by Paul Doherty
A Brood of Vipers
( sir Robert Shallot - 4 )
Paul Doherty
Paul Doherty
A Brood of Vipers
Prologue
Do marriage and murder go together? I recently reflected on this when my little clerk, God bless his pretty arse, asked my permission to marry. 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure!' I bawled back.
He slunk away, leaving me to my thoughts. Spring has come. I hear the song of the geese as they fly across the marshes in the woods of Burpham Manor. I grasp my stick and, one arm resting on Margot the other on Phoebe (two lovely lasses!), I go and stand out on the steps of my manor house. I stare up at the strengthening sun. My eyes are weak but I hold my face up, searching for its warmth. I recall those sweet, wine-drenched, murderous days under the Tuscan sun where, an eternity ago, I and my master, Benjamin Daunbey, beloved nephew of the great Cardinal Wolsey, searched for a killer. Ah yes, Wolsey, Chancellor and First Minister of the biggest bastard this realm has ever seen, Henry VIII, by God's grace King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. I turn and walk back into the manor hall. I study the small painting executed by Holbein the Younger, showing the Great Beast' in all his glory – Henry VIII with his fat, florid face, gold moustache and beard and those eyes. Oh Lord, those eyes! Just like a pig's before it charges. And those lips! Wet and slobbery! I remember that pursed mouth pressed up against my ear.
'Shallot!' Henry once hissed. 'You'll wet your breeches at Tyburn! And your clever little neck- will be stretched like a piece of cloth!"
Ah well, he was wrong, wasn't he? Old Shallot survived, proving once again that I do possess the quickest wits and fastest legs in Christendom. Roger Shallot didn't die, although not for any lack of trying by the legion of evil murderers whom I have had the pleasure of doing business with over the years. No, no, Roger Shallot, like the bay tree in the psalms, like the cedar of Lebanon, grew and flourished.
Now it's Sir Roger Shallot, in his mid-nineties, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Bath, Commissioner of Array, Privy Councillor, Justice of the Peace. The husband of four wives, now all dead, God bless them! (Oh, yes, I've been happily married! My wives were happy and I was married!) Old Roger Shallot, Lord of Burpham Manor, its fields, pastures, woods, streams, carp ponds, orchards, barns and granaries. Confidant, (and, yes, I'll say it) former lover of our Queen, God bless her, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. (Both marvellous girls, lovely tits!)
You name it and old Roger Shallot has done it. But it's been a long journey! Born in Ipswich at the time of the great plague, I grew, if not straight in the eyes of my contemporaries, then at least I grew-dark-faced, dark-haired, dark-hearted with a slight cast in one eye. No, I am wrong. I do myself an injustice – not dark-hearted, not old Roger! I have loved a great deal. Perhaps I'd loved wrongly, but better that than never loved at all. Of course, I have done dark deeds. I have met murder – on the highway; at the crossroads under a hunter's moon; in the sewers of Venice; in the fetid alleyways of London; on the wind-blasted heaths of Scotland: in the silken courts of Paris and Constantinople: in the rat-infested catacombs of Rome; and in the sun-drenched piazzas of Florence. Ah, there it is, Florence! The golden city on the river Arno with its princes' palaces stuffed with treasures, artefacts and paintings, the like of which the world will never see again. Now it's all gone. The bloody French put paid to that. They sent their soldiers across the Alps to burn and pillage and so black out the sun of human greatness.
Now old Roger is alone. I sit in my secret chamber and dictate my memoirs to my darling chaplain. Lovely little man!
Pinch-bummed, narrow-faced, now he wants to marry! About bloody time! I have seen his lustful glances at Phoebe's buttocks or Margot's generous tits. 'Better marry than burn' says Saint Paul and I suppose I'll have to give him permission. He turns round to argue with me. If he's not careful, I'll rap his little knuckles with my cane and tell him to keep writing.
