The Heresy of Dr Dee

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Not as such, no.’ Vaughan drank some beer, wiped his mouth. ‘But the ole Welsh families who ran with Glyndwr… they still dream. And some still hate the English. And don’t feel obliged to live by English laws. Plant Mat, see, the first of them were likely men who ran with Glyndwr’s army and, for them, it was never gonner be over. And as Glyndwr’s general – the man leading the Welsh in the rout of the English on Brynglas – as his name was Rhys Gethin. See?’

  The cold rain rolled down the panes, and only Dudley laughed.

  ‘Small-time outlaw affecting the name of a famous warlord? Shrouding himself in old myth to frighten the peasants?’

  No smile from Vaughan. The boy sat silent, watching the unceasing violence of water on ill-fitting glass. Me? I understood at once what local superstition this would arouse and didn’t feel it misplaced. The land remembers. Only wished now that I’d listened harder to my father’s tales, asked a few more questions. But then, I never thought I’d ever come here. I sought to quench it, all the same.

  ‘One hundred and fifty years ago. This man must needs be… what… a great-grandson?’

  ‘Or no relation at all, more like. Just a man who wants folk to think him possessed of a vengeful and still-active spirit.’ Vaughan fingered his sparse gingery beard as if there was more he might say about active spirits. ‘The thought of Gethin returned to the place where he slaughtered a thousand English – even if he’s in chains – is bound to cause unrest among the local folk. Not that it frightens the wool merchants. But they weren’t raised yere.’

  ‘And the judges from Ludlow and Shrewsbury fear only for their lives,’ I said. ‘After what happened twenty years ago.’

  ‘Legge, however,’ Dudley said, ‘comes with sixty armed guards and has no fear that can’t be overridden by his ambition. But you’re right, only a good hanging can end this.’

  Vaughan slumped in a corner of the parlour settle.

  ‘You think?’

  A cattle raid one full-moon night in the Irfon Valley, the other side of Radnor Forest. This was how they’d caught him.

  Been a few raids, and all the talk was of Plant Mat, so the local squires banded together and had all their men out – farm hands and shepherds, pigmen and rickmen. Long nights waiting in the woods, all armed with axes and pitchforks and clubs. The Plant Mat raiders, when they came, were badly outnumbered and taken by surprise, for once, and fled into the hills.

  Except for their leader who caught his foot in a root and twisted his ankle, and the farmers’ boys were on him. Two of the squires were summoned from their beds and came out and beat him about before having him tied, hand and foot, to a cart.

  ‘They know who he was?’ Dudley asked.

  ‘They did when he told them. Stood there all bloody and told them his brothers would pay them well if they let him go. He’d get a message back and they’d arrange an exchange, and they’d be rich men and their stock would be safe forever.’

  ‘Tempting,’ I said, ‘for a border farmer.’

  ‘But an insult to a squire,’ Vaughan said. ‘These two, they both knew what had happened over at Rhayader, when Plant Mat were taking a slice of the farmers’ meat in return for not firing their buildings. Forever’s no more’n a year in Wales. You make a deal with these brigands, they leave you alone for a few months, then they’re back, and worse.’

  ‘Never bargain with scum,’ Dudley said.

  All they did, Vaughan said, was to have Prys Gethin tied tighter and gagged him so they didn’t have to listen to any more of his babble. And then… a triumphal torchlight procession through the hills of Radnor Forest.

  ‘The new sheriff, Evan Lewis, he lives at Gladestry, which was along the route, and they sent ahead to have him roused. And Evan Lewis joined them on the road to New Radnor Castle, where Prys Gethin was dragged down from the cart. Standing there, under the full moon, they were in high spirits, mabbe a bit drunk. As you might well be if you’d brought the bane of Radnorshire to justice.’

  One of the squires, Thomas Harris by name, had stepped up and spat in the prisoner’s eye. Well, not in his eye, exactly, as Gethin only had the one. What Harris spat into was the shrivelled skin around the empty socket of the eye that was gone.

  Prys Gethin had not wiped it away. Although he could have done. They saw his hands were freed from their bonds. How was that possible?

  Vaughan drank some beer and was silent for a moment, as if unsure how the rest would be received.

