The Heresy of Dr Dee (18 page)

‘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.

XXI

C
OLD IN THE
parlour now, with that jagged hole in the window and water beginning to pool around Dudley’s fine riding boots. When we were alone, he
stood up, regarding me sideways, dark eyes aslant.

‘I don’t think… that should we get involved in this, John.’

‘Did I suggest we might?’

He snorted like a stallion.

‘You eel! I was watching your face. All that talk of Glyndwr’s magic and altering the weather and the curse of Prys Gethin? John Dee in the land of Merlin? A pig in shit. As for this
boy Vaughan…’

‘Mmm.’ I nodded. ‘He’s sitting on eggs. He’s a lawyer, but also border-raised, and he doesn’t think free pies can cure fear. Mortimer’s army would have
been drawn from places like Presteigne. The presence in the town of another Gethin…’

‘So
called.
And in chains.’

‘Freed himself from his bonds on the road to New Radnor,’ I said. ‘So that he was able to point the finger in malevolence…’

‘Jesu, don’t
you
start.’ Dudley rubbed his hands together to make heat. ‘Gives me shivers, this place, somehow, even more than Glastonbury. How far to Wigmore from
here?’

‘Seven miles. Eight? You weren’t thinking of riding there in this?’

‘First light, I was thinking,’ Dudley said. ‘Assuming we aren’t all drowned by then.’

I shook my head.

‘No real use in riding out to Wigmore until we have a better idea of exactly what we’re looking for. I gather there are people we might talk to in this town first.’

It was the first chance I’d had to tell him what I’d learned from John Scory in Hereford. Dudley listened without interruption, only the occasional raised eyebrow.

‘You saying the Bishop of Hereford knew of the stone?’

‘But not where it is – or the former abbot. But he did say Presteigne would be a good place to start looking. Not least because much of the property here once belonged to the
abbey.’

‘And then gathered in by the Crown, and the Crown would sell it off. I don’t see how there’d be a connection any more.’