I stare through the mullioned glass window at the sun. It's still weak, not like in Florence where it burns like a molten disc. I wish summer would come! I wish I could go out and sit in my secret maze with my dogs and my jugs of claret and recount my exploits, tell of my descent into Hell to meet devils with human faces. Ah well! I wish Benjamin were here (God rest him!) – Benjamin with his kind eyes and long, dark face. He had the stooped shoulders of a born scholar and a heart and soul as big as any saint's. We saw the days, Benjamin and I! We travelled all over Europe carrying out tasks for his Satanic Eminence Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and that devil incarnate Henry VIII. Ah excuse me, my clerk interrupts again, he is still blubbering about his marriage. He wants me to pay. The tight little turd! He's so miserly there are cobwebs in his purse. He's the sort of man who would steal a dead fly from a blind spider! Kick him in the heart and you'll break your toes! Yes, yes, my little clerk. He's always around me whenever he needs me. The sort of fellow who would give you the shirt off your back or throw a drowning man both ends of the rope! 'Store up treasure in heaven!' I roar at him.
Mind you, he spends so little he wouldn't even offer me the down payment on a harp. He'll also have to do something about his face before he climbs into the wedding bed – and lose some weight, especially round that moon face. After all, why should he have three chins when everyone else has only got one? Ah, I see his shoulders shaking. I never know whether he's laughing or crying. To be sure, he's not a bad little mannikin, except when he's stealing my claret or trying to inveigle Margot into the hayloft. 'You drink too much claret!' he cries.
The little hypocrite! How dare he lecture me! When it's dark you don't need any candles, his nose is so red it lights up the room! Let me tell you a little joke I played upon him. Quite recently I travelled to London. The old queen wished to take counsel with me in her secret chambers at the Tower. She was worried about our son, our darling boy, who was last seen in the south of Spain trying to have his memoirs published. Anyway, I went, not to lie with her in a carnal sense, but to lie about the past and make her laugh so much her red wig would fall askew and the white paint on her face crack. Now, I didn't take my chaplain. I was tired of his lectures about drink and wine. Anyway, in London, I had my little jest with him. I went to a scrivener outside St Paul's. I pretended to be one of these Puritans, you know the sort -miserable as sin, with a devil-sent mission to make everyone equally unhappy. I decided to call myself the Reverend Josiah Blackwood and had the scrivener write the following letter to my darling clerk:
Dear Sir, I have a mission from the Lord to tour this kingdom, warning all God's people against the evil dangers of drink. In my travels and peregrinations, I was accompanied by a young man named Philip, like you of good family, whose life has been ruined by deep howls of claret, pots of malmsey and jugs of London ale. During my sermons Philip would sit on a stool beside me, red-faced, bleary-eyed, farting, burping and making obscene gestures at the congregation. I would point to Philip as a living example of the devil drink. You'll be sorry to hear that, quite recently, Philip passed away. Now a good friend has given me your name as a possible replacement. I wonder if you would fill his place? You may contact me at the sign of the Green Kirtle opposite St Paul's Cathedral.
Yours, in the odour of sanctity, the Reverend Josiah Blackwood.
Well, I laughed myself sick. On my return from London I discovered my little turd of a chaplain was terrified lest Josiah Blackwood might come to visit. Oh, the laughs! Oh, the merriment! Weeks passed before he realized he had been gulled. I raise my hand and look at his little, plump face and solemnly swear that he has my permission to marry. I will adorn the church. I will lay on a banquet. I promise not to reveal anything about his past to his bride, on one condition -he must wear a mask throughout the ce
remony. 'Oh Tempora! Oh Mores!'
The little man rattles his quill on the table. I grow sober as memory taps on my soul. The door swings open, the ghosts beckon me back along the gallery of time, back to London when Henry and Wolsey had the kingdom in the grip of their avaricious fingers. Oh yes, back to subtle ploys and clever plans! To treason, murder and death by a thousand stings! Benjamin waits for me there. I hear the knocking, it grows incessant. I open the door and Murder, evil-faced and bloody-handed, stands waiting to greet me.
Chapter 1
In the spring of 1523, the fourteenth year of King Henry VIII's reign, my master and I were resting from our labours at our manor outside Ipswich. Benjamin was involved in his good works whilst I amply proved the dictum 'The devil finds work for idle hands'. I had attempted to open an apothecary's shop in the village. Benjamin stopped this when he realised I was buying supplies from a certain Doctor Quicksilver who lived in the shabby tenements opposite Whitefriars. Benjamin summoned me to his own chamber, his long, dark face showing both hurt and anger.
'Roger, Roger.' He wagged a bony finger at me. 'Since when has crushed frog been an aphrodisiac?' 'I didn't say it was,' I replied. 'You said as much to Hick the Haywain.'
