A Shrine of Murders Read online

  A SHRINE OF MURDERS

  Paul Doherty

  Copyright © 1993 Paul Doherty

  The right of Paul Doherty to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 9561 3

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Letter to the Reader

  About the Author

  Also by Paul Doherty

  Praise for Paul Doherty

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Historical Personages Mentioned in the Text

  Main Streets of Canterbury, C.1471

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  History has always fascinated me. I see my stories as a time machine. I want to intrigue you with a murderous mystery and a tangled plot, but I also want you to experience what it was like to slip along the shadow-thronged alleyways of medieval London; to enter a soaringly majestic cathedral but then walk out and glimpse the gruesome execution scaffolds rising high on the other side of the square. In my novels you will sit in the oaken stalls of a gothic abbey and hear the glorious psalms of plain chant even as you glimpse white, sinister gargoyle faces peering out at you from deep cowls and hoods. Or there again, you may ride out in a chariot as it thunders across the Redlands of Ancient Egypt or leave the sunlight and golden warmth of the Nile as you enter the marble coldness of a pyramid’s deadly maze. Smells and sounds, sights and spectacles will be conjured up to catch your imagination and so create times and places now long gone. You will march to Jerusalem with the first Crusaders or enter the Colosseum of Rome, where the sand sparkles like gold and the crowds bay for the blood of some gladiator. Of course, if you wish, you can always return to the lush dark greenness of medieval England and take your seat in some tavern along the ancient moon-washed road to Canterbury and listen to some ghostly tale which chills the heart . . . my books will take you there then safely bring you back!

  The periods that have piqued my interest and about which I have written are many and varied. I hope you enjoy the read and would love to hear your thoughts – I always appreciate any feedback from readers. Visit my publisher’s website here: www.headline.co.uk and find out more. You may also visit my website: www.paulcdoherty.com or email me on: [email protected].

  Paul Doherty

  About the Author

  Paul Doherty is one of the most prolific, and lauded, authors of historical mysteries in the world today. His expertise in all areas of history is illustrated in the many series that he writes about, from the Mathilde of Westminster series, set at the court of Edward II, to the Amerotke series, set in Ancient Egypt. Amongst his most memorable creations are Hugh Corbett, Brother Athelstan and Roger Shallot.

  Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough. He studied history at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate at Oxford for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now headmaster of a school in north-east London and lives with his wife and family near Epping Forest.

  Also by Paul Doherty

  Mathilde of Westminster

  THE CUP OF GHOSTS

  THE POISON MAIDEN

  THE DARKENING GLASS

  Sir Roger Shallot

  THE WHITE ROSE MURDERS

  THE POISONED CHALICE

  THE GRAIL MURDERS

  A BROOD OF VIPERS

  THE GALLOWS MURDERS

  THE RELIC MURDERS

  Templar

  THE TEMPLAR

  THE TEMPLAR MAGICIAN

  Mahu (The Akhenaten trilogy)

  AN EVIL SPIRIT OUT OF THE WEST

  THE SEASON OF THE HYAENA

  THE YEAR OF THE COBRA

  Canterbury Tales by Night

  AN ANCIENT EVIL

  A TAPESTRY OF MURDERS

  A TOURNAMENT OF MURDERS

  GHOSTLY MURDERS

  THE HANGMAN’S HYMN

  A HAUNT OF MURDER

  Egyptian Mysteries

  THE MASK OF RA

  THE HORUS KILLINGS

  THE ANUBIS SLAYINGS

  THE SLAYERS OF SETH

  THE ASSASSINS OF ISIS

  THE POISONER OF PTAH

  THE SPIES OF SOBECK

  Constantine the Great

  DOMINA

  MURDER IMPERIAL

  THE SONG OF THE GLADIATOR

  THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

  MURDER’S IMMORTAL MASK

  Hugh Corbett

  SATAN IN ST MARY’S

  THE CROWN IN DARKNESS

  SPY IN CHANCERY

  THE ANGEL OF DEATH

  THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS

  MURDER WEARS A COWL

  THE ASSASSIN IN THE GREENWOOD

  THE SONG OF A DARK ANGEL

  SATAN’S FIRE

  THE DEVIL’S HUNT

  THE DEMON ARCHER

  THE TREASON OF THE GHOSTS

  CORPSE CANDLE

  THE MAGICIAN’S DEATH

  THE WAXMAN MURDERS

  NIGHTSHADE

  THE MYSTERIUM

  Standalone Titles

  THE ROSE DEMON

  THE HAUNTING

  THE SOUL SLAYER

  THE PLAGUE LORD

  THE DEATH OF A KING

  PRINCE DRAKULYA

  THE LORD COUNT DRAKULYA

  THE FATE OF PRINCES

  DOVE AMONGST THE HAWKS

  THE MASKED MAN

  As Vanessa Alexander

  THE LOVE KNOT

  OF LOVE AND WAR

  THE LOVING CUP

  Kathryn Swinbrooke (as C L Grace)

