The Gallows Murders (12 page)

I hurried to the rim of the pit. I bent down to pick it up and, as I did so and was half rising, a blow in the small of my back pitched me forward. Now old Shallot is quick of wit with even faster legs, but that blow sent me staggering. I tried to stop myself. I was heading towards the pit, then I was over and falling, my hands flailing the air. I would have gone to the bottom if my fingers had not grasped and held the thick hempen rope which hung there. I hung on for dear life, gibbering with fright. I glanced down. The old wolf hadn't stirred but just stared up curiously. I am sure that, if it could, it would have jumped up and licked my legs. I grasped the rope even tighter, and noticed there was another rope also hanging a few feet away, probably used to lower foodstuffs into the pit. I tried to grab it, hoping I could swing myself up, when I heard a terrible chilling howl. There was another wolf hidden in the cavern running off the pit.

Chapter 6

I stared down in horror. The newcomer was no mangy animal but a great, grey wolf in all its prime, sharp in ferocity and, from the way it was glaring up at me, mad with hunger. One of those magnificent loping beasts from my blackest nightmare. The great ruff on its shoulders stood up. Its jaws were open, lips curled, tongue slavering at the prospect of a piece of Old Shallot for dinner. I screamed and tried to climb even as the wolf sprang, its teeth narrowly missing the heel of my boot. God knows how I did it. The rope burnt my hands, and it seemed like an age as I pulled myself up towards the rim. Again I glimpsed a flurry, a grey shape jumping up almost beside me, snaking its head, its jaws lashing at me. I screamed and climbed faster, ignoring the burning pain in the palms of my hands. The rope was beginning to fray where it hung over the rim of the pit. I heard a snap as strands began to break. The wolf howled and so did I. It lunged again; this time its teeth scored my boot. I closed my eyes and quietly vowed: no more claret, no more wenches, a life of prayer and fasting! The top of the pit seemed as far off as ever. I was terrified I would slip. I screamed and yelled. Suddenly Benjamin was leaning over and, with Agrippa's help, pulled me out. For a while I just crouched on the ground, sobbing for breath. I vomited out of sheer terror. I crawled back to the rim of the pit and shook my fist at the wolf which stood slavering up at me.

‘’You bastard!'

I fumbled for the hilt of my dagger but Benjamin pulled me away.

"Roger, Roger, for the love of God, it's a dumb animal!'

'It will be a dead dumb animal!' I snarled.

Agrippa came forward. He kicked a long pole which lay near the door of an outhouse, and I realised by what means I'd been pushed into the pit. He thrust a wineskin at me.

‘You’ll not die here, Roger,' he whispered. Drink the wine. Go on,' he urged. 'It's Falernian, the wine of ancient emperors. Pilate drank it when he condemned Christ.'

I lifted the wineskin and let the fragrant juice lap into my mouth. I gave it back, smiled and promptly fainted.

When I revived, I was not in the Tower but in a small ale-house on a corner of an alleyway near Thames Street. Agrippa was pushing a piece of burnt cork under my nose.

"Faugh!' I cursed, and drove it away. I blinked up at my master who was staring at me anxiously. 'Are you well, Roger?' he asked.

'Oh yes.' I straightened up and glared round the small taproom. 'It's not every day you are thrown to the wolves!' I tried to get up but my legs felt a little unsteady. ‘How did I get here?' I asked.

'Agrippa and I helped you down to the Lion Gate. We begged a ride from a carter and brought you here.' Benjamin leaned back against the wall. "Have something to eat, man.'

A slattern came up, bearing a tray of spiced beef, a pot of vegetables and tankards of ale. Now, one of the things about Old Shallot is that if you show me a pretty face or a good meal, danger is soon forgotten. I took my horn spoon out of my wallet and ate as ravenously as any wolf. Indeed, for a few seconds, I could appreciate that beast's disappointment.

'Who did it?' Agrippa asked as I put my horn spoon down and sat back, rubbing my stomach.

'I don't know.' I replied. 'One minute I was picking up silver coins, then a blow on my back with that pole tipped me over. One of those bastards at the Tower must have been hiding in an outhouse.'

'Impossible,' Benjamin replied. ‘We were with Kemble, Vetch and Spurge. They never left us, so it couldn't have been one of them.'

‘What about the precious Guild of Hangmen?'

Benjamin shook his head. 'As we left the Tower we met them coming in.'

