Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

‘Dr Dee trades with demons!’ a woman shrilled.

‘I’ve heard that.’ Another woman, older. ‘He spits upon the Holy Bible.’

Someone pressed against me and, as ever in a tangle, my body tensed, anticipating the fleet fingers of pickpockets, a glint of daggers. Some gentlemen, I noticed, were guiding their ladies away. I glanced behind me, looking for a way out of here.

Staring into a bearded face all too close. The beard splitting into a gap-toothed grin. Now the press of hard bodies, the stench of ale-breath. Before me, the pamphlet man was bloating into a near-frenzy, and the eyes of his peacock feathers were vibrating either side of his head.

‘Go on!’ he screamed. ‘Prophesy! Tell us of the coming of your dark master!’

I froze, watching the feathers wave.

A wild fury shook me. ‘All right…’ Barely aware of my words coming out. ‘I prophesy that before the week’s out you’ll be banged up in the lowest dungeon in the Fleet, you-’

A forearm was wrapped across my throat. My head jerked back, both arms seized, wrenched stiff behind me. Hard rain slashing my face.

Then a leathered hand across my mouth, and I was spun around to behold a man with a black velvet hat pulled down over his eyes. His dark cape failing to conceal the golden glow of a doublet that was like to a treasure chest split open.

‘Take this fucking impostor away,’ he said.

Stability of the Realm

Even on such a day as this, the light was everywhere in the room. Windows you could ride a horse through.

He had his back to them. He was sitting behind a trestle of wide oaken boards, which faced a modest coal fire.

‘This is merely a humble cottage, I tell everyone that. Plea for privacy.’ He poured wine for me, a little less of it for himself. ‘And, of course, they all fail to understand. Especially the Queen.’

There was a hanging smell of linseed and beeswax around the empty shelves. It seemed the house, at present, had room only for himself, his wife, two daughters and a mere fourteen servants. But he was already acquiring substantial properties on either side and, by the spring, it would be more than twice its size. In the meantime, I could see it would have its limitations for a man of the eminence of Sir William Cecil.

Who now turned limpid, mournful eyes upon me.

‘I do greatly love that young woman, Dee. And shall serve her, God willing, for the rest of my working days. But she does, dear Lord, require constant diversion. Oh, I shall come to sup with you, William. Soon! Everything must be soon. ’

‘It’s only the newness of it,’ I said. ‘The limitless power of monarchy is an intoxication. And she, more than most, knows how short life is. That is, um… some lives.’

‘She came through.’ Cecil’s eyes hardening fractionally, but he didn’t move. ‘And now she’s protected. For ever.’

He wore a black robe over a cloud-grey doublet. Hard to believe he was not yet forty; it was as if a certain tiredness had become part of his nature. Illusion, I knew. The weariness and the drabness of his attire was theatre. He loved what he did and was unfailingly good at it. So good, so efficient and so blessed by fortune that he was now serving his third monarch. How many could say that?

‘And you had a good meeting with Her Majesty yesterday?’

‘For as long as it lasted, Sir William.’

I sank back, still aquiver from the incident in the street. I’d been given a comfortably padded chair facing the great windows. The glass in them was very fine, with large panes. We were on the first upper floor, with a view of river and spires in the blue-grey haze.

‘We were interrupted,’ I said. ‘By my cousin.’

Which he’d know, of course, having – I was sure – personally instructed her to ensure that my discourse with the Queen should not get below surface pleasantries. I was guessing there was something Cecil wanted me to hear from him rather than the Queen. Presumably because their respective versions would differ a good deal.

‘You have a cousin’ – raising of a Cecil eyebrow – ‘who would interrupt the Queen?’

‘Blanche Parry,’ I said with patience. ‘Her family and mine are related. As are most families from the borderland of Wales.’

Including, for heaven’s sake, his own, the Cecils of Allt-yr-ynys – all of us down from those same hills.

‘So I’ve heard.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, of course. A formidable woman, Mistress Blanche.’

His eyes were half closed. He’d been Secretary of State in the time of the plot to make poor Jane Grey Queen of England in Mary’s stead, and yet somehow avoided entanglement. Thus surviving to serve under Mary, to enter Parliament, become knighted. Protestant to Catholic and back to Protestant – how many could say that?

He picked up his wineglass and appeared to do no more than moisten his lips before putting it down again and leaning back into fingers interlacing behind his head.

‘You’re busy, John?’

‘Day and night,’ I said. ‘When permitted.’

‘A man ever driven by an endless flow of illumination.’ Cecil peered down at his board on which several letters had been spread, then looked up. ‘Glastonbury.’

‘Mercy?’

‘A small town in the west. Once upon the Isle of Avalon. And once famous for its abbey. You know it?’

‘I know of it,’ I said.

Already making connections.

‘ What do you know of it?’

‘I know that it was the burial place of King Arthur.’

Arthur… What of him? the Queen had asked.

Cecil sniffed.

Last night, I’d shut myself in the library to locate the books I’d be obliged to deliver to the Queen.

My shelves were yet rudimentary structures supported by bricks. On them, I’d found the works of Giraldus Cambrensis and Geoffrey of Monmouth, from which Malory had derived his pot-boiling twaddle, Morte d’Arthur.

Not that Geoffrey himself was much more reliable. When he ran out of history he’d make it up and, on the subject of Arthur, history was scant. But there must at least be seeds of truth therein, and it hadn’t been long before I’d been guided to the town of Glastonbury, Arthur’s burial place on the so-called Isle of Avalon. An island town no longer, it seemed, the sea having long ago retreated, leaving a community built among small hills swelling from waterlogged flatlands bordered with orchard.

Orchard.

Odd that the Queen and I should have been discussing this matter in my mother’s orchard. The very word Avalon was surely derived from Afal, the Welsh for apple. This area of Somersetshire was both rich in apple orchards and close to Wales and therefore seemed as likely as anywhere to be the mystical island to which, in legend, the dying King Arthur had been borne by barge.

Either to be healed of his wounds or to die and to be buried within the precincts of what would become a famous abbey. Depending which version of the story it was in your interests to believe.

A pretty tale, whichever you accepted. An inspiring tale. A tale to strengthen our tradition. The ideal of monarchy, with his round table of knights and his magical sword Excalibur, King Arthur had ever been central to us.

Us? Us the English? Us the British? Us… the Welsh?

You and I being both of Welsh stock, the Queen had said.

When I was a boy, my tad would tell me that we, the Dees – the name is rendered English from the Welsh Ddu, meaning black – were descended from Arthur himself. And I believed it, for who would choose not to? I believe it now, but not in the same way. Now I’m more interested in an Arthurian tradition, a mystical strand, from which we can draw an ancient energy.

Besides, a far more illustrious family than mine also claims descent from the great British hero.