The Bones of Avalon

by Ormond House

  Indeed, it was further said that Jesus had returned as a man, to train in the spiritual disciplines under the Druids. A thrilling legend which seemed unlikely ever to be proved. However, it was more widely believed that, after the crucifixion, Joseph had also returned, bringing with him the holy cup of the Last Supper which had later caught drops of the holy blood from the cross, and that this cup, the Holy Grail, remained, hidden somewhere.

  The most precious, powerful and inspirational vessel in Christendom. The purest of King Arthur’s knights were said to have gone in quest of the Grail, thus bringing together the two great legends of Glastonbury. A holy legacy indeed, and out of all this had grown a huge and wealthy monastic establishment, said to have been founded by Joseph of Arimathea himself.

  And then King Henry, the Great Furnace, had ordered its destruction.

  ‘Never been there yourself?’ Cecil said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Odd. I mean… given your noted fascination with the great spiritual mysteries.’

  I grew cautious.

  ‘It’s a question of time, Sir William.’

  ‘Time.’ He smiled. ‘We can always make time. And you could be there… oh, well within a week, I’m assured.’

  He looked at me, placidly. There was never any reading of his eyes.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘For the stability of the realm of course.’ Parting his fingers, Cecil sat up in his chair and stretched his spine. ‘Why else do I exist?’

  I’d wondered why he’d summoned me here, to his private home, his cottage. Had to be for reasons of secrecy.

  Something sensitive. Something unofficial.

  Therefore something heavy with risk.

  I looked out of the window and now beheld the collected spires as something like to a bed of nails. With the twisted briars of religion and the gathering threats from abroad – the Queen of Scots fresh-married to the boy king of France – did Cecil not have enough tough meat on his plate without concerning himself with spiritual mysteries?

  ‘Are you quite sure I’m the man for this?’ I said.

  V

  Bones

  OUTSIDE, the rain had ceased and the winter sun hung in the central window, looking heavy as a new coin. It lit the spines of the books on Cecil’s few finished shelves. Books dealing with politics, law and property, but nothing, I’d guess, on the spiritual mysteries.

  I told Cecil about the pamphlet-seller, but not about my incautious attempt to take him on, nor how I’d been saved from what might have been a severe beating, or worse.

  All the time was wondering if he knew full well what had occurred. This man had eyes all over the city, and beyond.

  He lifted an eyebrow, reached for his wineglass then abruptly pushed it away.

  ‘There are scum out there who’ve been putting it around London that I maintain four mistresses and consume a gallon of wine nightly, before horsewhipping my children. Face it, you’re a public figure, now. Or at least, a public name. ’

  ‘But my mother’s not. And she’d be alone at Mortlake, where it seems I’m hated and feared by all the new puritans lest I raid their family’s graves.’

  ‘Then we’ll protect her.’ His hands emerging from his robe like puppets. ‘I’ll have armed guards put into Mortlake for as long as you’re away. I’ll even have a guard mounted on your blessed library. How does that sound?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think there’s need for-’

  ‘Good. Settled, then.’

  ‘There’s also the matter of my work. I’m already seriously behind in my work.’

  Cecil was gathering up the letters. He did not even look at me.

  ‘ This,’ he said, ‘is your work.’

  The stories of the four mistresses and the horsewhipping of children had obviously been plucked from the air to make a point. But there was gossip about Sir William Cecil, most of it related to his ancestry. The son of an innkeeper, it was oft-times said, in the same way that it was oft said of me that I was the son of a meat-slicer.

  But is it such a bad thing that we are now living in an age where ability may, on occasion, be recognised above breeding?

  I think not, and yet I believe ancestry to be important in ways that we have not yet fathomed. For my father, it was simple: he was a Welshman and, now that the Tudors of Wales had secured the English crown, this Welshness was an asset of no small proportion. I am Rowland Dee and I am a man of Wales! my tad would declare, with one hand on his heart, the other extended before him, and a comical deepening of his accent.

