The Heresy of Dr Dee

XXXI

A Popular Knave





IN PRESTEIGNE, THE night was alive with lights and the wailing of a fiddle and flute band which was led, I saw, by the chief ostler from the Bull, in a yellow hat with a feather, plucking at a battered lute.

And so many more people this night. The constant clatter of shod hooves. Messengers, likely from the Council of Wales at Ludlow, coming to feed and water their horses and take meat before going back on the road. New pitch-torches were set to burn all night outside the sheriff’s house, and extra guards had been posted outside.

The roistering was not a paid-for merriment; something had taken fire. If all this was over the trial of one man, it still made not full sense to me, despite what Roger Vaughan had said about the scratching of an old itch. I wondered, as I led my horse into the mews at the Bull, to what extent the wound had been inflamed by the manner of the deaths of the men who’d brought Prys Gethin out of Radnor Forest.

Lights against the perceived darkness of witchcraft?

‘Sorcerer!’

At the entrance to the mews, something stinking slapped into my left cheek. A child’s screech was followed by an ooze of grown man’s laughter, as I winced, plucking at the mess of rotting fruit on my face. Clearly my cousin Nicholas had not been inactive this day.

Quick footsteps behind me in the mews, and I froze, my horse’s hot breath on my neck. No way of knowing how many of them were in the shadows, or if they were all children.

‘No use in hiding…’ A voice more Welsh than any I’d heard in Presteigne or Pilleth. ‘Seen your faces now, boys.’

A voice familiar to me.

‘And here’s the thing,’ it said. ‘If I see your faces again this night and there’s no one about, I shall have no choice but to drown the both of you in the river. Leave you floating faces-down all the way to Hereford. A pity, but there it is. Cannot abide impoliteness in the young.’

Silence, then the voice came back quieter, with perhaps an edge of amusement.

‘I think there’s a horse trough just behind you, John.’

God’s blood. I found the tank and bent to it, splashing the cold water on my face and rising, dripping.

‘Thomas Jones?’

‘The small surprises life throws at us, eh? Keep me going, they do. How are you, boy?’

This was a man high on the list of people I’d not expected to meet in this town. But then again…

‘You’re here as a friend of the accused?’ I said.

‘Ha!’

‘To plead for his life, perhaps?’

Thomas Jones, who was betrothed to my cousin Joanne, peered at the approaching ostler.

‘Lying with the horse tonight, is it, John, or have you come into money?’

‘Living off my rich friends,’ I said. ‘As usual.’

‘I thought maybe it was that. You can buy me dinner, then.’



I’m yet unsure how my cousin Joanne, whom I’d encountered but rarely, had come to be enamoured of the man known in his own country as Twm Siôn Cati.

Thomas, son of John and Catherine, is all it means, but it’s said to ring like mocking bells in west Wales, where he was known as a scholar. And also a thief.

Thief? Listen, I know not – and take care never to ask – what he stole. According to the legend, his victims tended to be knavish landowners. Some of the proceeds of his crimes were, it is said, fed to the victims’ hard-pressed tenants… while leaving some behind for the purchase of his books, I’d guess, though never asked.

Especially since Thomas Jones – Dr Jones now – had, with little explanation, been granted a pardon by the Queen. Maybe through petition of his family to Cecil or even Blanche Parry. Who really knew how or why such pardons were granted? But Robert Dudley, when introduced, was predictably sceptical of the provenance of this one.

‘You expect me to dine with this sack of shit?’

Glaring at Thomas Jones from a corner of the parlour at the Bull, where candles flared from the walls and men I recognised as Legge’s attorneys were pressed amongst well-dressed men with a merchant air, and serving girls bore jugs of ale and cider.

Twm Siôn Cati looked hurt. He’d gained some weight since last I’d seen him, and his hair was longer, his beard shaven close. His doublet, of a warm, russet colour with threads looking suspiciously gilded, was the kind of garment that Dudley himself might have worn were he not in mourning or the guise of Master Roberts.

I did not know – and yet don’t – if there was history common to these men or whether Dudley’s disdain might even hide a well-buried respect. I might even have derived some amusement from it, had circumstances been different, for it was clear that Thomas Jones had a good idea of my companion’s identity. And Dudley’s attitude would confirm it.

‘This man’s a renowned knave. You do know that, John?’

‘Former knave,’ Thomas Jones said stiffly.

‘And you’re telling me this piece of gangrenous Welsh pus is your cousin?’

‘Soon to be, Master Roberts, by marriage.’ Thomas Jones tossed a handful of groats on to a tray and snatched up a mug of cider. ‘And may I say, John, your antiquary’s manner of speech—’

‘Tutored him myself,’ I said.

‘—is sadly typical of the vulgar way the grasping lower orders, when exposed to a little learning, choose to express themselves these days. Thank God, I say, that such a man will never be seen within a mile of the Queen’s Majesty.’

‘If I were in a position to order it,’ Dudley murmured, ‘I’d be obliged, for the good of the country and all of us, to see you hang.’

