He stopped.
‘In the matter of witchcraft?’ I said.
Fyche turned, remaining a good twenty yards away, fingering his jaw, considering. Then he approached slowly, until he stood before me again.
‘Dr John, you might think me a harsh man. But our roles in life alter, according to the will of God. Until the Dissolution of the abbey, I was a monk. Now I’m the father of two sons. A landowner. A Justice of the Peace. The words justice and peace being at the very heart of God’s teaching.’ He paused for a moment. ‘The main evidence against Eleanor Borrow would be of birth and circumstance.’
I waited. The ruin of the church tower shimmered in the lightening mist, spectral. As if it were of the mist. Or made of glass.
‘I was obliged,’ Fyche said, ‘to hang her mother.’
Yes, I could have taken this further, but that would have meant pursuing him, maybe revealing too much. I’m not good at this.
I walked away, slowly.
At first.
Until I was out of sight of Fyche and the monks, and then there was a green-grey blurring of turf and sky as I went stumbling in a frenzy down the devil’s hill, eyes flicking this way, that way, ignoring the path, tripping twice before ground level, then tumbling over the stile to the holy well, wood-splinters piercing the soft, white flesh of my bookman’s hands.
Calling out for her, an owl-screech in my head yet still deafening in its intensity.
Eleanor!
And even once…
Nel…
No-one there. Only the powerful hiss of the blood water racing through the veins of the sacred earth.
’Tis certain true to say that some men and women here are driven very speedily into madness.
How speedily? Two hours? Three hours? Or had whole weeks and months gone by since I first walked with her – as with men and women captured and taken into the faerie world?
Now I was falling, near-sobbing, to the ground, splashing the blood-water on my face, into my eyes.
Jesu, what am I become?
XVI
Love the Dead
No bones were visible within the shop, only raw skin, and I began to wonder if I were tricked.
The premises were in a mean and stinking alley off what was called Magdalene Street, opposite the abbey gatehouse. The sky was darkening now, and swollen like a vast bladder, with unshed rain.
Inside the shop, however, all was pale and soft: everywhere, the skins and fleeces of sheep, some made into rough garments and bulky hats.
And could this truly be Benlow the bone-man?
I’d imagined him old and shrivelled, clad in rags, but this man was no more than my own age. Tall, fair-haired and fresh-faced, and his apparel was of a quality far finer than mine and almost certainly above his station – the silver brooch in his hat, that fashionable slash in his doublet, red as a fresh wound.
He bowed and made gesture toward an array of garments hanging from hooks along one wall.
‘Fleece cloak, my lord?’
‘Fleece-?’
‘You don’t want to be took in by this fine weather. ’Twill turn biting cold by the week’s end, that’s what all the shepherds say, and nobody knows the weather better than a shepherd.’
‘I already, um, have a cloak,’ I said.
‘Fleeced?’
‘Well-’
‘Thought not!’ He bounced upon his toes, his tone light and soft as down-feathers. ‘I’m guessing, my lord, that you ain’t from these parts. London, am I right? Not been here long?’
‘Not yet one day.’
Jesu, it felt like a month.
‘Thought I knew not your face! Well, let me tell you, my lord, the winters in London they don’t compare – they do not compare – with what it’s like out here when the snow comes. And it will come again, before spring, sure as I’m standing here. Don’t mean to put fear into you, but this is God’s absolute truth – without a fleece about your shoulders, my lord, you may die. Ask anybody.’
Eyeing me, now, from head to boots, as if estimating what size coffin I’d require. His accent was more London than the west, which maybe explained why Cowdray had been so quick to finger him to me.
I was silent for a moment, and then looked him in the eyes.
‘No man need fear the cold, ‘ I said calmly, ‘if he has the love of God in his heart.’
‘Ah.’ His face turned at once solemn. ‘How true. How very true that is, my lord.’
‘You’re Master Benlow?’
‘So my mother tells me.’
‘Well, I’m here with a friend.’
‘A friend.. I see. ’
‘We’ve ridden for many days. My friend -’ my voice falling away – ‘is ill.’
‘Oh.’
‘ Sorely ill.’
‘That saddens me, my lord, it truly does.’
‘And, since his arrival, is become worse.’
‘Oh, that is bad news.’ He folded his arms. ‘Because, you know, they say that however strong a man’s faith be…’
‘Sometimes prayer alone is not sufficient.’
‘I’ve heard that, too.’
I was, as you know, not much good at this, but kept step with him.
‘We came here,’ I said, ‘having been told of… miracles?’
He leaned back at last, arms folded, lips pursed at an angle.
‘Been many of those, true enough. Glaston be famous the world over for its miracles. The mark of the Saviour’s been upon this town since He walked these hills as a boy and his uncle, old Joe Mathea, laid down the first stones for the abbey, but I expect you know that.’
I nodded. ‘Once, a true pilgrim might have gone to the abbey and prayed over the relics of saints. All the hundreds of saints buried there.’
‘All gone now.’
I took breath, met his slanting gaze.
‘ All gone?’
‘Gone from the abbey,’ he said.
‘But not necessarily from…’ I’d run out of byways and subtlety. ‘Master Benlow, my friend is a man of considerable wealth.’
‘Where’s he lie, my lord?’
‘At the George.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘There is a man lying at the George, I’ve heard that. They thought it was the plague.’
‘We don’t believe it to be the plague,’ I said. ‘But he’s very weak, all the same.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘two women were cured of the plague after a visit to St Joe’s shrine. Sure as I stand before you. You knew of that?’
‘Where is… the shrine?’
To my knowledge, there was no evidence at all that Joseph of Arimathea had ever set foot in Glastonbury, never mind been buried here… only lustrous legend.
‘Ah!’ Benlow tapped his lips. ‘Not many know that, and those that do keeps silent.’
‘And are you one of them, Master Benlow?’
‘The Vicar of Wells, now,’ Benlow said. ‘ He couldn’t walk proper and he comes limping over here one day and he was cured in no time at all! And a boy – no word of a lie – was carried in stone dead and was, there and then, raised. Oh, your friend, he’s come to the right place.’
‘Yes.’
‘It just ain’t so easy no more… to find a bone to kiss.’
This was the first mention of bone. I told him we’d thought to take something home with us, some small, blessed relic that might be kept in our own church… secretly, of course.
‘Oh, must be secret, my lord. Must!’ He peered beyond me toward the door. ‘What did you have in mind? A splinter from the true cross? Bottle of water poured from the Holy Grail itself? Or… a fragment…’
‘A fragment?’
‘A piece’ – he leaned close, his voice a wisp upon the air – ‘ a shard of sainted skeleton. ’
I waited a moment, lest I be thought too eager.
‘How much?’
‘Well now, that would depend upon the size of it… and the eminence of the saint.’
‘Who was the most eminent here?’
His eyes went still. I sensed his greed.
‘I am,’ I said, ‘a man of discretion.’
‘Follow me then,’ he said, ‘my lord.’
In the windowless storehouse behind the shop, a single candle burned from a ledge, and the smell of new fleece was overlaid by the almost suffocating scent of incense around the foot of a ladder to the loft.