The Bones of Avalon

by Ormond House

  ‘The Siege Perilous?’

  ‘That’s the one. And the thing is – ’ he sat up – ‘she’d do it, you know. She’d have a board made and assemble her knights all about her, in splendour. So loves her heroes – men of adventure, soldiers, seamen. And you, of course, John, you above all.’

  ‘Go to!’

  ‘I’ll admit it foxed me for quite a while, why the Queen should go so often out of her way to visit a pale scholar in a hovel on stilts in dreary Mortlake. And then it came to me – is not John Dee the greatest adventurer of them all? A man prepared… to venture beyond this world. Woohee!’

  Dudley’s laughter ringing like cathedral bells across the water.

  With his trusted chief groom, Martin Lythgoe, he’d been awaiting me downstairs in Cecil’s yet unfurnished entrance hall, jesting there with the guards. His own appointment with the Secretary had been two hours earlier than mine, which explained why he and his attendants had been on hand to witness the incident of the pamphlet-seller. And make their move.

  His barge had been ready at the riverbank, with a hamper of midday meat. I shall see you home, John, lest the pamphlet-man and his uglies are awaiting you in some back alley. Shaking his head, incredulous. However you survived in the cesspits of Paris and Antwerp without me around to save your sorry arse, I shall never know.

  Insisting on taking me all the way back to Mortlake. After which he was to return to the Queen at Richmond. His wife, meanwhile, being sequestered in the country.

  ‘When do we leave?’ he said now.

  ‘I’ve not yet decided… whether to do it.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll do it, John, you know you will.’

  ‘And deceive the Queen?’

  The word deceive hissing like a new-forged blade slid into cold water. Me thinking I was out of that world at last. And to deceive the Queen, who’d saved my reputation, and who was, after all… the Queen.

  ‘That may not be necessary,’ Dudley said. ‘We may find the bones. That’s certainly my intention. I should love to see the relics of Ar-’

  Me glaring at him, glancing at the oarsmen and his attendants at the front of the barge. He lowered his voice.

  ‘Has anybody ever really attempted to find them? I think not. We should easily get to the truth within a few days. Beat the shit out of some duplicitous ex-monk.’

  ‘This is just another small diversion for you, isn’t it, Robbie?’

  Someone both of us can trust, Cecil had said. Well, this was true, to a degree. I’d known Dudley since, as a very young man, I’d been employed as tutor to him and his siblings, by his late father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. Robbie had fast developed an interest in maths and astronomy, but other subjects that interested him had been beyond me at the time and were, I suppose, beyond me still.

  ‘I was in thrall, as a boy, to Malory’s histories,’ he mused. ‘The sword in the stone… the gathering of the knights – Gawaine, Galahad, Bedivere, Bors. And of course Lancelot, who made off with Arthur’s wife… I could well admire his nerve.’

  Dudley grinned. His beard was close-trimmed, his hair styled like he was ready to pose for a new portrait. He, too, had been close to a public death, feeling the wind of the axe that dispatched his father after the Jane Grey affair. But what had made me wary seemed, in some way, to have liberated his spirit.

  ‘As I tried to explain to you more than ten years ago,’ I said, ‘Thomas Malory… never trust the bastard and his ridiculous modernisation. Arthur was some tribal warlord.’

  ‘Matters not. Within those tales lies the very essence of knightly chivalry.’ Dudley leaned forward. ‘Whatever you say about the origins of Arthur, I revere what I perceive of him, and I’ll be honoured to bring back his bones. To London – the new Camelot.’

  ‘Streets full of thieves and whores and beggars, and a river full of shit?’

  ‘John, he belongs here – at Westminster, or St Paul’s. The Queen will be delighted beyond words.’

  ‘How will she? The Tudor line is he’s not dead.’

  ‘Ah, the body may be dead, but the spirit lives. His tomb shall once again be a monument to the golden age to which we aspire. For Bess, in particular. She’ ll be the one to bring Arthur home in glory. John, we have to give her this.’