‘You’ll stay for that, masters? The hanging?’ The big, shiny face of the innkeeper was before us. ‘Likely no more than a day after the trial. And then we’ll sell some ale, sure to.’

Thomas Jones looked dubious.

‘Won’t they torture him first? Find out where the others are? Won’t they want to crush what’s left of Plant Mat once and for all?’

‘You could be right, master, could be right. Likely be dusting off the rack at New Radnor as we speaks. Might have to build the gallows a few inches higher.’

The innkeeper was near doubled up with merriment.



Dudley said, ‘You actually trust this man Jones?’

‘In a way, I probably do. But I wish I knew why he was here.’

It had not been possible, in the suffocatingly crowded inn, to discuss anything of significance. Dudley had said hardly a word. Soon after our supper, Thomas Jones had disappeared to wherever he was to lie this night and Dudley and I had taken a jug of cider to our chamber, lit a candle, closed the shutters against what remained of the revelry.

‘He’s here,’ Dudley said, ‘because he knows Prys Gethin. Why else?’

‘Robbie, he was pardoned by the Queen.’

‘Only because she likes to appear magnanimous towards the Welsh. And because he’s a popular knave. That, of course, is assuming it was her own decision, which I tend to doubt. And who can be sure that Jones isn’t one of them? Plant Mat.’

Dudley had told me about coming face to face with Prys Gethin, chained in his gaol cart. Of his conviction that he’d been cursed by the man. I knew not what to think. For any number of reasons, Dudley was in a peculiar state of mind.

‘I just… I don’t like the feel of this, John. I’m yet failing to understand why a judge of the eminence of Legge is sent here, complete with jury, to make sure that one man is seen to be tried and goes to the gallows with all ends tied. It’s too much. There’s something happening behind it.’

He’d also told me about the whore he’d lain with – why was I unsurprised to hear of this? – and his belief that she might lead him to Abbot Smart and the Wigmore shewstone.

‘And you trust her?’ I said.

‘I know women. She’ll want more of me. What are you doing?’

I’d found paper and ink in my bag and spread them out upon the board under the candle.

‘Drawing a map, from memory, of Brynglas Hill and the valley leading down to the River Lugg.’

Wishing I was in my library, with Leland’s maps, where all might be measured against what was known and recorded. So many possibilities here. Did the ancients believe that dedication of the river to the god of the harvest might ensure fertility in the valley? I drew the ancient burial mound in the river’s curve and the church with its pre-Christian well and shrine. And betwixt them the oak grove. Dudley was peering over my shoulder, a mug of cider in hand.

‘What’s it mean?’

‘All these heathen sacred places all clustered together. The river and the hill. It’s clear that in the time before Christ some places were seen as more suited to worship and communion with the beyond. Places where there might be passage through the spheres, one to another.’

Dudley took a step back, cider spilling over his wrist.

‘Beg mercy, John, I may have asked the wrong question. What I meant was, what the f*ck does any of this matter?’

I looked up at him, perhaps vaguely.

‘I don’t know. I need to think on it. But it’s clear, is it not, that the battlefield was chosen by Glyndwr and Rhys Gethin? And Glyndwr studied magic and would see the power in this place.’

‘Jesu,’ Dudley said wearily. ‘You never change, do you? This is all because some failed MP from the rear benches asks you to explain why his village is dying on its feet.’

‘My father’s village.’

‘Your father’s dead! And it was so much his village that he took the first opportunity to put it a three-day ride behind him and never go back to the dismal hole.’

I shook my head. I’d fought against it and lost, for reasons I’d refused even to explain to myself.

‘I felt no particular kinship with it at first. Felt nothing of my tad there. And then mysteries appeared. As important, in their way, as… as the shewstone, I suppose.’

‘As important to the Queen?’

‘Possibly not.’

‘Your mysticism leads you by the nose,’ Dudley said. ‘So Pilleth’s dying. Villages die all the time, from the plague, or the river dries up, or—’

‘One more day.’

‘You’re going back?’

‘Maybe not more than half a day.’

Dudley thrust his face up to mine.

‘Can it be that you’ve forgotten why we came here? You’re leaving me to find the shewstone, while you waste another day trying to restore the reputation of the f*cking Dees?’

‘Give me one day, Robbie,’ I said. ‘Just one day.’



Maybe I should’ve told him about the Ceddols. Maybe if he’d known there was a startlingly beautiful and mysterious woman in Pilleth he would even have come with me.

Maybe some people would not have died so cruelly.

Maybe.

But I said nothing. When I crept from my truckle at first light, my head was all full of writings about a man called Agricola who I thought might answer the mystery of Siôn Ceddol. And Dudley was yet sleeping in the high bed.

The early ostler was saddling my faithful mare when, of a sudden, he climbed the ladder to his loft and returned with a fold of stiff paper.

‘Left for you last night, master.’

John, the message said. We must needs talk, boy. Alone. And with some urgency.

Had there been any sign of Thomas Jones on the streets of Presteigne as I rode out, I would of course have stopped.

Maybe I should have asked him where he was lodging.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Dear God.