by Phil Rickman
And then sat back and waited as I shivered.
I should have gone then to Stephen Price, told him what had happened this day – some of it, anyway – but I couldn’t face it. Needed some time to separate the truth from the madness. Besides, I knew I had to reach the sheriff before Daunce could get to him, although I couldn’t, at this moment, even remember his name.
I stole around to the stables at the rear of Nant-y-groes and found my mare. She knew me at once and was silent as I nuzzled her and saddled her and led her quietly out of the stable and down to the road. I’d come back tomorrow. By tomorrow I would have thought of something. Some way of persuading Anna Ceddol to return with me to London. What did it matter to me that she was incapable of childbearing? There was neither time nor money in my life for children.
I mounted up and followed the silvered ribbon of road with ease, giving brief thought to what I’d do when we arrived at my mother’s house. How my mother would react to my appearance in Mortlake with a beautiful woman and an idiot. The truth of it – I didn’t care. The moon rose, close to full in the clearing sky, and I felt hollow and sad and yet exalted.
We’d covered the few miles to Presteigne before I knew it, the mare and I, pounding the moonlit track.
As if she knew I was trying to shake something off.
Someone.
Even the mare knew something was wrong in Presteigne, starting and throwing back her head as the town houses sprang up to either side.
Most of them with light inside, even the poorer homes on the edge of town, where you’d have expected the families to settle down for their first sleep.
I dismounted and led the mare slowly toward the marketplace, now abuzz with groups of people, who spoke in low voices. No piemen. No merriment. The town was aslant, its balance altered, the sheriff’s building in darkness, all the pitch-torches snuffed, while only the inns were ablaze with hard light and the jagged air of a pervading rage.
XXXVIII
Unholy Glamour
THEN I SAW men with lanterns, horses saddled. Men with swords strapped on and hard faces, some gathered in small groups, as if waiting for a leader.
I espied Roger Vaughan walking alone, seeming to be going nowhere. The white, fattened moon illumined the sweat which spiked his hair and smeared his face like melted tallow. He looked like a man newly claimed by the plague, trying to absorb the awful knowledge of it.
‘I’ve just ridden from Nant-y-groes,’ I said. ‘What’s—?’
Vaughan shook his head, blinking, kept on walking until I could position myself and the horse in front of him. He stopped by an abandoned stall, the smell of fruit about it, slippery skins underfoot.
I waved a hand at the crowd.
‘A hue and cry?’
‘You could very well say that, Dr Dee.’
A young man came shouldering betwixt us, sliding his sword in and out of its sheath, shouting back at someone.
‘Be dead before midnight, if I finds him, tell you that much, boy.’
‘Who’s he talking about?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘If I knew—’
‘The one-eyed man,’ Vaughan said.
‘Gethin? Hell.’ I took a step back. ‘He’s escaped?’
‘You could say that, too.’
‘What about all the guards?’
His smile was crooked.
‘Dr Dee, the damn jury freed him. Under the explicit guidance of Sir Christopher Legge. The jury was as good as ordered to acquit him of all charges, and that’s what they did.’
A moment of waxen silence, like when an ear pops. The night took on a strange, spherical quality, as if I’d stepped out of it like a bubble.
‘Forgive me. The judge was sent from London with the specific purpose of convicting Gethin.’
‘That did seem to be the plan.’
‘Where is he? Where’s Legge?’
‘Gone. Ridden out within minutes of the verdict, with a small guard and no carts to delay them. Before the local people could storm the court.’
‘Jesu, Vaughan…’
‘Don’t try to make sense of it, Dr Dee. There en’t none.’
‘Where’s Dud— Where’s Roberts?’
‘Wouldn’t know. He was with me in earlier in court.’
‘Then where…?’
‘There was an adjournment while Legge considered the evidence. Mabbe he couldn’t get back in through the crush to hear the death sentence.’
Vaughan laughed dully, bent and picked up a stray plum and hurled it at the nearest wall, making a sucking phat.