  Downriver, I could already see the tower of Mortlake Church. I didn’t have much time.

  ‘This big boys’ adventure,’ I said. ‘Neither of us has the time for that. And there has to be something more to it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Cecil said he thought the Queen was spiritually troubled.’

  ‘Did he say how?’

  Dudley’s eyes narrowing; I saw caution there.

  ‘He said she didn’t often speak to him of such matters.’

  ‘But you think,’ Dudley said, ‘that she might’ve spoken of them… to me?’

  ‘Has she?’

  Dudley caught the eye of the thatch-haired Martin Lythgoe and moved a hand up and down to convey that he wished the oarsman to further slow our progress towards Mortlake.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look into history. Beginning, if you like, with the death of Arthur – not the king, the Queen’s uncle, Prince Arthur, who would’ve been King Arthur the Second. Born in Winchester, which Malory had identified as Camelot. His early death meant some salvage was required, lest it be thought a sign that God did not, after all, wish Arthur to be reborn as a Tudor. And then comes Harry…’

  ‘Yes.’

  How different life might have been, for all of us, had Arthur not died so young, bequeathing his crown and – most fateful of all – his bride, Catherine of Aragon, to his brother, Henry.

  Dudley gazed out over the river.

  ‘The Queen, as we know, admires her father. And indeed may be said to possess some of his… resolve. But she’s also aware of his very conspicuous failures. Failure, despite six marriages and the resulting division of the churches, to produce a surviving male heir. Bess considers the short life of Edward and the longer but hardly happy reign of her half-sister. Fears a resumption of the decline.’

  ‘Inevitably.’

  ‘And she’s superstitious.’

  Well, no-one knew that more than I. The Queen, needing to believe she’s chosen by God to rule this land, looking always for signs and portents to reinforce her confidence.

  One of my own roles being to point them out to her. And Cecil had said she might speak to me of her inner problem – while ensuring there was no chance of this happening in the near future by making himself the intermediary in the matter of Arthur’s bones.

  ‘Here’s the point,’ Dudley said, ‘Arthur’s linked by Malory and others to the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire – forget that he might have been no more than a heathen, go with the lore. What does Harry do? Breaks with Rome and fills his coffers with the treasures of the Church. Finally sacking Glastonbury Abbey… where lie Arthur’s bones.’

  ‘Someone’s suggesting Harry dishonoured King Arthur?’

  Dudley shrugged.

  ‘Thus bringing down a curse upon his line?’

  ‘If the curse was not already there. A few years ago, an appeal was made to Mary to put Glastonbury Abbey back together. Much as she’d have wanted it, there was little money to spare then. Even for God.’

  ‘So now something – or someone’ – I began to see it – ‘has put it into Queen Elizabeth’s mind that she has much to redeem if her reign’s to be fruitful.’

  ‘Or even avoid disaster. Glastonbury, John – it all comes together in Glastonbury. Arthur and Jesus Christ, all bound together. The holy heart of it all.’

  ‘Who put this into her mind, Robbie?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not me.’

  ‘Cecil speaks of visions. What’s that about?’

  Dudley shook his head. A shadow fell betwixt us. Martin Lythgoe stood there, a stocky, amiable man, and patient.

  ‘Mortlake, my lord.’

  Dudley sighed.

  ‘Get them to row
in circles, would you, Martin?’

  William Cecil had a certain genius for putting together the right men for a particular task. Here were two fellows of contrasting skills, committed to the same woman, if not for the same reasons. Dudley it was who had introduced me at court, Dudley who had commanded me to select a date for the coronation.

  Two men committed, by bitter history, to the watching of each other’s backs.

  ‘So when do we leave?’ he said.

  ‘After I look into the history of this. For instance, if an approach was made to Mary for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, was mention made of the bones then?’

  ‘Does Cecil not know?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Bonner might,’ Dudley said. ‘You still a friend?’

  ‘Needs all the friends he can get at this moment. It’s a wonder he still lives.’

  ‘A tribute to Bess, who refuses, bless her, to resort either to the axe or the taper.’

