The Grail Murders Read online

  Well, you know old Shallot, in for a penny in for a pound! 'Of course I could!' I cried.

  Her Majesty caught my eye, nodded, and the court reassembled. I was helped into the high pulpit. (I had drunk a little too much claret.) I leaned against the wooden rail and gazed blearily around.

  'My text,' I began, 'is: Don't do to others as ye would have others do to you. After all, they may not like what you do to yourself.'

  Well, gales of laughter greeted this. Up springs the red-nosed bishop who had sunk as much claret as I had.

  'A proper sermon!' he screamed. 'Do not mock us, Sir Roger!'

  Elizabeth nodded her red-wigged head and commanded me to continue.

  'One with a moral!' a bishop shouted out.

  'Yes,' another of his colleagues roared. 'Practise what you preach, Shallot! Something uplifting.'

  I leaned drunkenly against the pulpit and looked at these two hypocrites, two cheeks on the same arse.

  'All right,' I bellowed back, my mind racing through the possibilities.

  The Queen, lovely girl, was biting her lower lip. Her face had gone puce-red and even her wig had slipped slightly askew as she tried to control herself. She clapped her hands and glared sternly at me.

  'Sir Roger, you are commanded. Make your sermon short and give your gentle listeners at least three themes to reflect upon!' She winked quickly at me.

  'Once upon a time,' I began, 'there was a little sparrow who started to fly south rather late in the winter.'

  I stopped and stared round at my congregation gathered in the tapestry-hung chapel of Hampton Court. The clergy were glaring at me. Elizabeth had lowered her head, hiding her face behind her hand. I think she knew what was coming. Little Cecil, her secretary, stared fixedly at the ceiling.

  'In a short time,' I continued, 'ice formed on this little sparrow's wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard. A cow passed by and crapped on this little sparrow. The sparrow thought he would die but the manure warmed him and thawed out his wings. Snug and happy, the little sparrow began to breathe and then to sing. A passing cat heard this, cleared away the manure, found the sparrow and promptly ate him.

  'Your Majesty, brothers and sisters in Christ, that is my sermon!'

  'What is the moral of this tale?' the bishop shrieked, jumping to his feet. 'Her Majesty commanded that there be three themes for us to reflect upon.'

  'Can't you see them?' I bellowed back. 'First, my lord, anyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy. Secondly, anyone who gets you out of the shit is not necessarily your friend. Thirdly, if you are warm and happy, even in a pile of shit, keep your mouth firmly shut!'

  Well, that was it. The Queen swept out of the chapel and I was placed under house arrest at my London home until I wrote the bishop a fulsome apology. I did so and was promptly fined a further hundred crowns for saying he was one of the nicest old ladies I had ever met.

  Ah, well, if you can't take a joke you shouldn't be a Christian!

  (I see my chaplain's shoulders shaking. He'd better not be laughing at me, I'd wring his neck if he bothered to wash it! Good, he has sobered up. He taps his quill on the edge of the manuscript and it's time to begin.)

  We must go back into the past. Think of it as a corridor with many rooms and each chamber thronged with murderers. I must go back to those golden days when I was in the service of Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to the great Cardinal Wolsey. We were both the Cardinal's special agents working for his good and that of the crown. The good of the crown! Fat, murderous, syphilitic Henry VIII, The Dark Prince, The Mouldwarp who drenched his kingdom in torrents of blood and sent the best and noblest of his court to the scaffold . . .

  I am ready. I have opened the leather casket with the year '1522' inscribed in faded gold letters. We have taken out the relics of that bygone, murderous age. They lie before me upon the desk. Some are tinged with purple where a wine cup spilt, others bear a deeper scarlet, the traces of some poor bastard's life blood. The ring given back to me is not important. My eyes are drawn to the scarlet threads, strips of tough silk, so light, so pathetic, yet in their time they concealed mysteries which stretch back to the time of Arthur.

  I half-close my eyes, summoning up the past. I can almost catch Benjamin's voice and, in my mind's eye, glimpse his dark sardonic face, gentle eyes and lanky, stooped figure which masked so many subtle skills. Ah, I was so different then. No great lord but a mere commoner, a jumped-up jackanapes rescued by Wolsey's nephew to plumb the dark treacheries of Henry's court.

  I look at a picture framed in gold which hangs on the wall on the other side of my room. A fair replica of me in my golden youth. Will Shakespeare once asked me to describe myself.

  ‘I was a hungry, lean-faced villain,' I replied. ‘A mountebank, a threadbare juggler, a hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch.'

  Will thanked me for it and, as always, used it in one of his plays. You'll find the same description in his Comedy of Errors, a subtle humorous piece which I sponsored with my gold.

  Ah, well, no more dalliance or asides. The curtains are drawn so let the bloody drama begin. I will exorcise the ghosts in my mind. Purge the demons from my soul and order them to go back to hell and tell the Lord Satan I sent them there. (Oh, by the way, you'll find this same phrase in one of Will Shakespeare's plays. He borrowed that as well!)

  Chapter 1

  After we returned from France in the summer of 1521, my master Benjamin Daunbey was left untroubled by his uncle, the great Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Old Tom had other things on his mind as we later discovered. You see, the fat Cardinal had one great nightmare: how to control the King. He used a magic ring, so they say, to call up demons, and hired the chief of witches, a harlot known as Mabel Brigge, to go on a Satanic fast in order to keep the King's mind firmly in his grasp.

  Old Wolsey was a fool. I told him so when he lay dying in Leicester Abbey, cursing all princes and Henry in particular.

  Now Henry VIII, that limb of Satan, had his brains firmly in his codpiece whilst his soul was a storm of emotions. He was a great Catholic yet he attacked the Mass. A learned scholar but he killed poor Tom More. A fervent friend until he tired of you. And, above all, a loving husband until someone more young and buxom caught his eye.

  You may have read how Henry wanted a male heir and rejected both his daughters. First, poor Mary. (That was her problem, you know. Mary was always looking for her father in other men, including me. And that shows you how desperate she was!) Secondly, of course, the great Elizabeth, Boleyn's daughter. And wasn't that funny? Satan must be laughing in hell. Old Henry searching for a boy whilst his poor, rejected daughter, Elizabeth, turns out to be the greatest monarch England has ever seen. Mind you, that's not the full truth. Elizabeth was his heir, ostensibly his daughter, only I know the truth ... but that's a story for another time and another place.

  What is important is to realise that Henry was ruled by his lusts. Oh, he had his passing fancies: Bessie Blount, Lucy Rose, but in the summer of 1522 he was reverting to type. He liked the Howard women: Elizabeth Howard, Anne Boleyn's mother, had already graced his bed. So had Anne's eldest sister, Mary. Now Anne herself, that dark sensuous witch, had returned from France full of coquetry, with her satin dresses, thick lace petticoats, crimson high-heeled shoes, dark sloe eyes, and those beautiful hands which fluttered like the wings of a butterfly.

  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 s
chool 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 clarify 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.