The Heresy of Dr Dee (16 page)

‘The abbot, yes,’ I said. The former abbot was called John Smart? What of him?’

‘I’ve only been here a year, therefore never encountered the man in person. Only by reputation.’ Scory wrinkled his nose. ‘Why do you want to know about Smart?’

‘I gather that after the Reform, he was reported to the late Lord Cromwell for a number of crimes.’

‘And that’s unusual?’

‘Simony, I heard. And lewd behaviour with local women. And misappropriation of abbey treasure?’

‘And which of these might interest you?’ Scory said slyly. ‘Perchance… oh, let me think… the treasure?’

‘Bishop,’ I said. ‘It’s clear you have your own ideas where my particular interests lie. However—’

‘Well, yes, I do, Dr Dee, but if what I’ve heard’s correct we’re not necessarily talking of gold plate. On that ground, it may well be that our definitions of treasure
would, to an extent, correspond,’ Scory said. ‘Would you like to see some of mine before you retire?’

‘Treasure?’

‘A very rare treasure, to my mind, and I’d certainly welcome your opinion… as an authority in geography, navigation… and other matters.’

Response from the clergy to what I do falls into two groups: those who damn me as a sorcerer and those who wonder if my work and theirs might one day converge. Men like Bonner, this is, even
though he kept his interests secret while publicly damning sorcerers and Protestants to hell.

And Scory?

Carrying a ring of keys, he led me out through a back door of his house and across the shadowed green to the cathedral itself… and into this vast red-walled oven of a building. Simpler in
form and less-adorned than some I’d been into. A few lanterns were lit, and Scory unhooked one and I followed him across the misty nave and out through another door and into a cloister, where
another lamp met us.

‘Who’s—?’

‘Only me, Tom.’

‘My Lord Bishop,’ a shadow said.

‘Taking our visitor to see the treasure.’

‘Treasure, my Lord?’

Scory’s laugh mingled with the jingle of the keys as he unlocked a door to our right and held the lantern high. I followed him into a square cell with one shuttered window and no furniture
except for a wide oak cupboard on the wall facing us.

‘I’d show you our library, too,’ Scory said. ‘If I wasn’t too ashamed.’

‘How so?’

‘Disordered. One day we’ll raise the money to pay someone to examine and list the books.’

‘I’d do it for nothing.’

‘If you had two years to spare.’ He handed me the lantern and reached up to unlock the cupboard on the wall. ‘Meanwhile, anything you can tell me about this…’

At first the doors jammed and then yielded and sprang open together and, by God, it
was
treasure. Couldn’t take it in at first.

‘Hidden away for years,’ Scory said. ‘Thought to be papist magic.’

‘My
God…
’

The whole world was spread before us.

‘How old?’

‘At least three hundred years. Have you ever seen its like before, Dr Dee?’

He held the lantern close, slowly moving the lights around a thousand figures and images, etched in black upon a skin stretched over a wooden frame. I saw what seemed to be biblical figures
surrounded by a monstrous bestiary of birds and fishes, serpents and dragons. Horned creatures and haloed men, robed and naked, amid a maze of towers and rivers and seas, hills and islands, all of
them neatly labelled in Latin and enclosed by wedges of text.

‘A map… of everything?’

‘Of the world. As it was then known.’

‘Was it made here?’

‘Nobody knows where it was made or who made it or how it came to be in Hereford. Admittedly, a world that’s less than the one known now.’

‘Or more,’ I said, thinking I could spend weeks in study of it. ‘The knowledge we’ve gained is more than equalled by the knowledge we’ve lost.’

I stood transfixed, marking the figures of a mermaid and a lion with a man’s crowned head and symbols I did not understand. Yes, primitive compared with Mercator’s globe, yet I felt
in the presence of something far transcending the mapper’s craft. Evidently, the Welsh border had more secrets than I’d imagined.

