‘But he’d know anyway, if he was there. Would he not?’
‘Doctor weren’t there.’
‘But Joe Monger said- did not the three of you go up?’
‘Doctor weren’t there. Just us two and the Lord Merlin.’
‘Mistress Tyrre,’ I said. ‘What did Nel know of this? Does she know you were not given the dust of vision? Has she known from the beginning?’
‘Mistress Cate, her said to tell nobody. So I never did. Not till the storm come, and I knew ’twas all changed.’
‘The storm? The storm of last week?’
‘Her come to me.’
‘Nel… she came?’
Joan Tyrre will take me in. It’s no more than a hovel, but better than a dungeon.
I’d thought, the way things had turned out, that she’d gone at once to her father’s house, but Joan told me now that she hadn’t left here till close to dawn.
‘How was she? How was her mood?’
‘Mood? Oh, happy. For all they was lookin’ for her, her was happy as I’ve seen her since her was a young ’un. We sat and we talked for two hour or more…’
‘And you told her about the tor.’
‘Her said why wasn’t I out a trailin’ ole Gwyn, and I telled her ’bout Merlin and Mistress Cate.’ Joan laughed. ‘Her thought when I said Merlin I muster meant the doctor.’
‘And did you tell her… about Merlin’s secret?’
She looked at me, her head cocked on one side.
‘Merlin’s treasure,’ I said. ‘The vision of heaven.’
But she had no understanding of what I meant.
I patted her arm.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Joan.’
She beamed.
‘’Twill come, Master! Never fear.’
‘Um…?’
‘You be a late starter, but you’ll make up for that, look. You’ll marry…’ She began counting on her fingers. ‘Once… twice… thrice? Holy Lord, thrice it is! And the third – listen to me now – the third will be the finest match of all, and you know some’ing?’ She leaned forward, her exposed eye seeming to gather all the light in the place. ‘Her en’t barely born yetawhile. En’t barely born! Fine young flesh! Think on that, Master Lunnonman.’
XLVI
The Vision of Heaven
The distant sea was lit the dull metallic grey of a discarded breastplate upon a battlefield, and all the land… was it changed forever?
And me?
I’d not slept for over a day, eaten not even communion bread. And now something was set out before me that I was not sure I could believe. Either I was at the heart of a great delusion or at my life’s turning point.
Dudley and I standing atop the tor. I was in no doubt that Fyche could see us, and cared not a toss if he did.
‘I see the fishes,’ Dudley said. ‘ Do I see the fishes? Whereas the eagle… made more sense in the notebook.’
‘It’s also described as a Phoenix, in some way representing Aquarius the water-carrier. Follow the lines of the hills, how they curve. Not so much the carrier as the vessel.’
He couldn’t see it. Neither, in truth, could I, though already it burned in my soul. To know the truth we’d have to be higher, far higher. Flying like…eagles.
I’m flying.
Come, she’d said. This may be too much too soon.
The vision of heaven. Glimpsed when I was made of air and walked in my night garden, tending the stars with my hands. In the moments when I felt I almost knew His mind. Had I? Had that happened, or was it a false memory?
‘John?’
‘Mercy,’ I said.
There were few men of his status likely to be more receptive than Dudley to this intelligence, yet I wished to heaven that it were she who was with me now. She who, on hearing that stormy night what Joan Tyrre had to say, would surely have understood, forged the links. And then, heedless of the dangers, would have gone to her father, slipping through the dawn streets to ask what he knew of the great secret… Matthew Borrow, atheist, practical man who, if he knew at all, had thought so little of it that he’d buried it with his wife, considering it more trouble that it was worth. Merlin’s secret. Buried.
Not any more.
We sat down on the edge of the tor’s small plateau, maybe where Joan Tyrre had sat with Cate Borrow, and I could scarce keep a limb still. If I truly had been a conjurer, then I might have summoned the spirit of mad John Leland to join us. But at least I had his notebook. At least I knew his mind.
And so began to talk of Arthur, said by some to be descended from Brutus the Trojan, first King of Britain. Arthur had been Leland’s passion. Everywhere he went on his itinerary he’d discover more of his hero’s footprints, memorably proclaiming that the earthworks around the hill at Cadbury – not a long ride from here – made it, unquestionably, the site of Arthur’s Camelot.
‘So we can see why he spent so much time in Somersetshire,’ I said, ‘and why he returned here after the fall of the abbey. It was all about Arthur. ’
‘Arthur’s bones, perchance?’
‘Nothing so prosaic. This town stands for the magic side of Arthur. Here’s the place to which he was carried by barge, by fey women, either to die or to lie until his country hath need of him. And this – where we’re sitting – was where lived his magician. Merlin. Who came before Arthur and gave to him, in particular, the round table. Do you begin to see now?’
‘In truth,’ Dudley said, ‘no.’
‘Nel Borrow said her mother knew nothing of the Holy Grail but had once said that some of Arthur’s round table was still to be found here. Clearly, this must have become part of local legend, because Benlow the bone-man offered to sell me a piece of it.’
I reached into a bare patch of earth and scratched up some soil, holding it out on the palm of my hand.
‘In truth, this is a piece of it.’
Bringing out the hide-bound notebook, then, opening it up and turning it on end, so that a drawing of what had appeared to be a serpent now looked more like a swan with open beak.
‘These are the creatures of the stars… the signs of the Zodiac – Pisces, Aquarius, Libra… I could draw them all in my sleep. Yes, they look different here – the shapes are not as recent astronomers have drawn them. Which is why it took me so long to work it out. These may be much older versions.’
‘On the… ground?’
‘The signs of the Zodiac created upon the land… giant signs, in a circle which appears to be ten miles or more across. Marked out in physical features of the landscape – in the shape of hills and the paths of rivers and roads, fields, hedgerows. This… is the great secret of Glastonbury, passed on by Merlin the Druid, guarded by the monks.’
‘But who-?’
‘ I don’t know. The ancient people. The old Britons. Maybe the people who were here when Pythagorus was alive. Or earlier… when Hermes Trismegistus walked the earth. The very builders of the landscape… perchance with
