by Phil Rickman
‘I do believe that’s why she was murdered,’ Eleanor Borrow said.
XXVIII
The Great Unspoken
A PALE MOUND of lustrous candlefat had spread upon the boardtop betwixt us. Tallow. Smelled like a butcher’s slab.
I leaned back, hands as in prayer, thumbs pressed into my jaw, thinking: when does execution become murder?
An answer: when the deed has an expedience beyond justice. When the cords and strands of the law have themselves been stretched and twined to devise a death. Ask yourself: was not King Harry guilty of the murders of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard?
This is the great unspoken. The laws of man, held up as the laws of God, are just more tools in the practised hands of the powerful.
‘It would not be a good thing, mistress,’ I said softly, ‘for you to be known to talk like this.’
‘I seldom do. Unless in the presence of someone I trust –’ she hesitated – ‘in some odd way, as I would my own kin.’
I felt a light inside, as small and strange as a glow-worm.
‘Mistress Borrow, I’m—’
‘Oh, there are divers kinds of kinship. At college in Bath, I read some of your papers. Also met people who’d had dealings with you in Louvain, where they said all talk just ran free. I formed the impression that you were a man for whom knowledge and spirit were as one. And also –’ hands entwining in her lap – ‘also I know that you were once close to a death which… would’ve been worse than my mother’s.’
‘It doesn’t compare,’ I said gently. ‘Because it didn’t happen.’
I’d made known to her what Joe Monger had told me about the trial and execution of Cate Borrow, a woman who evidently had shared my own curiosity about the limits of the natural world. Was this what her daughter meant by kinship? I’d have to admit a certain disappointment if it was.
‘Tell me about Fyche,’ I said. ‘Why, after what was done to your mother, he yet seeks to damage you.’
‘No mystery there. He looks at me and he sees… her.’
‘You mean it’s a reminder of what he did?’
‘No, no!’ Shaking her head hard, hair swinging across her cheeks. ‘That would imply a sorrow over my mother’s death, and there is none. He sees another woman with the eyes of Cate Borrow and an education.’
‘A threat.’
‘Dr John, let me tell you about this man who was a monk at the abbey in the last days. Then had this land granted to him. And the money to farm it and build upon it.’
‘He inherited the land… from an uncle?’
‘An uncle!’
‘Did he not?’
‘It was gifted to him, I’d bet all I own on it.’
‘Gifted by whom?’
‘Who gifts land?’ Her body rocked. ‘Who gifts land?’
‘Mistress Borrow—’
‘Eleanor.’ Tossing back her hair. ‘Nel. Call me Nel. It takes up… far less time.’
Nel.
There was a sense of energy in the chamber. Moisture in the palms of my hands. And the thunder was coming so frequent now that it was like to being inside some vast drum of war. But not so loud as my own heart, the pounding of my blood.
‘Dr John…’
She was looking into my eyes, and I wanted to whisper to her, John, just John, and could not. That toss of her hair… dear God. I pulled my robe across my knees.
‘.…if this makes it any more plain,’ she said, ‘you should know that much of what is now Fyche’s land was once abbey property.’
‘You mean land which was taken by Thomas Cromwell on behalf of the King? Which, from then on, was the King’s to place in whoever’s hands he wished?’
We were upon dangerous ground.
‘My father knows more than I do,’ she said. ‘The house, Meadwell, was on the edge of the abbey grounds and had become derelict. And then… well, all that was known in the town was that, some years after the Dissolution of the abbey, this abandoned farmhouse was suddenly being rebuilt in grand style. And that Edmund Fyche, a former monk, was in residence there. And then he was Sir Edmund.’
‘Is all this widely known in the town?’
‘Well, it’s known, but makes no odds. Fyche, as well as the voice of the law, is seen as a benefactor. A poor harvest now, no-one starves, as many did after the abbey went. What you have now is more than half the people here thinking him a good presence… or the lesser of several possible evils.’
I nodded, could have named a dozen landowners, here and in Europe, who’d bought themselves popularity with which to turf over past misdemeanours.
But one question stood out here like a robed bishop in a brothel. ‘Why would the donor of the land have so favoured a former monk?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘You think your mother knew something of this? Knew what Fyche did for Cromwell and Fat Harry to earn such a lavish reward?’
A sudden apprehension enfolded me and I looked around. Stood up, went barefoot to the door and opened it and looked out, and then walked to the top of the stairs and looked down. In the well of the stairs, pale lighting flickered from doorway to doorway as if men were signalling to one another with lamps and blankets to cover the light.
But there was no-one about, and I came back and shut the door as the thunder broke, feeling embarrassed in my night-attire, wishing I was full-dressed. I pulled my robe across my bare knees again and sat back on the bed, in deepest shadow.
‘All quiet,’ I said. ‘All… under the sky.’
‘Good.’
Falling into an easy intimacy I’d never before felt with a woman. All the more rare, when you considered the hellish nature of what we were approaching.
‘So the Abbot of Glastonbury,’ I said, ‘is taken up to the top of the tor and hanged before the ruined church. And drawn and quartered. And, afterwards, one of his lowly monks becomes a wealthy man.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the crux of it.’
