I stared at her.
‘Sins?’
‘She never said they was wrong when they read out the charge to her face. When they said she was a witch and a murderer, she never said they was wrong. Folks here, they’ve seen this coming – a young woman who thinks she can walk a man’s path when she should be married and keeping a man’s home.’
‘Mistress,’ I said, ‘for God’s sake, if a woman has skills…’
But her face had fallen into an expression of blankness, a self-preserving forced indifference I’d seen too many times in this divided land.
From the heart of the town, I heard whoops and jeering.
XXXIV
Venus Glove
‘You could be a dead man.’
Thickbuilt, uncompromising, beard like strings of peat. Sir Peter Carew, senior knight, seeking to wither me with his contempt.
‘You could be lying like offal in the mud. You realise that?’
I made no reply.
‘And all for an old cunning man and a witch,’ Carew said. ‘Tales of your learning would appear to be exaggerated. Your brains are soft as shit.’
He and his company had ridden in, mid-morning, from Taunton where they’d passed the night. He and Dudley and I were alone in the dimness of the panelled room at the George, flagons of rough cider before us. I hadn’t touched mine. Carew spat out a mouthful of his onto the stone flags.
‘You think this shithole’s like London. Do you?’
‘Observing its present condition,’ Dudley murmured, ‘I doubt that’s a mistake anyone would make.’
‘The law here comes with rough edges, Lord Dudley, that’s all I’m saying. Rough edges.’
The sweat was cooling on me. Clothed in what remained of the fraying fabric of delusionary vision, I’d run blindly through the streets, from the foot of the town to its summit, past the Church of the Baptist, until the tor was swelling up ahead of me. Half convinced that if only I could catch them I could stop them. Bring her back.
But they were gone. She was gone, and now I wanted to throw myself at Carew, rip out his beard, strand by strand.
Felt Dudley’s warning gaze upon me. Dudley thinking, no doubt with some reason, that Carew would welcome any opportunity to batter me into the flags.
I effected a calmness.
‘Before the dissolution of the abbey, Sir Peter, I understand justice was administered by the abbot. How many witches did he arrest?’
Dudley frowned at me.
‘This is not the answer,’ I said. ‘Fyche sees himself as appointed by God to control the practice of religion in this town, and that’s a dangerous-’
‘Control the spread of sorcery,’ Carew said. ‘Surely?’
I could not this day face another futile argument on what constituted sorcery.
‘Look, Doctor, ’ Carew said. ‘In my experience, nobody tried for witchcraft is ever entirely innocent.’
‘That’s-’
‘Hear me out. They ask for it. Can’t keep their fingers out of God’s pot.’ He eased back, hands on his thighs. ‘From where I sit, Doctor, life and religion, since we ditched the Bishop of Rome, are simple and equitable. You go to church on the Sabbath, spend an hour or so on your knees thinking about your next night’s jelly-jousting and – unless you’re a vicar or a bishop – that’s it. I’ve no time for any man or woman for whom this world, so long as they’re yet in it, is not enough. And in the case of this bitch…’
He turned away in disgust. Dudley’s expression, eyelids lowered, said, Do not rise to this. He shifted in his chair as a roar went up from the street, glanced up at the window but didn’t move.
‘All I’d say, Carew,’ he said mildly enough, ‘is that if it were demons this woman employed to chase away my fever, it beats leeches any day of the week.’
He meant well, but talk of demons was no help. Voices were still raised in the street and I rose to peer out of the window, but the glass was poor and milked. Neither of the other two moved.
‘Wasn’t thinking of you so much as this fellow,’ Carew said. ‘Truly, how helpful would it be for a man with a conjurer’s reputation to be seen attempting to intervene on behalf of a proven necromancer?’
I sat down, hard.
‘No-one here knows who John is,’ Dudley said with menace. ‘And if his true name were to become common knowledge, I’ll know that it would’ve come from only one-’
‘Why necromancer?’ I said.
Carew faced me at last, a gap-toothed smile blooming in the murk of his beard.
‘You know nothing of this, Doctor?’
‘Neither of us knows of it,’ Dudley said quickly.
‘Even though it centres on the slaughter of your servant? Ah, but… you’ve been unwell, haven’t you, my lord?’
‘Well enough now, Carew.’
‘Necromancy,’ I said.
Carew sat up, folded his arms.
‘I’m not such an expert as you, Doctor, but if the use of a newly murdered corpse to procure spirits-’
‘What proof is there that this woman was in any way concerned with that?’
‘They have the fucking murder weapons, man! The blood still on them!’
‘Yes, but whose blood? These were her father’s tools, were they not? And he’d done surgery that night.’
Carew looked at me with curiosity.
‘Tell me, why does it concern you so, Doctor?’
This was dangerous ground, but I didn’t care any more.
‘I’ll tell you why-’ I began, but Dudley broke in.
‘No, I’ll tell you why, Carew. Because this is a new age. Because both the Queen and Cecil are wary of religious persecution.’
‘The Queen,’ Carew said heavily, ‘is yet a young woman. Who one day will learn that what you call persecution and I might call an element of discipline is the only way to keep the lid on the kind of insurgency that could yet unthrone her. Added to which, this is an investigation of murder.’
‘A murder used to instigate a witch hunt. Witchcraft being such an easy charge, much exploited in past times, as we all know. But these are enlightened times, and the broadening of human study makes what once would have been dismissed as devilry…’
Dudley broke off to drink some cider, winced at its bitterness, wiped his mouth.
‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘I thought I’d die, and I was healed through this woman’s knowing of herbs. So you may say it’s me. Me who finds concern about her arrest.’
I looked to Dudley in gratitude, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
‘Then what if I were to tell you there’s more?’ Carew said. ‘What if I were to talk of other corpses – dug from graves?’
‘Where?’
‘Behind St Benignus, so I’m told. Corpses dug up by night.’
I remembered that Fyche had spoken of this. Also using the word necromancy. I liked not the sound of this, but must not show it.
‘And how is this linked with the woman?’
‘You’d need to talk to Fyche.’
Dudley said, ‘The abbey’s in your charge, Carew.’
‘And the law’s in his,’ Carew said. ‘You’ll pardon me – I believe I have a cadaver to inspect, in my abbey.’
We went with him to the outhouse. I didn’t go in. Carew had appeared to treat his inspection of the corpse as a formality, and Dudley told me later he’d decided to say nothing about the suspected marks of torture. He was now agreeing with me that we should not make simple assumptions about this man’s allegiances. I couldn’t help recalling poor Lythgoe’s own comments as we rode through the bitter weather to Glastonbury and Carew had belittled me as a man who’d never borne arms for his country. Yon bugger’s fought for too many countries, you ask me, Dr John.
Later we went upstairs to my bedchamber to talk, Dudley having demanded of Cowdray that his own be stripped and purged of all that remained of his sickness. It lingered still, though, in the glaze of sweat that shone on his face in the window light.
‘All right, tell me,’ Dudley said. ‘Leave nothing out.’
I shut the door, stood with my back to it.
‘The surgeon’s tools are her father’s, used that same night to deliver twin babes the Caesarean way. That accounts for the blood.’