The Bones of Avalon

by Phil Rickman

‘But you obviously put each one before your masters at court. There must needs be scrutiny of them prior to publication… surely?’

  He took a patient breath.

  ‘Dr Dee,’ he said. ‘I know not how you came to be here this evening, but I’m happy to greet you as a fellow man of science… and would positively relish a discussion with you on our common ground – astrology, alchemical texts, meditation, all matters scientific. The first rule, however, must be that… the matters of state, they are not for us.’

  I found this sentiment disingenuous in the extreme but said nothing.

  ‘Come.’ He extended an arm. ‘Rest awhile. We’ll not be disturbed, I promise. No-one comes down here at night but me.’

  There was a stone seat projecting from the wall to the side of the altar. I lowered myself into it. Just taking the weight off my feet brought on a quivering drowsiness which made me glad of the cold. Nostradamus fitted himself into a wooden chair with arms and pulled it up opposite me. He placed his hands in his lap.

  ‘It offends me, you know, that – from what I hear – your talents are regarded less well in your native country than are mine in France. As you suggested… a sad indictment of England’s values.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘that our talents are identical.’

  He shrugged, opened out his hands, and I reminded myself that his apparel was misleading, maybe deliberately so. This was not, nor had ever been, a man in holy office.

  ‘Why are you really here?’ I said.

  ‘A question most reasonable. Which you answered yourself. A fascination with these islands. The portals to the past, they are open here in ways which are not so apparent in most of Europe. This place in particular… has a sense of continuity denied to us. And, it appears, a relationship with the cosmos which elsewhere… is long-lost.’

  ‘Ah.’ Now I was no longer on the wing. ‘You mean the Zodiac.’

  ‘My God…’ He spread his arms wide. ‘When I heard of that…’

  ‘How long since you heard of it?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘And how came you by the knowledge?’

  ‘Aha!’ The smiling Nostradamus wagging an admonitory forefinger. ‘How came you by the knowledge of it, Dr Dee?’

  So he knew. I must have shown my discomfort, for he laughed.

  ‘But what’s to be done with the thing, that’s the biggest question. I am perfectly ready to accept that the celestial Zodiac is refashioned, by whatever means, on the ground, but what are we to make of it?’

  He didn’t know either, then. Or was he testing me?

  I said slowly, ‘If it were designed by God, it’s miraculous. If by man, then it shows that civilisations far more advanced than ours once lived – as you’ve suggested – in these islands.’

  ‘Excellent thinking.’ Nostradamus leaned forward, alarmingly squeezing my arm, the way an uncle would. ‘You’re a man of perception, Dr Dee. Was this Merlin’s secret? What are your thoughts?’

  I sensed, at last, a curiosity. I must not lose this advantage. It was clear now that neither Cate Borrow nor John Leland had discovered the final secret – how the terrestrial Zodiac might be employed – which Abbot Whiting may well have died without passing on. If there was no-one alive who knew the key, it would tax all our skills for years to come.

  ‘My thoughts,’ I said carefully, ‘are, as yet, incomplete. Being more concerned, at this time, with the matter of Arthur.’

  ‘Oh. Does he not yet live, as the Britons believe?’ Nostradamus folded his arms, looking down at them for a moment, considering, then raising his head with a sly smile. ‘Does he not live as the spirit of the Tudor line? Tut!’ Lightly smacking his own hand. ‘I break my own rule about avoiding matters of state.’

  ‘I’d guess in your position they’d be near impossible to avoid.’

  No reply.

  ‘The matter of Arthur,’ I said, ‘and of Avalon. In seeking to… understand the Tudor line’s ancient right to the throne of England and Wales, certain elements within the French court must surely have realised that the role of Glastonbury must needs be considered.’

  ‘You flatter your country, Dr Dee.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Dr de Nostradame. Consider your own country. Until such time as the boy François is deemed fit to rule, France is protected by the Guise family, whose deepest desire is to see its daughter Mary, the Scot, become Queen of England.’

