The Heresy of Dr Dee

XXXVI

In Dark Arts





JOHN SCORY has removed his mitre and wears a small hat of an academic kind. He takes the oath with a knowing half-smile. Legge consults his papers, then sits back in his big chair and looks up.

‘My Lord Bishop, you are, I believe, my last witness.’

Scory looks perturbed.

‘Not the last ever, I trust, Sir Christopher. One would hate to think the fear of a Welsh curse might drive you from the Bench.’

Legge scowls. Dudley grins. He rather likes Scory, a bishop in perhaps his last see who gives not a whit for anyone, least of all an ambitious judge from London.

The light in here has gloomed since midday, the banners fading into shadow, the old barn’s beams and pillars giving the court the illumination of a forest clearing.

The judge starts again.

‘You’ve been Bishop of Hereford since…?’

‘Last year.’

Legge frowns. He evidently thought it was longer.

‘But in that time,’ Scory tells him, ‘I’ve studied in some detail the religious beliefs and practices on the fringes of the diocese.’

‘By which you mean the area in which we now sit?’

‘And some regions further west.’

‘You’re saying that beliefs in this area may differ in some ways from the accepted faith of the land?’

‘Only in the way that faith might be interpreted,’ Scory says. ‘Wales and the Border country are not noted as areas of religious rebellion, but old beliefs die hard.’

Legge waits. Now Dudley begins to see where the judge is going with this. He’ll have the court presented with clear proof that Wales is yet riddled with witchcraft and that it’s entirely reasonable to suppose that a man like Prys Gethin was schooled in dark arts.

It should make for an entertaining hour or so. Dudley has eaten passably well in the Bull, drained a flagon of the innkeeper’s finest cider and then emerged to find the whore, Amy, waiting for him in the marketplace. Telling him that if he comes to her after court’s out, she may well be able to point him towards the man he seeks.

Perfect. With any luck they could be out of here on the morrow, with the Wigmore shewstone all packed away. He has the money… and the menace, if required, as it usually is.

‘Coming out here,’ Scory says, ‘was a rather bewildering experience for someone used to softer climes. I found things remarkably different from Chichester in the south-east, where I was bishop in… in earlier times. There, for most people, worship was seen primarily as essential preparation for the life which is to follow.’

‘And is it not, my Lord Bishop?’

A suitably pious consternation creasing Legge’s brow.

‘Oh, most certainly it is, my Lord,’ Scory says. ‘However, in the wilder country, worship and ritual are seen also as serving a practical purpose in the surviving of this life. Isolated country people depend far more than do we upon a relationship with the land and its elements… perceiving themselves closer to the, ah, spirits which – under God – maintain the fertility of crops and stock, and hold the seasons in place.’

Legge’s eyes close in upon the blade of his nose.

‘Spirits?’

‘Country people, inevitably, are closer to what you may prefer to think of as the elements of nature. Not as close as our ancestors might have been but closer than most city people can imagine. Few have not had some experience of natural powers which have raised them up or – more often – reduced them to fear for their livelihoods. And life itself.’

Scory pauses, casts his gaze around the rustic courtroom as though it were become his cathedral. The air is clouded in here now, but not dark enough for candles.

‘My point is that they are constantly aware of the fragility of their lives and why a balance must be found and held. And, in finding this balance, are oft-times inclined – by instinct – to mingle the rituals and liturgy of the modern Christian church with the time-honoured customs of the area. Which some may see as witchcraft, but these simple folk—’

‘What are you saying, Bishop?’ the judge demands irritably. ‘That witchcraft is so deeply embedded in the religious practices of these counties that it goes unrecognised as heresy and blasphemy?’

Scory beams.

‘Precisely, my Lord. Were every man or woman who practises what we might consider a form of witchcraft to be brought before a court, most villages would be left derelict and the land untilled.’

Legge sits up, his chair creaking. This testimony has not taken the path which he – or Dudley – would have wished.

‘And what of curses?’

