The Heresy of Dr Dee

XX

Old Itch





IT WAS AS if the sky had split like a rotted water butt, releasing the kind of rain that joins clothing to skin in seconds. A rain that blinds. We watched its torrent in the milken glass in the parlour at the rear of the Bull Inn, forming rivers on the sills, dripping to the flags.

It was not yet five in the afternoon. The splattered street empty now.

According to Vaughan, the Bull was the best of the seven inns of Presteigne. Dudley and I had been told we’d have to share a bedchamber though not, I’d been glad to discover, a bed. A back parlour, plain but well-scrubbed, had been given over for our use and that of some attorneys who were not accommodated at the sheriff’s house. Including Vaughan who came to join Dudley and me and a jug of small beer, explaining that the more senior lawyers were presently taking instruction from Legge.

‘Evidently he wasn’t expecting that,’ Dudley said. ‘I mean the crowd – not the weather.’

‘Nor I, Master Roberts,’ Vaughan said. ‘For which I’ll be held responsible for sure.’

I said, ‘You’re here to smooth the judge’s path? Interpret the ways of local people?’

‘Sent to him by one of my tutors. And making a cock of it.’

‘Not the way of the Border, is it?’ I said. ‘All this fanfare.’

‘We don’t normally make a big noise about anything,’ Vaughan said, letting the border into his voice. ‘And we don’t take sides till we knows who’ll win.’

Well, I knew this – less from my father than my dealings with Cecil and, in particular, Blanche Parry, who’d walk thrice around some matter before dropping hints as to where she stood on it. And even then you wouldn’t really know.

‘This town’s changed, see,’ Vaughan said. ‘New wealth and most of it from England. Big families in the wool trade come in from Ludlow. Experts in cloth-making brought from Flanders. And all the money from the Great Sessions – bedchambers and good food and wine for the lawyers and the judges. Like I say, it en’t England… but it en’t Wales either.’ He lifted his cup, about to drink then lowered it again. ‘As for free pies, free fruit…’

‘Free?’

‘A fresh mutton pie buys a good helping of merry cheer. In place of fear.’

He looked over to the window. A pool was spreading on the flags where rain was oozing between two badly-set panes. Dudley leaned forward on the bench.

‘You’re saying the merchants and the clothiers paid for that show of welcome for Legge? So he doesn’t think he’s come into a hostile Wales?’

‘He’s here to scratch a twenty-year-old itch, is what it is. Quick trial, nice long hanging.’

‘Itch?’

I recalled what Bishop Scory had said about the biggest hanging party he’d seen hereabouts. Vaughan blinked.

‘You do know, I take it, why the Sessions came to Presteigne?’

‘Should we?’ I said.

Preparing myself. Seemed to me that the Welsh border was like to a clinging midden, rotting history into legend so the twain could not easily be separated.

‘Twenty years ago,’ Vaughan said, ‘all the courts were held at Rhayader. Out west.’

He looked at me in query. I’d never been to Rhayader, but knew of it. A town on the edge of the bandit-riddled wilderness which Vaughan said now had been more or less ruled by the brigand gang, Plant Mat.

There had been some resentment, it seemed, over the way justice was administered by the English judiciary, with only English spoken in court.

Plant Mat fed upon it.

Vaughan talked about the year 1540, four years after the Act of Union, when Plant Mat, lodged in the neighbouring county of Cardigan, were extorting regular payments from landowners to the west of Rhayader.

‘If you didn’t pay up they’d burn your winter straw. And if that didn’t work it’d come to blood. Your stock then your family.’

I marked the suppressed rage roiling in Dudley’s eyes as Vaughan talked about a judge sent to Rhayader for the Sessions. An old man and devout. He’d ride to church before taking his seat in the court. One morning they were waiting for him in an oak grove by the river.

Plant Mat.

‘Took him down,’ Vaughan said. ‘Murdered him.’

‘The King’s justice?’ Dudley finally driven to outrage. ‘Was there no retribution for that?’

‘They knew where to hide, Master Roberts. It’s their country. There may’ve been a hanging or two, but no one knew if they’d got the judge’s killer. After that, it was deemed unsafe for judges to sit at Rhayader.’

‘Driven out? Bowing to this scum?’

‘So that was why the court was moved here. To the softer lands on the edge of England.’

‘And this man Gethin is the leader of Plant Mat. Where’s he caged?’

‘A dungeon at New Radnor Castle. Not much left of the castle since the Glyndwr wars, but still the safest prison we have.’

‘About an hour’s ride?’ I said.

‘If that. But they en’t gonner do it in this weather. They’ll want to see where they’re going, and who else is on the road. Or in the hills. If the rain en’t over well before nightfall, they’ll fetch him on the morrow. Won’t please Sir Christopher if it prolongs his stay, but what can they do?’

‘The Queen’s judiciary running in fear of petty outlaws?’ Dudley sat shaking his head in disgust. ‘Am I alone here in finding that a complete humiliation?’

‘This place might look like England, Master Roberts,’ Vaughan said. ‘But it en’t.’

‘Give us time, Vaughan.’