  ‘As is her right. As the Pope himself—’

  ‘Ah.… the Pope. There lies the crux of the problem. England being once again free of Rome. Indeed… almost happily free.’

  ‘You delude yourself.’

  ‘You don’t live here. Consider the blood-letting which followed King Harry’s division from Rome. And consider the even worse bloodletting… the fire and blood of Mary Tudor’s reign, when the Pope was invited back. When Mary was gone, England was sick to its heart of religious persecution and the new Queen saw that. Had the vision to realise that Protestants and Catholics could live together, if not in harmony, at least in relative peace…’

  ‘In chaos, my friend! This sorrowful town, with all its witches and quackery, it is England in microcosm. London not much better. Do they not say Parker had virtually to be blackmailed into accepting Canterbury?’

  ‘The fact remains that in the year or so since Elizabeth became Queen, not one man or woman has been executed for religious belief.’ I opened my hand to the altar. ‘Look at us. Here we are, sitting in a Catholic chapel, with everything to hand for a Mass. There are chapels like it in houses throughout the country. Are they raided? Are they sacked and ruined?’

  ‘My good friend—’

  ‘And that’s the problem for the Pope, isn’t it? And for France… France is never sated. And with Elizabeth as Queen, its acquisition of England begins to look highy unlikely. The longed-for Catholic rebellion to remove Elizabeth and put Mary of Guise on the throne – where will that come from now? People enjoy the peace, even most Catholics. Why have most of the bishops sworn the Oath of Supremacy?’

  ‘Only the corrupt ones.’

  ‘And, of course, the Queen’s only twenty-six years old. She could be Queen for another half century. France… the Guises… the Pope… you’re all damned. Unless…’

  His face was without expression.

  Unless…

  Slowly, it was coming together.

  A Catholic chapel in the cellars of Meadwell gave the lie to Fyche’s assertion that every man here has put papacy well behind him and is ready to swear allegiance to the Queen.

  Quite the reverse. Fyche had been playing a double game from the beginning. Appearing to change sides at the Reformation, having betrayed his abbot to Cromwell in return for land and money, a knighthood and the status of Justice of the Peace. A betrayal viewed, maybe, as a necessary sacrifice, in the best long-term interests of the Roman Church.

  Not that Catholicism was likely to be closest to the heart of Fyche, from what I knew of him. He’d been a bursar, an administrator of accounts, had expected to become the next abbot… in effect, the supreme lord of Glastonbury and all points west, with limitless riches.

  Had he been led to believe that this, or something similar, could still happen? I thought of the long room full of books, furniture, minor treasures – the abbey in storage. Thought of how Cowdray, on our first night here, had told us of the severe penalties now imposed by Fyche on anyone caught stealing stone from the ruins.

  The abbey had not, as expected, been restored by Mary Tudor. But it might be under the sovereignty of Mary Queen of Scots, with all the wealth of France behind her.

  What had Fyche been promised in return for his assistance in the early removal of the Queen of England?

  How extensive was the part in this of Nostradamus?

  And why – in sudden discomfort, I glanced over my shoulder – was he still looking disturbingly at peace with himself?

  LIV

  A Cold Inversion

  OF COURSE, HE had no
cause to explain anything to me. Unlike poor Benlow, he wasn’t even dying.

  I’d need to tempt him, and there was, as far as I could see, only one jewel I could offer him: the key to the mysteries of the round table, the Glastonbury Zodiac. And I didn’t have it.

  Not that he knew that.

  ‘Who comes here for the Mass?’ I asked him.

  ‘If you wish me to name anyone, I shall… decline.’

  ‘Not the rabble, I imagine. Only men of influence. Who might also attend… meetings. Maybe with guests from Europe? Leading theologians? Men of state? Not forgetting renowned prophets and forecasters of world affairs.’

  Nostradamus smiled

  ‘You journeyed to Glastonbury yourself,’ I said, ‘in the hope of deciphering the secret at the heart of Leland’s notes?’

  He toyed with the girdle of his robe, but I could feel the heat of his mind’s engine. There was only one way he could have got hold of Leland’s notes, so recently reburied.