  Sometimes he’d even repeat it in Welsh. Which, I would imagine, cut no ice at all with the Great Furnace, who gave not a shit for Wales, most of the time. It had been different, however, for his own father, the first Tudor king, who’d landed from France in the west of Wales and rode from there with a gathering army and a weight of tradition.

  This tradition being King Arthur. According to the legends, Arthur had not died but was only sleeping and would return when his nation had need of him.

  And so, within Henry Tudor, was Arthur risen again, and the sense of an older and more united Britain. Henry had married Elizabeth of York, thus meeting the red rose with the white. To seal the family’s royal destiny, he’d even given their first-born son, his heir, the name of Arthur and had him born at Winchester, which Malory claimed had once been Camelot.

  A masterstroke. I knew the new Queen was much taken with this story of her family’s tradition and doubtless recognised its emotive power. King Arthur. Our royal ancestor, she’d said to me. And would have said more had not Blanche Parry appeared, the watchful owl amid the winter apple trees. Blanche having been given brief, I’d guessed, by this man, William Cecil, who at all times protected the Queen.

  Sometimes, it seemed, from herself.

  ‘She’s a young woman,’ he said now. ‘She’s clever, well read, and already carries a weight of experience. And, given the parlous state of the exchequer, she is commendably cautious. But, as a young woman, she’s ever prey to the allure of a great romance. And the problems it might pose. For her.’

  ‘Believing she must, in some way, make the mantle of Arthur… fit a woman?’

  I could still see no obvious problem. In Arthurian terms, the Queen was not merely Guinevere, nor even Morgan le Fay, the enchantress of Arthurian myth, but, potentially, someone greater, more powerful and more glamorous than either. I understood this entirely and did not think it foolish or wayward, for these were strange and awesome times.

  And so I waited, the room awash now with winter sunlight, two unicorns coming to luminous life upon a new tapestry, as Cecil drank the rest of his wine with no apparent appreciation. I doubted he believed in unicorns.

  ‘It all depends,’ he said, ‘on how dead you believe Arthur to be.’

  It was clear that we were now talking of the grave found in the abbey at Glastonbury during the reign of an earlier Henry, the Plantagenet, Henry II. I’d read of it last night in the writings of my father’s countryman, Giraldus Cambrensis.

  In the year 1191, an excavation at Glastonbury Abbey had uncovered a stone and a cross of lead proclaiming the burial there of the renowned King Arthur. Nine feet further down into the earth, in an oaken coffin, had lain the bones of an inordinately large man and the smaller skeleton of what was taken to be a woman. And a lock of yellow hair which crumbled into dust when picked up by one of the monks.

  Guinevere.

  And, oh yes, the monks had found this grave. Arthur was risen just when the monks had need of him most.

  ‘They needed money,’ Cecil reminded me. ‘Lots of it. The abbey having recently been ravaged by a very destructive fire. In the twelfth century, the tales of Arthur and his knights were widely read and told to children. Nothing could have brought more fame and pilgrimage to Glastonbury than the bones of Arthur.’

  Naturally, it was said by many that the grave was a fake and the so-called discovery of the royal remains nothing more than a deception by the monks. A decep
tion which was also of considerable value to the King in subduing the hopes of the rebellious Welsh.

  ‘Nothing better than bones,’ I said to Cecil, ‘as evidence that Arthur was very conspicuously beyond revival.’

  ‘Indeed. Almost a century later, the bones were placed in a black marble tomb before the high altar of the rebuilt abbey church. Having first been inspected by King Edward I who, after crushing the Welsh once again, at great expense, would also have been delighted to confirm that Arthur was dead.’

  ‘What king of England would neglect such an opportunity?’

  ‘Ah.’ Cecil arose and walked over to the vast windows. ‘There you have it.’

  ‘A Tudor king of England?’

  The sky over the river was clear of cloud; the air would freeze again tonight. I began to see a loose pattern. Highly useful for a Norman king, this evidence that Arthur was truly dead and the Welsh could no longer count on him. But for a king of Welsh descent, who had landed from France in the west of Wales and ridden into England under the numinous banner of an undying Arthur…

  I was intrigued. My books had none of this.

