‘Burning them all,’ Benlow said. ‘Go out in light.’
The whole cellar was flickering white-gold. Somewhere, a forbidden incense burned, and the air was all sickly-sweet as if the bones themselves, as was sometimes said of saintly relics, were become fragrant.
‘I wanted you to take me to London,’ Benlow said. ‘I was going to ask you. Before you set that old bitch on me.’
Sitting on his bench in a fine gold-hued doublet and his soft velvet hat. Cradling what he said was the skull of King Edgar, the good Saxon. Light and shadows shivering all around him, and it was as if we were taken into the astral sphere where nothing was solid.
‘How could I trust you,’ I said. ‘Knowing that your trade was founded on lies.’
‘No lies no more, my lord. Silence, maybe, but no lies.’
‘Silence helps no-one.’
‘No-one helps me.’
‘Do some good.’
‘What is good?’ He leaned out from the bench. ‘You tell me what is good. You can’t! No-one knows no more! To which God do I commend my soul? Do I cry to His mother? Am I allowed? Is He allowed a mother?’
Benlow began to laugh, and it turned to coughing. He covered his mouth and then looked down at his hand.
‘How soon before the blood comes?’ He moved to the end of the bench. ‘Sit with me. Are you afraid? Afraid I’ll give you the black lumps?’
Tentatively, I crossed the cellar, a brittle bone ground to fragments under my boot. Sat down at the opposite end of the bench. Even so, straining to hear what Benlow said next, for it was said in not much above a whisper, borne on poor breath.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m John Dee.’
He sighed.
‘The royal conjurer.’
‘The royal astrologer and consultant.’
‘Conjurer. Admit it.’
‘No. It would be a lie.’
‘It’s all lies. All life’s a lie. Tell me – which God’s a lie? Or are they all lies? Even no God’s a lie. Everybody lies in this town. You’re a wise man. Tell me that. Tell me that and I’ll tell you something. Bargain. Folks bargains with me all the time.’
‘Oh, there is a truth,’ I said. ‘At the core of it, Master Benlow, there’s a truth.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m a mathematician and I can see the geometry of it. I can chart the geometry of heaven and earth.’
‘Good, good… good so far. You’re a clever man. No more clever man in the whole of Europe, I’ve heard.’
‘That’s a lie also. But… clever enough.’ I felt a sweat in my hands. ‘Your turn, Master Benlow.’
‘I do resurrect the dead,’ he said. ‘To order.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know you provided the bones to be buried in the herb garden. I know that you dug up certain graves at the Church of St Benignus. As you say, to order.’
‘Good so far.’
‘I know that you perform these tasks for Sir Edmund Fyche and, in return, he’s permitted you to continue your business. Undisturbed.’
Benlow leaned back, his breath a thin wheezing. He brought out a small bottle, resting it on King Edgar’s cranium.
‘Dr Borrow give me this.’
‘For your… illness?’
‘Can’t be cured. He says this will give me sleep when I need sleep.’
‘You’ll rest easier,’ I said, ‘with a clear conscience.’
‘So they say. What’s all this to you, Dr Dee?’
‘Dr Borrow’s daughter’s to be hanged. For no good reason.’
He turned his face to me. It was creamed with sweat.
‘Like her, do you, my lord?’
‘Yes.’
‘She never judged me. I’ll say that for her.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Tell me something else.’
‘You’ve told me nothing yet. Not much of a bargain.’
‘Your servant… he was a fine, big man.’
‘And a good man.’
‘I followed him.’ Benlow said. ‘I follow people a lot. Especially men. I had nothing better to do, and following a fine big man…’
‘When was this?’
‘He was following you at the time. When you walked off with the fair Eleanor, up to the tor and the Blood Well, he followed you, and I followed him.’
‘Thinking you might learn something. Something you could pass on to Fyche.’
‘The business of relics is not what it was.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘What a funny voice he had. Could hardly understand a word.’
‘You heard him talking? Where was that?’
‘By the Blood Well. Are you testing me, Dr Dee? You sent him away, to find Joe Monger. Only he never went where he was bid. He kept on following you, keeping back a good way behind when you went up the tor, the two of you. I stayed even further back, for all’s visible from the tor. But I saw you talking to Fyche, and the old monk was there and Fyche’s cruel son, and when you left, your man followed them. ’
‘He followed Fyche?’
‘All the way back to Meadwell. He went over the wall to have a look and came back through the gate, two of them twisting his arm behind his back.’
‘Who?’
‘Two of the retainers. One of them had a hammer, I think they’d been putting a fence up. I kept my distance. I don’t go there. Then Stephen Fyche comes back – and he… Tell me’ – Benlow slapped his hands on the sides of the skull – ‘ secrets. ’
I started to tell him how I’d made the owls which seemed to fly, but that seemed not to satisfy him, probably because it could be explained by mechanics, so I talked about the spheres, the earthly, the celestial and the supercelestial, and he looked at me, his eyes filling up.
‘Where will I go when I die?’
‘Where would you wish to go?’
‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘I’d wish to live on here. Free of the body and all its sickness.’ He lifted the skull. ‘An empty vessel, see? Is the skull not like a cup, from which the liquid of life has been poured out?’
‘Maybe. Liquid… evaporates. Goes to air.’
‘Yes.’
A silence, then he told me.
‘Stephen Fyche… is a cruel boy. Likes to cause hurt. He had three men with him. They took your big fellow into the wood. Couldn’t hear too well, but they knew who he was and how he’d come here with you. They were demanding he should tell them who you were and what your business was here. He refused, of course. Not knowing whom he refused. For a long time, he refused. Too long. I’d’ve told them what they wanted without a thought. But then I know what Stephen Fyche is like. What he did to animals in the fields as a boy. Horses. For his diversion.’
Benlow said that once they’d starting trying to make Lythgoe talk, they wouldn’t stop till he did. It went too far. Too far, too quick.
‘Stephen was in a frenzy. Do this to him, let’s try this… move away, I’ll do it. By the time he’d given them your name, he was so cut about, real cut about – I couldn’t stand to watch no more. And Master Stephen said it was best to finish him. I didn’t stay for that, but his screams, before they were stifled, were pitiful.’
‘How close were you?’
‘Hidden in some brambles, which was torture enough for me. Yet I can be still for long periods. Still as the dead.’ He smiled. ‘I’m real tidy, my lord. I can dig up a grave and put it all back and no-one knows I’ve been. Except when they want me to, like Big Jamey Hawkes.’
I remembered Big Jamey Hawkes. ‘By the church of St Benignus? Benlow… How can I persuade you to tell all of this to Sir Peter Carew? What they did to Lythgoe. What happened to the bones of Jamey Hawkes.’
He tried to laugh. It would not come, He clutched at his throat, distressed.
‘You’re ill,’ I said.
‘So quick… In full health, not a week ago I was in full health. God help me…’
‘Come with me.’
‘That man’s a pig.’
‘Do you want to see Nel Borrow hang?’
‘I won’t see it.’
He leaned forward, and some small breath came into him, strained through the wheezing.
He put a hand on my knee. I tried not to cringe away.
‘Never thought I’d meet a man as famous as you, my lord. I would’ve asked you to take me to London. That’s what I planned. A bargain. Would’ve told you anything if you’d take me to London.’