churches, to produce a surviving male heir. Bess considers the short life of Edward and the longer but hardly happy reign of her half-sister. Fears a resumption of the decline.’
‘Inevitably.’
‘And she’s superstitious.’
Well, no-one knew that more than I. The Queen, needing to believe she’s chosen by God to rule this land, looking always for signs and portents to reinforce her confidence.
One of my own roles being to point them out to her. And Cecil had said she might speak to me of her inner problem – while ensuring there was no chance of this happening in the near future by making himself the intermediary in the matter of Arthur’s bones.
‘Here’s the point,’ Dudley said, ‘Arthur’s linked by Malory and others to the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire – forget that he might have been no more than a heathen, go with the lore. What does Harry do? Breaks with Rome and fills his coffers with the treasures of the Church. Finally sacking Glastonbury Abbey… where lie Arthur’s bones.’
‘Someone’s suggesting Harry dishonoured King Arthur?’
Dudley shrugged.
‘Thus bringing down a curse upon his line?’
‘If the curse was not already there. A few years ago, an appeal was made to Mary to put Glastonbury Abbey back together. Much as she’d have wanted it, there was little money to spare then. Even for God.’
‘So now something – or someone’ – I began to see it – ‘has put it into Queen Elizabeth’s mind that she has much to redeem if her reign’s to be fruitful.’
‘Or even avoid disaster. Glastonbury, John – it all comes together in Glastonbury. Arthur and Jesus Christ, all bound together. The holy heart of it all.’
‘Who put this into her mind, Robbie?’
‘I don’t know. Not me.’
‘Cecil speaks of visions. What’s that about?’
Dudley shook his head. A shadow fell betwixt us. Martin Lythgoe stood there, a stocky, amiable man, and patient.
‘Mortlake, my lord.’
Dudley sighed.
‘Get them to row in circles, would you, Martin?’
William Cecil had a certain genius for putting together the right men for a particular task. Here were two fellows of contrasting skills, committed to the same woman, if not for the same reasons. Dudley it was who had introduced me at court, Dudley who had commanded me to select a date for the coronation.
Two men committed, by bitter history, to the watching of each other’s backs.
‘So when do we leave?’ he said.
‘After I look into the history of this. For instance, if an approach was made to Mary for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, was mention made of the bones then?’
‘Does Cecil not know?’
I shook my head.
‘Bonner might,’ Dudley said. ‘You still a friend?’
‘Needs all the friends he can get at this moment. It’s a wonder he still lives.’
‘A tribute to Bess, who refuses, bless her, to resort either to the axe or the taper.’
‘Thus far.’
Dudley snorted.
‘Bloody Bonner. Be a queue of people a mile long ready to set light to his pile.’ He regarded me for a moment, tongue probing a cheek. ‘Thinking about it, you must be the only man he ever spared. Fellow you shared a cell with… he was burned. Are you still Bonner’s friend?’
‘For my sins. And his.’
‘Have to admire the old bastard’s nerve. Still refusing to recognise the Queen as head of the church, even when she offers a compromise.’
‘That mean prison?’
‘Marshalsea. For good this time, unless he changes his song. If you feel it worth visiting him, I wouldn’t waste any time.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That might be worthwhile.’ I watched a gull wheeling over the remains of our midday meal, which seemed still to be following in our wake. ‘How is Amy?’
‘Amy’s well.’ Dudley’s expression unchanging. ‘She ever prefers the country life.’
‘There’s fortunate,’ I said.
For a moment, he almost frowned. He swung his feet to the deck and stood up.
‘And what of you? Still dipping it in the mercury?’
‘Dudley, if a man can barely afford to support himself…’
‘That excuse, John, wears thin.’
‘So we ride out,’ I said, ‘with banners held high-’
‘That’s not how a great quest is undertaken. We fast for several days, perform three nightly vigils until dawn and then ride out silently, and with humility. We take few men with us, if any, and each church we chance upon, we stop and pray.’
‘Unlikely to get there before midsummer, then.’
Dudley stretched his arms.
‘Taking few men – that’s certainly part of it. I rather like the idea, to be honest – a rare freedom to move around as a common man, unencumbered by the trappings of high office.’
I may have blinked. Robert Dudley shorn of the trappings of high office was like Hampton Court with no glass in the windows and a flock of sheep in the gardens.
‘Cecil intends that we travel as lowly servants of the Crown,’ he said. ‘Undertaking a survey of historical remains. We’re to be accompanied by someone with knowledge of the country. Cecil’s organising that, too. Leaves nothing to chance.’
‘No.’
‘Thinks to remove me from court for a while,’ Dudley said.
‘Surely not.’
‘Doesn’t realise that a man who brings to his Queen such an irrefutable symbol of her royal heritage… something which bestows upon her monarchy’s most mystical aura. That man… he may expect his reward.’
He was not smiling.
‘It isn’t a quest for the Holy Grail,’ I said.
‘Maybe not for you. But for me… possibly.’
Dudley was gazing out, in noble profile, across the broad water, then up at the sky where a buttermilk moon bided its time.
VII
Awe and Stupor
Although I don’t consider myself sensitive to such intrusions, that night it was as if I were not alone in my library.
It happens. Oft-times I’ll hear a scraping of paper, as if the books are conversing amongst themselves. The sound of knowledge being shared and expanding in the air. Or a faint clarion of bells – distant, yet somehow within the room itself, as if proclaiming the nativity of an idea. Oh, I’m fanciful, you might think. But what I think is that science must never become dull and roped to rigid formulae, but must always be alive to the omnipresent otherness of things.
This night, sitting at my work board under two candles, a cup of small beer at my elbow, I’d thought to work on my creation theory, an attempt to explain precisely, concisely and mathematically the origins and composition of