  ‘So what happened,’ I asked Cecil, ‘to the black marble tomb when the abbey was despoiled?’

  ‘A good question.’

  ‘It’s gone, though?’

  ‘Every last stone. It was marble. The abbey’s little more than a quarry now.’

  A bonus, then, for the son of the first Tudor king? In the early years of his reign, King Harry had also been keen to maintain the connection with an undying Arthur. Had not his own face been imposed upon the likeness of the round table in the cathedral at Winchester where his dead brother, Arthur, had, conveniently, been born?

  ‘You’re saying Thomas Cromwell took the bones?’

  It was said that Cromwell, perversely, had acquired a personal collection of holy relics looted from the monasteries.

  ‘If he did,’ Cecil said, ‘he doesn’t seem to have bequeathed them to the nation when it was his turn to visit the axeman.’

  ‘What’s being said?’

  ‘My intelligence is that by the time the marble tomb was dismantled, the bones had simply disappeared.’

  ‘The monks having removed them, knowing what was to happen? Perhaps burying them in another grave, unmarked?’

  ‘That’s one possibility, yes.’

  ‘So all evidence of the death of the Queen’s spiritual forebear…?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Do we know where they might be hidden?’

  Cecil made no reply, returning to his board.

  ‘Is there a suggestion,’ I said, ‘that someone has them? And, if so… who?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Queen’s court’s as full of twitterings as a woodland at dawn. It’s all rumour.’

  For the first time, he looked angry. He was a pragmatist, a practical man, a survivor. Modern politics, certainly at Cecil’s level, did not lie easily with superstition.

  ‘John, all I know is this. At my last but one meeting with the Queen, she asked two questions. The first… if there was a great house at Glastonbury to which she might… invite herself.’

  Cecil was known to approve of the Queen’s extended visits to the homes of her supporters, thus relieving the beleaguered exchequer of considerable domestic expense, sometimes for weeks at a time. Usually, however, the chosen houses were within easy travelling distance of London. Glastonbury would be a journey of several days.

  ‘She seems to have been made aware, maybe through her reading, of the mystical qualities of the place. Talk of visions – your area of expertise, not mine, but something ’s put it into her mind. And she talks of Arthur, increasingly. As if she’s suddenly discovered his importance.’

  The coal fire had burned low. Cecil might have summoned a servant by now to stoke it, but he only stared into the whitening embers.

  ‘And what was the Queen’s second question?’ I said.

  His face was dark. He wiped a hand across his jaw.

  ‘She asked me what it might cost to restore the Abbey of Glastonbury to its former golden glory.’

  ‘Costly,’ I said.

  ‘Costly?’ Cecil smacked his board. ‘Jesu Christ, this was the most extensive, gorgeous, religious fucking edifice in the entire country!’

  ‘Ah.’

  I stood up, still not fully understanding. If the Queen’s father had been happy enough to destroy the evidence, however discredited, of Arthur’s mortality, why was Elizabeth now interested in getting it back?

  ‘All right,’ Cecil said. ‘Let’s hasten to the chase. If these bones exist, we need to have them. Even though they’ve caused nothing but trouble for more than four centuries.’

  My doublet was cheap and I was cold.

  ‘Sir William, I don’t know this place. I don’t know anyone there.’

  ‘Sit down, John. Not asking you to go out with a spade and a muffled lantern.’

  I sat down. Cecil made a steeple of his fingers.

  ‘We’ve known each other for a good many years. Have our differences, I accept this, but I think we’re at least united in our desire to preserve this queen. In body and in… spirit. And it seems her spirit, at present, is troubled.’

  ‘She’s talked to you of this?’

  ‘Doesn’t talk to me of such things. She’ll doubtless, in due course, talk of them to you, as her adviser on matters less earthly. Her… Merlin, shall we say?’

  I didn’t like the direction this was going. Cecil looked down at his board.

  ‘We both of us know her strengths and her… weaknesses.’