'And I suppose they laughed fit to burst?' I snapped. At me being tossed into some cart?'

Agrippa grinned. 'No, they didn't. They declared that if you were being taken to a hanging, could they do it for us?'

'Bastards!' I muttered.

Benjamin grasped my hand. 'Roger, you say someone tried to kill you. You are sure of that?'

‘No, Master, I just decided to go down and meet the wolves.'

Benjamin picked up his tankard.

'But if Spurge, Vetch and Sir Edward were talking to you,' I continued, 'and all five hangmen were outside the Lion Gate, who else could it have been?'

A small, black cat appeared from nowhere and jumped into Agrippa's lap. He stroked it, softly talking to it in a language I could not understand. When he glanced up at me his eyes were like the animal's, amber-coloured. I glanced nervously away, taking comfort in the homely atmosphere of the taproom: the onions hanging in bunches from the rafters, the slatterns and scullions chattering near the kitchen door. Two men, leaning over a badger in a cage; a drunk in the far corner; a madcap chattering to himself, waving his hands at some invisible audience. I closed my eyes and thought of that wolf-pit. Who could possibly have followed me, intent on murder?

'Mistress Undershaft was in the Tower,' Benjamin observed. 'As we left Sir Edward, we met her going across Tower Green with two of her children. Apparently, as Undershaft's widow, she still has the right to draw on provisions.'

'But why should she attack me?' I asked.

‘You visited Ragusa?' Agrippa asked. 'Could she have followed you?'

I thought of that old woman's shuffling gait, her rheumatic hands and shook my head. Again Agrippa looked at me, his eyes that strange colour.

‘What are you thinking, good Doctor?’ I snapped. That some ghost or ghoul lurks in the Tower?'

Agrippa blinked his eyes, then became bright and merry: as he shifted to put the cat back on the floor, I smelt that strange exotic perfume from his robes.

'It could have been a ghoul or ghost,' he said softly, picking up his tankard. "What happens, Roger, if the Princes didn't die?' He laughed. ‘I am only teasing you, but I believe -' he lifted one black gloved hand - that the fate of those two Princes lies at the root of all this mystery. Did Ragusa tell you anything?’ he asked.

'She claimed there were secret caverns and passageways beneath the royal menagerie.'

‘Yes,' Benjamin nodded. 'Spurge's maps told us the same; that's why we came to the wolf-pit. Kemble maintains that the caverns those beasts live in were once Roman sewers. However, they are now blocked off.'

‘I’ll take his word for it,' I replied.

'One day we will have to see if that is true,' Benjamin warned. He patted me on the arm. 'But don't worry, Roger, we'll make sure the wolves are caged.'

'And the clerk, Allardyce?' Agrippa asked.

'According to Ragusa, dead as a doornail.'

‘Yes, that's what the hangmen told us. They were at the Lion Gate the morning his body was carried out. They say the soldiers almost dragged it along the cobbles and threw it in the death-cart. There was also a bailiff present.' Benjamin described the same man I
had met in Smithfield. ‘He declared a proper scrutiny should be made. He climbed into the cart, lifted back the sheet, and pronounced the man dead.'

I remembered my own days working with the death-carts. Usually corpses were dragged out and piled in, but if a city bailiff was present, one of those honest royal officials, this scrutiny was always made. I flung my hands up in the air.

'So Allardyce is dead and my theory with him!' I exclaimed. 'Here we have blackmailing letters being delivered to the King bearing the seal of a prince who was supposed to have died forty years ago. Now, concedo, Master, anyone in the Tower - the hangmen, Kemble or his two associates - could have written them. However, if they did, they could not have sneaked out of the Tower to collect the thousand pounds at St Paul's. They were certainly not there when those two proclamations were posted in Westminster and Cheapside, or the second blackmailing letter which was left in the Abbey. So,' I sipped from my tankard, 'there is either a secret way of entering and leaving the Tower, which I doubt. Or the villain in the Tower has an accomplice outside. Now, we know Allardyce is dead, so it must be Undershaft, or his wife, or both.'

'And Hellbane's death?' Benjamin asked.

'Murdered to silence his tongue.'

'But why?' Benjamin asked.

'I don't know, Master.' I drained my tankard. 'As I don't know who tipped me over the edge of that pit to be devoured by that bloody wolf!'

Agrippa, who had been staring through a window overlooking the garden, abruptly got to his feet.