‘As old as time.’

‘And in your experience of this area, can curses yet kill?’

‘In my experience…’ Scory wrinkles his nose. ‘…a countryman believing himself cursed will oft-times curl up and die.’

‘You are saying the curse works.’

‘I believe that, in the right circumstances, some curses do indeed work. Especially, as I say, if a man knows himself cursed. If he falls ill, he’ll be inclined to believe the curse is come upon him.’

‘And the inflictor of the curse may issue it with this intent?’

‘Indeed,’ Scory says, gazing into the air. ‘However, I confess I’d find it rather harder to explain how such a man may seek to persuade let us say a bridge that its timbers are fatigued to the extent that the said bridge gives up its struggle against collapse just as the recipient of a curse is passing over it. Probably a gap in my occult knowledge, my Lord, which I must needs address.’

Silence, and then the sound of laughter.

Which, Dudley is dismayed to discover, comes from his own throat.

Scory retains his solemnity as the laughter spreads in slow ripples through the court.

‘Thank you,’ Legge says coldly. ‘I have no more questions for this witness and will shortly adjourn this hearing for a period to consider all the evidence before addressing the jury.’

He glances disdainfully at the prisoner, who yet stands as though a noose is already in place. Dudley eyes the doors. No better time, as the judge prepares to rise, for a rescue attempt.

Legge delves among his papers.

‘But before I adjourn… I had considered giving the prisoner an opportunity to speak for himself – on the understanding that it would be in English – but now see no need for this. However, a written statement has been presented to the court by the prisoner, writing in the name of Gwilym Davies, the substance of which I shall now disclose.’

The judge tells the court that the man calling himself Gwilym Davies and professing to be a farmer of Carmarthen, claims that, on the night in question, he and his fellows had driven a herd of black cattle to the London markets and were returning through Radnor Forest when they were set upon in darkness.

‘Believing their assailants to be murderous robbers, they fled,’ Legge said. ‘But Davies, being lame, was captured and thrown into a cart. Being much beaten about by men who, he says, gave no evidence of being officers of the law, he admits to subjecting them to a tirade of abuse after one of them spat into his empty eye-socket. He denies issuing a formal death curse. Claims he…’ The judge sniffs. ‘… would not know how to.’

In the dock, the prisoner is nodding very slowly.

What unmitigated shit. If there was anyone more practised in the art of cursing than this one-eyed man, Dudley has yet to encounter him. Deserves to dangle for these lies alone.

‘He also repeats his assertion,’ Legge continues, ‘that the name Prys Gethin was pressed upon him by his captors. This being a name which, as the sheriff has told us, is calculed to spread a particular fear in this area of the borderlands.’

The judge smiles thinly and sceptically before adjourning the hearing for two hours – an extraordinary amount of time for such a petty case, Dudley thinks.

He leaves the court and walks down to piss in the river.

Only wishing he could have taken the stand himself and declared how the man had cursed him. Here in the marketplace without a second thought, the malevolence springing full-formed to his lips as if directed from some outside force.

But then, what nest of wasps might Dudley have kicked if he were to have given evidence as Master Roberts, the antiquary?

Walking back up the street in the dimming afternoon, he marks a tall woman in a dark green cape, gliding towards him from the centre of town.

By the finery of her apparel alone, it can only be the whore calling herself Amy.

They draw level in the marketplace, now filling with people awaiting the conclusion of the trial that will scratch a twenty-year-old itch. The piemen gathering.

Amy smiles, reaches up quite openly and touches Dudley’s cheek.

‘Now, my Lord?’

The title delivered in a coquettish, mocking way, but Dudley still can’t help wondering if she knows who he is. All the men of influence she must bed. And introducing herself as Amy. Could that…?

Enough. She’s a woman. Dudley can handle women.

‘You can take me to him now?’ he asks.

‘Of course.’

‘Then I’m in your hands.’

‘Time for that as well, if we’re quick,’ Amy says.