  ‘Thus far.’

  Dudley snorted.

  ‘Bloody Bonner. Be a queue of people a mile long ready to set light to his pile.’ He regarded me for a moment, tongue probing a cheek. ‘Thinking about it, you must be the only man he ever spared. Fellow you shared a cell with… he was burned. Are you still Bonner’s friend?’

  ‘For my sins. And his.’

  ‘Have to admire the old bastard’s nerve. Still refusing to recognise the Queen as head of the church, even when she offers a compromise.’

  ‘That mean prison?’

  ‘Marshalsea. For good this time, unless he changes his song. If you feel it worth visiting him, I wouldn’t waste any time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That might be worthwhile.’ I watched a gull wheeling over the remains of our midday meal, which seemed still to be following in our wake. ‘How is Amy?’

  ‘Amy’s well.’ Dudley’s expression unchanging. ‘She ever prefers the country life.’

  ‘There’s fortunate,’ I said.

  For a moment, he almost frowned. He swung his feet to the deck and stood up.

  ‘And what of you? Still dipping it in the mercury?’

  ‘Dudley, if a man can barely afford to support himself…’

  ‘That excuse, John, wears thin.’

  ‘So we ride out,’ I said, ‘with banners held high-’

  ‘That’s not how a great quest is undertaken. We fast for several days, perform three nightly vigils until dawn and then ride out silently, and with humility. We take few men with us, if any, and each church we chance upon, we stop and pray.’

  ‘Unlikely to get there before midsummer, then.’

  Dudley stretched his arms.

  ‘Taking few men – that’s certainly part of it. I rather like the idea, to be honest – a rare freedom to move around as a common man, unencumbered by the trappings of high office.’

  I may have blinked. Robert Dudley shorn of the trappings of high office was like Hampton Court with no glass in the windows and a flock of sheep in the gardens.

  ‘Cecil intends that we travel as lowly servants of the Crown,’ he said. ‘Undertaking a survey of historical remains. We’re to be accompanied by someone with knowledge of the country. Cecil’s organising that, too. Leaves nothing to chance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thinks to remove me from court for a while,’ Dudley said.

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Doesn’t realise that a man who brings to his Queen such an irrefutable symbol of her royal heritage… something which bestows upon her monarchy’s most mystical aura. That man… he may expect his reward.’

  He was not smiling.

  ‘It isn’t a quest for the Holy Grail,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe not for you. But for me… possibly.’

  Dudley was gazing out, in noble profile, across the broad water, then up at the sky where a buttermilk moon bided its time.

  VII

  Awe and Stupor

  Although I don’t consider myself sensitive to such intrusions, that night it was as if I were not alone in my library.

  It happens. Oft-times I’ll hear a scraping of paper, as if the books are conversing amongst themselves. The sound of knowledge being shared and expanding in the air. Or a faint clarion of bells – distant, yet somehow within the room itself, as if proclaiming the nativity of an idea. Oh, I’m fanciful, you might think. But what I think is that science must never become dull and roped to rigid formulae, but must always be alive to the omnipresent otherness of things.

  This night, sitting at my work board under two candles, a cup of small beer at my elbow, I’d thought to work on my creation theory, an attempt to explain precisely, concisely and mathematically the origins and composition of our universe… and how we might have commerce with the hidden influences which govern it.

  But then caught myself thinking of our lost housekeeper, Catherine Meadows, and the times I’d wished I lay with her, that we might find warmth and consolation in one another, for Catherine looked a gentle girl who would not…

  Oh dear God, what am I become?

  Dr Dee trades with demons!

  ‘John.’

  I almost cried out, in my shame. My mother was standing in the doorway, holding a candle in a tin tray, her face turned to vellum in its light. She wore an old grey robe over her nightgown.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I like not the way our neighbours look at us.’

  Candlelight shadows bounded over the walls of books and manuscripts and the globe made for me by my friend and tutor, Gerard Mercator. Logs shifted on the fire. I sat up.

