I said, ‘So an earthquake brought down the church.’
‘Nigh on three hundred years ago. Except for the tower. The church was rebuilt after the quake, but after that it never seemed happy to be more than a tower. After the Reform and what happened to the abbot up there, the church was abandoned, and they took away the bells. Now it is… as some say it began.’
‘As what?’
Her eyes sparkled.
‘What brought about the earthquake? Was the church cleft to the bone by an act of God, or was it the work of Satan?’ She pointed upwards to the tower, shrunken now by our nearness to the hill. ‘Is it not become the finger of Satan?’
‘Meaning what?’
A faint, serpentine mist was apparent around the tower, the white sky grained as if lightly dusted with soot. As if the tower was a chimney for some fire within the hill.
‘Like to a standing stone,’ she said. ‘A Druid stone? ’Tis well known that in the years before Our Saviour, this was a place of Druid worship. ’Tis said that Merlin’s own stronghold was there.’
A throb in my chest.
‘Arthur’s Merlin?’
‘’Tis also said that inside the hill was the great gathering hall of the King of the Faerie, who rides the stormy sky with the hellhounds of the wild hunt. So, you see, to the religious, that tower is the finger of Satan.’ Mistress Borrow let her arm fall, then turned away. ‘The holy well’s along here.’
Most holy wells I knew had stonework, crude statuary. This one was entirely unadorned. Twisted apple trees had grown around it in a rough circle, their branches curling into a protective nest.
When I leaned to it, I heard the water threshing and tumbling with a rare power. Dark red in my cupped hands. I brought some to my mouth and tasted it: iron, as I’d expected. Iron for strength.
‘Many people have been cured by it.’ Mistress Borrow knelt in the damp grass. ‘Many pilgrims.’
‘And local people?’
‘Even local people. The most effective medicines come free from rocks and hedgerows. But you can see why this well’s best called holy .’
I looked into her green eyes and tried not to blink.
‘ Is it called holy?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘They call it the Blood Well.’
‘Whose blood?’
‘Ah…’
A finger to her lips. I felt a pulsing inside me.
‘What kind of doctor are you?’
‘Oh… some would say, not a doctor at all, compared with my father who trained at good colleges. What do I know of leeches and the balancing of the humours? Not much at all. Only of crude surgery. And herbs. Which are more important, for all plants hold life and the energy of dew. Some more than others. If we know where and how to grow them. And when.’
‘And what mean you by that?’
I’d felt a real quickening of interest, now. Mistress Borrow was winding a strand of her brown hair around a forefinger, looking suddenly and startlingly young. Must be a few years over twenty, but seeming no older, at this moment, than my mother’s housekeeper, Catherine Meadows.
There was… a certain not-quite symmetry in her features which made me want to study them at length, calcule their proportions.
‘How do you know,’ I asked softly, ‘when it’s best for certain herbs to be grown?’
She looked wary for a moment, and then her shoulders went loose and out it came.
‘Some ’tis best to sow under a new moon and then to harvest under a full moon. Or the other way around. Or cultivation may be more profitable when certain heavenly bodies are in certain portions of the sky. Also the curative qualities of some planets may be improved under certain planetary… what’s the matter?’
‘Where did you learn of this?’
‘From my mother, but -’ her eyes, of a sudden, sharpening with a defiant light – ‘I’ve also read books.’
‘And where did you obtain such books?’
Thinking: the abbey library, which left Leland in awe.
‘Pass me my bag,’ she said. ‘There’s a flask inside which we can fill with water for your friend. You should give it to him sparingly, betwixt larger quantities of ordinary, pure water. Not that much of the water in Glastonbury is truly… ordinary.’
‘Why is that?’
In London, water was seldom drunk these days.
‘Because… they say that the holy essence, all the sacred life in this place… flows with the water… underground. Even with the abbey going to ruin, the place itself is still hallowed. There are some things you can’t destroy. Some things about a place that are in that place.’
‘They say Our Saviour walked here.’ I handed her the bag. ‘As a young boy.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s why it’s holy?’
‘Did I say it was holy?’
‘I believe you said hallowed. ’
‘I meant it has a power,’ she said. ‘Maybe something to do with the flow of water beneath it. Maybe the abbey was only put here because of the unusual… that is, it may indeed be that Our Saviour was only brought here because…’ She must have seen the rapt stillness in me. ‘Oh – am I stepping close to heresy?’
Not looking, it must be said, as if she cared. Pulling a small, stoppered jug from her bag, she bent with it to the holy well. Despite the water I’d drunk, my mouth felt dry. Although the sun was still hidden in cloud, the day seemed warmer than any since Christmas. A close and airless warmth. No breeze. Unseasonal. I felt a discomfort. Everything here, in this odd, disfunctioned town, seemed to inflict discomfort.
‘What’s the power you speak of?’
‘I… don’t know. The reasons for it may be long into the past. Perchance you’ll feel it for yourself, when you’ve been here a while. It… alters the sense of things.’
‘I’m told,’ I said, ‘that some people here have had visions.’
She took the vessel from the well and put in the stopper.
‘Who told you that?’
‘I forget,’ I said lamely.
She placed the jug carefully in her bag, tucking it in like an infant.
‘’Tis certain true to say that some men and women here are driven very speedily into madness.’
‘Driven by what?’
‘Maybe by what they see or hear. Maybe no-one’s supposed to be living here. There are such places, are there not?’
‘Are there?’
‘Where people find it hard to live an easy life. And monks… monks would seek out such places, would they not?’
‘For a monk -’ an excitement like hot coals in my gut – ‘a monk must needs be challenged in his soul?’
‘Exactly.’
A glowing smile.
‘But now all the monks are gone,’ I said.
‘In which case, it might be thought -’ she brought a knuckle to her chin, as if there were something new here that she was considering for the first time – ‘that we needed the monks here to keep a balance in the place.’
She fell silent. I felt the weight of the hill behind us, had a feeling of the devil’s finger scratching at the clouds, something in me wanting, unaccountably, to cry out.
‘Balance?’
‘To keep the peace. Daily prayer and chanting creating a balm. Lying soft upon the air.’
‘And there’s no peace now? Worship at the Church of the Baptist does not have the same effect?’