‘Death sentence.’ He made gesture at the horsemen, beginning to move off in groups. ‘They think to catch Gethin on the road. Bring him back and have their own trial. Or mabbe just hang him theirselves.’
‘They won’t find him, I’m guessing.’
It was just young men with a need to turn anger into action – the twenty-year-old itch violently inflamed. They’d rampage across the hills for an hour or two, until the drink ran out, and stagger back into town, while the lights were gradually doused and the muttering about betrayal died until morning.
I pointed Vaughan down towards the river and the church, where it looked to be quieter.
‘Tell me about this, would you? In detail.’
He shrugged and followed me and the mare.
‘Some of the ole boys are even saying the judge was bewitched,’ he said.
The man known as Prys Gethin… he’d be well away, back into the heartland. Even if the angry men of Presteigne had caught up with him, who among them would have risked his own life administering rustic justice to a man so firmly acquitted by the Queen’s court?
Vaughan leaned over the bridge barrier, staring down at shards of the moon in the swirling waters of the River Lugg.
‘The judge told the jury that a hundred years ago – even fifty or less – they wouldn’t have had to think twice about their verdict. But the world was in the throes of mighty change and such matters as witchcraft were become subject to new thought.’
‘Legge said that?’
He must himself have undergone mighty change since the days when he’d conspired with my enemies to get me burned for using dark magic against Queen Mary.
‘He said that the two principal witness were also the victims, so called, and therefore dead. Told the jury that, as none of the men present had a proper knowledge of the Welsh speech, there was no evidence that a death curse had been delivered. But that it was reasonable to suppose – as implied by the Bishop of Hereford – that being abused in Welsh might have led Thomas Harris to believe that he was cursed.’
‘The Bishop of Hereford? Scory?’
‘Scory as good as said that witchcraft was the religion of Radnorshire. As for the collapse of the bridge in a sudden high wind… while there was much evidence of places nearby where there was no wind, what testimony was there to show there had been a violent storm in such a confined area? Only one man could say for certain, and he was drowned.’
‘Where did the story of the wind come from?’
Vaughan shrugged.
‘Legge asked that. To which there was no firm answer. It was all round the villages at the time but they clearly couldn’t find anyone to describe it to the court. The truth is, it was an old bridge. The judge said the jury would have to decide whether it believed that bitter words spoken by one man could cause timbers in that bridge to weaken it to the point of collapse. Drawing here on the evidence of Bishop Scory.’
‘Why was Scory even called?’
‘Ah…’ Vaughan pushed himself back from the bridge. ‘Now that… is of interest in itself, ennit? Sounded like Legge’d been expecting Scory to paint a dark and damning picture of Wales as a stinking midden of sorcery. Instead we heard of an almost benign heathenism which, enmingled with the Christian faith, gave country folk their own practical religion.’
‘Which is true, to an extent, is it not?’
‘Aye, course it’s true.
But it en’t what you say to a court when you’re bent on getting a bad man hanged.’
‘A judge like Legge,’ I said, ‘never calls upon a witness without knowing in advance the nature of his testimony.’
‘Oh, he was heard to try and prod Scory back on to the path. And then ending his testimony at a stroke when it was clear he wasn’t gonner play ball… but too late. Clever, eh?’
‘You think Legge knew that Scory would be showing witchcraft in a different light… but pretended he didn’t?’
‘We had it all wrong. From the start. Assuming he was sent here to make sure of a conviction which a local judge might be affeared to preside over… when in fact he was sent to… make sure of an acquittal?’
‘But why?’
Well, that’s the big question, ennit? A few are saying it was done because the Queen seeks to hold favour with the Welsh.’
‘The victims were Welsh.’
‘Not as Welsh as the accused.’
‘It’s still against reason,’ I said. ‘Saving one man, only to make an enemy of a complete county? That makes not a whit of sense.’
