The Heresy of Dr Dee

Pedr Morgan pulls some of the brambles away to reveal a leg twisted at the knee.

‘I’d not have my wife see this.’

Anna Ceddol almost smiles. She’s grown used to being treated not as a normal woman. This, she knows, is because of the tasks she has to perform in the care of her brother. Their parents died within a year of one another, and so Anna has never married – too old now, at twenty-nine, she’ll say, unless some widower is in need of comfort in his dotage.

But there’s no hope of comfort with Sion in the house – sixteen years now and terrifying to most.

‘There’s evil here,’ Pedr Morgan says.

Anna Ceddol has borrowed Pedr’s knife to cut away more brambles. When she glances up from the corpse, the shepherd is turned away, looking down the valley. She says nothing and bends to the brambles, working patiently and her hands do not tremble. She disregards the smells, seemingly unaware of the grace with which she undertakes such a foul task.

Both her hands bleeding freely from wrenching carelessly at the brambles. She slides a knife under a thick stem bristling with savage thorns and lifts. Up it comes, all of a sudden, bringing with it smaller shoots, and all is peeled away from the dead man’s thighs.

‘Oh,’ Anna says.

Of course, she’s heard the tales, still told in the alehouses of Presteigne, tales spat out like bile from the gut.

About what happened after the battle between Mortimer’s cobbled-together army of untrained English peasantry and the hungry Welsh, serving their fork-bearded wizard. On windy nights, they say, the last cries of dying men still are heard, bright threads of agony woven into the fabric of the storm.

This hill of faith and death. This holy hill soiled by slaughter and an old hatred that never quite goes away because this is border country and its air is ever ajangle with bewildered, jostling ghosts.

Anna Ceddol sees the dead man’s mouth is a mash of shattered teeth, though nothing parts them but a bloody pulp.

Betwixt his thighs, however…

Anyone can tell that’s not done by the crows.

XVI Pike-head

I WAS THROWN back at the sight of several dozen men with pikes and crossbows and a half-concealed firearm or two. And a dozen laden carts, all gathered under a whelk-shell sky in the field beyond London Bridge.

Seemed at first like an advance guard for the Queen, and it was only when I left the wherry that I marked the absence of flags, music or any hint of merriment. And saw that the shabby-clad man approaching me was Dudley.

‘Dr Dee.’ He shook my hand with formality. ‘Master Roberts. Remember me?’

First I’d seen of him since that night in my workroom. When I’d taken up his offer for me to lie at his house in Kew until our departure for Wales, he’d been absent the whole time. A bedchamber had been prepared for me and my meals made daily by the servants, while I spent long hours in solitary book-study. No one in the house appeared to know where Dudley had gone.

Master Roberts?

The name he’d been known by on our mission to Glastonbury at the end of the winter. An indication that discretion was to be exercised on this journey, for him if not for me, and yet…

…Jesu. I surveyed the clattering assembly with dismay. This was his idea of discretion? Before I could question it, Dudley led me across the well-trodden field, away from the throng.

We stopped close to the bridge itself, where it was quiet.

I said, ‘Have the trumpeters been delayed?’

The crow-picked head of a man had fallen from one of the poles and lay in the grass near our feet. I wondered if it had belonged to some executed traitor I might recognise, winced and looked away as Dudley kicked the head down the bank, then grinned.

‘All this… it’s not for me, you fool.’

Close up, I realised that shabby had been a wrong impression. If the mourning purple was gone and had not been replaced by his customary gilded splendour, his leathery apparel was still of good quality. Country landowner- class, at least, except for the exceptionally beautiful riding boots, possibly a small gift from the Queen at a time when there were no thousand-acre estates to spare.

‘It’s for the judge,’ Dudley said. ‘Sixty armed guards.’

He explained. It seemed the trial in Radnorshire was for some Welsh felon, of whom an example must needs be made. Dudley said a London judge had been requested by the Council of the Marches in Ludlow to make sure it was handled efficiently and robustly.

Well, I knew what that meant, but a London judge? Was that usual?

‘It is,’ Dudley said, ‘when the local judiciary fears for the health of its wives and children and safety of its property.’

The man on trial was the leader of Plant Mat, a brotherhood of violent cattle- thieves, highway-robbers and killers lodged in the heart of Wales. Well organised, controlling trade, smuggling goods from France, running several inns at which travellers were habitually robbed or held for ransom.

‘I’ve never heard of this. Plant Mat? Children of Matthew?’

Dudley shrugged.

‘It’s Wales. Where they seem to be regarded as heroes for the obvious reason that they’ve been preying, whenever they can, on the English. Or so they claim.’

‘Hence the guard?’

‘Procured with the full agreement of Cecil, I’d guess. Despite his being Welsh.’

I tensed.

‘That means Cecil knows we’re travelling with them?’

‘Of course not. We’re here through Blount’s connections.’

Thomas Blount, his steward, was a former attorney.

‘There’s a handful of others also travelling with us,’ Dudley said. ‘All of them well-investigated, no doubt, to make sure none are too… shall we say too Welsh?’

When he smiled, I saw that his moustache had been trimmed close to his face, his beard cut back to little more than stubble. Hardly distinguished but it was wise enough, under these circumstances. A ransom for Lord Dudley would be not inconsiderable.

‘Sure you’re quite happy with this, Robbie?’

‘Welsh banditry? God’s bollocks, John.’ Dudley sniffed in contempt and began to walk back up the field. ‘Come on, we need to fix you up with a horse. Oh, and while I remember… if anyone should ask, Dr John Dee is journeying, as he often does, in pursuit of old books and also to inspect his family’s property in the borderlands. Assisted by his old friend, Master Roberts, the antiquary. That sound plausible to you?’

Highly plausible, and it had worked in Glastonbury. Several dozen significant rare books and manuscripts in my library at Mortlake had come from the libraries of dissolved monasteries. When religious houses are plundered for treasure, either by common thieves or the Crown, the books are oft-times flung aside as worthless.

I caught him up.

‘Who knows the truth?’

‘Nobody knows the truth, John. Though obviously Legge knows who Roberts is and can think what the hell he likes about my reasons for getting out of London for a while.’

I stopped, grasping his arm.

‘Legge?’

‘The judge.’