There must have been more lightning, more thunder, but for several minutes I was unaware of either.
‘You can have no idea what it was like then,’ Nel Borrow was saying. ‘I was only a child, but some of my earliest memories are of a pervading fear and misery – all these dull-clad, stooping figures, their eyes cast down. The skull still up on the gatehouse. Nobody was asking questions then, lest their own heads be struck off.’
I was thinking on it. Laying it all out. The charges against Abbot Whiting, as I recalled, were that he secreted items away when Cromwell’s men came, including a gold chalice. Also, that writings of his were found that were disloyal to the King. Critical of the King.
Found by whom? Who could say? But it would be a good deal less easy for an outsider to put his fingers on such items than someone who was resident at the abbey.
‘Fyche betrayed his abbot,’ I said.
‘It was more than betrayal.’
A pivotal role in the stitching-up of Whiting for theft and treason. Had to be, for Fyche to be rewarded with land and money and position, a small slice of the most succulent monastic pie in England.
Unless… unless this rare and lovely woman lied. Or was deluded by grief. Dear God, I didn’t want to think on either of these, but you learn that survival in this dark world means that all things, however painful, must needs be considered.
‘You might also ask yourself,’ she said, ‘why it was felt necessary to have the abbot killed.’
‘To make an example of him.’
‘Oh? For what purpose… at this stage of the game?’
She was right. Glastonbury had been among the last abbeys to be taken by the Crown. It was not as if there was a dangerous army of rebellious priests out there to quell by intimidation. The ceremonial slaughter of the abbot, the division and display of the body… it seemed gratuitous, even for the times.
To silence him, then? And then cover the deed with bloody spectacle?
Again – why? And yet… whilst I couldn’t doubt, from what she’d told m
e, that Fyche had indeed conspired in Whiting’s downfall, did it follow that he’d fashioned charges of witchcraft and murder against Cate Borrow merely to gag someone who suspected him of it? It must have been clear she was not alone in her suspicions, but no others had died… had they?
As if she’d seen my thoughts, Nel was half risen from her chair.
‘I’m aware that there’s more to know…’ She sat down again, shaking her head. ‘If we but knew where to look.’
I saw that she was shivering freely. She had no real evidence against Fyche and knew it, but the last thing I wanted was to appear to be turning away from her at such a time. Nevertheless, another matter must needs be approached – questions that Robert Dudley would be asking when, on the morrow, I would have to put all this before him.
‘When Fyche talks of witchcraft at the tor, sorcery and the sacrifice of new-born babes—’
‘He said that?’
Her eyes were wide.
‘Spoke of people massing like maggots on the hill,’ I said, ‘chattering and screaming to the moon. Babes with their throats cut.’
‘Christ help us all.’ She bent to the cloak folded on top of her doctor’s bag. ‘All right, yes, I know where this comes from. A babe was found there last year. Still-born. One babe. It happens. And yes, obviously there has been old worship to the sun and moon, if you can call it worship. Usually no more than superstitious pleas thrown out in poverty and desperation. But not blood rites, Dr John. Not any more. I swear to you.’
‘Except,’ I said, ‘in the abbey?’
The thunder now was like to a blind giant blundering around in the high street. Nel was shivering freely.
‘No, look…’ She pulled her cloak around her shoulders. ‘What happened to your servant… yes, that was terrible almost beyond belief, and more so because he seemed a most decent man. But all this talk of devil magic, sacrifice…’
‘It’s said that there’s no more effective place for the summoning of devils than a holy place in ruins.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Dr John, we’d know! I tell you, if there were people like that here, we’d know.’
‘We?’
‘There are those here’ – her eyes were cast away towards the window –
‘who would know.’
‘But none of them,’ I said, ‘is Justice of the Peace.’
Now she was tightening her fists.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know it’s nothing to do with you. This hounding of you… this is all madness.’
‘Not madness.’ A sudden fury. ‘Were you not listening to me? This is contrivance. Fyche spreads these lies – this smoke – only to cover something darker. He shows this picture of himself as a Godly man in combat with the forces of Satan, and at the core, I’ll swear… that’s where you’ll find the real evil.’
I didn’t understand. ‘Nel, we live in enlightened times – relatively. What happened to your mother, that’s not going to happen again. Burnings, even hangings, for heresy and witchcraft are to be avoided. That’s the policy now. The Queen’s ever mindful of the way such retribution gathered pace during the last reign. She won’t go down that dark road, and this is being made known throughout the realm.’
Nel Borrow opened her eyes as the thunder resounded, and I saw that her eyes were weeping and my heart strained in my breast.
‘We’ll get help for you!’ Hoarse with desperation. ‘I’m schooled in the law…’
She looked at me through the screen of her tears, and it was not scorn, but it was not faith either and who could blame her? I wanted to tell her that my companion was – potentially, at least – one of the most powerful men in the realm. That we were in a position to call down support from the very highest quarter.
Yet were we? I thought of Robert Dudley and his growing suspicions of the motives of Sir William Cecil. He has his own script. Thought of the Great Unspoken.
