The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman Page A

corner of his bed. Clad this day like to a friar in humble brown habit, and yet the girdle of his robe had cloth-of-gold strands within it which drew the light betwixt the iron bars.
    ‘What’s this place, Ned?’
    ‘Purgatory!’ A great fart of laughter exploding out of him. ‘Preparation, my boy. Getting into practice.’
    ‘But you—’
    ‘Marshalsea, I gather. I’ve been before. Could be worse. Could be the Fleet.’
    ‘Why don’t you just swear the oath? You’re no enthusiast for Rome.’
    ‘No, indeed,’ Bonner said.
    ‘And the Queen… you don’t dislike her, do you?’
    ‘Admire her enormously, John.’
    ‘And she’s made her concession. She’s not
head
of the Church of England, merely its supreme governor. There’s no persecution, Catholics can still worship, there are private masses in country houses and nobody’s been executed for it since she’s been Qu—’
    ‘Get thee behind me Satan!’
    Bonner bouncing to his feet, pudgy forefinger outstretched. Then he plopped down again, dissolving into giggles and looking around his simulation of a cell with something approximating to a perverse delight. I wondered, for a moment, if perchance he was dying of some malady and knew it, yet he appeared in his usual rude health.
    ‘So…’ He beamed. ‘Your message says you’re come to speak with me about Queen Mary and King Arthur.’
    ‘I am.’
    Told him about my mission to Glastonbury. Told him nearly the whole of it, more than I’d told my own mother.
    How could I confide in him thus, you ask? This man who, as the Catholic Bishop of London, had threatened and bullied and brow-beaten and choked the city’s air with the greasy smoke of religion gone bad, leaving what once had been men in small piles of twitching, blackened limbs. How could I trust this monster? God help me, I don’t
know.
Yet trust him I did.
    When I’d finished, Bonner sat there nodding slowly, hands placidly enfolded across his not-inconsiderable gut.
    ‘Tell me,’ he said at last. ‘Young Dudley. Is it true he’s dicking the Queen?’
    ‘I’ve never asked,’ I said.
    ‘No.’ Bonner smiled, with affection. ‘You are the only man in the realm who, yet being close to the boy, would not ask.’
    He observed me for a few moments, then threw up his hands.
    ‘All right, yes, there
was
a petition to Mary. Not calling for the restoration of Glastonbury Abbey, as such, merely asking for the site and what remained of the buildings to be handed over to a group of monks. Therefore it
might
have been done at almost no expense… and I believe it had the support of more than one bishop, as well as many of the gentle-folk of Somersetshire, if only because it would have planted the seeds of a recovery.’
    ‘So why didn’t Mary—?’
    ‘Hard to say, John. Maybe the Privy Council was against it. Or maybe if Mary had lived longer it might’ve happened. After all, the place was a treasure house of saintly remains, not all lifted by Cromwell, and that’s not something which someone as devout as Mary could easily overlook.’
    ‘Was mention made of the bones of Arthur?’
    Bonner’s eyes widened.
    ‘If it was, then someone was not thinking.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘The bones of even a Celtic saint would be holy relics. Was Arthur a saint?’
    ‘Better than that,’ I said, ‘in the eyes of some.’
    ‘No, no,
no.
’ His head shaking. ‘What does Arthur represent but… magic… enchantment? The king who does not die but waits in some misty spiritual realm until he shall be summoned? Ferried in a barge to Avalon by beautiful black-clad totties? A fine legend for Henry Tudor, when he needed to involve the Welsh, but can you not see poor little Mary shuddering?’ Bonner leaning forward, hissing. ‘The S-word, John, the S-word.’
    Sorcery. I thought about Mary – a kindly woman at heart, everyone said that, but her religious stronghold had been kept high and firm around her, patrolled by guard-dogs like