'What can I do, Master? He's head over heels in love with that dairymaid.'
'Wasn't she the one you were tutoring in the long meadow down near the river?' I softly cursed my master's retentive memory. 'I don't think so,' I muttered, refusing to meet his eye. 'What about Vicar Doggerell?' 'What about him, Master?' Benjamin eased himself into his chair behind the table. "That paste you sold him to cure his baldness. I smelt it after Mass on Sunday.' I kept my face straight. 'Very much like cow dung,' Benjamin insisted.
'A secret remedy, Master. Crushed herbs and grass with a special elixir. Vicar Doggerell, if he wears it every night, will have as fine a head of hair as myself.'
Benjamin leaned forward. 'No, he won't, Roger. I want this stopped and whatever profits you have accepted placed in the church poor box.' Benjamin pushed the chair back. 'You have a fine brain, a quick eye and a good hand. How are the fencing lessons going?'
'Signor d'Amoral,' I replied, referring to the Portuguese whom Benjamin hired for both of us, 'says I have acquired great skill.'
Benjamin scratched his head and gazed moodily out of the window. 'Uncle will send for us soon,' he said softly.
My heart skipped a beat and my stomach lurched, but I schooled my features. Whenever old Fat Tom, Cardinal Legate, Archbishop of York, Henry VIII's first and only minister, sent for his 'beloved nephew' and my goodself it only meant one thing. Old Shallot was heading straight for cow dung a thousand times thicker and more dangerous than what old Vicar Doggercll plastered on his silly, bald pate. 'What makes you think that, Master?' I stuttered.
Benjamin went up to stare at the two shields over the fireplace. One depicted the armorial bearings of the Daunbey family, the other those of Shallot. 'Are you sure, Roger?' he asked absentmindedly. 'About what, Master?' 'That the Shallot arms have a red stag rampant?' Benjamin grinned lopsidedly at me. 'This one's very rampant.'
I shrugged. 'The Shallots are an ancient family,' I lied. 'They were once great and noble, until they fell on hard times. But, Master,' I insisted, 'what makes you think "dearest uncle" is sending for us?' 'Just a feeling, just a feeling.'
I quietly groaned and closed my eyes. Last winter "dear uncle' had 'sent for us'. Benjamin and I were despatched to the icy wastes of Somerset to deal with witchcraft, decapitated heads, Hands of Glory and murder at every turn between skating on freezing lakes. 'Roger, why are your eyes closed?'
I opened them and forced a smile. 'Just praying. Master, just praying that "dear uncle" is in the best of health.'
'Well, we can't waste time,' Benjamin declared, 'Do you know that old hill?' 'The one that overlooks the mill?' 'Yes, Roger, I believe it's an ancient hill fort.'
Once again I groaned quietly to myself. Master Benjamin, a true man of the new learning, had a kind heart and an enquiring mind. He had two great passions – alchemy and antiquities. (I should add a third – his mad, witless betrothed, Johanna. Seduced by a nobleman, she lost her mind and was sent to the nuns at Syon in London. Poor girl! She lived into her eighties. To the day she died she still thought the young nobleman was coming back. Of course he never could. Benjamin, a skilled swordsman, had killed him!)
Now, as I said, my master was a great scholar, a true lover of all things classical. And why not? He had even travelled to Wales to attend the Eisteddfod held at Caurawys and became friends with its foremost poet Tudor Aled. He bought John Fitzherbert's book on husbandry and ordered a copy of Hans Sachs' work The Wittenberg Nightingale, a poem about Martin Luther. (The Wittenberg Nightingale! Luther was a constipated old fart! You know that, don't you? That's why many of his writings, including Table Talk, are full of references to bowels, stools and body fluids. There was nothing wrong with Luther a good purge wouldn't have cured. The same applies to his lover, the ex-nun {Catherine. I met both of them once; all I can say is that they were as ugly as sin and richly deserved each other.) Ah, the people I have met. I only wish Benjamin was here now. Will Shakespeare would have fascinated him. Last summer Will came to Burpham and staged his play Twelfth Night. I helped him with some of the lines, especially Malvolio's
Some men are born great, Others achieve greatness, And others have greatness thrust upon them.
I composed those lines myself. Old Will cocked his cheerful face and stared at me.
