The Grail Murders srs-3 Read online

  Henry lusted for her but this time it was different. Anne had been trained at the court of the greatest lecher the world had ever seen, Francis I of France, where seduction, love-making and affairs of the heart were treated with as much attention as matters of state. Anne had seen her elder sister pursued, wooed, seduced – only to be rejected as the 'English mare', a hackney whom anyone could ride. Anne was different. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to be Henry's wife.

  Wolsey, lost in his intricate game of human chess against Boleyn, left us alone. So we trotted back to our manor house outside Ipswich.

  Now Benjamin was a strange fellow. We had gone to school together. Afterwards he had become a lawyer's clerk and, in doing so, saved me from an undeserved hanging. He was astute, cunning, an expert swordsman, but at times could be infuriatingly naive; not childish but very childlike. He was not your usual landowner who exploits the peasants and seduces their daughters. Oh, no! Benjamin really believed in the milk of human kindness. Despite my protests, he cancelled all levies, tolls and dues owing to him as the Lord of the Manor. His tenants became freeholders, allowed to till their own soil and grow their own crops. He set up a small hospital in the village and hired an old physician, a gentle, caring man who knew the art of physic.

  (A rarity indeed! I wouldn't trust any doctor as far as I can spit. They call me a rogue, but you watch any quack! He will grab your wrist, stare at your urine, poke about your stools, shake his head and stroke his beard. Do you think he's concerned about you? Like hell he is! All he is doing is calculating the bill.

  I discovered this recently when the rogue who calls himself a doctor came up to visit me. He brought a jar of physic distilled from the dry skin of a newt and the head of a frog with a touch of batwing. I drew my dagger and said that he must drink it first. Do you know what the bastard did? He coughed, looked narrowly at me, and said on second thoughts perhaps a little more claret and a good night's sleep would put me right. Take old Shallot's advice, never trust a doctor or a lawyer! Well, the only good one I have seen was hanging by his neck from a scaffold.)

  Ah, well. Benjamin had set up his small hospital as well as a school in the manor hall where all the scruffy little villains from the nearby villages could attend free of charge. Benjamin hired a schoolmaster – a proper teacher, not one of those sadistic bastards who enter the profession so they can inflict as much damage as possible on every child who comes into their care. No, this man was a scholar who had studied with Colet and Erasmus. He could teach Mathematics, Geography, and was fluent in Latin, Classical Greek, French and Italian. Soft as dough was old Benjamin. He never had a business head. Mind you, out of respect to his memory, I have started similar schemes on my own estates.

  The administration of the manor was left to a thrifty steward called Barker, the grandfather of my present captain of the guard. (Oh, yes, I believe in keeping everything in the family. Even my little turd of a chaplain, on whom I lavish so much love and affection, is the great-nephew of the teacher Benjamin hired.) Suffice to say that with my master looking after his fellow man and others more capable looking after the estate, I grew bored. I drifted back to London, ostensibly to take lessons with a duelling master, a Portuguese who had taught Benjamin, having left his country one step ahead of the Inquisition.

  'You have a good eye and a quick wrist,' the fellow remarked one day. 'You are swift in your parry, cunning in your lunge – but there's something lacking.'

  'Too bloody straight there is!' I answered. 'I don't like being killed and I have no desire to kill anyone!'

  The sword-master, leaning elegantly on his fencing foil, stroked his short goatee beard.

  'Good!' he murmured. 'The mark of a true swordsman.' He wagged a finger at me. 'One day you will understand. When the blood runs hot, you'll know it. A wild unselfish desire, something which comes from the very marrow of your soul: to kill or be killed. All your life, all your existence, channelled to that one end.'

  Of course I thought this was nonsense and the fellow short of a king's full shilling. Yet he was right. Years later, on a golden sea-shore, Benjamin and I fought sword against sword, dagger against dagger, over a woman with a face as beautiful as Helen of Troy and a heart and soul as black as the deepest pit in hell. However, that's another story and doesn't concern us here.

  Soon I had learnt enough of duelling and began to drift around the capital. London is such a wonderful place! It harbours every type of villain under the sun: gamblers, foists, footpads, cut-throats and cut-purses, sturdy beggars, palliards and counterfeit men… I really felt at home. Naturally, Benjamin kept a wary eye on me and insisted that I spend no longer than three nights in succession in London. He would sit behind his desk in the great solar of our country manor and waggle his bony finger at me.

