by Paul Doherty
(That's one thing I noticed about Agrippa. He never liked the sunlight. Like some dark spider, he preferred the shadows. I never saw him eat or drink. Oh, he'd raise a cup to his lips, as he did in the garden at Charterhouse, but nothing ever seemed to pass his lips. He always seemed cold, too.) Agrippa pointed to a sandbank in the river on which stood a massive, three-branched gibbet bearing the rotting corpses of river pirates.
The Tower is full of curiosities,' he murmured. 'A month ago the chief executioner's deputy, Andrew Undershaft, was, somehow, put in a cage at Smithfield and roasted alive over a roaring fire.'
‘I was there,' I exclaimed. Well, I saw his blackened corpse and helped remove it from the cage… What's that got to do with these letters?'
'Perhaps nothing,' Benjamin replied. 'Undershaft died in Smithfield, God knows how. He was seen, the previous day, drinking in a tavern near Cock Lane, and then he disappeared. How anyone could take a burly man such as him, put him in a cage and roast him to death is a mystery. Now the city authorities thought it was revenge carried out by the friends or relatives of a man Undershaft may have executed. However, ten days ago, another member of the Guild of Executioners, Hellbane, was fished from the Thames. According to the surgeon who examined the corpse, Hellbane had been alive when he had been put in the sack. No mark or wound was found upon his corpse, but weights had been attached to his feet. You see, Roger, that's the mystery; two members of the Guild of Executioners suffered judicial murder. They were not knifed or clubbed to death. They were both killed in a way prescribed by law for certain felons. Undershaft died the death of a poisoner; Hellbane suffered the fate of a patricide, someone who has killed his father.' 'And they were innocent?' Benjamin shrugged. 'As far as we know.'
I gazed at the lonely gibbet. 'Hellbane,' I said. 'What sort of name is that?'
The city executioners are a rare breed.' Benjamin explained. 'Surprisingly, Roger, despite all the barbarism, very few people want their job. They are marked men, hated and reviled by London's underworld. However, they do a job that has to be done, and business is always brisk.'
(Oh, God bless my master for his truthful heart. During the Great Beast's reign the scaffold and gibbets were never empty. I know of one executioner, an axeman, who became so sickened by the dreadful sentences he had to carry out that he became quite mad and tried to cut his own head off. Poor fellow, he died in chains in Bedlam.)
'Anyway,' Benjamin continued, 'the city hangmen are patronised by the King himself.' 'Like is always attracted to like,' I remarked.
They meet in a tavern called the Gallows, in the shadow of the Tower. They have their own guild. They wear a chain round their wrists and hold meetings in the nave of St Peter ad Vincula.'
(Now, there's a dreadful place. Under St Peter ad Vincula, the Tower chapel, lies the headless corpses of all Henry's victims; all those who died on the execution block or perished in some desolate dungeon.) 'So,' I insisted. Two hangmen have been murdered. They are not the most popular of men.'
'Somehow,' Benjamin replied, 'My Lord Cardinal believes the murders of these two hangmen and the blackmail letters to the King are connected.' He paused as the boat swung in towards the quayside. 'You see, Roger, no one really knows what happened to the Princes in the Tower. They might have been poisoned, strangled or starved.'
The Cardinal,' Agrippa explained, has studied the fate of these princes closely. He has also spoken to Sir Thomas More who is writing a study of King Richard the Third's life. Now More believes that the Guild of Hangmen must have known what happened to the two Princes.'
‘You mean a secret passed on from one generation to another?' I asked.
'Precisely,' Benjamin replied. 'John Mallow, the chief hangman, has sworn a great oath that no such secret exists, but, "dearest Uncle" is not convinced. He believes that if the Princes were killed and their bodies removed, someone from the Guild of Hangmen must have been involved.' 'But this is just dearest Uncle's feeling?' I asked.
Benjamin sighed and put his hands together. 'Well, if this villain writing the blackmailing letters is a charlatan, the only way the King could silence him, or so dearest Uncle reasons, is by finding out what really happened to the Princes and proclaiming this to the city and the kingdom. Henry would give his eye-teeth just to find their corpses.'
'And so this same charlatan,' I added, 'is murdering the hangmen just in case one of them has inherited the secret and could reveal the truth?'