'And what about you, Roger Shallot?' he asked. 'Which one of these applies to you?' 'All three!' I retorted.
Shakespeare laughed in that pleasant, delicate way he has. I could tell from his clever eyes that he knew the truth, so I laughed with him. And what is the truth? Old Shallot's a liar. (My clerk taps his quill and looks over his shoulder disapprovingly at me. Do you know, his face has more lines than a wrinkled prune. The little tickle-brain. My juicy little mannikin! 'You digress!' he wails. 'You digress!')
Yes, I do, in a fashion. But everything I say has a bearing on my story. I am going to tell about murders to chill the marrow of your bones and send your heart thudding like a drum, about subtle, cruel men! However, we'll soon come to that. To cut a long story short, on that warm spring day my master had set his heart upon digging up the old hill that overlooked the mill. So the next morning, armed with a copy of Tacitus's Life of Agricola, as well as some picks, bows, hoes and shovels, we went out to dig.
At first I really moaned. I wailed that my old wounds sheeted my back in throbbing pain. Benjamin just laughed. I see him now, his hair gathered up in a knot behind him, dressed in black hose pushed into stout boots, his cambric shirt open at the collar, his sleeves rolled up. The sweat coursed down his face, turning his shirt grey with patches of damp. He gazed at me solemnly.
'I think you should dig, Roger. I believe there may be treasure hidden here.'
Believe me, I dug as if there was no tomorrow, until Benjamin had to restrain my enthusiasm. I found no treasure. At last I stopped, rested on my shovel and glared at him furiously.
'Why are we digging? Here, I mean? Why not further along?' Benjamin pointed to the top of the hill.
'I believe a fort once stood there. This would have been the ditch or moat at the bottom of the hill, lying on either side of the entrance. The people who lived here would dump their refuse into the ditch. Moreover, according to Tacitus, when the Romans came, these hill forts were stormed and the dead were always buried here. So, dig on, Roger!'
I did, cursing and swearing. The soil became looser. I glimpsed something white. 'Master!' I called.
Roger hastened over. He scooped the soil out with his hands and we gazed down at the uncovered skeleton.
'What's this, Master?' I whispered. 'Oh, bloody hell!' I stepped back. 'I know what will happen. We will be blamed for this. What is it? Witchcraft? Someone buried alive?'
'Hush, Roger. This man has been dead for over a thousand years.'
We kept dig
ging, unearthing more skeletons. Now and again we found artefacts – a ring, a sword, necklaces and leather sandals. Benjamin patiently explained that we had found a burial pit, pointing to the skulls of the skeletons, each with a perfect hole in the forehead, just above the nose.
'I suspect these were Celts,' Benjamin observed. 'Killed when the hill fort was taken.' 'Master Daunbey, you are right.'
We both whirled around. Murder was standing there -dressed as usual in black from head to toe. The face beneath the broad-brimmed hat was red and merry as any jovial monk's, clean-shaven and snub-nosed except for those strange, colourless eyes.
'Doctor Agrippa,' Benjamin breathed, throwing down the pick and wiping his hands on his shirt. He clasped the black, leather-gloved hand of Cardinal Wolsey's special emissary. 'Uncle wants us?'
Agrippa nodded and took off his hat. He stood, one leg slightly pushed forward, tapping the hat against his knee whilst staring down at the skeletons. 'I was here,' he said in a half-whisper. 'Here?'
Agrippa's eyes shifted to mine. 'It's good to see you, Roger.' He walked a little closer. I caught the fragrance of his exotic perfume – sandalwood, I think, mixed with myrrh and frankincense. I stared at his face and tried to calm the chill of fear which ran along my sweaty neck. Agrippa's eyes had changed colour again, now they were light blue, innocent like a child's.
'Oh, yes, I was here,' he continued. 'A great hill fort once stood at the top of this hill. The Iceni owned it. Tall and blond-haired, they worshipped Epona the horse goddess and sacrificed prisoners by hanging them from oak trees.'
Benjamin had turned his back and was walking away to collect his cloak.
'The Romans killed them all,' Agrippa continued absent-mindedly. 'Slit their throats, men, women and children, and piled their bodies into a pyre. You could see the flames and smoke from miles around. Nothing changes,' he murmured. 'Nothing changes.'