  'Roger, you're my friend but you have the same penchant for mischief as a cat does for cream. You will either come home or I'll come for you. Do you understand?'

  I did. To be perfectly honest Benjamin was the only person I was really frightened of and the only person I never lied to. Well, within reason. Yet, cats like cream and Shallot likes mischief.

  I fell into bad company: some gentlemen of the road who skulked in the graveyard of St Paul's well beyond the sheriff's writ. They were led by a former cleric, a defrocked priest. I forget his name, we just called him Rat's Arse. He had the innocent face of an angel and one of the most eloquent mouths which ever drew breath. He could convince you black was white and night was day!

  Rat's Arse persuaded me to raise money from our tight-fisted banker Waller so he could set up a molly house in an alleyway off Cock Lane. An exclusive brothel where gentlemen of leisure could take their ease. Of course he took the gold and I never saw him again. Well, alive that is. Two years later, whilst crossing Hampstead Heath, I passed the gallows and saw poor Rat's Arse tarred and gibbeted hanging by his neck. I said a little prayer. He was a villain but his heart was in the right place.

  Anyway, old Waller came for me like a whippet after a rabbit. On the very afternoon I was fleeing the city he grabbed me by the arm in Paternoster Row. 'Shallot!' he screamed. 'Where's my money?'

  (Have you noticed that about bankers? If you've got money, they'll lend it. If you haven't, they purse their lips and shake their heads.)

  I was desperate. I gazed round looking for a way out and suddenly glimpsed old Tunstall, Bishop of London, who was riding down to St Paul's for his daily verbal assault on the Almighty. Now I had met Tunstall when I had been with Benjamin at court so I seized Waller by the wrist. 'You see over there?' I cried. 'Who?' the wretch replied.

  'His Grace the Bishop of London. He agreed to stand surety for the money I have used to send the sick and the poor on a pilgrimage to St James Compostella!' Waller drew his sour face back like a viper about to strike. 'I don't believe you!' he snapped.

  'Look.' I drew off my boots. 'Hold these and I'll go across and prove it to you.'

  Waller held my boots and I tiptoed across the cobbles towards the bishop. 'My Lord Bishop!' I gasped. 'Your Grace!'

  The bishop, surrounded by his flunkeys, reined in and looked down at me. 'Yes, my son?'

  'A petition, My Lord Bishop. A petition. Your holiness may remember me?'

  The old hypocrite stared sourly back, gathering his reins as if to move on.

  'I am the manservant to Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to the great Cardinal.'

  Well, that stopped the old bugger in his tracks. He forced a smile. (Have you noticed how priests do that? As if they were God Almighty and everyone else some poor benighted wretch?) 'What is it, my son?'

  I pointed back to where Waller stood like an idiot, holding my boots.

  'My Lord Bishop, I was in violent disputation with that man over the nature of the Trinity when you passed by. My Lord,' I lied, 'your reputation as a theologian is known to all. I offered you as an arbiter in our debate. My friend said he did not believe me so I left him with my boots as an assurance that you will grant him an audience and clar
ify the error of his ways.' Tunstall drew himself up and nodded wisely.

  'My Lord, I know you are busy,' I continued breathlessly, 'but if you will just agree to fix a time and place where you can see him…?' Again the holy nod and Tunstall beckoned Waller over. He, the old fool, approached bobbing and curtseying.

  Tunstall looked at him reprovingly. 'Give your friend his boots back,' he commanded. 'And be at my chambers tomorrow morning at ten o'clock and I will settle matters then.'

  Waller was almost prostrate in his thanks. The bishop sketched a blessing in the air and moved on. I grabbed my boots and left London within the hour.

  I returned to Ipswich sober-faced and assured Benjamin that my good work amongst the London poor had now reached an end and perhaps it was best if I helped him on the estates. He looked strangely at me, smiled with those innocent grey eyes and went back to the list of accounts he was studying.

  I looked at that dark intelligent face, framed by long black hair, and desperately wondered if my master was the most cunning man I had ever met or the nearest thing to innocence in human flesh.