  Meaning her indecisiveness. Agonising over some issue, going one way then another. An example of this being the inability to reconcile her conflicting attitudes to religion – unable, as was I, to renounce the mysticism of the Mass.

  ‘Restoration’s out of the question,’ Cecil said, ‘even if the money were there. Glastonbury Abbey’s too big and already hardly more than a ruin. Its stonework apparently supports new houses for miles around. Hopeless. However… if we had the bones, then we might satisfy the Queen by fashioning a suitably elaborate shrine for Arthur…’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here in London.’

  ‘You want me to go to Glastonbury… locate the bones of Arthur… and fetch them back here?’

  His nod was almost imperceptible. He was asking me to go out with a spade and muffled lantern.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘You’ll be accompanied by someone both of us can trust.’

  ‘Who?’

  Sounding as if this had already been organised. I had a dismaying thought.

  ‘Not Walsingham?’

  Cecil’s gaze hardened.

  ‘I met him when-’

  ‘I know when you met him.’

  ‘Does he work for you, Sir William?’

  ‘Francis?’ He leaned back. ‘Not officially. Let’s say I’m trying him out. As he’s not the man who’ll go with you to Glastonbury, he needn’t worry you.’

  Could not quite explain my relief. There’d been a close-hung darkness around Walsingham, and not only in his dress. Whatever he’d done after we’d parted that morning in the alley near the river, not a word about the effigy seemed to have leaked out. No pamphlet had published even a hint of it.

  But within the relief, there was still trepidation.

  ‘What if they’re not to be found? The bones.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be found,’ Cecil said. ‘Not necessarily the full set. A leg bone may suffice, and a ribcage. And of course a skull, suitably shattered.’

  ‘And you think the Queen will be convinced that these are indeed the remains of her… ancestor?’

  ‘That would depend… on who assures her of their authenticity.’ The thin, grey light of Cecil’s gaze settling upon me.

  Here would be the bones of Arthur, formally presented to Her Majesty the Queen by her Merlin. And oh, dear God, as you can imagine, I liked this not at all.

  VI

 
The Holy Heart

  The oarsmen had been bidden to take it slowly, and our progress downriver was smooth. Fireshined by the unexpected afternoon sun, the Thames looked near-serene. Legend has this as a holy river, and I’ve seen it written that the Romans considered it sacred to their solar deity, Apollo.

  River of the Sun. I liked that and could believe it, even though today’s sun, being yet a winter sun, was shamed by my companion’s gold and burgundy slashed doublet. The kind of doublet which, on a summer’s day, must needs be viewed through smoked glass.

  ‘Where are your thoughts gone now, John?’

  Sprawled in the stern of his low barge, regarding me with that old amusement.

  ‘I was seeing the river as a lake,’ I said bitterly. ‘Imagining a woman’s hand emerging holding a magical sword. The sun’s rays spraying from its blade.’

  The eyes of Robert Dudley were theatrically wide.

  ‘God’s bollocks, John… any woman’s arm protruding from the Thames would, for a start, be brown to the elbow with shite!’

  My former student’s reputation as a great romantic figure is, in my view, ill-founded. Doubtless the Queen sees a different side of her Master of the Horse. But then, how much of Dudley the Queen sees is something I try not to think too hard about.

  ‘Perchance we might all go to Glastonbury.’ He sank into the cushions, lifting a soft-booted foot to the seat opposite. ‘Good idea, do you think?’

  ‘All?’

  ‘You… me… the Queen?’

  When he’d told me he’d be lying with her at Richmond this night, I’d taken him to mean simply that he would be accommodated, as Master of the Horse, in his apartment at the palace. They’d been friends since children. But who knew? Who really knew?

  ‘You really don’t understand, do you, Robbie?’

  ‘Of course I understand. I’m merely thinking how best to loosen Cecil’s bowels.’ Dudley smoothed his moustache over a malicious smile. ‘Apart from the rest of it, the very last thing Uncle Willie wants is for Bess to descend upon some God-forsaken Somerset ruin and set up a round table with a… what did they call that fucking chair at the round table where you planted your arse if it was your lot to pursue the holy cup?’