Dudley smiled, and I sighed and poured more beer for us all.

‘Prys Gethin, Master Vaughan… Prys the Terrible, Prys the Fierce… is that his real name?’

‘Probably some puny little turd with a withered arm,’ Dudley said.

‘Two good arms, Master Roberts,’ Vaughan said, ‘but only the one eye. His real name… well, who can say? But clearly he’s too young to be the son or even the grandson of Rhys Gethin.’

Dudley looked blank-faced for a moment as the association of names registered upon him.

‘Prys, Mr Roberts. Ap Rhys. Son of Rhys? Dr Dee your house – your family home, Nant-y-groes… under Brynglas? The hill of Pilleth?’

‘Christ’s blood, Vaughan…’ Dudley slammed down his beermug. ‘The Battle of Pilleth?

I didn’t share Dudley’s fascination with all manner of mortal conflict, human and animal, but I knew that an army hurriedly raised by Edmund Mortimer, the Marcher Lord, had been outwitted and crushed by the Welsh, with terrible carnage.

But all this was a century and a half ago.

‘They’re yet finding the remains of the Pilleth dead,’ Vaughan said. ‘Turned up by the plough. A dark place, it is. Holds terrors yet. I don’t much like where I live, but I’d not live there.’

‘And which side,’ Dudley asked me, head atilt, ‘was your father’s family supporting, John? I do believe the Dees were there at the time?’

Oh yes, they must have been there. But, God help me, I didn’t know which side they’d been on or if any of them had died in the Battle of Pilleth.

‘Hill of ghosts,’ Vaughan said. ‘I’ve heard it called that.’

I wondered which side his family had been on. He sounded Welsh, spoke Welsh and yet the house, Hergest Court, was, if only by a short distance, in England.

‘Beg mercy,’ I said, ‘but I don’t yet understand how this is linked with Prys Gethin. Glyndwr’s long gone. There’s no Welsh army any more.’

‘Not as such, no.’ Vaughan drank some beer, wiped his mouth. ‘But the ole Welsh families who ran with Glyndwr… they still dream. And some still hate the English. And don’t feel obliged to live by English laws. Plant Mat, see, the first of them were likely men who ran with Glyndwr’s army and, for them, it was never gonner be over. And as Glyndwr’s general – the man leading the Welsh in the rout of the English on Brynglas – as his name was Rhys Gethin. See?’

The cold rain rolled down the panes, and only Dudley laughed.

‘Small-time outlaw affecting the name of a famous warlord? Shrouding himself in old myth to frighten the peasants?’

No smile from Vaughan. The boy sat silent, watching the unceasing violence of water on ill-fitting glass. Me? I understood at once what local superstition this would arouse and didn’t feel it misplaced. The land remembers. Only wished now that I’d listened harder to my father’s tales, asked a few more questions. But then, I never thought I’d ever come here. I sought to quench it, all the same.

‘One hundred and fifty years ago. This man must needs be… what… a great-grandson?’

‘Or no relation at all, more like. Just a man who wants folk to think him possessed of a vengeful and still-active spirit.’ Vaughan fingered his sparse gingery beard as if there was more he might say about active spirits. ‘The thought of Gethin returned to the place where he slaughtered a thousand English – even if he’s in chains – is bound to cause unrest among the local folk. Not that it frightens the wool merchants. But they weren’t raised yere.’

‘And the judges from Ludlow and Shrewsbury fear only for their lives,’ I said. ‘After what happened twenty years ago.’

‘Legge, however,’ Dudley said, ‘comes with sixty armed guards and has no fear that can’t be overridden by his ambition. But you’re right, only a good hanging can end this.’

Vaughan slumped in a corner of the parlour settle.

‘You think?’



A cattle raid one full-moon night in the Irfon Valley, the other side of Radnor Forest. This was how they’d caught him.

Been a few raids, and all the talk was of Plant Mat, so the local squires banded together and had all their men out – farm hands and shepherds, pigmen and rickmen. Long nights waiting in the woods, all armed with axes and pitchforks and clubs. The Plant Mat raiders, when they came, were badly outnumbered and taken by surprise, for once, and fled into the hills.

Except for their leader who caught his foot in a root and twisted his ankle, and the farmers’ boys were on him. Two of the squires were summoned from their beds and came out and beat him about before having him tied, hand and foot, to a cart.

‘They know who he was?’ Dudley asked.

‘They did when he told them. Stood there all bloody and told them his brothers would pay them well if they let him go. He’d get a message back and they’d arrange an exchange, and they’d be rich men and their stock would be safe forever.’

‘Tempting,’ I said, ‘for a border farmer.’

‘But an insult to a squire,’ Vaughan said. ‘These two, they both knew what had happened over at Rhayader, when Plant Mat were taking a slice of the farmers’ meat in return for not firing their buildings. Forever’s no more’n a year in Wales. You make a deal with these brigands, they leave you alone for a few months, then they’re back, and worse.’

‘Never bargain with scum,’ Dudley said.

All they did, Vaughan said, was to have Prys Gethin tied tighter and gagged him so they didn’t have to listen to any more of his babble. And then… a triumphal torchlight procession through the hills of Radnor Forest.