  ‘Stood there, blood and spit on his cheeks. Pointed at the two squires who’d beaten him, tied him down, spat into his eye socket. Stood there in the light of the full moon and cursed them by turn, low in his voice, pointing with a curled finger.’

  ‘Cursed in Welsh?’ Dudley looked unimpressed. ‘Terrifying.’

  But I noticed Vaughan’s eyes and the bleak way he was staring into his beer.

  ‘Within a month,’ he said, ‘Thomas Harris was dead of a fever that came overnight. And the other, Hywel Griffiths, he drowned in the river, when a new footbridge collapsed in high wind.’

  I hoped Dudley would not laugh, and he didn’t. I’d be the last to deny the power of a curse, especially if the victim knows he’s cursed.

  ‘This wind,’ Vaughan said, ‘was sudden, fierce and unnaturally short-lived. Came and went in a matter of minutes. Taking with it the little bridge and a man’s life.’

  ‘And another myth was born,’ Dudley said sourly.

  ‘Myth?’ Roger Vaughan, for all his schooling in London and Oxford, was a man of the border yet, his accent strengthening with his anger. ‘That’s how you sees it, is it, Master Roberts?’

  ‘So’ – I broke in – ‘the charges will be cattle-thieving…’

  ‘And witchcraft,’ Vaughan said. ‘Murder by witchcraft.’

  Ha. So this was where Scory came in. What evidence, I wondered, would he give to strengthen the case against this felon?

  ‘Not easy to prove,’ I said. ‘Not these days.’

  The last Witchcraft Act, introduced by King Henry, having been repealed after his death. Everyone had expected it to be replaced by something less random, but it hadn’t happened yet, whatever Jack Simm might say about the Queen’s need to prove that she was not like her mother. Goodwife Faldo had been on firm ground when she’d said, in Mortlake Church, that she no longer feared imprisonment for inviting a scryer into her house.

  But where a death was involved… well, I’d heard of cases where evidence of circumstance had been enough to hang a woman – it was usually a woman – where proof of dark threats had been given. And fear of witchcraft would never go away. Even in London, there would have been unrest under these circumstances. Out here, with all the terror of the Glyndwr war yet within local memory, it would have a considerable power to disturb.

  ‘Glyndwr studied magic,’ I said.

  Vaughan was nodding.

  ‘And is said to have used it with clear intent, Dr Dee. As you likely know, it was said he could arouse spirits to change the weather – arouse storms and the like – to gain advantage on the battlefield.’

  ‘So a sudden wind blowing down a footbridge,’ Dudley said. ‘would suggest this man was simply calling on the same dark powers?’

  ‘Not too difficult to make out a case for it, Master Roberts.’

  ‘Especially before a man of Legge’s abilities,’ I said. ‘Was Rhys Gethin said to have dark powers?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was killed in battle three years after Pilleth.’ Vaughan drained his cup. ‘But what a victory that was. Against all odds. And he was Glyndwr’s best general. And they did burn down the church of the Holy Virgin before the battle. Oh God, it’s all a nest of wasps.’

  ‘So you’re saying the local judges… might be in fear for more than their lives?’

  ‘Like I said, Dr Dee, this en’t England. And it definitely en’t London. Although Plant Mat’s never been known to work so far east, the guard’s yere to make sure Sir Christopher Legge stays safe before and during
the trial. And the hanging, if he stays for it.

  ‘As for any kind of danger that don’t involve physical attack…’

  ‘Legge has fairly advanced Lutheran leanings, as I understand it,’ Dudley said. ‘The Lutheran scholars are in the process of effecting a severe reduction of what we’re allowed to be afraid of.’

  ‘Aye, and the handful of men who own this town now are all firm reformers, too.’ Vaughan stood up, peered at the window. ‘It en’t stopping, is it? Better face the wrath of Sir Christopher. Tell him his trial en’t gonner start tomorrow.’

  He flinched, as did I, at a sudden cracking of glass. The loose pane had fallen from its leading, or been blasted out by the force of the rain, and now smashed on the flooded stone flag. Shards of glass were skittering through the spill, as a second pane fell out.

  ‘I’ll send the innkeeper,’ Vaughan said. ‘If I can find him.’

