‘But he was expecting trouble?’
‘He didn’t know,’ Dudley said. ‘None of us knew. A few men had come here ahead of us, orders of Cecil. It appears I am, after all… considered of some value to England. And maybe even you, in your peculiar way.’
‘Half a dozen sleeping in my cellars,’ Cowdray said. ‘Come out to watch the entrances at night. Nobody noticed the extra, with all the lowlife in town for the hue and cry.’
‘And, um, when Carew went to Exeter,’ Dudley said, ‘in fact he went no further than Wells. Now you know.’
‘Good of you.’
‘John, look… if ever a man spends his days looking over his shoulder, it’s you. You must know how you are.’
‘Unstable in my mind?’
‘It was simply considered unwise to… trouble you with this.’
‘ Who considered it unwise? You? Carew? Cecil? You going to tell me Fyche knows?’
‘Fyche knows nothing of this,’ Dudley snapped. ‘You see? There you go again. That ’s why you weren’t told. Would you have dug up a grave knowing you were being watched? Not that we-’ Dudley raising both hands. ‘No more than two of them, on that occasion. Instructed to come no closer than the bottom of the hill. They were not to see what we were doing.’
For me, the humiliation was as solid as an another person in this cider-stinking cell. I thought to leave. Then, at the door, recalled what Dudley had said that afternoon in his barge on the Thames, turned and threw it in his face.
‘A rare freedom to move around as a common man, unencumbered by the trappings of high office…?’
‘Figure of speech,’ Dudley said. ‘You’re right. You’re my friend, and I should’ve told you. Blame the fever.’
‘Go and look for your damned bones.’
Turning away, walking out of the alehouse, into the grey afternoon. Still hadn’t eaten, but there was no time. At least I’d fulfilled my purpose, decoding Leland’s notebook. If Arthur’s bones lay not at Butleigh then the monks of Glastonbury had not the wit I’d credited to them.
At least I was free now to apply what remained of my energies to that which was most important to me. The rain had stopped and, though the sky was cold, the day was unseasonably warm.
Wild lights were blazing in my head as I walked down the high street.
Half in purgatory, half in the Bedlam.
PART FIVE
‘Oh Glastonbury, Glastonbury… the Threasory of the carcasses of so famous and so many rare persons… how Lamentable is thy case now?’
XLIX
His Diversion
Candles everywhere.
A cathedral’s worth of candles albaze in Benlow’s ossuary. Cheap tallow candles, fine beeswax candles, many of them hot-waxed to the craniums of the anonymous dead who posed as kings and saints.
‘Burning them all,’ Benlow said. ‘Go out in light.’
The whole cellar was flickering white-gold. Somewhere, a forbidden incense burned, and the air was all sickly-sweet as if the bones themselves, as was sometimes said of saintly relics, were become fragrant.
‘I wanted you to take me to London,’ Benlow said. ‘I was going to ask you. Before you set that old bitch on me.’
Sitting on his bench in a fine gold-hued doublet and his soft velvet hat. Cradling what he said was the skull of King Edgar, the good Saxon. Light and shadows shivering all around him, and it was as if we were taken into the astral sphere where nothing was solid.
‘How could I trust you,’ I said. ‘Knowing that your trade was founded on lies.’
‘No lies no more, my lord. Silence, maybe, but no lies.’
‘Silence helps no-one.’
‘No-one helps me.’
‘Do some good.’
‘What is good?’ He leaned out from the bench. ‘You tell me what is good. You can’t! No-one knows no more! To which God do I commend my soul? Do I cry to His mother? Am I allowed? Is He allowed a mother?’
Benlow began to laugh, and it turned to coughing. He covered his mouth and then looked down at his hand.
‘How soon before the blood comes?’ He moved to the end of the bench. ‘Sit with me. Are you afraid? Afraid I’ll give you the black lumps?’
Tentatively, I crossed the cellar, a brittle bone ground to fragments under my boot. Sat down at the opposite end of the bench. Even so, straining to hear what Benlow said next, for it was said in not much above a whisper, borne on poor breath.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m John Dee.’
He sighed.
‘The royal conjurer.’
‘The royal astrologer and consultant.’
‘Conjurer. Admit it.’
‘No. It would be a lie.’
‘It’s all lies. All life’s a lie. Tell me – which God’s a lie? Or are they all lies? Even no God’s a lie. Everybody lies in this town. You’re a wise man. Tell me that. Tell me that and I’ll tell you something. Bargain. Folks bargains with me all the time.’
‘Oh, there is a truth,’ I said. ‘At the core of it, Master Benlow, there’s a truth.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m a mathematician and I can see the geometry of it. I can chart the geometry of heaven and earth.’
‘Good, good… good so far. You’re a clever man. No more clever man in the whole of Europe, I’ve heard.’
‘That’s a lie also. But… clever enough.’ I felt a sweat in my hands. ‘Your turn, Master Benlow.’
‘I do resurrect the dead,’ he said. ‘To order.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know you provided the bones to be buried in the herb garden. I know that you dug up certain graves at the Church of St Benignus. As you say, to order.’
‘Good so far.’
‘I know that you perform these tasks for Sir Edmund Fyche and, in return, he’s permitted you to continue your business. Undisturbed.’
Benlow leaned back, his breath a thin wheezing. He brought out a small bottle, resting it on King Edgar’s