‘Gotter be something we don’t know, ennit? See, even if Legge hadn’t brought half a jury with him, he could’ve turned it either way. He could have asked why there were no statements from Gwilym Davies’s fellow cattle-drovers to support his story of returning from London.’
‘And why were there not, do you suppose?’
‘Because all of them knew that if the case went against Gwilym they would have identified themselves as members of Plant Mat.’
I nodded.
‘Legge commented on the fact that neither the sheriff nor any of his constables were there when the ambush was laid. Wouldn’t it be normal, if a trap were laid, to include constables? The truth is that it’s a big patch and there en’t enough constables to send out night after night, week after week, when there’s no proof a raid’s to take place. Gethin could’ve been convicted. Easily. All the evidence was there, and all the focus of Legge’s questioning was upon conviction. Nobody was even called to say cattle had been stolen – well, none had, they’d been discovered in the act. Ah… cleverest piece of double-twist I ever saw… and the horses all saddled up in the street at the back.’
I stood at the edge of the bridge.
‘What about you? Where does this leave you?’
He shrugged.
‘I came down with Legge. I was his interpreter. His guide to the thinking of Radnorshire folk. And he used what I told him. Oh hell, aye. Used it to aim his final bolt at us. Right at the start, the prisoner – before he was shut up – told the court they gave him the name Prys Gethin, see?’
‘His captors? The sheriff?’
‘Who knows? But Legge, in his address to the jury, came back to that. Saying the name carried what he called an unholy glamour. Particularly in this county. As if it had been introduced deliberately to give the capture of a common thief a significance it wasn’t worth. As if it was all a piece of elaborate theatre to heighten the status of Presteigne as county town. In the west, see, they’ve ever resented it. Despising this place as an offcut from England.’
I could see the logic here. But why had Legge become such an enemy of this town?
‘You had no opportunity to question, if not Legge himself, then, one of the other attorneys?’
‘They’d cleared off within minutes of the verdict. The guards and jurymen split up into pairs and took off separately. Me…’ Vaughan drew a rough breath. ‘Two of the local boys had me up against a wall, would’ve beaten the shit out of me if a couple of Evan’s constables hadn’t come over, dragged them away.’
‘He’ll look a fool, too.’
‘The sheriff? Aye, nobody’ll come out of this unsullied. They think we’re all in it. And half of Wales here to see the humiliation. A man was even pointed out to me as Twm Siôn Cati, the famous robber of the west – and he got away with it, too. They’re laughing at us, Dr Dee. Mabbe I’ll take the coward’s way out on the morrow. See the kin at Hergest then ride back to London.’
I sighed.
‘Twm Siôn Cati is to marry my cousin. He’s a scholar now. I, um, try not to think about his past.’
He was silent a moment, then he smiled.
‘No offence meant.’
‘Nor taken. You believe Gethin was wholly guilty?’
‘I believe he was, Dr Dee, I’ve looked into the bastard’s eye. I believe there’s evil in him. But then… I’m a local boy.’
XXXIX
Property of the Abbey
GREEN OAK AND clean new brick were aged by crowding shadows, alleyways become caverns. Behind the gloss of commerce, this was an old town with old ways.
We walked back towards a quietened market place, where you could smell the pitch from the dead torches. No lights in the sheriff’s house. He’d be back in his farm, the other side of Radnor Forest, nursing his wounded reputation. Lights could yet be seen in the hills where the young men of Presteigne pursued a quarry they must have known they’d never find. I guessed it was become a game now, Prys Gethin already become a phantom.
I said, ‘How did he get out of the court unmolested?’
‘Mabbe the same way they got the judge out.’ Vaughan stared ahead to where the castle mound loomed grey in the moonlight. ‘There’s a yard at the back, with a gate to an alley… and back to the road out of town. You’d expect him to take one of the two roads west, but who knows? He’d be safer in England tonight.’
‘It deceives you, this town,’ I said. ‘So many alleyways, so many hidden houses.’
‘England. Welsh towns are simpler.’
