The Merchant of Death Read online

  THE MERCHANT OF DEATH

  Paul Doherty

  Copyright © 1995 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 9563 7

  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

  About the Author

  Praise for Paul Doherty

  Also by Paul Doherty

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Letter to the Reader

  Historical Note

  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

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  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 family in Essex. Paul’s first novel, THE DEATH OF A KING, was published in 1985 and since then he has written prolifically, covering a wealth of historical periods from Ancient Egypt to the Middle Ages and beyond. He has recently published his 100th novel, THE LAST OF DAYS.

  To find out more, visit www.paulcdoherty.com

  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

  ‘Deliciously suspenseful, gorgeously written and atmospheric. A great read’ Historical Novels Review

  ‘First rate; Doherty has a formula which works every time’ Nottingham Evening Post

  ‘Medieval London comes vividly to life’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘The best of its kind since the death of Ellis Peters’ Time Out

  ‘Resurrectionist magic’ New York Times

  ‘I really like these medieval whodunnits’ Bookseller

  ‘Historically informative, excellently plotted and, as ever, superbly entertaining’ CADS 20

  ‘This rich tale . . . seeps authenticity and is written with wonderfully efficient style. A gem of an historical thriller’ Huddersfield Daily Examiner

  ‘The maestro of medieval mystery’ Books Magazine

  By Paul Doherty

  Kathryn Swinbrooke mysteries

  Shrine of Murders

  Eye of God

  Merchant of Death

  Book of Shadows

  Saintly Murders

  Maze of Murders

  Feast of Poisons

  Canterbury Tales by Night

  An Ancient Evil

  Tapestry of Murders

  A Tournament of Murders

  Ghostly Murders

  The Hangman’s Hymn

  A Haunt of Murder

  Hugh Corbett mysteries

  Satan in St Mary’s

  The Crown in Darkness

  Spy in Chancery

  The Angel of Death

  The Prince of Darkness

  Murder Wears a Cowl

  Assassin in the Greenwood

  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

  Sir Roger Shallot mysteries

  The White Rose Murders

  The Poisoned Chalice

  The Grail Murders

  A Brood of Vipers

  The Gallows Murders

  The Relic Murders

  Mathilde of Westminster mysteries

  The Cup of Ghosts

  The Poison Maiden

  The Darkening Glass

  Templar

  The Templar

  The Templar Magician

  Mahu (The Akhenaten trilogy)

  An Evil Spirit of the West

  The Season of the Hyaena

  The Year of the Cobra

  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

  As Vanessa Alexander

  The Love Knot

  Of Love and War

  The Loving Cup

  Nicholas Segalla mysteries

  (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 mysteries

  (as P C Doherty)

  The Whyte Harte

  The Serpent Amongst the Lilies

  Standalone Titles

  The Rose Demon

  The Haunting

  The Soul Slayer

  The Plague Lord

  The Death of a King

  Prince Drakulya

  Lord Count Drakulya

  The Fate of Princes

  Dove Amongst the Hawks

  The Masked Man

  The Last of Days

  Non-fiction

  The Mysterious Death of Tutankhamun

  The Strange Death of Edward II

  Alexander the Great: The Death of A God

  The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303

  The Secret Life of Elizabeth I

  The Death of the Red King

  About the Book

  It is nearly Christmas, and snowstorms have blanketed the city of 15th-century Canterbury. Physician
Kathryn Swinbrooke and her cook Thomasina are busily preparing for the holiday, when terrible news arrives: the painter Richard Blunt has confessed to killing his young wife, along with two men who were dallying with her. Kathryn is disturbed by Blunt’s serene demeanour, but before she can articulate her suspicions, another death captures her attention. A tax collector, Sir Reginald Erpingham, has been found dead in his room at the Wicker Man tavern, and the King’s monies have been stolen. Kathryn quickly determines that the collector was murdered, perhaps by poison, and begins questioning the guests at the tavern. Meanwhile, there are patients to be cared for, a practice to build, and a household to maintain – but Kathryn must put aside these pleasant duties if she is to find the link between Richard Blunt and the strange events at the Wicker Man tavern.

  To Grace Harding

  Letter to the Reader

  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].

  Historical Note

  In 1471, the bloody civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster was brought to an abrupt end by Edward of York’s victories at Barnet and Tewkesbury. The King came into his own and, as autumn turned into winter, sent out his tax collectors to secure what was his.

  Now in the fifteenth century, tax collection depended very much on powerful individuals who acted as tax farmers. They were given a fixed amount to raise and what private profits they made were, if they were within reason, ignored by the Crown. Accordingly, fifteenth-century tax collectors were powerful men. Erpingham, the character mentioned here, was a knight, a merchant, and a lawyer. People were as terrified of them as, perhaps, twentieth-century people are of modern taxmen: their powers were quite extensive. Indeed, in the outbreak of every great revolt in English history, be it the Peasants Revolt of 1381 or the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, tax collectors played a vital part!

  Prologue

  The snow came unexpectedly: thick grey clouds massed over England’s east coast, heavy and lowering, as if God himself had turned his hand against the earth. On the octave of the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, the snow began to bury the fields and trackways of Kent under thick carpets that hardened into ice. A cold northeasterly wind sprang up and whipped the snow into a fierce blizzard, cutting off hamlets, villages, outlying farms, even placing the King’s great city of Canterbury under siege. So heavy did the snow lie upon the turrets, towers and roofs of the cathedral, which housed the bones of the blissful martyr Thomas, that even the great bells could not be rung, lest the iron clappers send the snow hurtling onto the unwary below. Life in Canterbury was reduced to staying indoors and huddling round fires. No trader opened his booth. No tinker, whore or city beadle roamed the streets. Everyone shivered and prayed that the snow would lift by Yuletide and the celebration of Christ’s birth.

