the help of the cosmos itself-’
‘Calm yourself, John, you’ll have a seizure.’
‘Mercy.’ I swallowed, leaning over with hands on knees, could barely breathe. ‘A… a celestial mirror. The earth here – the holiest earth. Dear God, it’s wondrous.’
‘If it’s right, my friend,’ Dudley said. ‘If it’s there. It’s just I don’t see how they could have done it. If it’s not possible for anyone to see it fully, even from the highest ground…’
‘You also,’ I reminded him, ‘found it impossible to see how one man might chart the land, the shapes of hills, the shape of the coastline. The point is… if it were possible to stand in one place and see the whole circle, it would be no secret. Its power lies in the knowledge of its existence… how it lives in the mind. As above, so below.’
Of course, it would not be so obvious now as it might have been in centuries past. Hills would be eroded, rivers grown wider, some dried up.
‘But if it would’ve meant altering the paths made by roads,’ Dudley said, ‘and maybe changing the direction of rivers and streams… then too many people would have to know the secret, and it wouldn’t be a secret and we’d all know of it.’
I shook my head.
‘Not so. Who owned all this land, or most of it? The abbey. Who decreed how it should be maintained? Who decided where roads might go, how the flat lands might best be drained… The abbot. The farmers and builders would do as the abbot decreed.’
‘So you’re saying this was the secret Abbot Whiting would not reveal?’
I shrugged.
‘Jesu,’ Dudley said.
‘It was also, I’d guess, the secret that drove Leland out of his mind. Did it not bring together the two most important things in this man’s life – the charting of the country…?’
‘And Arthur.’ Dudley came to his feet. ‘By the Lord God, John, what have we stumbled upon?’
‘We didn’t stumble upon it. We had to dig for it.’
I looked down at the notebook, these rough sketches: the design of insanity? For all I knew I was on the same path as Leland, destined for the Bedlam.
‘Let’s look at this chronologically. We don’t know when it was made, but we must assume it was before the time of Christ.’
‘So no abbey…’
‘Hell, Robbie, it explains the reason for the abbey. If this was a wonder of the ancient world, an island of the stars, then surely it justifies the story of the Saviour being brought here as a child. There would’ve been a college here, where the knowledge was held and passed on by the Druids.’
‘Merlin?’
‘Merlin indeed, whoever he was. In all probability, a Druid. Someone best qualified to reveal to Arthur, when he came of age, the great celestial secret… in other words, presenting to him the round table.’
‘But did Arthur come before or after Christ? I mean, in Malory-’
‘Malory wrote stories, not history. It matters not a toss which came first, the Zodiac fits either version. Arthur comes to die in the most sacred place in all England, Christ is brought here to learn the mysteries of astrology. Joseph of Arimathea founds the abbey to guard and maintain the great Zodiac.’
‘But then the abbey falls…’
‘Which is where the darkness comes down. If we assume that the secret of the Zodiac was held only by the abbot and maybe one or two of his most trusted monks… were these the two executed with him?’
‘Here.’ Dudley glancing over a shoulder. ‘Here where we sit.’
I could not but sense the agony of Abbot Whiting. Dragged up here upon a hurdle. Hanged. Cut down when not yet dead to be gutted and quartered. I looked at Dudley, saw the tightening of the muscles of his face, knew he was thinking not only of Whiting but of Martin Lythgoe.
Neither of whom were at peace.
‘I think we can assume,’ I said, ‘that Fyche was not one of the monks trusted with the secret. Yet, having aspirations to become the next abbot, would be close enough to know that there was a secret. Which he’d do anything to discover.’
‘For himself?’
‘For himself.’
Dudley stood looking across the town on the purple-grey edge of evening. You could, at least, see all of that, from the crow-picked skeleton that had been an abbey to the fish hill on whose flank Cate Borrow lay.
‘You believe Fyche tortured Whiting?’
‘Or had it done.’ I arose, went to stand beside him, looking down. ‘I’d give anything to prove it.’
‘But even if you could… it was more than twenty years ago. Hard times. Atrocities happening daily. And the Papists were worse. I won’t shed too many tears over a Papist. And anyway, who’ll charge Fyche now? And with what?’
‘It wouldn’t help his reputation,’ I said.
‘He’d still be a monk, then, right?’
‘So? He’s from a moneyed family. Not too difficult to get the ear of Thomas Cromwell.’
‘Luring him with this talk of a secret?’
‘May not have been necessary,’ I said. ‘Cromwell only sought evidence of the abbot’s treachery. Who better to plant it than a monk at the abbey?’
Thinking back to the night of Nel Borrow, her conviction that Fyche had betrayed his abbot, and then…
It was more than betrayal.
‘It seems likely,’ I said, ‘that Cromwell was satisfied enough with evidence of Whiting concealing a chalice and possessing documents critical of the King.’
‘Fyche thinking to learn the greater secret and keep it for himself?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m not sure I’d torture an old monk to get it.’
‘He hanged an innocent woman,’ I said, ‘and he wants to hang another.’
‘And Lythgoe? Was Lythgoe…?’
‘I think I’ve said enough.’
The twisting of a knife in a new wound. And if a charge against Fyche were needed…
A few moments of silence. Even the crows had fled the tower. Then Dudley’s shoulders relaxed and he turned and gazed over to where the sun, if there’d been one, would be setting.
‘Is this the centre of the wheel of stars?’
‘No. I’ve not yet worked that out. But I will.’
‘How do you think Leland heard of it?’
‘Don’t know.’ I sighed. ‘Unlikely we’ll ever know. But he, more than any man of his time, had an eye for the patterns in the land. He travelled constantly. He spoke with divers people – noblemen and yeomen and peasants. He also had access to every book in the abbey’s library.’
Awe and stupor, I remembered. Awe and stupor, indeed. ‘Both Nel and Monger the farrier attest that Leland approached various monks who’d been at the abbey. According to Monger, the only ones who might’ve known are long gone from here… but Leland may have found one. He moved around.’
But betwixt times he’d been to talk to Cate Borrow, close friend of Abbot Whiting. Prompting the thought that Whiting, knowing he might otherwise be taking the intelligence of the Zodiac to his grave, had imparted at least some of it to Cate.
It seemed not improbable.
But Cate to Leland? From what I knew of her, she’d never have betrayed the abbot’s trust.
‘John…’
‘Mmm?’
‘Someone coming.’
Voices. Laughter.
‘If this is Fyche, I’ve’ – Dudley wore no sword, but I saw his hand moving to where it usually hung – ‘not yet met the man.’