  ‘Which neighbours? Not Goodwife Faldo?’

  ‘No, they’re… not people I know by name. Do you not notice the looks we get?’

  I thought of the men who’d stared at me in the tavern where I’d been in search of Jack Simm. And of what he’d said. I wanted to say something reassuring and could only think of Cecil’s offer to have my mother guarded – knowing what her reaction would be.

  ‘I don’t want it. I have to live here. I don’t want us to be seen as… strange.’ My mother came into the room and shut the door behind her. ‘I thought it would all be different, when you were given the rectorate of Upton-upon-Severn.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Not so very long.’

  ‘Mother, it was another era. The boy Edward was king, Seymour was protector, the Act against witchery was withdrawn, I was-’

  ‘Untainted,’ my mother said, ‘by rumour.’

  ‘Unknown,’ I said. ‘I was unknown then, there’s the difference.’

  There’s ever been a thin line ’twixt fame and notoriety.

  Couldn’t deny that the eighty pounds a year for Upton had been useful, but I was never going to be a minister of the church. The cure of souls – the very idea of such responsibility was terrifying to me.

  ‘I don’t know what you do,’ my mother said, in a kind of desperation. ‘I no longer understand what you do.’

  ‘I study. Collect knowledge. Calcule.’

  Couldn’t see her expression, but I could feel it. Must needs do better.

  ‘Studying mathematics’ – I closed my book – ‘I’ve become aware of universal patterns. Ordered patterns, which I feel could enjoin with something within us. Allowing us to… change things. I hope eventually to understand something of why we are here. To know, in some small way, God’s purpose-’

  ‘How does that change my life? Who pays you to know of these things?’

  I closed my eyes. She was right. The Queen had oft-times spoken of making my situation more formal, but nothing ever happened. No income, no title, not even the offer of a new rectorate. Men had been awarded knighthoods or peerages and estates for smaller services than my work on navigation, while I was yet a commoner.

  But, then, who honours a conjurer?

  I should not feel bitter. What was a title worth? It made you known to the world in ways I care nought for, only wanting to be left alone to get on with my work. Although, yes, I agree
that it would have been pleasant not to have to worry about money.

  ‘Please thank the Secretary for his concern for me,’ my mother said, ‘but assure him that I shall be quite secure here.’

  ‘You don’t think that. You said-’

  ‘I’ve never lived entirely without servants. Indeed, I’d thought you’d be married by now, and there’d be another woman here to-’

  ‘Mother-’

  ‘Still… perchance the very fact that you are not here… will make the difference.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said softly. ‘Maybe it will.’

  The candlelight flickered like soft lightning on my coloured charts of the planets, glimmed in my hourglass, brought the eyes of the owl to life. I felt like a man hanging onto a stunted tree bent over an abyss. No firm situation, no wife, no siblings. No family but my poor mother, who only wished for me to be a normal man, and respected as such.

  ‘Don’t stay up too late,’ my mother said. ‘You’re not so young any more.’

  The cats. Maybe the rustling in the shelves had been the cats, who liked to prowl the library when I was working here.

  Or maybe it was the matter of Arthur, calling to me. I sighed, put away my cosmology and reopened the collected manuscripts of Giraldus Cambrensis.

  Gerald of Wales, a respectable chronicler who had travelled widely in these islands and attempted accurate descriptions of what he found there. You might almost have thought that Gerald was present himself when the discovery was made of the bones of Arthur at Glastonbury in 1191, such was the detail.

  The thigh bone, when put next to the tallest man present, as the abbot shewed us, and placed on the ground by his foot, reached three inches above his knee. And the skull was of a great, indeed prodigious capacity, to the extent that the space betwixt the brows and betwixt the eyes was a palm’s breadth. But in the skull there were ten or more wounds which had all healed into scars, with the exception of one which had made a great cleft and seemed to have been the sole cause of death.

  Gerald probably was not there when the bones were uncovered, but it seemed unlikely that he could have invented any of this. It was a report. The bones had been shown to him. The bones were real. But whose?