The Heresy of Dr Dee

up its struggle against collapse just as the recipient of a curse is passing over it. Probably a gap in my occult knowledge, my Lord, which I must needs address.’

Silence, and then the sound of laughter.

Which, Dudley is dismayed to discover, comes from his own throat.

Scory retains his solemnity as the laughter spreads in slow ripples through the court.

‘Thank you,’ Legge says coldly. ‘I have no more questions for this witness and will shortly adjourn this hearing for a period to consider all the evidence before addressing the jury.’

He glances disdainfully at the prisoner, who yet stands as though a noose is already in place. Dudley eyes the doors. No better time, as the judge prepares to rise, for a rescue attempt.

Legge delves among his papers.

‘But before I adjourn… I had considered giving the prisoner an opportunity to speak for himself – on the understanding that it would be in English – but now see no need for this. However, a written statement has been presented to the court by the prisoner, writing in the name of Gwilym Davies, the substance of which I shall now disclose.’

The judge tells the court that the man calling himself Gwilym Davies and professing to be a farmer of Carmarthen, claims that, on the night in question, he and his fellows had driven a herd of black cattle to the London markets and were returning through Radnor Forest when they were set upon in darkness.

‘Believing their assailants to be murderous robbers, they fled,’ Legge said. ‘But Davies, being lame, was captured and thrown into a cart. Being much beaten about by men who, he says, gave no evidence of being officers of the law, he admits to subjecting them to a tirade of abuse after one of them spat into his empty eye-socket. He denies issuing a formal death curse. Claims he…’ The judge sniffs. ‘… would not know how to.’

In the dock, the prisoner is nodding very slowly.

What unmitigated shit. If there was anyone more practised in the art of cursing than this one-eyed man, Dudley has yet to encounter him. Deserves to dangle for these lies alone.

‘He also repeats his assertion,’ Legge continues, ‘that the name Prys Gethin was pressed upon him by his captors. This being a name which, as the sheriff has told us, is calculed to spread a particular fear in this area of the borderlands.’

The judge smiles thinly and sceptically before adjourning the hearing for two hours – an extraordinary amount of time for such a petty case, Dudley thinks.

He leaves the court and walks down to piss in the river.

Only wishing he could have taken the stand himself and declared how the man had cursed him. Here in the marketplace without a second thought, the malevolence springing full- formed to his lips as if directed from some outside force.

But then, what nest of wasps might Dudley have kicked if he were to have given evidence as Master Roberts, the antiquary?

Walking back up the street in the dimming afternoon, he marks a tall woman in a dark green cape, gliding towards him from the centre of town.

By the finery of her apparel alone, it can only be the whore calling herself Amy.

They draw level in the marketplace, now filling with people awaiting the conclusion of the trial that will scratch a twenty-year-old itch. The piemen gathering.

Amy smiles, reaches up quite openly and touches Dudley’s cheek.

‘Now, my Lord?’

The title delivered in a coquettish, mocking way, but Dudley still can’t help wondering if she knows who he is. All the men of influence she must bed. And introducing herself as Amy. Could that…?

Enough. She’s a woman. Dudley can handle women.

‘You can take me to him now?’ he asks.

‘Of course.’

‘Then I’m in your hands.’

‘Time for that as well, if we’re quick,’ Amy says.

XXXVII Falling Away

I MUST HAVE gone stumbling down the path like a hunchback, and the hunch was Brynglas Hill itself and all the weight of worship piled upon it – one religion grinding against another, the fog before me lit with frictive sparks. Why is it that all faiths founder upon the jagged rocks at their extremities?

Towards the foot of the hill, the fog thinned to a mist again before revealing a sky of amber-grey and the smoke from the Pilleth fires which I hurried towards… and then cried out as the path crumbled before me.

Losing my footing, and the land was all atilt. Then came the shock of cold water – treacherous mud had flung me headlong into a brown, stagnant puddle.

God damn. I lay soaked, twisted and dazed, close to weeping in frustration like an infant. Jesu, what was I become? The adversary? Truly, I’ve never in my life wanted to challenge God, only to understand some small part of his mind. Is that the worst kind of heresy?

Blinking away the dirt in my eyes, I thought for a moment that I saw my tad with that expression of both sympathy and scorn which all good fathers wear when a child falls and explodes into self-pitying tears.

And then found I was looking up into the calm, weather-browned face of Anna Ceddol.

‘Mistress…’ Coming at once, red-faced and dripping to my feet, brushing wet earth and slimed leaves from my sopping jerkin, feeling more foolish than I could ever remember. ‘Oh God, Mistress Ceddol… what have I done without thinking.’

Or, more likely, while thinking too much.

Anna Ceddol nodded towards the boy, who was scrabbling among the damp ashes on the midden.

‘He does everything without thinking. Or, at least, not as we know thinking.’

Yet still achieved more than me, for all my years of study. A bookman who thinks only of how his learning might grow. Making him more of scholar, but less of a man.

Anna Ceddol took my arm.

‘You’re shivering. Come by the fire.’

Leading me inside the Bryn, where she propped three logs in conical shape upon the smouldering hearth, drawing me towards the new flames.

‘It was coming, anyway,’ she said.

‘What was?’

‘The rector. Sooner or later he was going to move against us. He was only gathering kindling for his blaze.’

‘We can stop him.’

‘Don’t waste your time, Dr John.’

‘I’ll find the sheriff tonight,’ I said. ‘Before Daunce gets to him. And bring Stephen Price down from the wall, on your side. He’s halfway there. Can’t deny the malady affecting the valley. Can’t be the political man turning from the old ways. If he’s to have the rest of his life here, he must needs face…’

I knew not how to put it and fell back on Price’s own words.

‘He must needs face what is,’ I said. ‘And that the Pilleth ills will never be cured by a Puritan whose answer to anything he doesn’t understand is to condemn it as satanic and shut it out.’

In that enclosure of firelight and shadows, it was all very clear to me now. I saw the shrine left to crumble and rot, the holy well overgrown, sucked back into the earth which gave out old corpses in profusion.

‘I’ll tell the bishop he has the wrong cleric,’ I said.

Yet I knew how hard it could be to remove a priest. Especially one who knew where a murdered man’s body lay and who put it there. I closed my eyes.

Then opened them quickly.

‘What are you doing?’