The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘I told you there was something wrong here. You lose religion and let a town become ruled by commerce and greed…’

‘Dr Dee…’

A man drew level with us at the corner of the street. Dudley’s elbows bent, one hand forming a fist.

‘This one,’ he said, ‘I’ll deal with now.’

‘If I may have a word, Dr Dee?’

The moon showed me a man who, though shortish, was yet built like a brick privy.

‘Make it very quick, fellow,’ Dudley said.

The man didn’t move, as though the word quick had little meaning for him.

‘Only I overheard your cousin’s tirade, see.’

Dudley starting forward, but the man was standing his ground, like a bull in a meadow.

‘And was surprised,’ he said, ‘at how he spoke. Seein’ as when I was in London, I heard naught but good words of you. And knew of your father when he was at Nant-y-groes and I was a child down the valley. He was ever merry and, as you said, generous – especially with apples, as I recall.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Master…’

‘Stephen Price.’

‘Then you…’

‘Lease Nant-y-groes from Nicholas Meredith, and I wondered… Well, it would seem a pity if you’d come all this way without seeing your father’s birthplace.’

Found myself nodding, grasping at a friendly hand.

‘And as I’ll be riding back there at dawn… no wish to watch all the paid-for glee at the arrival of the Welshie in chains. So if you wanted to ride back with me, I’d deem it an honour to show you around the place. And your companion, of course.’

* * *

‘He wants something,’ Dudley said in darkness.

The shutters were up at the window but left open. Dudley had the four-poster. I’d taken – by choice – the truckle pulled from under it, though he’d tossed me an extra pillow in a bere.

‘I doubt Price means us ill,’ I said. ‘And I would like to see the house and its situation. Maybe the only chance I’ll ever have if it’s owned by my cousin. Don’t mind riding out with him alone. It’s but a few miles. Could be back soon after noon.’

‘I was about to suggest it. Let Meredith think he’s driven you away. Would give me chance to ask a few questions while the town’s in holiday mood over the trial. Be a pity to leave empty-handed.’

‘You’re yet determined to have the stone?’

‘I’ve faith in your learning, John. And if France’s poisonous prophet’s making use of scrying, it’s our duty. I’ll let it be known I’m an antiquary collecting gemstones and prepared to pay good money for intelligence about Smart.’

‘Well, keep away from my cousin.’

‘I could deal with the likes of your cousin in my sleep. It’s interesting, though, John. What’s behind it? Why’s he want you out of here? What’s he not want you to find out? Is there money here you’re entitled to? Property?’

‘Don’t raise my hopes. Money and the Dees—’

‘His approach to you seemed a little too conspicuously aggressive. As if he sought to draw you into public conflict.’

‘I should call him out?’

‘Big books at dawn?’ Dudley said. ‘Goodnight, John.’

* * *

I lay in the truckle bed next to the door. A haloed moon was visible where the shutters had been left open so I’d awaken at first light, and I looked for known stars. Wondering why we were here, what the future might hold for Dudley. If he’d ever find out how Amy died and at whose hands and if that would free him or expose him to more threat. On the rim of sleep, I found myself considering if it might even be true that the Queen carried Dudley’s child. So many months had passed since she’d summoned me. How many others had seen her in that time?

Among the stars, I saw images of Elizabeth walking alone in the private gardens of Richmond, all big of belly, gazing out to the fabricated island where Robert Dudley had lain his head betwixt her feet.

If he’d stopped at her feet. I saw him as he was an hour ago, when first he’d seen the ripe-bosomed young woman who had shown us to our chamber and turned out to be the innkeeper’s wife. A movement in his jaw, a tightening of wires.

I shut my eyes on the stars, wrapping the sheets twice round me because of the cold. Knowing not that I’d slept until I awoke to Dudley’s scream.

XXIV All Heavy with Old Death

THERE WERE TWO families of ducks on the good-sized pond in front of Nant-y-groes. Sheep grazed the land down to the river and more sheep were on the opposite bank until the valley floor was lost into woodland.

Beyond which was the hill, a pale and almost luminous green under the heavy sky.

The hill of ghosts.

‘Be glad when I don’t have to see it every morning,’ Stephen Price said. ‘Or watch it under the last lights.’

‘And when will that be?’

‘One year, mabbe two. Fair bit of work to be done on the new place yet.’

He stood firm on this land. Short, thick-built, weathered of face, and showing more confidence than he had in Presteigne last night, as he spoke of the house his family was rebuilding in the next valley, a former abbey grange, Monaughty, from the Welsh for monastery.

An easy walk from here, but its aspect was different.

‘Keeping an air of the holy,’ Stephen Price said. ‘We’d like it to be…’ He glanced back at Nant-y-groes. ‘… three, four times this size. Bigger families in the years to come. As you doctors learn to stop disease leaving empty cribs.’

‘Not that kind of doctor, Master Price. Or… well, not beyond a small knowledge of anatomy.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded his big, squarish head and led me along a path towards the river and a new barn of green oak. Though obviously of the gentry, he spoke simply, in a farmer’s way, as if with an inborn sense of the rudiments of life which the time he’d spent in London could not take away.

‘If the new house was a monastery grange,’ I said, ‘would that mean for Wigmore?’

‘No, no. Abbey Cwmhir in the west. Wigmore land stopped at Presteigne. That’s English, see – wherever they draws the boundary. This… is where Wales begins.’

* * *

I’d tried to feel it. Tried to feel the weight of my ancestry, back from my grandfather Bedo Ddu – an ebullient man whom, my father said, had ordered the font filled with wine at the baptism of his first son. Back through Llewelyn Crugeryr, who had a castle, and Prince Rhys ap Tewdwr, which would give me common ancestry with the Queen… all the way back, my tad would insist, to Arthur himself.

Out of Presteigne, the country had changed: a darkening of the soil but a lightening of the hills, close shaven by sheep. Although there were no jagged peaks, you could sense the rock under the green, the bones of the land. The ruins of a small castle stood like a skeletal fist across the river, and a small grey church was tucked into the hill of Pilleth with a cluster of mean houses below.

I saw all this, but felt no pull of the heart.

Found no sense of my tad in the house which lay behind us, a solid dwelling of timber and rubblestone, with a good hall and inglenook and a new chimney. An old housekeeper had been making flat cakes on a bakestone, with dried currants and shavings of apple. Welsh cakes, I guessed – my tad used to say proudly that he’d taught the