And then, worst of all, I thought of those surgeon’s knives all conveniently coated with gore, as if circumstance itself were bending to contrivance. I doubted that Nel Borrow even knew about the bloodied knives, not having seen her father since last night, and I did not think it would help to tell her.
‘You said there was a chamber made ready for you here,’ I said. ‘For the night.’
‘If I need it. But if I’m found there, it’ll come down on Cowdray. Don’t want that.’
She rose. I wanted to cry out to her: Stay here and let it all come down on me! But said nothing and dared not even stand, for fear that my basest desires would be insufficiently concealed by the threadbare robe across my knees.
She began to lace her cloak together at the neck.
‘Perhaps it were best if I left.’
‘Where will you go? They’ll be watching your father’s house.’
‘Joan Tyrre will take me in. It’s no more than a hovel, but better than a dungeon.
‘It’s late. She’ll be abed.’
‘Oh, no.’ Nel smiled. ‘Not tonight, Dr John. Not in a storm. Joan will be in her doorway looking out over the tor… watching for the King of Faerie and his hounds.’
‘The Wild Hunt?’
Remembering my tad terrifying me as a child with his tales of the Hounds of Annwn. The faerie king and his white hounds with red ears, reputed to ride the storm in search of lost souls.
Nel said, ‘Joan has ever hoped that one stormy night he’ll take her to his hall, to be his earthly bride.’
She laughed, the crossing of her teeth disclosed like a confidence as she began to draw up her hood.
‘Don’t go,’ I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
I said, ‘Stay here.’
She looked up at the ceiling ’twixt the oaken beams, her half-smile rueful now.
‘It was kindly of Cowdray to offer, but I’d rather not. The attic chamber here…’
‘Is probably cold and damp. However—’
‘And most severely disturbed. Or so they used to say, the pilgrims and the travellers. Doors which go banging in the night when there’s no wind. A babe’s whimpers. Boards that creak as if someone walks across them, though there’s no-one there.’
‘Haunted?’
‘So ’tis said.’
I must have thought on this for all of a second.
‘Then you should stay here in this chamber,’ I said, ‘and I shall see out the night up there.’
XXIX
The Storm
THE WALL WAS lit white again, and new thunder seemed to break before it had faded into shadow, huge and exultant in its violence and loud enough to be directly above us.
Maybe in the attic. Always one floor beyond me, these manifestations of the spiritual. It was ever thus. I felt like a clown, and all of it was apparent, all my folly lit by the unsparing sky.
‘And you wouldn’t be afraid,’ she said, ‘to pass the night up there all alone?’
‘My life’s experience tells me that ghosts tend to avoid me.’
She looked at me, with her hands hidden inside her cloak and her doctor’s bag at her feet. The hood had fallen away and her head was tilted to one side, as if inspecting some rarity.
‘Perchance, because you try too hard to know them?’
In my head, Dudley’s voice: I think if I were a ghost, the very last man on earth I’d want appear before would be John Dee.
‘It’s rather,’ I said sadly, ‘because I’m a dull and bookish man who has not the sight.’
Standing up at last, for the shame of it had diminished me. I recalled Dudley sprawled in his barge: is not John Dee the greatest adventurer of them all? A man prepared… to venture beyond this world!
The unwaxed truth was that I was a sham, a hollow man with a big library, and the only time Dudley had spoken with any real honesty was when, in faking my arrest, he’d hissed, Take this fucking impostor away!
‘There,’ I said, wearied. ‘The secret’s out. A man oft-times accused of conjuring who can’t even see what he’s supposed to have conju
red. Others might be witness to the seepage ’twixt spheres. Not me.’
I suppose it was the first time I’d disclosed this directly to anyone and, in the silence which followed, I regretted it. Although doubtless mumbled miserably, it had sounded to my ears like strident organ chords swelled with bitterness.
‘Tush, Dr John.’
Nel Borrow’s head was still atilt. She made a small, soft bud of her lips. It might be pity or it might be mockery, neither of these much to be desired. She leaned back against my bed.
‘Remember when you first came to the tor and set foot on the top…’
‘I fell over.’
‘But if I’d said to you, Oh, have a care, for you might fall over due to the strange force of the place… then you might not have fallen over.’
I said nothing.
‘You think too much. Weighing every new thing against all the volume of knowledge you hold in your head. In fact, it might even be said that you know too much.’
‘Mistress, most of the time, I think I know not half enough. If you’re saying that in order to see and feel what’s hidden I must needs forget myself and all that I’ve learned—?’
‘Forget yourself? No. It’s probably necessary that you should remember yourself.’
‘I don’t understand.’
And, God help me, I didn’t.
Light flared like laughter on the wall.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘’tis something I find hard to achieve myself for longer than a few moments. To grow quiet inside and become aware of my thoughts and my feelings… but to be no longer one with these earthly things. To become separate. To stand apart from who I think I am. In such a state… things may be received. So they say.’
‘Who say? Where did you learn of this?’
‘There are still a few people who come here on pilgrimage.’
‘What I mean is… this is not Christian, is it?’
A cautious observation, her reply less so, as the thunder cracked. But the air betwixt us was calm. She placed her palms together.
‘Did I say Christian pilgrimage?’
‘Go on.’
