I dropped the twig.
‘Who are you?’ I said.
He came awkwardly down from the tump, as if his limbs were afflicted by the gnarling sickness, symptoms not apparent the last time I’d seen him. He wore a peasant’s apparel, sacking around his waist, where the apron had been.
He looked tired. His grey-white hair, in disarray, was like to the tonsure he must once have worn. He was, I realised, much older than I’d thought – maybe seventy, maybe more. Too old for a satyr.
‘Ah, Dr Dee,’ he said wearily. ‘I feel you’re determined to do me harm.’
The local accent was all gone. I recalled that he’d been educated at Oxford. His background may indeed have been wealthy and privileged if, as Bishop Bonner thought, he’d actually bought his position of supremacy at Wigmore Abbey.
I followed him around to the sweeter-scented side of the tump, where the air was merely autumnally damp. In truth, I hadn’t expected him. I’d thought it might be Daunce.
‘You’re all aglow, my boy,’ he said. ‘Look like a priest who’s just celebrated the Mass.’
‘Merely tired,’ I said. ‘Abbot.’
It was true that I felt light and separate from my body. Yet my mind, freed from its weight, had a piercing focus, and when John Smart raised his hands I felt it was in defence, rather than benediction.
‘Call me Martin,’ he said. ‘Abbots are of the past.’
I looked around, warily.
‘You’re alone.’
‘I thought we should talk. Somewhere only the faeries can overhear us.’
‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Where are they?’
‘Safe, I believe. Except for Gethin, who is dead.’
I stared at him, the former abbot who’d stolen Church gold, sold the buildings around him, ran whores.
‘It’s too late for lies,’ John Smart said. ‘I can show you his body, if you like, though I’d guess you’ve seen enough of them for one morning, and it’s not pretty. He put out his own eye with his dagger. The last good eye. With some rage, so that the blade would seem to have proceeded into his brain. A swifter end than perhaps he deserved.’
And too easy.
‘Where was this?’
‘In a dingle about half a mile from the hill, not ten minutes ago.’
‘Why would he?’
‘The Presteigne boys. Out all night in the hills and angry. For some reason, he thought they were on his side, let them take the woman.’
‘So Mistress Ceddol—’
‘Safe. I believe.’
‘You believe?’
‘She ran away. She was not hurt. Not more than she had been anyway.’
‘Master Roberts?’
‘The so-called Master Roberts is taken by cart back to Presteigne, where I’ll find a better bedchamber for his recovery.’ A wry smile. ‘With glass in its windows. As befits his status.’
I was watching his hands, both exposed, both empty. No sign of weaponry.
‘I’m not lying to you, Dee.’
‘Why would Gethin think that, Abbot? That the angry boys from Presteigne were on his side?’
‘Call me Martin. Odd, is it not, the way men’s minds work in extremis.’
‘Jesu, Smart, you weren’t even born here, and you can’t give a straight answer to a straight question.’
‘Met Scory last night,’ he said, ‘for the first time. Still in town, after giving evidence to the court. This was before you arrived, all full of wild accusations.’ Smart chuckled. ‘Poor old Bradshaw. He was far more surprised than I was.’
I sighed.
‘What did you discuss with Scory?’
‘Talked about the problems of survival in the Church in a time of constant change. Scory’s less adventurous than me in my younger days, but he likes to, as you might say, put some modest items discreetly in store for his future comfort. But that’s an aside.’
It seemed the Bishop of Hereford knew more about Abbot Smart and his circumstances than he’d confided to me. What a bag of adders the Church of England already was become.
‘Good man, Scory, make no mistake,’ John Smart said. ‘But, as he may have indicated to you, working the Welsh borderlands does require a certain… adaptability. He’s become quite exercised over the conduct of this man Daunce, who, it might be said, has too much God in him.’
More energy in Smart now, his cheeks pinkened.
I said, ‘Once again, why did Gethin think the Presteigne boys were on his side?’
The sun had broken through again. Smart clapped his hands.
‘What a fine morning this is become.’ He peered at me. ‘Are you sure you haven’t performed some kind of invocation, Dr Dee? All manner of stories are told about you.’
‘Most of them exaggerated.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘I think you knew Mistress Ceddol?’
‘Did I?
‘But how well did you know Prys Gethin?’
I knew not where this question came from. Maybe I’d thought back to what Bonner had said about simony, the ordination of fifty paying candidates, a small coterie of thoroughly reprehensible followers. Or maybe it was given to me by the Archangel Michael.
‘Was he at the Abbey of Wigmore?’ I said. ‘Was he given Holy Orders?’
Smart said, ‘Gethin trusted the Presteigne boys because I’d told him he could. And because I was with them.’
‘My thanks,’ I said. ‘Now to go back to my previous question…’
Smart’s face had visibly darkened. His eyes grown still. He looked down at what I yet held: the butcher’s knife, laden with dried blood. I let go of it and it fell to my feet, bounced and slid in the slick grass towards the foot of the tump.
‘Thank you,’ Smart said. ‘This is very much not the place to keep a weapon too close.’
‘Or an obsessive killer? God’s tears, Smart, you can’t just tell me what you want me to know and expect me to take my nose out of your stinking midden and walk away.’
Smart sighed at last.
‘There were times, in the years before and during the Reform, when an abbot of the Welsh Borderlands was in need of personal protection. I was, I suppose, threatened more than most. In divers ways.’
‘You ordained him… as your guard?’
He shrugged.
‘Knowing what he was?’
‘All right, it was not my holiest act. Look, Dee, if you’ve seen the report made to Cromwell, that was not fully accurate, but some of it… had foundation. I knew it was coming. I knew Cromwell was committed to taking virtually all of us down; the abbeys, by whatever means, and I knew there’d be no great difficulty doing it to me. I’d already journeyed to London, cwtching up to the wily bastard, offering my services…’
‘In what way?’
‘Matter of survival, Dee. I’m not proud of it. Not my behaviour then, nor my behaviour now, although old Jeremy Martin…’
‘Is a different man.’
‘And a good innkeeper, generous with his ale and cider and ever offering a night’s sleep to those in need.’
He smiled, and then it died.
‘An innkeeper hears everything. An innkeeper with a host of old acquaintances and friends in London is able to form an impression of what’s taking shape under his nose and… use it. When it came to my notice that certain men were entrusting the man now known as Prys Gethin with a task of considerable delicacy… let’s say I thought it was ill-advised and might rebound.’
‘On whom?’
‘I remember what he did, in my defence, twenty years ago when he was little more than a boy. In those days, his excuse would have been that he was doing it for the Church. Now he’s been…’