'It's best,' he warned, 'when we meet the King, that we say nothing of this. We have eaten and drunk enough. We should be gone.'

We arrived at Windsor just as darkness fell. The journey up-river had been quiet and serene enough. Benjamin and I dozed as Agrippa's stalwarts cracked their backs, pulling lustily at the oars. Their master, sitting in the prow of the boat, chattered to himself or stared out across the river, carefully watching the sunset.

The small town built under the soaring keep of Windsor castle was dark and quiet. Agrippa led us up through the steep, narrow streets and across the moat into the Great Beast's favourite palace. Inside all was light and colour: lantern horns hung gleaming like fireflies in the yard. Rich, savoury smells from the kitchen mixed with those in the stables: servants, scurriers, messengers and chamberlains hurried about on this errand or that. The King was in residence and everybody knew it.

Now Windsor is a great sprawling palace: a mixture of fortress and stately manor house with its outer and inner keep, the long connecting galleries, chambers and halls decorated and developed by successive princes. The most beautiful is the Rose Chamber, a long hall or gallery with huge windows on either side. Agrippa led us along this. Outside it was dark, but burning torches and tall yellow beeswax candles turned night into day. Nobody noticed us as we passed; everyone was busy. Agrippa whispered how the King, after his day's hunting, would want his usual dancing and banqueting until the early hours. That was the Great Beast: during the day he'd pursue the fleet-footed stag, whilst at night he would go after the fast-living women of his Court. He'd then arise the next morning complaining about the labours of State and decide to relax with a day's hunting, and so it went on.

Henry had a deep, abiding fear of illness; the very thought of it and he'd pull up sticks and race off to a place as far away as possible. During that hot, sweaty summer, with the sickness raging in London, he'd moved lock, stock and barrel to Windsor. The Exchequer, Chancery, and even the Court came with him. He also made sure his stay was as comfortable as possible. The walls of the palace were decorated with hangings to be replaced every week by yeomen and grooms of the wardrobe. Furniture from the London palaces filled every room. The royal kitchen, under the command of its French master-chef, worked morning to night roasting beef, mutton, lamb, chicken, pheasants and quails to feed the King and his vast concourse of courtiers.

Of course, poor Benjamin and I got nothing of that. Agrippa handed us over to a royal chamberlain whilst he slipped away. This snotty-nosed little varlet, waving his white wand as if he was king of the fairies, took us to a shabby little chamber in one of the towers: it contained two truckle-beds and a mouldy, worm-eaten chest into which we put our belongings. Thankfully we had not brought much. We never did on these journeys to Court. Henry was a great thief and loved to taunt me. Once I had a fine buckram jacket which disappeared from my chamber when I visited him at Sheen. He just shrugged and said, what could I expect in such a busy place? A few days later I saw it on the back of one of his great hunting dogs, cut and clipped to make the beast feel warm!

Naturally I protested at our quarters, but Benjamin shrugged, murmuring that this was not Uncle's doing; he doubted anyway that we'd stay in Windsor for long. It I had known what the Great Beast had planned, I would have opened the window and dived straight into the moat. It always surprised me that, busy and frenetic though the Court was, Henry always knew when I had arrived. He told me when he grew old, when no one would go near him except old Will Somers, his jester, and myself, that he always longed to see my face. The great turd of a liar! But that's Fortune's fickle wheel, isn't it? In my youth Henry despised me. He baited me and taunted me. The fat bugger even tried to kill me; but when Henry grew old and became imprisoned in his mobile chair, it was Old Shallot who had to push him about. I'd sit with him in the sun-washed tilt-yard at Whitehall. He'd grab my jerkin, those piggy eyes blazing with madness, and push his slobbering lips next to my ear.

‘We are so alike, Roger,' he whispered. 'Rogues, but good men underneath.'

(Oh, the gift of self-deception! He'd then go on and list all those he'd once loved who'd failed him: Wolsey, Cromwell, Boleyn, Norris, Howard. Good Lord, my stomach would clench at the long list of men and women he'd used and discarded. Well, Henry's at Windsor for good now. The fat slob is buried there. I personally helped stuff his bloated corpse into the coffin. And it's true, like Pope Alexander VI’s, the corpse later blew up and exploded, though by then I was gone, riding for my life from black-garbed assassins. However, that's for the future because, though many don't know it, Henry VIII did not die in his sleep; he was murdered!)