‘Many of the houses and workshops were once owned, I’m told, by Wigmore Abbey.’
‘Much of the town was owned by the abbey,’ Vaughan said. ‘It was how a wool merchant like Bradshaw could buy into Presteigne so quickly. Grabbing the old abbey property from the Crown as soon after the dissolution as deals could be done.’
‘And is it possible,’ I said, ‘that deals may have been done before—?’
‘Dr Dee!’ A shout. A man approaching us briskly out of the shadows. ‘Forest, Dr Dee. John Forest.’
Dudley’s man, who we’d left behind in Hereford to intercept any significant messages from London. When the devil had he returned?
‘My master, Dr Dee… he’s not with you?’
‘No, I… haven’t seen him since this morning. I had business at my family’s home, I—’
I saw the serious, gaunt-faced Forest glancing warily at Vaughan, who at once held out a hand for the reins of my mare.
‘Take your horse to Albarn, Dr Dee?’
‘Mercy?’
‘The ostler at the Bull?’
‘Oh… yes… thank you.’
He’d yet go far, this boy. Knew when to fade into shadow. When we were alone, Forest placed a hand on his leather jerkin, at the breast.
‘I’ve a letter here – for my Lord Dudley. From Thomas Blount. His steward?’
‘I know.’
‘I’m given to understand that it…’ He hesitated. ‘That is, I think it’s of considerable import. In relation to the continuing inquiries into the death of Lady Dudley.’
‘You’ve been to the Bull?’
‘He’s not at the inn, although his horse is. No one there I spoke to can recall seeing Lord… Master Roberts. Not tonight, not this afternoon. I’ve since been all over the town.’
‘He was in the courtroom earlier.’
‘Then where in God’s name is he? God’s bones, Dr Dee, this is Lord Dudley— Master of the Horse.’ Forest smashed a fist into a palm. ‘I warned him – tried to – against this folly. Felt better when I saw all the armed men with the judge, but now…’
‘You know what’s happened here?’
‘Be hard not to. The place is collapsed into insanity! Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’
‘He’d be furious at the verdict,’ I said. ‘He’d want answers.’
‘You
think he went after the judge? With one of the hunting parties?’
I hadn’t thought of that. In normal circumstance, Dudley would have been leading them.
‘I don’t know.’ I spun around wildly. ‘He’s less driven by impulse these days, but… you said his horse was still stabled at the Bull?’
Of a sudden, none of this looked good.
‘Let’s go back to there,’ I said. ‘Make sure he hasn’t returned.’
Yet knowing he wouldn’t be there. Thinking now of Dudley telling me how the whore had implied she could put him in touch with Abbot Smart. When he’d told me, I hadn’t been too convinced. But that was before I’d spoken with Anna Ceddol and drawn certain conclusions about the abbey property.
It took not long to find the narrow house in the alley, dark workshops either side of it. Glass in its windows, the moon in the glass.
John Forest beat upon the door with a gloved fist, then again, louder and harder, until an upstairs window set into a small gable was pushed open with some difficulty.
‘Come back tomorrow!’
Her face was furrowed with shadows in the moonlight; she pulled hair out of her eyes.
‘We’re looking for Master Roberts,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Master Rob—’
‘Never heard of him. You have the wrong door.’
‘Tall,’ Forest said. ‘Not yet thirty years. A fine, handsome man such as you won’t see around here too often.’
‘Then I’d remember. Go away.’
You could hear the woman battling to close the window, its iron frame grinding.
‘Wait,’ I shouted. ‘Amy…’
No reply, but she left the window ajar.
‘Your name is Amy?’ I said.
‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Mistress Branwen Laetitia Swift. Ask anyone in this town.’
‘You told Master Roberts your name was Amy,’ I said, thoughtful now. ‘How came you by that name?’
‘I never came by it, for, as I’ve just told to you, it’s not my name. Now leave me alone. You’re both in your cups. Get off to your homes and sleep it off.’