  ‘Presumably, Matthew Borrow sent you the notebook. Having, despite his many skills, been unable to extract any sense from it.’

  ‘No more than could Leland,’ Nostradamus said.

  Probably true. He’d left his notes to Cate in the hope that she might one day make something meaningful of them.

  How had Leland himself found out about it originally? Maybe from one of the monks – just a whisper of it, on one of his first visits to Somersetshire, in the ’30s, in search of antiquities and Arthur. When at last he’d found time to investigate it, he’d returned. Most of the monks having gone by then, but Cate Borrow had still been around and he’d gone to her. I’m my own man now.

  Had Cate found out more? Had she ever got close to the real meaning and intentions of the Zodiac? We would probably never know. She hadn’t had much time, anyway, between receiving the notebook long after Leland’s death and her own arrest for witchcraft and murder.

  After which the book had fallen, inevitably, into Borrow’s hands. Borrow would have seen the possible significance and alerted either his masters or Nostradamus himself. How long had it taken Michel de Nostradame, with the help of a translator, to decipher Leland’s notes? Had he discovered the whereabouts of the bones of Arthur buried by the last faithful monks of Glastonbury? Had the bones of Arthur been buried in Ursa Minor? If so, where were they now? On their way to France?

  It was clear that Nostradamus, with his fascination for ancient remains, had come to Glastonbury to investigate the Zodiac. Returning the notebook to Borrow? Worthless, Borrow had said to Dudley and me. Occultism. Knowing how rapidly the last of these words might persuade me to approach the unspeakable – taking the bait, waking into the snare. If the journey to Arthur’s grave had been less of a perilous and harrowing quest we’d be far more likely to question what we’d found.

  Matthew Borrow was a cunning man.

  ‘When were you at Montpellier?’ I said. ‘May I ask?’

  Nostradamus shrugged.

  ‘Around 1529. I was twenty-six.’

  ‘Would’ve taken him under your wing then. The young Matthew Borrow.’

  ‘He was quite capable of looking after himself, Dr Dee. A Jesuit education does that for one.’

  I gripped the stone seat hard.

  Hell.

  A Jesuit. The steel in the blade of the Catholic Church.

  Tried not even to blink, only nodded, as if I’d known of this already.

  It at once rang true. The town thought him an unbeliever, a man who went to church only to avoid the fines. Well, safer to be assumed an atheist than a cutting-edge Catholic. The target of Matthew Borrow’s quiet venom would, in his own mind, be the Protestant Church. When the expulsion from this country of the papacy itself comes through a rising not of the spirit… but a man’s cock…

  It also explained his cruelty. The callousness of the zealot with a Jesuit’s cold intelligence and almost mystical intuition.

  I don’t think I smiled.

  ‘Was it you who suggested at the French court that he’d make a perfect secret agent in the town of his birth?’

  No reaction. But I could see the reason for it. Fyche had established Meadwell, as a possible hub of Catholic rebellion. But how far could the French trust him? François of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, would have wanted their own man in Avalon.

  ‘I wondered what he receives for his services to France – maybe an income and the promise of land and a title when the Queen of Scots and Queen of France is also Queen of England.’

  ‘Dr Dee…’ Nostradamus scowled. ‘I’ve been tolerant of your unceasing—’

  ‘One more question… before I offer you, in the interests of science, my theory of at least one use for the Glastonbury Zodiac. What do you know of wool-sorters’ disease?’

  It could have been Borrow himself who’d thought of using wool-sorters’, the disease on which he was now an expert. Or maybe some spy-master close to the French court or the Guise family, some ambitious young Walsingham, had seen that notebook and thought how it might be used.

  But had Nostradamus really known nothing of this?

  ‘As a doctor, you tended plague victims?’

  I was thinking of Aix-en-Provence, fifteen or so years ago. So ravaged by the plague that scores of houses were abandoned, churches closed, graveyards overflowing. Into this hell, Nostradamus, according to an account I’d received, had entered as a physician. A brave thing.

