Scarcely had I crossed the threshold when the mere sight of the most ancient books took my mind with an awe and stupor of some kind, and for that reason I stopped in my tracks…
And it was all there. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin. Records of St Patrick who was fabled to have spent time in Glastonbury. Had not Leland been dead these seven years or more, I should have sought him out, for I knew of his fascination with Arthurian matters and my own twin callings of astrology and alchemy. And yes, it made sense that this oldest and wealthiest of abbeys should possess unrivalled accounts of the wisdom of the ages.
Awe and stupor. Christ, I knew this feeling so well, and the tingle it aroused in me felt near to sinful. What if elements of this library yet survived in the town?
Another reason, beyond the bones of Arthur, to venture there.
I stilled my heart through a steadying of breath and laid my head upon an arm on the boardtop, all thoughts calmed now by a quiet joy, choosing not to dwell on the fact that, for several years before his death, John Leland had been mad.
A barn owl shrilled close to the window, and I lifted my head into air that seemed scented, for a moment, with summer roses.
A candle guttering.
Must have fallen asleep across the board.
And dreamed. For some time now, I’ve kept diaries of my dreams to look back on, years hence, to see what they might have foretold, what patterns they revealed.
I would set down no record, however, of this one, having dreamed of fair-haired Catherine Meadows, all naked in my arms in her pallet; who, when I gently brushed aside her hair, had become…
I stared, wide-eyed, into the frail flame, horrified at the pressure within my hose. Dear God… in my arms in all her majesty? Two hours in the dangerous company of Robert Dudley, and what am I become?
Shook myself, tried to smile. Deciding that my phantasy woman had only turned into the Queen because the Queen, more than any woman, was so far beyond the likes of me. As far beyond as Guinevere was to Merlin. And therefore, in my sorry state, safe to entertain in dream.
One of the cats was brushing my ankles and in my head the Queen still laughed, punching my arm, ginger curls on white forehead.
Are you yet equipped to call upon the angels, John?
Only in my imagination, shaped by the reading of a thousand books and manuscripts, the absorption of others’ thoughts, others’ ideas, others’ divine inspiration. Equipped, in truth, for little. I wished that Dudley had bothered to snatch a copy of the peacock man’s pamphlet so that I might at least know what visions I was supposed to be having.
The last log had died in the fireplace, and the room was as cold as a dungeon. Was a sudden cold not an indication of the impending appearance of an unquiet spirit?
Only in my dreams. Some were endowed with abilities like to the angels and some could see the dead. But not me.
I brought the base of my left fist down on the board to scare away the numbness in the arm on which I’d lain my head and to fragment the dangerous pictures lodged therein.
Dudley was right.
If the bones of Arthur were to be found upon the Isle of Avalon, then we must find them.
VIII
Without the Walls
Once you’ve smelled roasting flesh – human meat – you never forget it.
Oh, I’ve seen men burn. Held there by the frenzy of the crowd when all I wanted was to be far away. Seen the hideous moment of hell’s halo, when the hair catches frizzling fire and the mob’s fever explodes with a great bull-roar and a score of pickpockets make their move.
But even the sight of that horror has faded in the mind’s eye before the smell departs the nostrils… a smell of throat-searing sweetness which seemed to find me again this day, as I was shown in by one of the canons.
Shown not, this time, to the bishop’s sumptuous receiving room, but to a small, stone-walled chamber down amongst the servants’ quarters at his East London palace.
‘Welcome,’ Bonner said, ‘to my cell.’
He’d always laughed a lot, this roly-poly priest, who’d sent so many to the stake in the darkest of Mary’s days. Once a lawyer, a clever man, a worldly man, now… what?
There was a single high, barred window, a low and narrow bed – little more than a pallet. A chest with a ewer and looking glass. A bookshelf high on the wall bearing maybe twenty volumes. A chair and board, a jug and a stoneware cup, and the sweetness I could smell… was probably wine.
He gestured me to the only chair, lowering himself to a corner of his bed. Clad this day like to a friar in humble brown habit, and yet the girdle of his robe had cloth-of-gold strands within it which drew the light betwixt the iron bars.
‘What’s this place, Ned?’
‘Purgatory!’ A great fart of laughter exploding out of him. ‘Preparation, my boy. Getting into practice.’
‘But you-’
‘Marshalsea, I gather. I’ve been before. Could be worse. Could be the Fleet.’
‘Why don’t you just swear the oath? You’re no enthusiast for Rome.’
‘No, indeed,’ Bonner said.
‘And the Queen… you don’t dislike her, do you?’
‘Admire her enormously, John.’
‘And she’s made her concession. She’s not head of the Church of England, merely its supreme governor. There’s no persecution, Catholics can still worship, there are private masses in country houses and nobody’s been executed for it since she’s been Qu-’
‘Get thee behind me Satan!’
Bonner bouncing to his feet, pudgy forefinger outstretched. Then he plopped down again, dissolving into giggles and looking around his simulation of a cell with something approximating to a perverse delight. I wondered, for a moment, if perchance he was dying of some malady and knew it, yet he appeared in his usual rude health.
‘So…’ He beamed. ‘Your message says you’re come to speak with me about Queen Mary and King Arthur.’
‘I am.’
Told him about my mission to Glastonbury. Told him nearly the whole of it, more than I’d told my own mother.
How could I confide in him thus, you ask? This man who, as the Catholic Bishop of London, had threatened and bullied and brow-beaten and choked the city’s air with the greasy smoke of religion gone bad, leaving what once had been men in small piles of twitching, blackened limbs. How could I trust this monster? God help me, I don’t know. Yet trust him I did.
When I’d finished, Bonner sat there nodding slowly, hands placidly enfolded across his not-inconsiderable gut.
‘Tell me,’ he said at last. ‘Young Dudley. Is it true he’s dicking the Queen?’
‘I’ve never asked,’ I said.
‘No.’ Bonner smiled, with affection. ‘You are the only man in the realm who, yet being close to the boy, would not ask.’
He observed me for a few moments, then threw up his hands.
‘All right, yes, there was a petition to Mary. Not calling for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, as such, merely asking for the site and what remained of the buildings to be handed over to a group of monks. Therefore it might have been done at almost no expense… and I believe it had the support of more than one bishop, as well as many of the gentle-folk of Somersetshire, if only because it would have planted the seeds of a recovery.’
‘So why didn’t Mary-?’
‘Hard to say, John. Maybe the Privy Council was against it. Or maybe if Mary had lived longer it might’ve happened. After all, the place was a treasure house of saintly remains, not all lifted by Cromwell, and that’s not something which someone as devout as Mary could easily overlook.’
‘Was mention made of the bones of Arthur?’
Bonner’s eyes widened.
‘If it was, then someone was not thinking.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The bones of even a Celtic saint would be holy relics. Was Arthur a saint?’
‘Better than that,’ I said, ‘in the eyes of some.’
‘No, no, no. ’ His head shaking. ‘What does Arthur represent but… magic… enchantment? The king who does not die but waits in some misty spiritual realm until he shall be summoned? Ferried in a barge to Avalon by beautiful black-clad totties? A fine legend for Henry Tudor, when he needed to involve the Welsh, but can you not see poor little Mary shuddering?’ Bonner leaning forward, hissing. ‘The S-word, John, the S-word.’