.

Emanation

Found Cowdray in the dimness of the panelled room, replacing burned-out stubs with new candles.

‘Where’s Monger?’

‘Gone with Master Roberts. To Butleigh. I thought you knew.’

‘Of course I did.’ Sinking into a chair, head in my hands. ‘ Shit. ’

Cowdray put down the candles.

‘Let me get you some meat, Dr John.’

‘No… no time. But some small beer…?’

‘Look, I should say…’ Cowdray brushed at his apron. ‘I didn’t realise there were things you hadn’t been told… by Carew and your friend. I’m not a man who… That is, I must needs keep these walls from falling down, you know?’

‘Cowdray, I’m not blaming you for my friend’s deceit. The money you’d make for accommodating Carew’s men, that was hardly to be turned down. It’s just… there’s something wrong here. Something very wrong.’

Wanting to tell him what Stephen Fyche had done to Lythgoe. Wanting to cry it in the streets.

‘Dr John…’

Cowdray’s gaze was in the gloom behind me. I turned quickly.

The woman sitting in the most shadowed corner, to the left of the window, had long, silver hair, uncoifed, unbound. I’d never seen her before. In front of her on the board were pen and ink and paper.

‘Mistress Cadwaladr,’ Cowdray said. ‘A speaker of Welsh.’

I inclined my head to her. Yet cautious.

‘My brother was a monk at the abbey of Strata Florida,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said. ‘I came here with him some years ago, and stayed. I was a cook at the abbey.’

‘After which,’ Cowdray said, ‘she worked with Cate Borrow in her herb garden. If that helps.’

If ever a man spends his days looking over his shoulder, it’s you. You must know how you are.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you, Cowdray.’

My dear John

I am writing in our own tongue in case this letter should be intercepted, which I fear it might. I am aware that you do not speak the Cymraeg, but I think you might be able to read it.

I believe the prophecies to have been conveyed to our sister through the good offices of her correspondent in France. The source would seem to be the French family’s own consultant. I know not the circumstances of this, except that they appear to have been secretly obtained.

Here is the latest prophecy in full. The translation from French to English to Welsh will not, I hope, present too much fuddle in the meaning of it.

Our sister is no better.

I looked up.

‘I’m sorry all’s not well with your family,’ Mistress Cadwaladr said. ‘But what I’ve read, I shall forget.’

‘Thank you.’

I stared at the translation.

Two names had at once presented themselves.

Her correspondent in France: Sir Nicholas Thockmorton, the Queen’s ambassador. I’d met him once, only briefly, but knew he’d been close to the Dudley family. That he came from an old Catholic family, yet was now unquestionably Protestant. Knew also that he was considered a trusted adviser to the Queen and would keep her well informed about plans by the power-hungry Guise family to ensure that the daughter of Mary of Guise, the Queen of Scots, now Queen of France, would also one day be Queen of England.

As for the French family’s own consultant, this could only be Nostradamus. Christ above, I could scarce believe it.

Michele de Nostradame. This man had thrown a long and faintly sinister shadow over my career from the start. Some twenty-five years older than I, beloved by the French court and held in reverence over half Europe… for doing what I would not do. I’d never met him, nor sought to. If pressed, I’d say I was suspicious of his prophecies, so pretentiously laid out in four lines of verse… whilst wondering privately if the bastard possessed some faculty with which I’d not been endowed.