A Catholic chapel in the cellars of Meadwell gave the lie to Fyche’s assertion that every man here has put papacy well behind him and is ready to swear allegiance to the Queen.
Quite the reverse. Fyche had been playing a double game from the beginning. Appearing to change sides at the Reformation, having betrayed his abbot to Cromwell in return for land and money, a knighthood and the status of Justice of the Peace. A betrayal viewed, maybe, as a necessary sacrifice, in the best long-term interests of the Roman Church.
Not that Catholicism was likely to be closest to the heart of Fyche, from what I knew of him. He’d been a bursar, an administrator of accounts, had expected to become the next abbot… in effect, the supreme lord of Glastonbury and all points west, with limitless riches.
Had he been led to believe that this, or something similar, could still happen? I thought of the long room full of books, furniture, minor treasures – the abbey in storage. Thought of how Cowdray, on our first night here, had told us of the severe penalties now imposed by Fyche on anyone caught stealing stone from the ruins.
The abbey had not, as expected, been restored by Mary Tudor. But it might be under the sovereignty of Mary Queen of Scots, with all the wealth of France behind her.
What had Fyche been promised in return for his assistance in the early removal of the Queen of England?
How extensive was the part in this of Nostradamus?
And why – in sudden discomfort, I glanced over my shoulder – was he still looking disturbingly at peace with himself?
LIV
A Cold Inversion
Of course, he had no cause to explain anything to me. Unlike poor Benlow, he wasn’t even dying.
I’d need to tempt him, and there was, as far as I could see, only one jewel I could offer him: the key to the mysteries of the round table, the Glastonbury Zodiac. And I didn’t have it.
Not that he knew that.
‘Who comes here for the Mass?’ I asked him.
‘If you wish me to name anyone, I shall… decline.’
‘Not the rabble, I imagine. Only men of influence. Who might also attend… meetings. Maybe with guests from Europe? Leading theologians? Men of state? Not forgetting renowned prophets and forecasters of world affairs.’
Nostradamus smiled
‘You journeyed to Glastonbury yourself,’ I said, ‘in the hope of deciphering the secret at the heart of Leland’s notes?’
He toyed with the girdle of his robe, but I could feel the heat of his mind’s engine. There was only one way he could have got hold of Leland’s notes, so recently reburied.
‘Presumably, Matthew Borrow sent you the notebook. Having, despite his many skills, been unable to extract any sense from it.’
‘No more than could Leland,’ Nostradamus said.
Probably true. He’d left his notes to Cate in the hope that she might one day make something meaningful of them.
How had Leland himself found out about it originally? Maybe from one of the monks – just a whisper of it, on one of his first visits to Somersetshire, in the ’30s, in search of antiquities and Arthur. When at last he’d found time to investigate it, he’d returned. Most of the monks having gone by then, but Cate Borrow had still been around and he’d gone to her. I’m my own man now.
Had Cate found out more? Had she ever got close to the real meaning and intentions of the Zodiac? We would probably never know. She hadn’t had much time, anyway, between receiving the notebook long after Leland’s death and her own arrest for witchcraft and murder.
After which the book had fallen, inevitably, into Borrow’s hands. Borrow would have seen the possible significance and alerted either his masters or Nostradamus himself. How long had it taken Michel de Nostradame, with the help of a translator, to decipher Leland’s notes? Had he discovered the whereabouts of the bones of Arthur buried by the last faithful monks of Glastonbury? Had the bones of Arthur been buried in Ursa Minor? If so, where were they now? On their way to France?
It was clear that Nostradamus, with his fascination for ancient remains, had come to Glastonbury to investigate the Zodiac. Returning the notebook to Borrow? Worthless, Borrow had said to Dudley and me. Occultism. Knowing how rapidly the last of these words might persuade me to approach the unspeakable – taking the bait, waking into the snare. If the journey to Arthur’s grave had been less of a perilous and harrowing quest we’d be far more likely to question what we’d found.
Matthew Borrow was a cunning man.
‘When were you at Montpellier?’ I said. ‘May I ask?’
Nostradamus shrugged.
‘Around 1529. I was twenty-six.’
‘Would’ve taken him under your wing then. The young Matthew Borrow.’
‘He was quite capable of looking after himself, Dr Dee. A Jesuit education does that for one.’
I gripped the stone seat hard.
Hell.
A Jesuit. The steel in the blade of the Catholic Church.
Tried not even to blink, only nodded, as if I’d known of this already.
It at once rang true. The town thought him an unbeliever, a man who went to church only to avoid the fines. Well, safer to be assumed an atheist than a cutting-edge Catholic. The target of Matthew Borrow’s quiet venom would, in his own mind, be the Protestant Church. When the expulsion from this country of the papacy itself comes through a rising not of the spirit… but a man’s cock…
It also explained his cruelty. The callousness of the zealot with a Jesuit’s cold intelligence and almost mystical intuition.
I don’t think I smiled.
‘Was it you who suggested at the French court that he’d make a perfect secret agent in the town of his birth?’
No reaction. But I could see the reason for it. Fyche had established Meadwell, as a possible hub of Catholic rebellion. But how far could the French trust him? Francois of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, would have wanted their own man in Avalon.
‘I wondered what he receives for his services to France – maybe an income and the promise of land and a title when the Queen of Scots and Queen of France is also Queen of England.’
‘Dr Dee…’ Nostradamus scowled. ‘I’ve been tolerant of your unceasing-’
‘One more question… before I offer you, in the interests of science, my theory of at least one use for the Glastonbury Zodiac. What do you know of wool-sorters’ disease?’
It could have been Borrow himself who’d thought of using wool-sorters’, the disease on which he was now an expert. Or maybe some spy-master close to the French court or the Guise family, some ambitious young Walsingham, had seen that notebook and thought how it might be used.
But had Nostradamus really known nothing of this?
‘As a doctor, you tended plague victims?’
I was thinking of Aix-en-Provence, fifteen or so years ago. So ravaged by the plague that scores of houses were abandoned, churches closed, graveyards overflowing. Into this hell, Nostradamus, according to an account I’d received, had entered as a physician. A brave thing.
‘An experience most harrowing,’ he said. ‘There was, in truth, little I or anyone could do, except to aid the healthy in their efforts to remain free of contagion. Still… good for one’s immortal soul, is it not, to risk death in such a cause? Forgive me, but whether the disease of the wool-sorters can be compared…’