  SHRINE OF MURDERS

  EYE OF GOD

  MERCHANT OF DEATH

  BOOK OF SHADOWS

  SAINTLY MURDERS

  MAZE OF MURDERS

  FEAST OF POISONS

  Nicholas Segalla (as Ann Dukthas)

  A TIME FOR THE DEATH OF A KING

  THE PRINCE LOST TO TIME

  THE TIME OF MURDER AT MAYERLING

  IN THE TIME OF THE POISONED QUEEN

  Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)

  A MURDER IN MACEDON

  A MURDER IN THEBES

  Alexander the Great

  THE HOUSE OF DEATH

  THE GODLESS MAN

  THE GATES OF HELL

  Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)

  THE WHYTE HARTE

  THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES

  Non-fiction

  THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN

  ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II

  ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD

  TH
E GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303

  THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I

  THE DEATH OF THE RED KING

  Praise for Paul Doherty

  ‘Teems with colour, energy and spills’ Time Out

  ‘Paul Doherty has a lively sense of history . . . evocative and lyrical descriptions’ New Statesman

  ‘Extensive and penetrating research coupled with a strong plot and bold characterisation. Loads of adventure and a dazzling evocation of the past’ Herald Sun, Melbourne

  ‘An opulent banquet to satisfy the most murderous appetite’ Northern Echo

  ‘As well as penning an exciting plot with vivid characters, Doherty excels at bringing the medieval period to life, with his detailed descriptions giving the reader a strong sense of place and time’ South Wales Argus

  This novel is dedicated to the memory of the late Dr. William Urry, scholar and ardent student of medieval Canterbury. I must also express my gratitude to Dr. Urry’s daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Wheatley, who kindly allowed me access to her late father’s papers on medieval Canterbury. Any errors, however, rest solely with me, and certainly not with that great scholar.

  Author’s Note

  History is riddled with as many fallacies as facts. It is easy to assume that, in the Middle Ages, the status of women was negligible and only succeeding centuries saw a gradual improvement in their general lot. This is certainly incorrect. One famous English historian has already pointed out that women probably had more rights in 1300 than they had in 1900, whilst Chaucer’s description of the Wife of Bath shows a woman who could not only hold her own in a world of men but travelled all over Europe to the great shrines and was a shrewd business woman, ever-ready to hold forth on the superiority of the gentler sex.

  In this novel fiction corresponds with fact and the quotation facing the title page summarises quite succinctly how women played a vital role as doctors, healers and apothecaries. Kathryn Swinbrooke may be fiction, but in 1322, the most famous doctor in London was Mathilda of Westminster; Cecily of Oxford was the royal physician to Edward III and his wife Philippa of Hainault; and Gerard of Cremona’s work (mentioned in the novel) clearly describes women doctors during the medieval period. In England, particularly, where the medical faculties at the two universities Oxford and Cambridge were relatively weak, women did serve as doctors and apothecaries, professions only in later centuries denied to them.

  History does not move in a straight line but often in circles, and this certainly applies to medieval medicine. True, as today, there were charlatans ready to make a ‘quick shilling’ with so-called miraculous cures, but medieval doctors did possess considerable skill, particularly in their powers of observation and diagnosis. Some of their remedies, once dismissed as fanciful, are today in both Europe and America regarded quite rightly as alternative medicine.

  Historical Personages

  Mentioned in the Text

  In 1471 the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York reached their climax in the two battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, which led to the total destruction of Lancaster and the ascendancy of the House of York.

  Edward IV, Yorkist King 1461–1470; 1471–1483.

  Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s wife.

  George, Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV.

  Richard, Duke of Gloucester, younger brother to Edward IV.

  Henry VI, Lancastrian King, murdered in the Tower 1471.

  Margaret of Anjou, the ‘She-Wolf’, Henry VI’s wife and the main protagonist of the House of Lancaster.

  Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, Margaret of Anjou’s principal general (and, if scandal is to be believed, the Queen’s lover).

  Lord Wenlock, Lancastrian general.

  Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, Lancastrian general nicknamed the ‘Kingmaker’

  Thomas Falconberg, Lancastrian general. He made the last stand trying to hold London after the Yorkish victory at Tewkesbury.

  Edward, son of Margaret of Anjou, killed at Tewkesbury.

  Henry IV, King of England, 1399–1413.

  John Wycliffe, English ecclesiastical reformer in the last quarter of the fourteenth century.

  Nicholas Faunte, Mayor of Canterbury and ardent Lancastrian.

  Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. He clashed with Henry II (1154–1189) over the rights of the church and was murdered in Canterbury by a party of Henry’s knights.

  Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340–1400), poet, diplomat and courtier. England’s greatest medieval poet and author of the Canterbury Tales.

  Main Streets of Canterbury, c.1471

  ‘There comes at nightfall to that hostelry

  Some nine and twenty in a company,

  Of divers persons who had happened to fall

  In comradeship and pilgrims they were all

  Who towards Canterbury town they would ride.’