  The days passed and then, just before All Saints, one of those last, beautiful golden days of the year when the sun burns hot and you think summer has returned, I was on top of a hayrick with some young girl from the village – a joyous, happy lass, pleasant-faced and warm-bodied. I was trying to persuade her that her bodice was too tightly tied and she, laughing, gently tapped away my probing fingers. Her resistance weakened as her laughter grew when suddenly I heard Benjamin shouting for me. 'Roger, Roger. Quickly, come here!'

  I looked over the hayrick. My master stood in hose and a white shirt open at the neck, hopping from one foot to another as he tried to push his feet into his boots. 'Here I am, Master!' 'Roger, what are you doing?'

  I hissed at the wench to be quiet whilst I clambered down and boldly declared I was trying to track the path of the sun.

  'You are too curious, Roger,' he murmured. 'Your mind never ceases its probing.'

  My master pushed me up the grassy knoll on which the manor house stood. 'What is it?' I asked.

  Benjamin pointed along the dusty trackway which led down to the main gates. 'Riders, Roger. And I think they are from dear Uncle.'

  I shaded my eyes with my hand and saw the puffs of white dust, a small pennant snapping in the breeze, the bright jerkins of the horsemen and the rider in front clothed all in black. My heart sank. Dear Uncle was making his hand felt. If he was sending his personal secretary and adviser, the magician Doctor Agrippa, some bloody business was afoot.

  We met the visitors in our large hall, freshly painted and wood-panelled with shields bearing the arms of Shallot and Daunbey along the wall. The riders, a group of Wolsey's mercenaries, dressed in the scarlet livery of the Cardinal, were taken off to the buttery to quench their thirst and ogle the maids.

  Doctor Agrippa, dressed from head to toe in black leather, tapped his broad-brimmed hat against his leg, waiting for the servants to serve chilled white wine and sweetmeats. All the time he smiled and indulged in tittle-tattle, studying me with those cold, colourless eyes.

  A strange man, Agrippa. I have mentioned him before. He was always cold and, whatever the heat, I never saw him perspire. He was a true magus. Yet, superficially, he looked like some benevolent village parson with his round cheery face sweet as a cherub's, neatly cut black hair, and that smile which failed to reach his eyes. He never grew old and, after Wolsey died, had the gift of appearing in the strangest places.

  Raleigh once told me – yes, that freebooter is still at sea, financed by my gold – that he had seen Agrippa near Jamestown in Virginia. How he got to the New World God only knows! A spy reported he was in Madrid and, years later, when I was fleeing from Suleiman's stranglers. I caught a glimpse of his face in the crowd as I was being pursued through the filthy streets and alleys of Constantinople. I saw him at court once and, only fifteen years ago, he turned up at Burpham looking as young and fresh as he had in my youth. I asked him what the matter was. He only smiled and gave me warning that Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned at Fotheringay, was plotting Elizabeth's death. Then he disappeared.

  Agrippa was a magus with a gift for seeing the future and once told me I would die in a most unexpected way, which is one of the reasons I keep my eye on this little turd of a chaplain. A strange man. Perhaps Agrippa was the wandering Jew, condemned to wander the face of the earth for ever? I once asked a few Rabbis about this legend. They just looked askance and shook their heads.

  (By the way, I like Jews. They remind me very much of the Irish. They love debate, honour, the family, and have a wicked sense of humour. Indeed, I have published a learned treatise in which I argue that the Irish are really the lost tribe of Israel. My main conclusion was as follows: when Moses and Aaron left Egypt, they put all the rogues together at the back of the column. After the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, the lot at the back took a wrong turn and ended up in Ireland. Very interesting, you should read it.)

  On that far golden day, however, Agrippa was concerned with more pressing matters. He waited until Benjamin had cleared the hall of servants then slumped down on a high-backed chair before the empty fireplace. As he passed me I caught a whiff of that strange perfume of his – as if some precious ointment had been poured on a burning pan. His eyes changed colour, giving them a black, marble look, and the smile faded from his lips. He stared at Benjamin and myself, sipped the wine and nibbled at a piece of diced marchpane.

  'For goodness' sake, sit down!' he said softly, indicating the empty chairs. He stretched and eased his neck to combat the stiffness after his long ride. 'It's begun,' he murmured. 'What has?' Benjamin asked testily.

