aspects of Master Benlow’s other trade?’
‘In return for… favours?’
‘Some may think that.’
‘Where’s he get the bones? In general?’
‘Dr John-’
‘It won’t come back on you, Cowdray, I swear it.’
‘Ah…’ He sniffed, wiped the back of a hand across his nose and mouth. ‘Man can spend all his days watching his words.’
I waited. The fresh sunlight falling through the open window turned even Cowdray’s stubble into gold dust.
‘Benlow buys most of his bones,’ he said. ‘Usually from wretched folk whose very poverty presses them to go out at night and dig up graves and break into mouldy tombs. That’s the ones he don’t do himself. For the pleasure of it.’
‘Pleasure?’
‘Old bones, new bones… he loves them like jewels.’
‘He took me into his private charnel house.’
‘I’ve been down there but once,’ Cowdray said. ‘’Twas enough. That’s a man not well in his mind. He loves… what should not be loved.’
‘Men?’
‘If that was the worst of it we’d all know where we were. He loves the dead. Poor family, son or daughter’s died… if it en’t some contagion, he’ll make an offer for the body. To be cut up by medical students in Bristol is what he’ll tell them. Truth is… oft-times the corpse won’t leave his premises. Not for a long time.’
‘God.’
‘Keep out of his bedroom, my advice.’
I recalled the heavy smell of incense around the foot of the loft ladder. Cowdray went back to the mop, slopping it around in the pail.
‘He was in here, Dr John. Asking for you.’
‘When?’
‘Couple of times yesterday. Said he thought you’d’ve been back to see him.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Told him if you wanted him you’d know where to find him and to keep out of my inn.’
Cowdray raised his mop, stabbed it down, water pooling on the flags.
I didn’t go to find Benlow. If he’d provided the bones to be planted in Nel’s herb garden, the last man he’d admit that to was me. For what remained of the morning, I walked the streets of Glastonbury, mostly alone with my drab thoughts.
What might I take to Sir Edmund Fyche to induce him to withdraw his factored evidence against Nel Borrow? Only the secret he’d tried to get from Whiting. Somebody had to know the nature of it.
But if it was too late to withdraw whatever charges had been laid against her, then I must needs go to court – a strange court in a strange city – to present my case to a hostile assize judge already primed by Fyche.
I leaned against the sun-dappled wall of the abbey, thinking back to my last time in court, when I’d faced charges of attempting to kill Mary by sorcery. Charges built upon spurious evidence and my own reputation as an astrologer, at a time when astrology itself was deemed by many to be a heresy. Realising now, with a barren dismay, that the case against Eleanor Borrow was, by comparison, as solid as the wall against which I rested.
Unless she knew otherwise.
Around noon, a clatter of horsemen had me scurrying back to the George, where Carew and three attendants were dismounting by the stables entrance, Carew tossing the reins of his horse to a groom as I hurried across the street.
‘How now, Dr John?’
He seemed happy. Not a good sign.
‘You’ve ridden from Wells?’
‘Have indeed,’ he said. ‘It was most pleasant. On such a day, the idea that this is Jesu’s chosen bit of England seems credible indeed.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Suppose you’ll want to know about your meeting with the witch.’
‘When?’
‘Tell Cowdray to bring up meat,’ he said to one of the attendants. ‘And best cider, none of his dog piss.’ Then addressing me over a shoulder. ‘I regret… not today.’
‘When, then?’
‘Nor tomorrow.’
‘Carew, for-’
‘Nor, come to that, the day after.’ He turned, leaning toward me, teeth agleam through his tarry beard. ‘In fact, not ever.’
It felt like my heart was afloat in an icy well.
‘What are you saying?’
‘She doesn’t wish it,’ Carew said gaily. ‘The witch has no desire to speak with you. Or even to see your white scholar’s face.’
‘You’re lying.’
I was numbed. One of the attendants drew a sharp breath and took a step back as a horse voided its bowels and Carew’s face went blank, as if wiped like a slate.
‘What did you say, then?’
I walked right up to him.
‘You’re such a bastard, Carew. How do I know you’ve even seen her?’
Carew hardly seemed to have moved, and I was unaware of what had happened until I was in the dirt by his feet, watching him rubbing a fist and feeling that my face had been smashed by a side of beef. Realising through the pain that he’d finally found cause to do what he’d been wanting to do for days.
‘How do you know?’ Carew said, ‘Because, Doctor, you hear it from a man of honour.’
With a small prod of his boot, he put me on my back in a tump of steaming horseshit, and walked past me into the inn.
XXXIX
Nothing to Hide
Dr Borrow was in his surgery unbinding a goodwife’s broken arm. I sat and waited and watched, questions tumbling one over the other in my crowded mind.
‘Best not to lift the child with this one for a while,’ Borrow told the goodwife. ‘I don’t want to see you back here… except with the money, of course. Or, if you don’t have the money, a week’s milk will suffice.’
He smiled. I knew not how he could be so calm. There was a scar to one side of his mouth, a swollen lip, but I noticed that he never touched either of the wounds with fingers or tongue.
After the woman had left, he put the stopper into a jar of comfrey, the tangled plant swimming in its own dark brown oil, sunbeams from the mean windows making it look alive. He placed the jar on a shelf in a row of apothecary’s vessels.
‘You’ve come to me for balm, Dr John?’
‘Um… no.’ I could not but put a hand to the side of my jaw. It hurt to speak now. ‘I lost my footing, and… but that’s not why I’m here. I’ll come directly to the point, Dr Borrow. I’d thought to defend your daughter at the assize.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m schooled in law. Hate injustice. I asked Sir Peter Carew to fix a meeting between us, that we might plan the case. Half an hour ago, he came back from Wells, telling me she’d refused to see me.’
