The Heresy of Dr Dee

Looking between the trees to the moon-grazed hills, I experienced that momentary sensation of being separate from the physical: the uncomfortable feeling of following yourself, just one step behind, which always comes when there’s no time to contemplate its significance.

And then it was fading, and Thomas Jones was untying his horse from the tree.

‘He may not even be there yet, especially if he’s on foot. You have weaponry, boys?’

Vaughan produced a stubby dagger. I had nothing.

‘Only your magic, eh, John?’

Thomas Jones smiled, more than a touch ruefully.

* * *

Whitton Church lay by the side of the road, amid ancient yew trees, about half a mile short of Pilleth. It was two or three hundred years old and not in good repair. But it gave us some concealment as we looked out towards Brynglas, upon whose slopes the moonlight gave the illusion of a first fall of quiet snow.

‘Been here in my dreams so often,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘Every Welshmen is inclined to venerate Owain Glyndwr.’

Was this a time for following such dreams? I wondered again how far I might trust him. What if he played a double game, with his veneration of Glyndwr?

This is what the night does to you.

‘If we go directly up the hill, we’ll be seen for miles,’ Vaughan said. ‘Better to follow the river, where it winds behind the trees.’

He led us out past Nant-y-groes, where one small light shone in a downstairs room – or was it the moon’s reflection? And then we left the road to follow the River Lugg… the river of light living up to its name this night, still as a cold, white, twisting road. Behind us, a multitude of sheep lay close-packed in a corner of the pasture, like frogspawn on a pond.

‘They come down before sunset,’ I said. ‘They don’t like the hill at night.’

We kept, as far as possible, behind the trees. The ground was rough and sloping. We went carefully, passing under the towering motte of the long-ruined castle, overgrown now, the river forming a natural moat.

The moon was high and white and the clouds were rolled back, and the side of Brynglas shone now like a polished breastplate, looking bigger than I’d ever seen it. I thought of Anna Ceddol sleeping in the house that was half inside the hill – if ever there could be sleep with the mad boy in the house. Pushing back the thought, I called softly to Thomas Jones.

‘So how was it in your dreams?’

‘Brynglas? Like Jerusalem. A shrine. It makes me tremble.’

His voice low and sibilant as the wind through dead foliage.

‘There is a shrine up there,’ I said, as we stopped. ‘ To the Virgin Mary. And, um, I suppose what came before her.’

‘I know.’ Thomas Jones gazed up, between tall trees, at the silvered hillside. ‘The heathen well, where nymphs would bathe. A portal to the otherworld, the land of the dead, of the ancestors.’

‘So they say.’

‘They also say Owain went there on the night before the battle, did you know that? There’d been this huge and savage storm, the sky ripped apart with lightning.’

‘Weather again.’

‘Indeed. His war began with a fiery star crossing the heavens, followed by thunder, and so it went on. And in the silence after this fierce storm in the summer of 1402, Owain and Rhys Gethin ascended the hill to the holy well. It was June the twenty-first. Midsummer. The old festival.’

‘And the next day they set fire to the church,’ I said. ‘They stood and watched the church burn.’

Glyndwr had fired several churches on the way here, supposedly because they paid tithes into England, but I said nothing about this.

‘The new Rector of Pilleth, he’d say Glyndwr and Gethin had sold their immortal souls to the devil that night.’

‘And a goodish deal it was, boy. Imagine the terror when word of the victory reached the English court. Wondering if, by year’s end, they’d all be learning Welsh.’

‘But short-lived. Like all deals with the devil. Whatever he invoked here deserted him when he entered England. He died unfulfilled as, presumably, did Rhys Gethin.’

‘If he died.’ Thomas Jones reined in his horse. ‘Don’t make dust of this, boy. Owain’s death was never recorded, nor his burial place ever found. He simply disappeared. Oh, I’m not saying he lives… but something of him does. And, if it’s anywhere, it’s here.’

He turned slowly in the saddle to face me, his round, pale face shining like a smaller moon.

‘Look at me, boy – fallen Welshman, recipient of an English pardon. See what it does to me, this place. Oh, they all come here, at least once. Not just the handful of mad old ragamuffins in Plant Mat, but all those who yet dream of an exalted Wales. They come here to seek… renewal. And they keep coming back, oft-times for reasons they’ll never quite understand. The men I drink with in Tregaron, the poets and the dreamers. They come quietly, and quietly they leave, at dusk or before dawn. Sometimes journeying all the way on foot.’

I thought of the rector: I have seen them anointing themselves here at night, in the heathen way.

‘So this is the place for them, isn’t it? The shrine. The most likely, anyway. Where might they take him? What hiding places are there? How far is it from the village?’

‘Not within sight of the village at night,’ I said. ‘And no one comes out of there after dark. The church itself… the shrine’s behind it, and the well, a long hole in the ground, with a pine wood behind.’

And below it… the Bryn. Half sunk into the hill itself.

Like a cave.

I said nothing of this, but it would be the first place I’d go, to warn the Ceddols. I kept my voice steady.

‘There are wide views from the church,’ I said. ‘Especially on a night like this. You’d see anyone coming.’

‘Especially three of us, on horseback. If we ride directly up the hill, we’re meat. Is there another way?’

‘There is another way,’ I said. ‘With good tree cover.’

‘Fit for horses?’

‘If we dismount and lead them. I’m sure we could leave them in the stables at Nant-y-groes, but… Stephen Price is a cautious man, and the explanations would take time.’

‘We’ll continue,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘See what there is to be seen. If anything.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘How much do you believe? Is there magic?’

‘There’s magic everywhere on a night like this, boy.’

But I had little faith that there was anything of the Hidden here. So many legends were woven with hindsight, to light mere coincidence with glamour: strange weather, moving stars, earth-tremors.

‘You feel a softening of the ground?’ Vaughan had dismounted and was tying his horse to a young oak. ‘We should be able to get through this way and up the hill from behind but not if we’re in bog.’

Damn. I should have thought. When I came down the hill, through the oak wood, I’d only gone as far as the burial tump. Now I only wanted a swift and discreet way to the church and Dudley, if Dudley was there. And also to the Bryn.

‘I’ll go through on foot for a short way,’ Vaughan said. ‘See how firm it is for the horses.’

I watched him vanish into a thickening of undergrowth, wishing there were more of us, then looked up at the hill and the moon. You could make out the grey tower of Pilleth Church, halfway up. A marker for the shrine. Of the village you could see nothing.

‘I’ve never asked,’ Thomas Jones said. ‘But why were you here when I followed the Roberts boys? I presumed just to visit your old family home, but…’

‘It’s dying,’ I said, not wanting to mention the peculiar talents of Sion Ceddol and the lure of his sister. ‘The village is dying.’

‘I’d almost think you cared.’

‘It’s the old home of my father. My tad.’