Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘They’ve finished me,’ he whispered. ‘Is that not so?’

‘The doctor’s coming.’

‘Wrap me in fleece, my lord. Put me in my grave… wrapped in good fleece, so my bones…’

‘May lie like Arthur’s bones?’

There was no time no waste. Not a minute. I waited, holding his eyes, which were become still and watchful.

‘What do you know?’

‘I know what you buried at Butleigh.’

He opened his mouth wide, as if he might take in more air, then shut it, and his words came feebly.

‘Not worth a piece of fleece, am I?’

‘A better fleece than Arthur’s.’

‘ Offered them a fleece. A good fleece. One of mine.’

‘They didn’t want a good fleece, though, did they?’ I said softly. ‘It was supposed to look twenty years old.’

He tried to sniff, his eyes wide with distress.

‘Dis…gusting old thing. Left for me.’

‘Where?’

‘Abbey grounds, behind… behind the abbot’s kitchen. Dis gusting old thing. I was ashamed…’

‘They brought you the box, first? When was this?’

‘Yesterday? Day before? Day before that? What’s today?’

‘Monday.’

‘A week ago? Who knows? Time passes quick when you’re dying.’

‘Who brought the fleece, Master Benlow?’

‘Dunno. Just lying there. They told me to collect it.’

‘Who?’

‘Tell me some secrets.’

‘You know all my secrets.’

I could imagine the fleece being brought from some farm where wool-sorters’ disease had been found amongst the sheep. Brought from there at night. On the end of a very long pitchfork.

Till she shall kiss the bones of the King of all Britons…

‘Whose bones?’ I whispered. ‘Whose bones did you put into the fleece. Whose bones did you bury at Butleigh?’

Thought I knew. Just couldn’t recall the name.

Benlow made no reply. I asked him again, close enough now to see the lumps on his neck, one of them an inch across, the black at its centre like a hole.

‘A big man,’ I said. ‘The biggest man in the graveyard.’

‘Arthur,’ Benlow croaked. ‘A hundred saints in the wall, and all they ever want is Arthur.’

He tried to take a breath, and it wouldn’t come, a terrible panic flaring his eyes before he subsided against a wall of crumbling death.

‘Help me, Benlow. Do some good.’

‘What’s good?’ His eyelids fluttered like moths. ‘What’s evil? What’s in between? They all lie. Even God lies.’

‘And no God?’

‘Uh?’

‘You said… When I was here before, you said even no God was a lie. Who were you talking about? Perchance Dr Borrow?’

Thinking now of what Mistress Cadwaladr had said. Thinking of my own feelings on leaving Borrow’s surgery the first time, when my thoughts had not been swamped by Leland’s dreams.

‘He filled me with an awe, my lord. I was drawn to him.’

‘Followed him?’

‘Like the Messiah.’

‘You said you followed people all the time.’

‘Folk goes to unexpected… places.’

‘Like? Where does Dr Borrow go?’

‘Church, once, at night when it was quiet. The doctor went to the Church of St Benignus, and he lit a candle, and I-’

Benlow reached out and gripped my arms, fighting for his breath.

‘What else did you see?’

‘Heard. He cried out. He was alone in the darkness at the altar, and he cried out, like Christ on on the cross. Angry.’

‘ Father, why have you forsaken me?’

‘Uh?’

‘What Christ said on the cross.’

‘I… don’t know.’

‘Where else does he go? Where else did you follow Dr Borrow?’

‘Walking to the sea, once, but I… got tired. Too far. Came back. And he’d go at night to the Meadwell.’

‘When?’

Feet on the ladder.

‘When, Benlow?’

‘Two times, three times…’ His eyes grew sly. ‘I’m tired of doing good. This en’t good, my lord. ’Tis all a lie.’

‘Gone,’ Monger said, stepping down. ‘He’s gone.’

His face was aglow with sweat, eyes wide and bright with a bewilderment I’d never seen in him.

‘Matthew… he’s not there. Must be out on his rounds, can’t find him. We have no doctor.’

Benlow moved. A noise from his throat like the thinnest, distant bird-song.

‘As you thought?’ Monger said, and I nodded.

‘You go and do whatever you must do,’ he said. ‘I’ll clean him up, make him comfortable. Can’t see a man die like this.’

‘Better in your hands.’ I stood up carefully, head bent under the ceiling. ‘Better a doctor of horses, than… Joe, he must be stopped.’

Benlow’s mouth was agape, like one of his skulls, a thin finger crooked, beckoning me.

‘Dudley,’ I said. ‘We have to bring him back. And the bones. Bury the bones again. Somewhere no-one ever digs.’

‘Then somebody has to ride like hell,’ Monger said. ‘Tell Cowdray. If he sends all his boys out… With a cart, they can’t travel too hard.’

‘And will have to stop somewhere tonight.’

‘Pray God.’

Benlow was trying to raise himself up, and Monger went to him. Benlow kept on looking for me, looking at where I’d been a moment ago, his eyes unseeing.

‘They didn’t…’ His throat creaking, no laughter left in him. ‘They didn’t… call him Big Jamey Hawkes for nothing, my lord.’

We watched the riders leave, Cowdray and I. The sky was like lead, the daylight dying without having had much of a life.

Three of them were gone after Dudley: the stable boy, the kitchen boy and another who may have been Cowdray’s son. One had taken my horse. Each of them carrying my own copies of a brief letter for Dudley, scribed, in the absence of a fitting seal, with the symbol of the eyes I’d once made for the Queen as my signature, for a jest. Each letter inked and sand-dried and bound, conveying the message that if Dudley did not return at once, with the box of bones unopened, his only reward would be death. The worst of deaths. Hard to think how best to convey this. The grave of love, I’d written finally. Underlining it twice.

‘Whatever you were thinking to charge,’ I said now to Cowdray, ‘you should double it.’

He was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head.

‘I’ll take nothing for this.’

He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But he was a good man.

I nodded in the direction of the tor, tried to speak evenly.

‘Where will Nel pass the night?’

‘Meadwell, I reckon. Used to be an old gaol up town, but they wouldn’t rely on that now. There are cells at Meadwell. ’Tis almost fortified, that house. Well… so they say. I’ve never been.’

‘Never?’

‘Not since it was rebuilt.’

‘Will Carew be there?’

‘Most likely, aye.’ He cast eyes on me and winced. ‘Dr John, man… you’re in sorest need of sleep. You’re like the walking bloody dead. You en’t eaten… In truth I don’t know how you’re still on your feet.’

‘I’m well. And must needs talk to Carew, without delay.’

Better it were Dudley, but who could say when, or if, we’d see Dudley again this night. I told Cowdray what Benlow had said about Stephen Fyche and the murder of Martin Lythgoe.

‘Let this come out, Master Cowdray. Let it be spread far and wide. Too late now to rebound on poor Benlow.’

A weary disbelief on Cowdray’s face.

‘You think it en’t known? What that boy is. Folks might’ve chose to forget the tales about Fyche, in view of his charity, but they’ve seen what his boy’s like, loose in the town of a summer night, well into his cups.’

‘Where’s the mother?’

‘Long gone. Fyche and the boy, ’tis said they goes whoring together in Wells.’