  ‘An experience most harrowing,’ he said. ‘There was, in truth, little I or anyone could do, except to aid the healthy in their efforts to remain free of contagion. Still… good for one’s immortal soul, is it not, to risk death in such a cause? Forgive me, but whether the disease of the wool-sorters can be compared…’

  ‘There’s a man dying of it in the town. Maybe dead by now.’

  ‘It happens. Especially in areas such as this.’

  ‘Do you know how it’s spread?’

  ‘I believe through the meat and skins of animals dead of it.’

  ‘Oft-times long after their deaths?’

  ‘It is as well to bury them deep.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is your interest, Dr Dee?’

  I took a breath and repeated to him the third and now most chilling line in his Elizabeth quatrain.

  ‘Jusqu’ele beisera les os du roi des Isles Britanniques.’

  Sat back against the stone. He appeared unmoved.

  I said, ‘Does that mean physically to kiss the bones?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You composed it.’

  ‘No, my friend, God composed it.’

  ‘’God composes in rhyme and metre?’

  One of the altar candles went out. A draught from somewhere.

  ‘See?’ Nostradamus said. ‘See how He responds to your impudence?’

  He picked up the smoking candle and relit it from its neighbour.

  However…’ Placing his hands on his knees and levering his back straight. ‘I repeat to you… a physician only heals.’

  ‘Yet you know which road I’m on.’

  ‘No, Dr Dee, I confess to bewilderment.’

  ‘And I admit to fury, because someone seeks to make me part of a plot to destroy my Queen.’

  I tried to tell him. He made the hand-behind-the-ear motions, shook his head violently.

  ‘You leave me far behind again, Dr Dee.’

  I leaned toward him.

  ‘The bones which it’s intended should be kissed… are laid upon the fleece of a ewe dead of wool-sorters’ disease. The man charged with laying the bones on the fleece is become its first victim. A plot, of cold complexity, to kill the Queen.’

  It was the first time I’d spoken aloud of this: a journey to enlightenment contrived as a difficult and perilous quest, involving even a journey to the underworld – grave dirt and distress.

  But why had the arcane knowledge of the Zodiac been made attainable… Been given away? Maybe the answer was supplied by Nostradamus himse
lf when he’d demanded, But what’s to be done with the thing? Nobody knew. It was a wonder, but an enigma and maybe always would remain so.

  And, as such, had been found expendable in what was considered to be a greater cause: the death of Queen Elizabeth just over a year after her coronation.

  Would the Queen have kissed the bones?

  Oh, indeed.

  Without a doubt.

  Before a breathless crowd of onlookers, smiling with a gracious pride as she bent her noble head to the recently shattered brainbox of Big Jamey Hawkes.

  ‘You truly think,’ Michel de Nostradame said, ‘that I journeyed here to supervise the murder of your Queen?’

  ‘You think that it wouldn’t cause considerable rejoicing amongst your patrons at the French court? In France, is not Queen Elizabeth seen as satanic? How many of your forecasts have named Elizabeth as the worst of women? Flawed parentage.’

  ‘I lose count. It comes from God. I spend long hours alone, in vigils deep and silent, opening my heart to the divine spirit and, at some point… am granted entry into what you would call the mist of perceiving.’

  I snatched a candlestick from the altar and held the light close to his face and stared into his deep-lidded eyes. He was calmness itself, as if he might drift at any moment into his prophetic mist. I leaned into his face. I was beyond fatigue, my body felt weightless and my hand shook, and the candle went out.

  ‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘Where’s Borrow?’

  His eyes remained benign, untroubled.

  ‘Matthew? Not here.’

  I looked around me. The quietness of Meadwell had seemed an advantage when I was first here. Now the wrongness of it hit me like a blow to the heart.

  ‘Why is it nobody’s here but you?’

  ‘Because they’re all out on the hill,’ Nostradamus said. ‘Me – I’ve seen too much death.’

  ‘Hill?’

  ‘But not Matthew, of course,’ he said. ‘Surely no-one, even in England, would compel a man to attend the hanging of his daughter.’