The Bones of Avalon (60 page)

Benlow moved. A noise from his throat like the thinnest, distant bird-song.

‘As you thought?’ Monger said, and I nodded.

‘You go and do whatever you must do,’ he said. ‘I’ll clean him up, make him comfortable. Can’t see a man die like this.’

‘Better in your hands.’ I stood up carefully, head bent under the ceiling. ‘Better a doctor of horses, than… Joe, he must be stopped.’

Benlow’s mouth was agape, like one of his skulls, a thin finger crooked, beckoning me.

‘Dudley,’ I said. ‘We have to bring him back. And the bones. Bury the bones again. Somewhere no-one ever digs.’

‘Then somebody has to ride like hell,’ Monger said. ‘Tell Cowdray. If he sends all his boys out… With a cart, they can’t travel too hard.’

‘And will have to stop somewhere tonight.’

‘Pray God.’

Benlow was trying to raise himself up, and Monger went to him.
Benlow kept on looking for me, looking at where I’d been a moment ago, his eyes unseeing.

‘They didn’t…’ His throat creaking, no laughter left in him. ‘They didn’t… call him Big Jamey Hawkes for nothing, my lord.’

We watched the riders leave, Cowdray and I. The sky was like lead, the daylight dying without having had much of a life.

Three of them were gone after Dudley: the stable boy, the kitchen boy and another who may have been Cowdray’s son. One had taken my horse. Each of them carrying my own copies of a brief letter for Dudley, scribed, in the absence of a fitting seal, with the symbol of the eyes I’d once made for the Queen as my signature, for a jest. Each letter inked and sand-dried and bound, conveying the message that if Dudley did not return at once, with the box of bones unopened, his only reward would be death. The worst of deaths. Hard to think how best to convey this.
The grave of love
, I’d written finally. Underlining it twice.

‘Whatever you were thinking to charge,’ I said now to Cowdray, ‘you should double it.’

He was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head.

‘I’ll take nothing for this.’

He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But he was a good man.

I nodded in the direction of the tor, tried to speak evenly.

‘Where will Nel pass the night?’

‘Meadwell, I reckon. Used to be an old gaol up town, but they wouldn’t rely on that now. There are cells at Meadwell. ’Tis almost fortified, that house. Well… so they say. I’ve never been.’

‘Never?’

‘Not since it was rebuilt.’

‘Will Carew be there?’

‘Most likely, aye.’ He cast eyes on me and winced. ‘Dr John, man… you’re in sorest need of sleep. You’re like the walking bloody dead. You en’t eaten… In truth I don’t know how you’re still on your feet.’

‘I’m well. And must needs talk to Carew, without delay.’

Better it were Dudley, but who could say when, or if, we’d see Dudley
again this night. I told Cowdray what Benlow had said about Stephen Fyche and the murder of Martin Lythgoe.

‘Let this come out, Master Cowdray. Let it be spread far and wide. Too late now to rebound on poor Benlow.’

A weary disbelief on Cowdray’s face.

‘You think it en’t known? What that boy
is
. Folks might’ve chose to forget the tales about Fyche, in view of his charity, but they’ve seen what his boy’s like, loose in the town of a summer night, well into his cups.’

‘Where’s the mother?’

‘Long gone. Fyche and the boy, ’tis said they goes whoring together in Wells.’

‘Carew knows of this?’

‘It would alarm Carew?’

‘No. I suppose not. Look, what’s the quickest way to Meadwell? I only know it’s the other side of the tor.’

‘No, Doctor.’ Cowdray sighed. ‘’Tis only the other side of the tor when you’re
on
the tor. The Meadwell’s a mile or so out of town. If you follows the track
after
the one to the tor, keep heading east, you’ll come to the gates.’

I nodded. I was thinking of Borrow, where he might be. Where he’d been educated thirty years ago or more.

‘You’re thinking to go there on your own?’

‘No-one else. No, no…’ I held up a hand.
‘
Thank you. Look to your inn.’

Cowdray shook his head. I wanted to say,
Cowdray, they want to kill the Queen. They’ve poisoned her heritage.
Yet, if he’d asked who, I could not have told him with any degree of certainty.

‘I assume… there’s no-one left to watch for me, is there?’ I said. ‘Carew’s guard?’

‘You never was the one they was guarding, you must know that.’ Cowdray laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘You just watch out for yourself, hear me?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

So much now to watch out for. The sky was all the colours of mould, but wild lights were blazing in my head as I walked into the street. I’d go to Meadwell, but not yet.

