The Heresy of Dr Dee

XXXVIII

Unholy Glamour





THEN I SAW men with lanterns, horses saddled. Men with swords strapped on and hard faces, some gathered in small groups, as if waiting for a leader.

I espied Roger Vaughan walking alone, seeming to be going nowhere. The white, fattened moon illumined the sweat which spiked his hair and smeared his face like melted tallow. He looked like a man newly claimed by the plague, trying to absorb the awful knowledge of it.

‘I’ve just ridden from Nant-y-groes,’ I said. ‘What’s—?’

Vaughan shook his head, blinking, kept on walking until I could position myself and the horse in front of him. He stopped by an abandoned stall, the smell of fruit about it, slippery skins underfoot.

I waved a hand at the crowd.

‘A hue and cry?’

‘You could very well say that, Dr Dee.’

A young man came shouldering betwixt us, sliding his sword in and out of its sheath, shouting back at someone.

‘Be dead before midnight, if I finds him, tell you that much, boy.’

‘Who’s he talking about?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘If I knew—’

‘The one-eyed man,’ Vaughan said.

‘Gethin? Hell.’ I took a step back. ‘He’s escaped?’

‘You could say that, too.’

‘What about all the guards?’

His smile was crooked.

‘Dr Dee, the damn jury freed him. Under the explicit guidance of Sir Christopher Legge. The jury was as good as ordered to acquit him of all charges, and that’s what they did.’

A moment of waxen silence, like when an ear pops. The night took on a strange, spherical quality, as if I’d stepped out of it like a bubble.

‘Forgive me. The judge was sent from London with the specific purpose of convicting Gethin.’

‘That did seem to be the plan.’

‘Where is he? Where’s Legge?’

‘Gone. Ridden out within minutes of the verdict, with a small guard and no carts to delay them. Before the local people could storm the court.’

‘Jesu, Vaughan…’

‘Don’t try to make sense of it, Dr Dee. There en’t none.’

‘Where’s Dud— Where’s Roberts?’

‘Wouldn’t know. He was with me in earlier in court.’

‘Then where…?’

‘There was an adjournment while Legge considered the evidence. Mabbe he couldn’t get back in through the crush to hear the death sentence.’

Vaughan laughed dully, bent and picked up a stray plum and hurled it at the nearest wall, making a sucking phat.

‘Death sentence.’ He made gesture at the horsemen, beginning to move off in groups. ‘They think to catch Gethin on the road. Bring him back and have their own trial. Or mabbe just hang him theirselves.’

‘They won’t find him, I’m guessing.’

It was just young men with a need to turn anger into action – the twenty-year-old itch violently inflamed. They’d rampage across the hills for an hour or two, until the drink ran out, and stagger back into town, while the lights were gradually doused and the muttering about betrayal died until morning.

I pointed Vaughan down towards the river and the church, where it looked to be quieter.

‘Tell me about this, would you? In detail.’

He shrugged and followed me and the mare.

‘Some of the ole boys are even saying the judge was bewitched,’ he said.



The man known as Prys Gethin… he’d be well away, back into the heartland. Even if the angry men of Presteigne had caught up with him, who among them would have risked his own life administering rustic justice to a man so firmly acquitted by the Queen’s court?

Vaughan leaned over the bridge barrier, staring down at shards of the moon in the swirling waters of the River Lugg.

‘The judge told the jury that a hundred years ago – even fifty or less – they wouldn’t have had to think twice about their verdict. But the world was in the throes of mighty change and such matters as witchcraft were become subject to new thought.’

‘Legge said that?’

He must himself have undergone mighty change since the days when he’d conspired with my enemies to get me burned for using dark magic against Queen Mary.

‘He said that the two principal witness were also the victims, so called, and therefore dead. Told the jury that, as none of the men present had a proper knowledge of the Welsh speech, there was no evidence that a death curse had been delivered. But that it was reasonable to suppose – as implied by the Bishop of Hereford – that being abused in Welsh might have led Thomas Harris to believe that he was cursed.’

‘The Bishop of Hereford? Scory?’

‘Scory as good as said that witchcraft was the religion of Radnorshire. As for the collapse of the bridge in a sudden high wind… while there was much evidence of places nearby where there was no wind, what testimony was there to show there had been a violent storm in such a confined area? Only one man could say for certain, and he was drowned.’

‘Where did the story of the wind come from?’

Vaughan shrugged.

