‘Sounds like everyfucker needs to see her today.’
‘So where is she?’
‘Dunno, Joe. Out of town, she got any sense.’
‘What do they want with her?’
‘They gonner tell me that?’
‘ Could she have gone back to see the man at the George?’
‘Dunno. He’s from Lunnon, en’t he, so they can beat the piss out of him, all I cares.’
‘I see.’ Monger turned to me. ‘She won’t have gone home. If she knows they’re looking for her, the last thing she’ll want is to bring any of this down on her father. Joan, where else might she be?’
Joan Tyrre said, ‘Where’s my drink?’
She’d swallowed two mugs of ale, not touching her jaw again. A bruise was beginning, green and purple in the firelight like a bad sky.
Joe Monger had made her promise to send for him at any time if she suffered any further ill-effects of the beating. He’d questioned her about the number of constables on the streets; she reckoned there must be over a dozen of them, and more seen riding down from the Mendip Hills.
‘Joan might well have counted the same man three times,’ Monger said. ‘But, all the same, this doesn’t look good. If either of us had intervened back there, they’d have summoned others at once. We’d all have been beaten, arrested… the place smashed up.’
He beckoned me to follow him outside, where we stood for a moment blinking in the harsh white light. Market stalls were being hurriedly taken down, carts loaded.
All of it done in near silence. Monger looked around.
‘This is Fyche. He’s long been looking for an excuse to move against the… the worshippers of the stars and the stones.’
‘The maggots,’ I said.
‘Mercy?’
I shook my head.
‘So if the constables have gone to the George…?’
‘That’s not a problem,’ Monger said. ‘Cowdray will deal with it. When they find out Nel’s patient’s the man from London, they’ll back off. They won’t go far away but they won’t seek open confrontation in front of an officer of the Crown.’
I was still sickened by the two constables’ treatment of Joan Tyrre and felt responsible, having told Fyche where I’d last seen Martin Lythgoe – Fyche seizing upon the fact that Eleanor Borrow had been with me at the time. I related to Monger what had occurred ’twixt Nel Borrow and Fyche upon the tor.
‘And that was the last time you saw her?’
‘I searched for her afterwards, but…’
I felt like shit. Yet how, within all reason, could Fyche claim that what had been done last night to Martin Lythgoe had been done by a woman?
‘Master Monger,’ I said, ‘why did Fyche hang Mistress Borrow’s mother?’
‘He told you that?’
‘Without explanation.’
Monger strode away across the street. ‘This isn’t London,’ he said over a shoulder. ‘It’s easier here.’ Determined to learn the facts of this, I followed him down the hill through the dispersing crowd toward the centre of the town. He kept close to the wall around the abbey grounds, past the gatehouse.
‘Where are you going?’
He pointed to the modern church near the bottom of the town, its tower more modest than St John the Baptist’s. I drew level with him under a sky now as tight and dark-flecked as a goatskin drum.
‘Tell me about Fyche, Master Farrier.’
‘I don’t know Fyche.’
‘Was he not at the abbey the same time as you?’
‘That doesn’t make me his friend. The abbot was happy for me to work at my forge. Tended to meet the others only at prayer. Monks don’t talk much at prayer.’
‘He’s a Protestant now.’
‘Or finds it appropriate to look like one. During the last reign, when there was hope of money to restore the abbey, he’d become a good Catholic again. Such conversions happen in a flash, as you know.’
We’d come to a narrow street behind the church. Its dwellings were mean, but it was surprisingly dry underfoot – in London, the gutters would have been ripe with shit.
‘Fyche’s proposed college of monks,’ I said. ‘You weren’t invited to join them?’
‘They’d want a farrier?’ Monger sniffed. ‘Anyway, there are few monks from the abbey at Meadwell. Most are come from outside – learned men. Heavyweights. God’s army, Fyche’ll tell you, against the rise of an evil older than Christianity.’
‘Evil? Joan Tyrre and her faerie? The men who find wells with a forked twig? Why should he fear these people?’
‘What makes you think it’s fear?’
‘Trust me, Master Monger,’ I said. ‘It’s always fear.’
We’d arrived at the end house, near the church. It was bigger and in better repair than the others, its timber-framing oiled. The man in the doorway wore an apron, faded but clean, and a skullcap the colour of old parchment over stiff white hair.
‘They’ve been, then,’ Monger said.
A tightening of the man’s lips and a nod so small and cautious that it barely happened.
‘How many, Matthew?’
‘Three. Including Fyche himself.’
This man’s voice was dry as ash, his face taut and unfleshed, his eyes watchful.
Monger said, ‘But Nel wasn’t with you?’
‘Must’ve left early, Joe. I know not where to.’
‘But she was here last night?’
‘I don’t…’ The man’s shoulders sagged. ‘I was out till late. Delivery of twins at a farm towards Butleigh, and I had to cut them out or they’d be dead and the mother with them. I thought Nel to be abed when I got back. And then… out before I was up.’
Monger turned to me. ‘This is Nel’s father – Dr Borrow. Matthew, this is Dr John, a visitor to the town, for reasons… yet to be established. But who can, I think, be trusted. What did Fyche say?’
‘Not much. He just looked everywhere in the house, having his men empty lockers, sweep the content of shelves to the floor.’
I remembered his daughter’s jest about the elixir of youth – ninety but looked fifty. Probably was fifty, but had a sinewy, capable look.
‘And that was it?’ Monger said.
‘No.’
Monger waited in silence, arms hanging by his side.
‘My instruments,’ Dr Borrow said. ‘Didn’t get in until nigh on three of the clock. Went straight to bed, having thrown my bag of instruments… just, you know, in the corner. Which is where one of Fyche’s men found them. When they picked up the bag, I never gave a thought to it at first. More concerned that they shouldn’t find the wrong… the wrong books.’
I was guessing he meant the books from which his daughter had learned of the science of stars. More books rescued from the abbey, maybe.
Saw Monger’s jaw jut and stiffen.
‘Your surgical instruments?’
‘’Tis my normal habit, Joe, to clean them soon as I get home. Pulling out a blade in front of a new patient when it’s all splattered with the blood of the last one, that’s… never helpful. But I was too damn tired to think.’
‘Let me get this right,’ Monger said. ‘Your surgeon’s knives. You’re saying they found a surgeon’s knives with