  'The killing,' Agrippa replied. 'The Mouldwarp's emerged.' He held out his hand and splayed his fingers. 'Each man has a choice of different paths. King Henry is no different. He could have been the greatest monarch England has seen, but has chosen instead to be The Mouldwarp, The Dark Prince who will drench his kingdom in blood.' 'Doctor Agrippa,' I retorted, 'be more precise.'

  'I shall be. In two days' time, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, will lose his head on Tower Hill.'

  Benjamin just stared aghast and even I, with my ignorance of court politics, could only gape in amazement. Stafford was the direct descendant of Edward III, one of the greatest landowners in England, the son of the Duke of Buckingham who had plotted against Richard III and lost his head just before Henry Tudor landed to kill the usurper at Bosworth. 'What happened?' Benjamin asked.

  Agrippa shrugged. 'Stafford was always a thorn in the side of your uncle.' He smiled apologetically at Benjamin. 'He was for ever calling him an upstart jackanapes from Ipswich, a common mountebank hiding behind the robes of a Cardinal.' He pulled a face. 'Well, a few weeks ago Stafford was at court. He was standing near Henry and, as is customary, offered the King a silver basin to wash his hands in. When the King had finished, Wolsey dipped his own fingers into the water basin. Stafford, enraged, threw the water over the Cardinal's robes.'

  Agrippa stopped talking, brushing flecks of dust from his black hose.

  (Isn't it strange how great men can lose their heads over a drop of water?)

  'Your uncle was furious,' the doctor continued, 'and, shouting that he would sit on Stafford's robes, strode off, sloshing water, making himself look an even greater fool.'

  I just lowered my head and thanked God I hadn't been there. The sight of Cardinal Tom walking like some little boy who had pissed his breeches would have had me roaring with laughter. 'The rest of the court laughed?' Benjamin asked.

  'Oh, yes, they roared. The palace rocked with their merriment. Stafford only made matters worse. The next day he turned up wearing a common jerkin and hose and when the King asked him why, replied it was to prevent the Cardinal from sitting on his robes.' Agrippa spread his hands. "The mockery grew even louder.'

  'But if a man is to lose his head for mocking a cardinal,' I replied, 'then Henry would lose all his subjects.'

&
nbsp; Benjamin smiled wryly for, although he had great affection for his powerful uncle, he had no illusions about this commoner with a brilliant brain who had managed to rise to be Cardinal and Lord Chancellor of England.

  'Ah!' Agrippa leaned forward as if he suspected there were spy-holes behind the panelling. 'You know your uncle, Master Daunbey. No man insults him, and Stafford he has always hated. My Lord Cardinal has always believed that revenge is a dish best served cold.

  'Despite my advice, he began to play upon Henry's secret nightmares.' Agrippa studied his finger nails for a while. 'It's the same story,' he murmured, 'the same words, the same tune. Henry may be the son of Elizabeth of York but his father was Henry Tudor, nothing more than a Welsh farmer. The German reformer, Martin Luther, publicly derides him as Squire Harry. He has always feared that others such as Stafford have a better claim than he to the throne.

  'Now,' Agrippa continued, 'the Tudors have a craving for a dynasty. The present King's father called his eldest son Arthur, trying to use his Welshness to build up legends linking his family to Arthur of the Round Table. Do you know these legends?' I shook my head. 'Of course not. I'm no scholar.'

  'Well', he stroked his chin, 'there is a legend that, after the great Arthur died, prophecies grew up in the West Country that one day he would return, come riding out of the setting sun to right all wrongs. The Great Miser wanted to depict his family as Arthur's line come again but his eldest son died and now Fat Henry is king. Nonetheless, the Tudor dream or nightmare continues.'

  'Oh, come!' I interrupted. 'You are not saying our noble Henry is frightened of some mythical King riding down to Westminster with the Knights of the Round Table?'

  Agrippa narrowed his eyes. 'Of course not, but he is frightened of the Yorkists, the Plantagenets, those who have better claims to the throne than he! And you know how superstitious he is. What would happen if Stafford or some other prince with Yorkist blood in his veins produced the sacred relics? Arthur's sword, Excalibur, or worse the Grail which sat on his table, the chalice which Jesus drank from at the Last Supper?'