‘The new sheriff, Evan Lewis, he lives at Gladestry, which was along the route, and they sent ahead to have him roused. And Evan Lewis joined them on the road to New Radnor Castle, where Prys Gethin was dragged down from the cart. Standing there, under the full moon, they were in high spirits, mabbe a bit drunk. As you might well be if you’d brought the bane of Radnorshire to justice.’

One of the squires, Thomas Harris by name, had stepped up and spat in the prisoner’s eye. Well, not in his eye, exactly, as Gethin only had the one. What Harris spat into was the shrivelled skin around the empty socket of the eye that was gone.

Prys Gethin had not wiped it away. Although he could have done. They saw his hands were freed from their bonds. How was that possible?

Vaughan drank some beer and was silent for a moment, as if unsure how the rest would be received.

‘Stood there, blood and spit on his cheeks. Pointed at the two squires who’d beaten him, tied him down, spat into his eye socket. Stood there in the light of the full moon and cursed them by turn, low in his voice, pointing with a curled finger.’

‘Cursed in Welsh?’ Dudley looked unimpressed. ‘Terrifying.’

But I noticed Vaughan’s eyes and the bleak way he was staring into his beer.

‘Within a month,’ he said, ‘Thomas Harris was dead of a fever that came overnight. And the other, Hywel Griffiths, he drowned in the river, when a new footbridge collapsed in high wind.’

I hoped Dudley would not laugh, and he didn’t. I’d be the last to deny the power of a curse, especially if the victim knows he’s cursed.

‘This wind,’ Vaughan said, ‘was sudden, fierce and unnaturally short-lived. Came and went in a matter of minutes. Taking with it the little bridge and a man’s life.’

‘And another myth was born,’ Dudley said sourly.

‘Myth?’ Roger Vaughan, for all his schooling in London and Oxford, was a man of the border yet, his accent strengthening with his anger. ‘That’s how you sees it, is it, Master Roberts?’

‘So’ – I broke in – ‘the charges will be cattle-thieving…’

‘And witchcraft,’ Vaughan said. ‘Murder by witchcraft.’

Ha. So this was where Scory came in. What evidence, I wondered, would he give to strengthen the case against this felon?

‘Not easy to prove,’ I said. ‘Not these days.’

The last Witchcraft Act, introduced by King Henry, having been repealed after his death. Everyone had expected it to be replaced by something less random, but it hadn’t happened yet, whatever Jack Simm might say about the Queen’s need to prove that she was not like her mother. Goodwife Faldo had been on firm ground when she’d said, in Mortlake Church, that she no longer feared imprisonment for inviting a scryer into her house.

But where a death was involved… well, I’d heard of cases where evidence of circumstance had been enough to hang a woman – it was usually a woman – where proof of dark threats had been given. And fear of witchcraft would never go away. Even in London, there would have been unrest under these circumstances. Out here, with all the terror of the Glyndwr war yet within local memory, it would have a considerable power to disturb.

‘Glyndwr studied magic,’ I said.

Vaughan was nodding.

‘And is said to have used it with clear intent, Dr Dee. As you likely know, it was said he could arouse spirits to change the weather – arouse storms and the like – to gain advantage on the battlefield.’

‘So a sudden wind blowing down a footbridge,’ Dudley said. ‘would suggest this man was simply calling on the same dark powers?’

‘Not too difficult to make out a case for it, Master Roberts.’

‘Especially before a man of Legge’s abilities,’ I said. ‘Was Rhys Gethin said to have dark powers?’

‘I don’t know. He was killed in battle three years after Pilleth.’ Vaughan drained his cup. ‘But what a victory that was. Against all odds. And he was Glyndwr’s best general. And they did burn down the church of the Holy Virgin before the battle. Oh God, it’s all a nest of wasps.’

‘So you’re saying the local judges… might be in fear for more than their lives?’

‘Like I said, Dr Dee, this en’t England. And it definitely en’t London. Although Plant Mat’s never been known to work so far east, the guard’s yere to make sure Sir Christopher Legge stays safe before and during the trial. And the hanging, if he stays for it.

‘As for any kind of danger that don’t involve physical attack…’

‘Legge has fairly advanced Lutheran leanings, as I understand it,’ Dudley said. ‘The Lutheran scholars are in the process of effecting a severe reduction of what we’re allowed to be afraid of.’

‘Aye, and the handful of men who own this town now are all firm reformers, too.’ Vaughan stood up, peered at the window. ‘It en’t stopping, is it? Better face the wrath of Sir Christopher. Tell him his trial en’t gonner start tomorrow.’

He flinched, as did I, at a sudden cracking of glass. The loose pane had fallen from its leading, or been blasted out by the force of the rain, and now smashed on the flooded stone flag. Shards of glass were skittering through the spill, as a second pane fell out.

‘I’ll send the innkeeper,’ Vaughan said. ‘If I can find him.’

None of us had commented on the uncommon ferocity of the rain which looked like preventing the sheriff bringing Prys Gethin from New Radnor this night.

It had, after all, been a wet summer.