‘Legge asked that. To which there was no firm answer. It was all round the villages at the time but they clearly couldn’t find anyone to describe it to the court. The truth is, it was an old bridge. The judge said the jury would have to decide whether it believed that bitter words spoken by one man could cause timbers in that bridge to weaken it to the point of collapse. Drawing here on the evidence of Bishop Scory.’

‘Why was Scory even called?’

‘Ah…’ Vaughan pushed himself back from the bridge. ‘Now that… is of interest in itself, ennit? Sounded like Legge’d been expecting Scory to paint a dark and damning picture of Wales as a stinking midden of sorcery. Instead we heard of an almost benign heathenism which, enmingled with the Christian faith, gave country folk their own practical religion.’

‘Which is true, to an extent, is it not?’

‘Aye, course it’s true. But it en’t what you say to a court when you’re bent on getting a bad man hanged.’

‘A judge like Legge,’ I said, ‘never calls upon a witness without knowing in advance the nature of his testimony.’

‘Oh, he was heard to try and prod Scory back on to the path. And then ending his testimony at a stroke when it was clear he wasn’t gonner play ball… but too late. Clever, eh?’

‘You think Legge knew that Scory would be showing witchcraft in a different light… but pretended he didn’t?’

‘We had it all wrong. From the start. Assuming he was sent here to make sure of a conviction which a local judge might be affeared to preside over… when in fact he was sent to… make sure of an acquittal?’

‘But why?’

Well, that’s the big question, ennit? A few are saying it was done because the Queen seeks to hold favour with the Welsh.’

‘The victims were Welsh.’

‘Not as Welsh as the accused.’

‘It’s still against reason,’ I said. ‘Saving one man, only to make an enemy of a complete county? That makes not a whit of sense.’

‘Gotter be something we don’t know, ennit? See, even if Legge hadn’t brought half a jury with him, he could’ve turned it either way. He could have asked why there were no statements from Gwilym Davies’s fellow cattle-drovers to support his story of returning from London.’

‘And why were there not, do you suppose?’

‘Because all of them knew that if the case went against Gwilym they would have identified themselves as members of Plant Mat.’

I nodded.

‘Legge commented on the fact that neither the sheriff nor any of his constables were there when the ambush was laid. Wouldn’t it be normal, if a trap were laid, to include constables? The truth is that it’s a big patch and there en’t enough constables to send out night after night, week after week, when there’s no proof a raid’s to take place. Gethin could’ve been convicted. Easily. All the evidence was there, and all the focus of Legge’s questioning was upon conviction. Nobody was even called to say cattle had been stolen – well, none had, they’d been discovered in the act. Ah… cleverest piece of double-twist I ever saw… and the horses all saddled up in the street at the back.’

I stood at the edge of the bridge.

‘What about you? Where does this leave you?’

He shrugged.

‘I came down with Legge. I was his interpreter. His guide to the thinking of Radnorshire folk. And he used what I told him. Oh hell, aye. Used it to aim his final bolt at us. Right at the start, the prisoner – before he was shut up – told the court they gave him the name Prys Gethin, see?’

‘His captors? The sheriff?’

‘Who knows? But Legge, in his address to the jury, came back to that. Saying the name carried what he called an unholy glamour. Particularly in this county. As if it had been introduced deliberately to give the capture of a common thief a significance it wasn’t worth. As if it was all a piece of elaborate theatre to heighten the status of Presteigne as county town. In the west, see, they’ve ever resented it. Despising this place as an offcut from England.’

I could see the logic here. But why had Legge become such an enemy of this town?

‘You had no opportunity to question, if not Legge himself, then, one of the other attorneys?’

‘They’d cleared off within minutes of the verdict. The guards and jurymen split up into pairs and took off separately. Me…’ Vaughan drew a rough breath. ‘Two of the local boys had me up against a wall, would’ve beaten the shit out of me if a couple of Evan’s constables hadn’t come over, dragged them away.’

‘He’ll look a fool, too.’

‘The sheriff? Aye, nobody’ll come out of this unsullied. They think we’re all in it. And half of Wales here to see the humiliation. A man was even pointed out to me as Twm Siôn Cati, the famous robber of the west – and he got away with it, too. They’re laughing at us, Dr Dee. Mabbe I’ll take the coward’s way out on the morrow. See the kin at Hergest then ride back to London.’

I sighed.

‘Twm Siôn Cati is to marry my cousin. He’s a scholar now. I, um, try not to think about his past.’

He was silent a moment, then he smiled.

‘No offence meant.’

‘Nor taken. You believe Gethin was wholly guilty?’

‘I believe he was, Dr Dee, I’ve looked into the bastard’s eye. I believe there’s evil in him. But then… I’m a local boy.’