‘You should know that it does inspire a level of fear, even amongst some of the canons here. They say too much contemplation of it invites madness. I’m told there’ve been
attempts over the years to burn it to a crisp. I’d guess there
is
an element of the occluded here. So for the present, I keep it locked away. Does it speak to
you
?’

Scory moved the lantern and the shapes on the map seemed to shuffle like playing cards into different patterns.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I doubt it was made by one man. More likely some closed monastic order. Look.’

I pointed at the centre of the map, where something of evident importance was represented by a cogged wheel.

‘The centre of the world,’ Scory said.

‘Jerusalem.’ I nodded. ‘That could be of significance.’

I stepped back, half-closing my eyes, and new configurations began to form in the candlelight.

‘Bishop, were the, um, Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon… ever active in Hereford?’

‘The Knights Templar?’ Scory’s eyes widened. ‘Well… not in the city itself but, yes, there were several Templar communities within ten miles of here. My God,
Dee…’

‘Jerusalem obviously was the centre of the Templar world. They guarded the city against the Saracen for many years, had their headquarters on the site of the Temple and, it’s said,
had access to its most ancient secrets. Some of which might well be…’

I glanced at the map.

‘Enciphered
here
?’

‘I’d put extra locks on this cupboard… and on the door. That’s assuming you do not consider the Templars to have been, um, satanic?’

Scory smiled.

‘Part of my duty here, Dr Dee, is not to condemn but to protect what exists until such time as it might be interpreted. Well…’ He let out a breath. ‘What you say makes
remarkable sense. I’d never thought of the Templars. This is, ah, better than papist magic, I think.’

‘Potentially, beyond value,’ I said. ‘Which is why I’d recommend you make it even more secure.’

‘I will. And, ah… some men, if I may say so, might have chosen to keep such a deduction about the map’s origins… to themselves.’

‘Why would they? It’s in the best place.’

He put out his hand.

‘Thank you, Dr Dee,’ he said.

As we walked back to the palace, Scory’s mood was far more open. He told me he’d once been a Dominican friar. Possibly a reason he’d been given Hereford where,
until the Reform, the Blackfriars had been popular residents in the heart of the city.

‘Hereford might seem a lowly post after Chichester. But more important for being on the rim of Wales. The significance of which was made clear to me from the start – the importance
of keeping Wales on the Queen’s side.’

‘The Queen’s proud to be a descendent of King Arthur of the old Britons.’

‘A descent beyond dispute, Dr Dee,’ Scory said with what might have been mock gravity. ‘Her grandfather’s progress from out of Wales to the English throne is surely
confirmation of the prophecy that Arthur would rise again. And all’s been quiet on the border ever since.’

‘It has?’

‘More or less. Still recovering from the damage inflicted during the Glyndwr wars. And yet now… they’re sending a small army to convict and hang one man. One
Welsh
man.
Curious, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know enough about it.’

‘No.’

He stopped, looking out over the river, moonlit now, and then walked down towards its bank.

‘The Wye flows through a strange and individual place, Dr Dee – more so over the border. They have their own beliefs which continue regardless of the Church, whether it be Catholic
or Protestant.’

‘Oh?’

‘It seemed to me that one could either respond with a Bonner-like ferocity or with a tolerance bordering on the spiritually lax.’

‘Towards what?’

I followed him down to the edge of the river, a strip of silvery linen unrolled from the hills.

‘I chose tolerance,’ he said. ‘Which is why I suspect that the behaviour of your Abbot Smart reflected no more than his own response to his bucolic situation. He feasted, he
hunted, he chased after women. And caught some. Well… I’d be a fool to say that’s not how some of my fellow bishops have behaved.’

‘And the abbey treasures?’

‘Such an extravagant way of life will ever demand a certain wealth,’ Scory said.

‘Do you know what they were, these treasures?’

‘Never gone into it. What’s the treasure you seek?’

‘A gemstone. Said to have been at the abbey.’

‘And you think you’ll find it
now?
’

‘A gemstone which is now, apparently, for sale.’