The darkening town was silent, streets deserted, the air laden with comforting smoke as I walked down towards the church of St Benignus. The doctor’s surgery was sinking into the gloom of early dusk, and I was just another shadow at the top of the steps as I took out my dagger.

I’m no expert at this, but it was an old lock and the wood splintered around the blade.

Inside, the fire in the grate was near dead, but I managed to light a couple of candles from it, setting them on the trestle board. Not yet sure what I was looking for but I’d know when I found it.

W
HAT HAD
I expected? Maybe not the severity of it.

For those of a certain wealth, as I’ve said, this is the first age of light. Big houses have big windows.

Not like the mean mullions at Meadwell. I stood in the gateway. Noone in attendance, the house rearing before me, like a cliff face in the dusk.

The gates were open. I’d not expected that either, imagining myself accosted by some surly jobsworth and having a message sent to Carew who, in his own good time, would emerge before me, angry or sneering. But he’d be forced to listen. By Christ, I’d make him listen. And an execution would, by God’s good offices, be halted pending an inquiry which might take many weeks and end with different necks in nooses elsewhere.

I wanted Carew, not Fyche. Out here.

But only the owls were out. Fluting across the valley behind me, in a sky which, perversely after such a day, was clearing.

No stars yet, though. I was on my own. Kept on walking.

It had not entered my mind that Carew himself might be party to any of this. He was not, in essence, that complicated. True, he’d served different kings in Europe, fought at different times with opposing armies. But since returning to England he seemed solely committed to England’s interests, Protestant to his spine, an adventurer, not a conspirator.

Not that I could ever like the oaf. But he’d been given the abbey by the Queen or Cecil, and the owner of the abbey was yet the owner of this sorry town.

I thought to call out for Carew but, in the end, simply walked up to the house, until I came to a door of green oak, set into the stone wall
without porch or overhang. Hardly the main entrance, but it would do. I banged upon it with a fist, twice.

No response. No echo within.

Standing there, unsure, for some moments before twisting the iron ring above the keyhole, somehow knowing that it would not be locked.

I’d gone back to Cowdray. Nobody knew more about a town than its principal innkeeper, observing who came and who went, listening to all the careless words which fell nightly from lips loosened by drink.

First, I’d taken the letters I’d found in Borrow’s surgery and hid them under a beam high in the ass’s stable. Asses could keep secrets.

Then I’d beckoned Cowdray from the alehouse – filling up now, much talk of the execution on the morrow.

You couldn’t find Meadwell, Dr John?

Not even tried yet. We don’t have much time. Dr Borrow – when did he leave the town, as a boy?

Which was how I’d learned about Borrow’s father, a wealthy wool-merchant and prominent Catholic, who’d done much of his trade in France and found the humours there more to his liking.

In the ’20s, this was, when there was no inkling of Reformation and King Harry was safely wed to his brother Arthur’s widow, Catherine.

The only one who came back was Matthew, as a qualified doctor. A fine doctor, as he soon proved. Glastonbury had been grateful to have him. And many of the wealthier merchants and landowners in the area, Cowdray said, would have been grateful to have him wed their daughters.

But, to the dismay of the merchants and their daughters, Borrow took up with an orphan who’d become a kitchen maid at the abbey.

She was beautiful, mind,
Cowdray said.
But, obviously, she had no money. Nobody could understand it.

Some houses, whatever the season, are colder inside than the open air. Without coat or cloak and or even food that day, I stiffened at the chill of Meadwell.

No candles or lamps, no flicker of fire or scent of woodsmoke.

Only a passage. I stood, quiet and without obvious direction, while the foolish lower mind was conjuring its own steps down to the dungeons, which would, of course, be unguarded, a bunch of keys hanging, in full view, from a nail.

And then what? Run away from here with Nel Borrow, hand in hand? Flee the country together?

Life would never be that simple any more, not for anyone. I turned to the left, there being more light that way, from high slit windows. I surely could not be alone in here and thought to call out. But what if it were Fyche? What I needed was a servant whom I could bid fetch me Carew.

The passage ended in a T and a door was facing me, so I simply opened it. As far as it would go, which was not far. I thought at first that the resistance was someone pushing from the other side and sprang back, and there was a toppling sound which I recognised at once.

Books. A long room full of books. A smell of old leather and damp.

Not a library, though. All the books, none of the shelves. Books in squalid piles on the floor. Good books, well bound, in incredible quantity. At the far end, a window gave into a high-walled yard, and almost the first title I was able to discern through its meagre light was at once familiar.