  The monastic chroniclers of Christchurch blew on ice-cold fingers and quietly cursed the blue-green ink freezing in the inkstands. How could they describe these times? The insane and those who saw visions claimed the blizzard was a punishment sent by God because the world stank with the brimstone of hell and the odour of the devil’s dung. The scribes liked such phrases and entered their thoughts in the margins of the priory chronicle: how the evil ones now lit black wax candles and, in dark, dank places, seized maidens and imprisoned them in close narrow cells lit by the tallow fat from hanged corpses. If the truth be known, these monkish chroniclers loved to frighten both themselves and their readers, so they imagined another world, a topsy-turvy place in which hares chased dogs and amber-eyed, velvet-skinned panthers fled before deer. Animals with human hands on their backs prowled there as did red-striped dragons, bizarre creatures with serpentine necks twisted into a thousand unbreakable knots. Monkeys with the faces of nuns cavorted in the trees, their furry heads adorned with the horns of stags whilst armless men hunted fish with wings or scaly monsters with lizard snouts. The monkish chroniclers drew these nightmarish drawings to keep themselves amused whilst they stared out of the windows and wondered what this great, cold winter would bring.

  At a crossroads miles beyond Canterbury, the Irishman Colum Murtagh, King’s Commissioner in Canterbury and Keeper of the King’s stables at Kingsmead, was in a nightmare of his own. He wrapped the freezing reins around his hands and stared bleakly across the frozen fields. The dray horses that pulled the cart on which he was sitting snorted in pain from the cold, which froze their hogged manes and clogged their eyes and muzzles. Colum looked despairingly over his shoulder at the provisions stacked in the cart, then turned to the wiry, usually smiling-faced ostler, Henry Frenland, who had accompanied him to the mills at Chilham.

  ‘We should never have left,’ Colum murmured. He pointed a finger at the horses. ‘They can take little more.’

  Colum pulled the cowled hood closer round his head. His ears were freezing and the tip of his nose felt as if some invisible imp had grasped it with ice-cold pincers. Henry Frenland looked mournfully back.

  ‘For God’s sake, man!’ Colum cursed. ‘What is the matter? You have been as miserable as sin since we left Chilham.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I know. We are in the wilds of Kent; a blizzard is blowing, we are cut off and lost. Now, what shall we do? Go back or seek refuge at some farm?’ He shook his companion. ‘Henry!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are your wits fey? I should have left you at Kingsmead and brought Holbech.’

  ‘All things have their beginning,’ Frenland said sonorously as if totally oblivious to the driving snow, freezing cold or Murtagh’s questions.

  Colum steadied the horses.

  ‘Henry, what is the matter?’

  Frenland blinked and stared at Colum.

  ‘I am sorry, Master Murtagh,’ he stammered. ‘I am truly sorry.’

  Colum Murtagh narrowed his eyes. ‘How long have you been with me, Frenland?’

  ‘Six months, Master.’

  Colum nodded; he stared grimly at the snow-covered scaffold, its gibbet-irons empty, which stood next to the signpost at the crossroads.

  ‘That’s right,’ he murmured. ‘Six months.’

  Frenland had been a good servitor, a man gentle with horses, hard-working, industrious, posing no trouble to anyone. No one knew where he came from. However, in the winter months of 1471, with the King’s army disbanded after the war against Lancaster, the country lanes were full of former soldiers and landless men seeking work.

  ‘You volunteered to come with me?’ Colum asked. ‘You are not f
rightened of the snow?’

  Frenland shook his head. ‘No, Master, I am not.’

  ‘Well, I am,’ Colum replied. ‘I don’t know where on God’s earth we are; I’m freezing cold and the horses won’t take much more of this.’

  As if to echo his fears the grey-white stillness was broken by a long-drawn-out howl.

  ‘A wolf,’ Frenland ventured.

  Colum gripped the reins to hide his own fears.

  ‘That’s no bloody wolf!’ he hissed. ‘They are wild dogs, Henry.’

  More howls shattered the silence.

  ‘They are hunting in packs,’ Colum said. ‘Mastiffs, more powerful than a wolf, strong as a bear. Animals who used to follow the armies, strays from farms pillaged during the civil war. They have now formed into packs, more dangerous than wolves. Come on!’ Colum clicked his tongue at the horses. ‘Cheer up, Henry. Have I ever told you the story about the fat abbot, the young maid, a pair of rosy-red lips and lily-white hands?’ He started as Frenland gripped the reins.

  ‘Master, I am sorry.’

  ‘What, in God’s name . . .!’

  Frenland jumped down from the cart and spread his hands. ‘Master Murtagh, I am so sorry.’

  ‘For God’s sake, stop saying that!’ Colum roared. ‘What are you sorry about?’

  Frenland began to back away. Colum just gaped in astonishment as the groom turned and began to run, stumbling and slipping on the snow back along the trackway.

  ‘Henry!’ he shouted. ‘Come back! For the love of God, man, you’ll die!’

  Colum cursed as Frenland disappeared, hidden by the driving snow whilst, to his right, Colum heard the baying of the dogs.

  ‘I can’t go after him,’ Colum muttered. ‘I’ve got to find shelter.’ And, shaking the reins, he urged the great dray horses forward.

  The snow was falling thicker. Colum, freezing, stared up at the sky; before him the cobbled track was quickly disappearing under the falling snow and the onset of evening whilst the howls of the dogs drew closer and closer.

  Chapter 1

  In her house on Ottemelle Lane, Kathryn Swinbrooke, city physician, was also concerned about the snow, which had fallen all night and was now beginning to slide down the red-tiled roof of her house.