The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘What did they do there?’

‘Didn’t go close enough to find out, boy. Remembering too well the face of a man beaten in Tregaron town by Gerallt Roberts. Most of his teeth gone and his jaw too close to an ear than a jaw was ever meant to be. However… I did see two other men on the hill, one of whom bore a close resemblance to my old friend John Dee.’

‘When was this?’

But I knew, recalling two horsemen I’d noticed down by Nant-y-groes when I was on first the hill, with Stephen Price.

‘The same Dee I saw again that night, in Presteigne,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘Well, well… why then was the Queen’s conjurer in town? Was he there to give evidence to the court on aspects of the Hidden relating to Prys Gethin and death by cursing?’

‘No,’ I said with caution. ‘He wasn’t.’

‘Anyway, it seemed useful to seek you out. I even wondered if you’d been followed to Brynglas by the Roberts brothers.’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘So I left you a message, which you, with your renowned intelligence, contrived to ignore.’

‘Consider my head hung in shame,’ I said. ‘But the Roberts brothers had no need to free Gethin from the court.’

‘None at all.’

‘And you think they knew this?’

Thomas Jones shrugged.

‘What’s happening here?’ I said. ‘How could the truth about Prys Gethin have failed to come out in court?’

‘Because it was an English court.’

‘Not good enough. Legge knew. Legge knew everything before the trial began. You’d told… whoever you told. You’d told them all about Prys Gethin – no such thing as a free pardon? I don’t understand. Why did you even come to the trial?’

‘Not such a long ride from my home.’

‘That’s no answer.’

‘No.’ He looked down at his enfolded fingers. ‘I suppose not. Does it make more sense that I came to court because I was most explicitly warned not to?’

‘In truth?’

He looked up at me.

‘You think I would not like to see an end to Prys Gethin? Look, the woman… I’ll tell you… the young woman who was raped and then choked to death and her husband killed, that was no myth, they were neighbours of my aunt at Llanddewi, not far from Tregaron. Everyone knew who’d done it, but it would never be proved, so I… Thinking it cowardly to finger Prys from behind, I offered to give evidence to the court regarding his reputation.’

‘But you—’

‘And was told, boy, that it would not be necessary. Told my presence would not be useful. Told to keep my head down in the west and forget the foregoing conversation had ever taken place. So why, after that, would I not come to the trial?’

Movement overhead – a bat flittering tree to tree, followed by another. Thomas Jones leaned back, hands clasped behind his head.

‘Does all this then suggest anything to you, John?’

The wood all around us let off a smell of voracious decay. I sat down upon a stump with a jagged edge that hurt my arse. I didn’t care; pain sharpens the senses.

Monstrous constellations, like the grotesque creatures on Scory’s map, were finding form in the firmament of my head, and it felt as if the cold moon itself were lodged in my breast.

XLV Cold Geometry

IT FELT LIKE they were here with us now, skulking and scurrying amid the rotting trees: Cecil in shadow, long-nosed and mastiff-eyed, with his intelligence gatherer Walsingham running hither and thither, ratlike, getting things done.

Getting things done.

And, of course, none of it would ever lead back.

Nothing ever did.

Hell, I didn’t even know if this was Cecil. Felt my fists clenching and unclenching, my body all aquiver. Asking Thomas Jones when he’d been approached by the man he would not name who might have been of Cecil’s Welsh kin.

‘Ten days ago… a fortnight?’ he said. ‘A messenger came to me with instruction to ride to… a certain place.’

‘And what was required?’

‘I told you. As much intelligence as I could provide on the man calling himself Prys Gethin. And speedily.’

Yes, it would need to be, else how could all this have been arranged in the time?

Easily, when you thought about it. Dudley had never explained fully, but I guessed that, not wishing to attract attention by assembling his own travelling party, he would have instructed his steward Thomas Blount to cast around for a discreet but secure company journeying to the Welsh border.

And Thomas Blount being a lawyer well known in the inns of court… they would have found him. How fortunate that this should coincide with the most unusual circumstance of a London judge being sent to try a Welsh felon for a most uncertain offence.

My thoughts curled in upon themselves like eels in a bucket, and I fought to untangle them.

‘The idea of the border judiciary in fear of a band of brigands – that seemed unlikely to me from the start.’

‘If the word came down from London,’ Thomas Jones said, ‘they’d be forced to swallow their pride. Still hard, it is, to believe London would go to all that trouble, all that expense. All that connivance.’

The question of Robert Dudley and the Queen… this was the most crucial matter in England. Nay, in all Europe. A decision had therefore been taken to dispose of a man, at whatever cost.

I recalled the urgency in Cecil that day I’d been brought to him. The day it must have begun to look as if Amy’s suspicious death had not been enough to finish Dudley as a suitor. The day Cecil and Blanche Parry had conspired to ensure that she failed to deliver the message to me from the Queen seeking a suitable date for a royal wedding.

I have no doubts about your ability in this regard. Which is why I don’t want you and your fucking charts within a mile of the Queen at this time.

Watching me. How long had they been watching me? I recalled a flitting glimpse of the black-clad Walsingham, mothlike in the Strand as I was leaving Cecil’s house.

Watching Dudley, too. Well, of course. Watching Dudley, the most hated man in all England, and all his household – in particular his principal retainers, Blount and Forest.

I said, ‘How would they get to the prisoner in New Radnor castle?’

‘It’s hardly the Fleet, John.’

And if it had been the Fleet, they’d have got to him easily enough. Even quicker at Marshalsea, though it might cost a groat or two more for the guards. New Radnor castle, inside curtain walls, would be a fine place for comings and goings. Certainly better than Presteigne, with its gaol in the middle of the town,