Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your help.’

I held open the door was for her – yet a small and slender woman, not made shapeless by childbearing.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Monger was saying outside. ‘Master Roberts found exactly what we were looking for.’

Reward

The task had not, it seemed, presented any great difficulty. Not with Lord Dudley in his finery and a posse of armed men. And, in the background, Monger, the farrier, who was known and trusted by the vicar, the blacksmith, the miller.

One wood which was spreading so that the circle of oak trees was no longer at its centre. Oh, yes, it had been known there was a grave here, a burial by night many years ago, and no-one talked of it and no-one went near for fear of ghosts.

‘Thick with brambles,’ Monger said, ‘except for one bare patch.’

‘Where nothing will grow,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of such places. Oft-times it’s the grave of a murderer, as if the ground itself were poisoned.’

‘Lord Dudley set the men to dig,’ Monger said. ‘First, about four feet down, a stone cross was unearthed. A fine thing – a crucifix, bearing a figure of Christ. Old but not that old. As if it were from a church. And then, a couple more feet down… not a full length casket, more like a household chest.’

Monger had suggested it should be brought back to Glastonbury, but Dudley had thought for a few moments and then said no, it should be broken open in case it was not what it seemed.

‘In truth,’ Monger said, ‘I think it was a household chest, rudimentary and not very old.’

As there’d been some superstition among the men, Dudley himself had prised it open up with a spade. There, inside, was a far more ornate container of oak, with a glass top.

‘A leaded window, in effect,’ Monger said.‘With six square panes. Through which we could see the bones. It was, in its way, a very solemn moment.’

They’d found lettering indented in the oak. A simple legend:

Rex Arturus.

Legend, indeed. Some of the men had been sorely afraid, one even instinctively crossing himself in the old way, trying at once to hide the gesture.

‘So you didn’t try to open the inner box?’ I said.

‘Why would we? As Lord Dudley said, and I was inclined to agree, the opening should be done with full ceremony, before a high altar. Relics last entombed before Edward I, he said, should not be exposed to the air of another time except before its monarch.’

Even though all my instincts had said this was where Arthur’s bones would be found, it was yet strange to think it had all happened so quickly, as if destiny were at work.

Would have been strange. And glorious and mystical. Had I not known what I knew.

Monger opened out hands still browned with earth.

‘Lord Dudley said we should give thanks to God for this and at once fell upon his knees, and the rest of us followed. Then he bade me say some suitable prayer. Which I did. And we then we knelt in silence for two minutes or more before Lord Dudley arose and commanded that the box be placed upon the cart.’

Dudley taking off his own cloak to cover the box. Then more prayers had been said before it was driven into the village.

What had happened then was that the cart, with the bones upon it, had been driven to the church where, to pre-empt gossip, an announcement was made that the remains of King Arthur had this day been discovered by Lord Dudley, the Queen’s Master of the Horse, and were to be taken at once to London. Riders then being dispatched to the sheriff at Bristol to arrange for a company of men to ride out to join them.

‘No undue ceremony, then,’ I said.

Monger looked at me and smiled.

‘Such a pity that you aren’t with Lord Dudley, to share the glory of such a famous discovery. It being, after all, the result of your scholarship.’

‘Lord Dudley said that?’

‘He said you’d understand.’

‘Oh yes. Perfectly.’

A man who brings to his Queen such an irrefutable symbol of her royal heritage… something which bestows upon her monarchy’s most mystical aura. That man… he may expect his reward.

‘Scholarship is its own reward,’ I said. ‘Um… Joe. Before the box was covered over, did you get a good look into it? Did you see the bones… clearly?’

‘Well enough. The box was, I suppose, more like a reliquary than a coffin and, having been boarded up inside the chest, was largely free of dust. The glass was a little milked but, on the whole, it could not have been better for its purpose.’

‘Large bones? Is it possible to say?’

‘Certainly, the leg bones were of such a size that some were laid diagonally. The skull placed at the centre.’

‘Large skull.’

‘I’d say so.’

‘Any marks upon it?’

‘Damaged, certainly. Several dents, and a clear hole in the cranium, as if made by a heavy blow from a sword or mace.’

Thus matching the description set down by Giraldus Cambrensis all those years ago, and committed by me to memory for just such an eventuality.

… in the skull there were ten or more wounds which had all healed into scars, with the exception of one which had made a great cleft…

‘Arthur, then,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, the Arthur the monks claimed to have uncovered back in the twelfth century?’

‘Brown with age, certainly,’ Monger said. ‘But, truly, how could it ever be proved? It must have been quite hastily done by my brother monks, but accomplished with all reverence, the bones placed on…’

He looked at me. I felt for a moment that we were actors in a play, intoning old lines.

‘On what?’

‘On a soft bed,’ Monger said. ‘To ensure they should not suffer any more damage. In fact… a sheep’s fleece.’

An intelligent man. Maybe he’d thought of the further implications before I had. Maybe he’d picked up on my sceptic’s tone. Either way, the eyes which met mine were fogged with suspicion. And then a kind of fear.

Fully justified. ‘Help me,’ I said.

So we both went, and his state was pitiful.

Crouching on the floor, in a nest of bone. He’d pulled down shelves, and the unjawed skulls and bones lay in piles like the site of some old massacre. Fresh blood on some of them now. There was a broken bottle in his bunched hands, pointed at his throat, all quivering. I think he’d already tried to cut his wrists with it, leaving bracelets of blood to the elbows.

Still the candles burned, but the scent of incense was sharpened with piss. A brown fluid was dripping from the smashed neck of the bottle. I thought it was the bottle of potion Matthew Borrow had given to Benlow.

‘Too weak.’ Monger prised his fingers away from it, tossing it into a corner of the cellar. ‘Too weak to do it.’

Tears in Benlow’s eyes.

‘We must needs bring Matthew here,’ Monger said.

‘Yes.’

I, too, thought I should like to talk again to Dr Borrow.

‘I’ll get him now. Could you stay with Benlow.’ He paused. ‘One moment.’

From his robe he pulled a metal cross on a chain, dropping the chain over Benlow’s head.

‘God be with you,’ he murmured. ‘Now and always.’

‘Take it off… ’ Benlow rolling onto his side, gasping, clawing at his throat, his fine doublet all ripped open. Making a strangled kind of bleating only approximate to laughter. ‘I’ve given up God.’

‘Then talk to this man.’ Monger moved away. ‘Make your peace. Don’t take it all with you.’ Grasping the ladder, he said to me, ‘Ask what you need. You may not have long.’

I knelt on the floor, rolling away the skull of King Edgar or some other king.

‘Master Benlow…’

He grinned up at me. I think it was a grin. There was blood between his sharp little teeth. I think he must have been tearing at his wrists with them before he lost the will and the very breath to do it.