  None of us had commented on the uncommon ferocity of the rain which looked like preventing the sheriff bringing Prys Gethin from New Radnor this night.

  It had, after all, been a wet summer.

  XXI

  Rowly’s Boy

  COLD IN THE parlour now, with that jagged hole in the window and water beginning to pool around Dudley’s fine riding boots. When we were alone, he stood up, regarding me sideways, dark eyes aslant.

  ‘I don’t think… that should we get involved in this, John.’

  ‘Did I suggest we might?’

  He snorted like a stallion.

  ‘You eel! I was watching your face. All that talk of Glyndwr’s magic and altering the weather and the curse of Prys Gethin? John Dee in the land of Merlin? A pig in shit. As for this boy Vaughan…’

  ‘Mmm.’ I nodded. ‘He’s sitting on eggs. He’s a lawyer, but also border-raised, and he doesn’t think free pies can cure fear. Mortimer’s army would have been drawn from places like Presteigne. The presence in the town of another Gethin…’

  ‘So called. And in chains.’

  ‘Freed himself from his bonds on the road to New Radnor,’ I said. ‘So that he was able to point the finger in malevolence…’

  ‘Jesu, don’t you start.’ Dudley rubbed his hands together to make heat. ‘Gives me shivers, this place, somehow, even more than Glastonbury. How far to Wigmore from here?’

  ‘Seven miles. Eight? You weren’t thinking of riding there in this?’

  ‘First light, I was thinking,’ Dudley said. ‘Assuming we aren’t all drowned by then.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No real use in riding out to Wigmore until we have a better idea of exactly what we’re looking for. I gather there are people we might talk to in this town first.’

  It was the first chance I’d had to tell him what I’d learned from John Scory in Hereford. Dudley listened without interruption, only the occasional raised eyebrow.

  ‘You saying the Bishop of Hereford knew of the stone?’

  ‘But not where it is – or the former abbot. But he did say Presteigne would be a good place to start looking. Not least because much of the property here once belonged to the abbey.’

  ‘And then gathered in by the Crown, and the Crown would sell it off. I don’t see how there’d be a connection any more.’

  ‘Just telling you what he said. He also thought it worth talking to my cousin Nicholas Meredith. Who also seems to be a substantial property owner.’

  I was recalling how Scory had laughed on learning that Meredith was my cousin, when a man appeared in the doorway, bearing a broom and glowering at the remains of the window.

  ‘God’s blood! Profuse apologies, my masters. The glazier’s art is yet in its infancy round yere.’

  He began sweeping the shards of glass into a corner with his broom, then gave up and tossed the broom across the parlour.

  ‘I’ll have it shuttered. He’ll not get paid for this.’ Wiping his wet hands on his apron, straightening up and jabbing a thumb at his chest. ‘Jeremy Martin. Keeper of this inn.’

  A powerfully built man of late middle-years. Dense grey hair winged back behind his ears.

  ‘Least there’ll be no broken glass in your bedchamber this night, my masters.’

  ‘Although wouldn’t that be because it’s yet without any kind of glass?’ Dudley said.

  Jeremy Martin grinned.

  ‘On the list, that is. Glass in all the windows next year, sure to be. Proper glass. I en’t been yere long enough to do all as needs doing, but this’ll be the finest inn in the west ’fore long. Can I replenish your jug, my masters? On the house?’ Picking up the beer jug, he sniffed it with suspicion. ‘Holy blood, you’re drinking ale! You have a flagon of my ole cider, masters, and I’ll tell you, you en’t gonner go back to this bat’s piss in a hurry.’

  Dudley looked pained. One virtue of high social status, he’d been known to remark, was that it spared you the crude predations of the serving classes.

  ‘Master Martin,’ I said, ‘would you happen to know where we might find Nicholas Meredith?’

  ‘Won’t be far away. He’s in town. Friend of yours?’

  ‘My cousin.’

  ‘You’re his cousin? From London? You en’t a lawyer, then?’

  ‘I… No. Not as such.’

  Martin took a step back into the pooled water, inspecting me from head to feet and back again.

  ‘Holy blood! You en’t…?’ His eyes widened, and then his arms were thrown wide as if he’d embrace me. ‘Rowly Dee’s boy? The man who… Holy blood…’

  ‘You knew my father?’

