The Heresy of Dr Dee

She nodded.

‘He’s still there?’

‘They say he pulls a good income from Presteigne. That’s what’s said. Only gossip, but the same gossip from different ends of town. Yes, he’s there.’

‘Tell me.’

While she told me what she knew and what she’d heard of John Smart and his dealings, Sion Ceddol gazed placidly into the smoke. Holding out his hands in it, as though to accept a gift. But, conspicuously, not from me. His white hands swam up in the blue-grey smoke like flatfish and seemed to grasp something.

Something heavy.

Holding it up to look at it.

Holding up nothing.

Of a sudden there was no heat from the fire.

Anna Ceddol said quietly, ‘There’s someone with you.’

I stiffened. The fire burned white.

The boy turned and picked up his beloved earth-brown thigh bone and laid it on the hearth and then pushed it forward as if he were offering it for inspection to whoever sat next to me.

And then sat back and waited as I shivered.

* * *

I should have gone then to Stephen Price, told him what had happened this day – some of it, anyway – but I couldn’t face it. Needed some time to separate the truth from the madness. Besides, I knew I had to reach the sheriff before Daunce could get to him, although I couldn’t, at this moment, even remember his name.

I stole around to the stables at the rear of Nant-y-groes and found my mare. She knew me at once and was silent as I nuzzled her and saddled her and led her quietly out of the stable and down to the road. I’d come back tomorrow. By tomorrow I would have thought of something. Some way of persuading Anna Ceddol to return with me to London. What did it matter to me that she was incapable of childbearing? There was neither time nor money in my life for children.

I mounted up and followed the silvered ribbon of road with ease, giving brief thought to what I’d do when we arrived at my mother’s house. How my mother would react to my appearance in Mortlake with a beautiful woman and an idiot. The truth of it – I didn’t care. The moon rose, close to full in the clearing sky, and I felt hollow and sad and yet exalted.

We’d covered the few miles to Presteigne before I knew it, the mare and I, pounding the moonlit track.

As if she knew I was trying to shake something off.

Someone.

* * *

Even the mare knew something was wrong in Presteigne, starting and throwing back her head as the town houses sprang up to either side.

Most of them with light inside, even the poorer homes on the edge of town, where you’d have expected the families to settle down for their first sleep.

I dismounted and led the mare slowly toward the marketplace, now abuzz with groups of people, who spoke in low voices. No piemen. No merriment. The town was aslant, its balance altered, the sheriff’s building in darkness, all the pitch-torches snuffed, while only the inns were ablaze with hard light and the jagged air of a pervading rage.

XXXVIII Unholy Glamour

THEN I SAW men with lanterns, horses saddled. Men with swords strapped on and hard faces, some gathered in small groups, as if waiting for a leader.

I espied Roger Vaughan walking alone, seeming to be going nowhere. The white, fattened moon illumined the sweat which spiked his hair and smeared his face like melted tallow. He looked like a man newly claimed by the plague, trying to absorb the awful knowledge of it.

‘I’ve just ridden from Nant-y-groes,’ I said. ‘What’s—?’

Vaughan shook his head, blinking, kept on walking until I could position myself and the horse in front of him. He stopped by an abandoned stall, the smell of fruit about it, slippery skins underfoot.

I waved a hand at the crowd.

‘A hue and cry?’

‘You could very well say that, Dr Dee.’

A young man came shouldering betwixt us, sliding his sword in and out of its sheath, shouting back at someone.

‘Be dead before midnight, if I finds him, tell you that much, boy.’

‘Who’s he talking about?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘If I knew—’

‘The one-eyed man,’ Vaughan said.

‘Gethin? Hell.’ I took a step back. ‘He’s escaped?’

‘You could say that, too.’

‘What about all the guards?’

His smile was crooked.

‘Dr Dee, the damn jury freed him. Under the explicit guidance of Sir Christopher Legge. The jury was as good as ordered to acquit him of all charges, and that’s what they did.’

A moment of waxen silence, like when an ear pops. The night took on a strange, spherical quality, as if I’d stepped out of it like a bubble.

‘Forgive me. The judge was sent from London with the specific purpose of convicting Gethin.’

‘That did seem to be the plan.’

‘Where is he? Where’s Legge?’

‘Gone. Ridden out within minutes of the verdict, with a small guard and no carts to delay them. Before the local people could storm the court.’

‘Jesu, Vaughan…’

‘Don’t try to make sense of it, Dr Dee. There en’t none.’

‘Where’s Dud— Where’s Roberts?’

‘Wouldn’t know. He was with me in earlier in court.’

‘Then where…?’

‘There was an adjournment while Legge considered the evidence. Mabbe he couldn’t get back in through the crush to hear the death sentence.’

Vaughan laughed dully, bent and picked up a stray plum and hurled it at the nearest wall, making a sucking phat.

‘Death sentence.’ He made gesture at the horsemen, beginning to move off in groups. ‘They think to catch Gethin on the road. Bring him back and have their own trial. Or mabbe just hang him theirselves.’

‘They won’t find him, I’m guessing.’

It was just young men with a need to turn anger into action – the twenty-year-old itch violently inflamed. They’d rampage across the hills for an hour or two, until the drink ran out, and stagger back into town, while the lights were gradually doused and the muttering about betrayal died until morning.

I pointed Vaughan down towards the river and the church, where it looked to be quieter.

‘Tell me about this, would you? In detail.’

He shrugged and followed me and the mare.

‘Some of the ole boys are even saying the judge was bewitched,’ he said.

* * *