‘Ah.’ Scory smiled. ‘Now
that
sounds like Smart. What kind of gemstone?’

‘We think a beryl.’

‘
We?
’

‘The friend who’s travelling with me.’

‘And that would be…? Come now, Dr Dee, think yourself into my situation. Here I am, leading my quiet life, learning my Welsh to talk to the neighbours… when, of a sudden,
I’m invited to accommodate a company including a prominent judge, the Queen’s astrologer… and another man who, despite his dull apparel, I recognise from my time in the South as
none other than the Queen’s Master of the Horse…’ Scory leaned into the candlelight ‘
… at the very least.
’

I sighed.

‘It is who you think, yes. Not the most popular man in London at the moment, for reasons you’re doubtless aware of. But, I believe, falsely accused.’

Did
I believe that? The candle in the lantern had gone out and I was glad of the relative dark.

‘Nevertheless, a man not short of gemstones, I’d guess,’ Scory said.

What choice did I have? I told him the beryl was famous as a spiritual device and heard him laugh.

‘The magician arises. You’ve come all this way for a fortune-telling stone?’

‘In the cause of, um, scientific study.’ I was beginning to feel like a prating prick. ‘The way such stones have been studied in Europe.’

He shrugged.

‘I’ll grant you that. I’m hardly in a position to dismiss miracle and magic when we have here in the cathedral the shrine of one of my distant predecessors, whose boiled bones
seem to have cured thousands and still draw pilgrimages.’

He meant St Thomas Cantilupe. My library had several manuscripts on the tomb of this most famous bishop of Hereford and other healing shrines where tapers were lit and the bodies of the sick
measured to the saints.

‘Indeed,’ Scory said. ‘So a small brown stone dedicated in the names of several prominent angels which not only foretells the future but gives off healing
rays—’

‘So you know of it.’

‘I’ve
heard
of it. But it’s all gossip and myth and legend and I know not where it might be found. But I can tell you that if Smart has it, it won’t come cheap.
Unless you – or more likely Lord Dudley – are in a position to, ah, apply some physical pressure?’

‘That was never my intention,’ I said honestly. ‘Do you have any idea where Smart might be found? Assuming he’s still alive.’

‘Oh, he’ll be alive, unless the border’s ridden with some vengeful plague I’ve not yet heard of.’

‘How did he escape… well, at least imprisonment, when the charges against him were presented to Cromwell?’

I was thinking of poor pious Abbot Whiting of Glastonbury, who’d been hanged, drawn and quartered for less.

‘Blood of Christ, Dr Dee,’ Scory said, ‘I didn’t know, until this night, how you yourself escaped the stake at the hands of Bonner. And no, I don’t know where Smart
is, though I do hear word of him from time to time. If I were to say…’

His back hunched in deliberation, he walked along the moonlit riverbank, looking down at his entwined fingers.

‘What
can
I tell you…? Except… as the rest of them are going to Presteigne, why not begin your inquiries there? The Abbey of Wigmore owned most of that town at one
time.’

When I told him my cousin, Nicholas Meredith, lived there, Scory’s laughter went skimming over the Wye like a hail of pebbles.

‘And
Meredith
, I was about to say, owned much of the rest. And now appears to own even more. Oh, yes, he might be a
very
good man to talk to…’

‘Bishop, I get weary of saying I don’t understand, but—’

‘No, no, no…’ Scory moved away, separating his hands and wiping the air betwixt us. ‘You’ll get no more from me on this particular bag of adders. All I’ll
say is it’s worth remembering that Presteigne still has its share of dark alleys. Anyway, you might see me there.’

‘You?’

‘The judge has asked me to give evidence to his court. Come along, Dr Dee. Past my bedtime, and past yours, too, if you don’t want to fall off your horse tomorrow.’

‘Evidence?’

‘In the matter of witchcraft,’ Scory said.

The river licked at the bank below my thin boots, like the sound of quiet, sardonic laughter, and I turned away from it and followed him back to his palace.