  (Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ‘The Prologue’)

  ‘In the Middle Ages women doctors continued to practise in

  the midst of wars and epidemics as they always had, for the

  simple reason that they were needed.’

  Kate Campbellton Hurd-Mead. A History of women

  in Medicine. London: The Haddam Press, 1938. Page 306.

  Prologue

  Wizards and warlocks proclaimed it to be a killing time. Squatting in their damp cells, the monkish scribes dipped quills in ink-horns and wrote a chronicle of their years, neatly cataloguing the homicides, felonies, treasons and bloody deaths. The good monks really believed the Gates of Hell were prevailing. After all, so the gossips said, on the Eve of All Hallows past, the necromancer John Marshall took seven pounds of wax and two ells of cloth to a deserted manor-house outside Maidstone and fashioned there rude puppets depicting the King, his Queen, and all the great nobles of the land. Marshall had dipped these in blood, pricked them with bodkins and left them to roast over a roaring fire. Deep in Bean Woods outside Canterbury, other magicians clad themselves in long skins, the hides of animals with immense tails still attached; they smutted their faces and called upon the witch-queen Herodias to come to their aid. Other sorcerers, so the chroniclers wrote, made bloody sacrifices to the Queen of the Night and called upon the ghouls for assistance. Strange sights were seen: legions of hags flew through the dark watches of the night, leading silent convoys of the dead to black sabbaths and blasphemous Masses.

  Such whispering spread even to the city of Canterbury itself. A man with the head of a corpse and a grimoire of spells was arrested near Westgate, and outside the city limits, a woman who had murdered her husband had a rod struck through her mouth, a spike through her head; yet when she was buried, her flesh still quivered. Other evils swept in as spring gave way to summer. The demon sweating sickness appeared, its victims dying in a few hours: some in sleep, some whilst walking, some fasting, others full of food. The sickness always began with a pain in the head, then the heart; nothing could cure it. All remedies were tried: the horn of a unicorn, dragon’s water, angelica root. Prayers were offered, relics brought, heaven beseeched, but Death still strode the foul alley-ways and streets of Canterbury. His skull-like face grinned through the windows, his bony fingers tapped on doors or rattled on casements in his voracious hunt for victims.

  Summer came at last. The sweating sickness disappeared but the violence and blood-lust continued. Strange deaths were reported, mysterious fatalities amongst those who flocked to Canterbury to seek the help of Blessed Thomas à Becket, whose battered corpse and cloven skull lay under sheets of gold before the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. Of course, the living ignored the dead, and at first the murders went unnoticed. After all, summer was here. The streets were dry, the grass was long and lush, the water sweet and fresh. A time for travelling, for visiting friends. Folk gathered in their orchards, sipping cool wine or draining tankards of the ale they’d brewed during the winter months. They discussed the blood-drenched prophecies, the failings of their betters, and above all the bitter civil war ragin
g between the houses of York and Lancaster.

  In the west the Wolf Queen, Margaret of Anjou, plotted with her generals to seize the throne for her witless husband, King Henry VI, and their son, her golden boy Edward. Her enemies mocked her and said her husband was so holy, he had not the wit nor the means to beget an heir and that the young prince was the offspring of her secret lust for Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. In London, Edward of York, with his silver-haired wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and his war-hungry brothers Clarence and Gloucester, gathered in the King’s secret chamber at Westminster and drew up subtle plans against the She-Wolfs approach. They attended Mass three times a day, sang Matins and Vespers, and all the time plotted the total destruction of Margaret, her husband, and the entire House of Lancaster. Truly a killing time, and those who could remembered the sombre lines of Chaucer’s poem about

  ‘The smiling rascal, concealing knife in cloak;

  The farm barns burning and the thick black smoke.

  The treachery of murder done in bed,

  The open battle and the wounds which bled.’

  A few weeks later Robert Clerkenwell, a physician from Aldgate in London, was busy conversing about the fortunes of such a war in the Checker Board Tavern near the stocks in the centre of Canterbury. Robert was a rich man; the physic he’d sold during the sweating sickness, rose-water and honey, may not have cured many of his patients, but it had earned the good doctor clinking purses of gold and silver. Robert thought he’d had a good year.

  ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ he would murmur piously as he collected his fees and left his patients to die.

  Now that summer had come, Robert had decided to thank God for such favours with a pleasant ride to Canterbury to pray before Becket’s tomb. The journey had been peaceful, the countryside quiet and sweet, as if the land held its breath whilst kings and princes manoeuvred to fight. Clerkenwell had been in Canterbury three days; he’d visited the cathedral twice, eaten good meals in the cook-shops and taverns of the city and even paid for the service of a comely wench who, upstairs in the tavern’s most spacious chamber, had obliged him in every way he wished. Tomorrow he would leave; his bags were packed and the good doctor had just eaten his last meal at Canterbury or anywhere else: roast quail, golden, succulent and tender to the taste-buds; fresh vegetables, and clear white wine cooled in the tavern’s spacious cellars. Now Robert sat back, burping gently, and beamed at his companions seated on either side of him in the great taproom.