  ‘Rowland Dee? All the talk was about him at one time. How close he was to the ole King. How well-favoured. And now it’s his son and the ole King’s daughter. Holy blood! I tell you… Master Meredith, when the pamphlets come from London after the crowning, he’s in yere reading it all out. His uncle’s boy calculing the stars for the new queen. Well, well… Do he know you’re yere?’

  ‘I wrote to him but… no, he doesn’t. Not yet.’

  ‘Aye, I thought… He’d known you was coming, we’d never’ve yeard the last of it. So you en’t nothing to do with the judge?’

  I assured him we were merely travelling with the judge’s company, while inspecting manuscripts from disassembled libraries. Taking the opportunity to make a visit to my family’s old home.

  ‘Nant-y-groes? Master Stephen Price, he’s there now, see. You know Master Price? He was down London. MP for Radnorshire.’

  ‘Why’s he living at Nant-y-groes?’

  ‘Building a new home down the valley, by the ole monastery grange. Gotter keep his family somewhere, meanwhile.’

  ‘So he’s only renting it.’

  ‘Master Nick likely owns it yet.’

  ‘And much of this town?’

  ‘Not as much as Master Bradshaw – big wool merchant.’ Jeremy Martin beamed. ‘Wool, cloth and the law, my masters. As good a foundation as you’ll find anywhere. Used to be religion, now it’s wool, cloth and the law.’

  The rain stopped not long before twilight. Within half an hour, a piercing red sun lit the street, and Dudley and I walked out into a town that you could feel to be growing around you.

  Signs of building on a scale I hadn’t encountered since leaving Cecil’s house in the Strand. Piles of bricks everywhere and frames of green oak for new houses. Poke into any alleyway, and you’d find old barns and outhouses being converted into business premises.

  We edged around a puddle the size of a duckpond, the sun floating there like an orange.

  ‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘why this town makes you shiver.’

  Dudley looked across the street where the ground rose towards a castle, fallen into ruin on its green mound, much of its stone already plundered.

  ‘I do mistrust sudden wealth.’

  ‘As distinct from inherited wealth?’

  He didn’t rise to that. The sun spread a glowing hearthlight over a wall of new brick, and a stout man in clerk’s apparel crossed the street in front of us, bearing a pile of
leather-bound documents.

  ‘It’s in a hurry, this town, to leave something behind,’ Dudley said. ‘Don’t you feel that?’

  ‘Poverty, perhaps?’

  He eyed me.

  ‘Why so frivolous tonight?’

  ‘That’s frivolous?’

  Dudley frowned. The ostler, who’d stabled our horses, led two more past us towards the entrance to the mews at the side of the Bull. It was not hard to imagine my tad here, carousing with his friends on the hot summer nights of old. I felt sad.

  ‘Tell me about Cumnor Place,’ I said.

  No reply. Doors were opening, people threatening to throng the streets. I waited until we could no longer hear the clitter of hooves.

  ‘Better here than back at the inn,’ I said. ‘You never know who’s listening at the door of a bedchamber.’

  We’d come to the corner of the wide street leading down to the church and the sheriff’s house. All was yet quiet here. If they’d brought Prys Gethin from New Radnor, another crowd would have formed in no time, but the street was empty. At the bottom, just past the church, a stone bridge over the river carried a narrow road into the hills, where a castle occupied a gap in the forest. Probably back in England.

  ‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ Dudley said.

  ‘About what… exactly?’

  He stopped, glanced behind him to where the lurid sun was down on the horizon, poking through the layered clouds like the tip of a tongue betwixt reddened lips.

  ‘The murder of my wife. Beyond all doubt, now.’

  XXII

  So She Wouldn’t Die

  CUMNOR PLACE. BARELY three miles from Oxford. Hardly a demanding ride from Kew. And now his wife was dead and buried Dudley had finally made the journey.

  I wondered how he’d felt, but didn’t ask.

  The house was a century old, but recently made modern by Dudley’s friend and his wife’s last host, Anthony Forster. It had been divided into a number of fine apartments, one of which had become the home of Amy Dudley.

  Ten years of marriage, no country house of her own and unwelcome in London town – so that the Queen could pretend she didn’t exist.