‘And that can be shown?’
‘He’ll tell you.’
‘He’s her father. ’
‘She’s no witch.’
Who was I seeking to convince? Witchcraft: what was it? Where were its boundaries?
Dudley crooked an arm around one of the bedposts, the loose one which, just a few hours ago, the dust of vision had turned into an apple tree.
‘John, if this Fyche is determined to show she deals with demons, he’ll do it. He’s a JP. He knows the courts, he knows the judges. He’ll get what he seeks. She’ll hang.’
‘Unless someone-’
I broke off, feeling almost nauseous as I recalled my own words to Nel last night: We live in enlightened times – relatively. What happened to your mother, that’s not going to happen again.
‘People hang for less every week,’ Dudley said. ‘ She must know that. Why the hell did she walk into their hands? Why didn’t she just move to another town? She has skills which would surely-’
‘Because of her father.’ I moved, in agitation, to the window. ‘It’s why she went home last night. She fears for her father. Her mother was hanged by Fyche, for reasons no more solid than…’
But we’d dealt with that. I stood gripping the window sill, looking down into the high street, where people had gathered around the bakery where fresh mutton pies were sold on market days and the baker studied old magic and dreamed of making gold from lead.
‘Carew’s a crude bastard,’ Dudley said, ‘but he knows how the world works. His warning to you… there’s clearly some substance in that. If you’re seen to be pleading for a witch’s life and your true identity should ever be disclosed, then you’re in the shit, John.’ He shrugged. ‘Both of us, for that matter.’
It was true. May have been because of his known association with me, but his own name had been placed more than once, in gossip and the pamphlets, on the threshold of sorcery. Something which men at Cecil’s level made light of.
Had made light of. It came back to me what Dudley had said last night about Sir William Cecil, who was his friend yet deplored his intimacy with the Queen. How far would Cecil risk his own position by protecting Dudley if he were seen to be implicated in a scandal involving witchcraft and the murder of his groom?
Traps everywhere. I sank into the chair by the window. In the space of a few hours, my life had been lifted up higher than I could have dreamed and then brought down and smashed before my eyes.
My life – that scholar’s dim-lit, book-lined existence. I lowered my head into my hands, and green eyes stared up at me through the fingers. Dudley was my friend, the best I had at court, through whose support and influence I’d won the Queen’s approval. Should I now further complicate his life by reporting what Nel Borrow had told me last night about her suspicions that Fyche had obtained wealth and position through the betrayal of his abbot?
Of which there was no evidence beyond circumstance. But then, how often in a court of law was evidence any stronger than that?
‘What’s this?’
I’d scarce heard Dudley sliding down from the bed. When I looked up, he was on his knees, scrabbling under the board. Came to his feet, holding something between finger and thumb, his face at first just curious and then tipped into a crooked smile.
‘Well, well…’
‘What’ve you found?’
He held out his open hand, displaying a damp, shrivelled, yellowish thing in his palm. Tubular. Appeared to be a piece of animal intestine, ewe’s bladder maybe. Meant nothing to me.
‘John, you bastard.’
Dudley’s features displaying a mischievous delight such as I hadn’t seen upon them since he was a boy intent upon disrupting my lessons. I rose from the chair.
‘What is it?’
‘What is it?’ His eyes rolling. ‘Jesu, John, how long have we known one another?’
I failed to understand. Dudley dangled the fragment of organ between finger and thumb.
‘Certainly, I’ve seen them in Paris. Indeed, used one there, on a certain occasion – unwise to take chances in France, but that’s another tale.’ He stared at me. ‘God’s bollocks, look at your face! You don’t remember, do you? Were you drunk?’
‘I’ve scarce been drunk in fifteen years, as you…’
‘Not that I’m not delighted, even in such adverse times, to find you’ve had need of a Venus glove?’
I sank back.
‘What?’
Dudley placed the remains of it upon the board, pulling out a snot-cloth to wipe his hand. The smile remained, as if a weight hung from one side of his mouth. I said nothing. The thing was surely from some previous occupant of the chamber, either that or…
‘Who was it, then, John?’ Dudley said. ‘ May I ask? One of the kitchen maids seduced by your timid good looks and courtly reticence?’
‘I…’
I think there may have been tears in my eyes.
I think maybe he saw them. A hand went to his mouth, and then he snatched it away and returned to the bed, crooking an arm around the apple-tree post and swinging lightly to and fro.
‘Oh, bugger,’ he said. ‘How – even with the fever – could I have missed the obvious?’
XXXV
Black Energy
It must have taken more than an hour to enlighten him, as the sky shifted into a grey afternoon and dulled the chamber.
I doubt I left out much, from that first meeting with Fyche atop the tor and all that I’d learned from Monger about Nel’s mother, to what had been spoken of between us last night. He interrupted not once. It was like when he was a boy and I a very young man: when the subject was of interest, like astronomy, he would sit calmly, all the facts digested slowly, savoured like a platter of sweetmeats.
Not much here that was sweet. Least of all the tale of a monk who was said to have stood by while his abbot, a man most fondly remembered in and out of the abbey, was tortured and killed and dismembered. Because of what he would not disclose? I posed the question and Dudley posed another.
‘Who knows of this, John?’
‘Nobody knows of it. Nobody left alive anyway. Quite a few suspect . But who dares speak of it?’
‘The death of Mistress Borrow’s mother was contrived because she had evidence against Fyche?’
‘Monger the farrier thinks it was to do with the dust of vision, but that’s what Nel believes, yes.’
‘But it was twenty years ago. Bad things happened then. And anyway, what would Whiting not disclose to Cromwell’s heavies?’
‘He was said to have hidden a chalice. That’s all I know.’
‘Not the Grail?’
‘Hardly likely. The chalice is supposed to have been found anyway. Had it been the Grail, I think King Harry would’ve made something of that, don’t you? To be known as the custodian of the most sacred of all vessels… the field of the cloth of gold doesn’t begin to compete. But it could be there was something… something Cate Borrow knew, from her friendship with the abbot, that he determined to conceal. Perhaps something Fyche wanted, rather than Cromwell.’
‘Was there mention of Arthur’s bones?’
‘No, but…’
‘We know for a fact that the bones disappeared during the Dissolution,’ Dudley said. ‘Possibly removed on instruction of the abbot to a place of safety. If he suspected the King himself wanted them either removed or destroyed, to improve their mythic status… support the legend that Arthur lives on in the Tudors…’
‘Then he would certainly have hidden them. The presence of the bones of Arthur being central to the status of Glastonbury Abbey since the twelfth century.’
‘And if Whiting knew where they were, he didn’t reveal the hiding place, even under… torture.’
Torture. As soon as that word was out, I knew what he was thinking. I saw in my head that rusting point under Martin Lythgoe’s blackened fingernail.
‘Even facing the worst of deaths, Whiting kept quiet.’ Dudley looked hard at me. ‘Are you listening, John?’