tomb of King Arthur.
Something like relief was at once apparent in her eyes, a tightness departing her body. Evidently, she’d feared worse.
‘But the bones are gone,’ she said. ‘Gone from the abbey, yes.’
‘Gone from the town.’
I settled back on the side of the bed.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I…’ She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. ‘My mother told me once.’
‘Oh?’
‘And now you’re about to ask how my mother knew.’
I said nothing. Mistress Borrow took breath.
‘She was close to the abbey. Always. That is, to the abbot. When I told you I remembered the abbot, that was because he was oft-times at our house. Which my father, though he’d little time for men of God, would tolerate because the abbot had an interest in healing.’
‘But it was only your mother who had the abbot’s confidence?’
‘And whatever he told her always remained in the most sacred confidence. She told neither my father nor me, and we learned not to ask. It was just that, one night my father was reading to us from Malory, while scorning his version of the tales…’
‘With good reason.’
‘It was read for amusement only. And we talked of Arthur in Avalon and his burial, and my father remarked on the tomb being plundered for the marble and my mother said to me later that it was of no import because it was empty by then. The tomb was empty.’
‘You think the abbot had the bones removed, knowing what was to come?’
‘Someone must have.’
‘But your mother said they were not in the town.’
‘I think her words were, it’s no use anyone looking for them in Glastonbury.’
‘Thus suggesting that she knew where the bones were hidden.’
‘I don’t know. I truly don’t know. She never spoke of it again, though sometimes, when we were alone, I thought she came close.’
Which didn’t take us much further but was a start. But Mistress Borrow hadn’t finished – hesitating a moment, as if considering how sacred a confidence might be when both parties were dead.
‘My mother… knew, I think, where many secret things were to be found. Other remains of Arthur.’
I sat up, recalling what Monger had said about hidden wonders. But her smile was regretful.
‘I don’t mean the Holy Grail. Anyway, most people say the Grail’s not real. That it’s only a vision.’
‘Only-’
‘But there was once mention of King Arthur’s round table.’
‘Your mother believed King Arthur’s round table remains? Here? In this town?’
‘It was just a passing- What’s the matter?’
I told her about Benlow, the bone-man and his piece of oak in a wooden box which I might have taken away but, in the end, had bade him keep. She laughed.
‘Did he suggest you stow it away inside your codpiece, and then offer to help you?’
‘Um…’ I sighed. ‘I gather that Benlow is not regarded as one of the seekers of Avalon.’
‘You gather right.’
‘So he’d not be trusted with secrets…’
‘Dr John, that man would sell his own mother’s bones to flavour a Christmas stew.’ Her face sobered. ‘When my mother spoke of the round table, I felt it was in a more spiritual sense, in the way that mystics speak of the Grail. She was a rare woman. I think she knew much of what happened under the surface.’
‘You mean underground?’
‘I truly can’t say, Dr John,’ Mistress Borrow said. ‘But I do believe that’s why-’
She broke off at the white spatter of lightning, and we waited for what followed. Very soon afterwards, this time, and the whole frame of the window was atremble.
‘I do believe that’s why she was murdered,’ Eleanor Borrow said.
XXVIII
The Great Unspoken
A pale mound of lustrous candlefat had spread upon the boardtop betwixt us. Tallow. Smelled like a butcher’s slab.
I leaned back, hands as in prayer, thumbs pressed into my jaw, thinking: when does execution become murder?
An answer: when the deed has an expedience beyond justice. When the cords and strands of the law have themselves been stretched and twined to devise a death. Ask yourself: was not King Harry guilty of the murders of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard?
This is the great unspoken. The laws of man, held up as the laws of God, are just more tools in the practised hands of the powerful.
‘It would not be a good thing, mistress,’ I said softly, ‘for you to be known to talk like this.’
‘I seldom do. Unless in the presence of someone I trust -’ she hesitated – ‘in some odd way, as I would my own kin.’
I felt a light inside, as small and strange as a glow-worm.
‘Mistress Borrow, I’m-’
‘Oh, there are divers kinds of kinship. At college in Bath, I read some of your papers. Also met people who’d had dealings with you in Louvain, where they said all talk just ran free. I formed the impression that you were a man for whom knowledge and spirit were as one. And also -’ hands entwining in her lap – ‘also I know that you were once close to a death which… would’ve been worse than my mother’s.’
‘It doesn’t compare,’ I said gently. ‘Because it didn’t happen.’
I’d made known to her what Joe Monger had told me about the trial and execution of Cate Borrow, a woman who evidently had shared my own curiosity about the limits of the natural world. Was this what her daughter meant by kinship? I’d have to admit a certain disappointment if it was.
‘Tell me about Fyche,’ I said. ‘Why, after what was done to your mother, he yet seeks to damage you.’
‘No mystery there. He looks at me and he sees… her.’
‘You mean it’s a reminder of what he did?’
‘No, no!’ Shaking her head hard, hair swinging across her cheeks. ‘That would imply a sorrow over my mother’s death, and there is none. He sees another woman with the eyes of Cate Borrow and an education.’
‘A threat.’
‘Dr John, let me tell you about this man who was a monk at the abbey in the last days. Then had this land granted to him. And the money to farm it and build upon it.’
‘He inherited the land… from an uncle?’
‘An uncle!’
‘Did he not?’
‘It was gifted to him, I’d bet all I own on it.’
‘Gifted by whom?’
‘Who gifts land?’ Her body rocked. ‘ Who gifts land?’
‘Mistress Borrow-’
‘Eleanor.’ Tossing back her hair. ‘Nel. Call me Nel. It takes up… far less time.’
Nel.
There was a sense of energy in the chamber. Moisture in the palms of my hands. And the thunder was coming so frequent now that it was like to being inside some vast drum of war. But not so loud as my own heart,