'Exactly,' Benjamin replied, peering over his shoulder at the approaching quayside. 'And how many are in the Guild of Hangmen?' I asked. There should be seven,' Benjamin replied. 'John Mallow, he's old and about to retire. Andrew Undershaft, lately deceased. Hellbane, who's also been called to his maker, and four other assistants: Snakeroot, Horehound, Toadflax and Wormwood. And, before you ask your question, Roger, the chief hangman's apprentices are never called by their real names.' He smiled thinly. This is to protect them; sometimes they change their minds and decide to take up another profession.'
I looked up at the jutting towers and turrets of the Tower. 'If I had my way, Master,' I grumbled, 'I'd do the same.'
Chapter 4
How can I describe the Tower? A narrow, cruel place. Yet, in 1523, it had yet to acquire its reputation as the Great Beast's slaughter ground. Oh, Edmund Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, had lost his head on the hill outside, but to me it was still a double shield of walls beyond a wide moat; a fortress, strengthened by at least a dozen towers which ringed the great Norman keep that dominated all. It stored the King's arms and artillery, his jewel house, his mint as well as his menagerie, with its lions, apes, pelicans, elephants, bears and other unfortunate animals, sent as gifts by foreign princes. When we approached it after leaving Charterhouse, my overriding concern was about the stench from the moat slimed with green, and the occasional corpse of some animal bobbing on the surface. We entered by the Lion Gate, passing guards who snapped to attention as Agrippa showed his warrant carrying the King's personal seal.
The Tower is like a maze. It draws you in: you become lost, as well as over-awed, by the winding paths along high brick walls, the tower doors, closely guarded, the shutters on the windows firmly bolted. Then, as in a maze, you reach the centre, a great, open, green expanse surrounding the Norman keep: the playground of children of the Tower garrison, who hopped and jumped amongst the mangonels, catapults and other impedimenta of war. Soldiers' wives had put up lines to dry their clothes, whilst the men lazed in the shadows, drinking, dicing, sleeping or gossiping. A homely scene – and that's part of the trap. Around the green are entrances to the different towers. Each of them contains its own mysteries: twisting, mildewed steps which stretch up to cells, or worse, go down to the cavernous pits where the torturers with their instruments wait to search out the truth.
In one far corner, just near the church of St Peter ad Vincula, is a stretch of ground where the grass struggles to grow. Some say it's cursed because that's where the scaffold's erected. I believe this. In my long and troubled life I came to know the Tower well. Sometimes as a visitor, other times as a guest of the King, his prisoner. I have been stretched out on Exeter's Daughter, the great rack which pulls your limbs from their sockets. If you survive and confess, the executioners fix steel plates so your body is in one piece when they cart it out for execution. However, I babble on. On that fine August day, with the sun beaming down, I had no knowledge of the Tower's future. Believe me, if I had, I would have turned and run like a whippet for the nearest gate.
Now, across the green, facing the Norman tower, are the royal apartments, housed in a long, ramshackle building, three storeys high, with a red slated roof, cornices, buttresses and jutting bay windows. A manor house, with black timber and white plaster walls on a red brick foundation. These were the royal quarters where the King's officers lodged.
We went through a bustling entrance and up a broad, sweeping staircase. A guard at the top took our names. He told us to wait on a bench in a small recess, marched down th
e gallery and knocked at the door. I heard a bell ring, and the guard beckoned at us to approach. We entered a chamber where three men were hurriedly seating themselves around a long, polished table which ran down the centre of the room. They rose as we entered. The man at the top introduced himself as Sir Edward Kemble: fussy, grey-haired, grey-eyed, grey-faced. He was dressed richly in a dark-blue gown lined with dyed black lambswool: however, the jerkin beneath was rather soiled, and the shirt collar which peeped out above looked as if it had missed wash-day. Kemble was one of those worried officials, narrow-eyed from peering over manuscripts. He had an unhealthy pallor and hands which could never stay still. He introduced the gentleman on his right as Master Francis Vetch, his lieutenant or deputy, a bright-faced young man with close-cropped black hair, wide-spaced blue eyes and a pleasant smiling mouth. Vetch was dressed soberly in a dark yellow gown which fell just below the knee. A warbelt was strapped round his middle, but he'd left his sword and dagger lying on a stool just within the door. The man on Kemble's left was Reginald Spurge: a frightened squirrel of a man, with nostrils like a horse, ever sniffing the wind, little darting eyes, and a tongue which reminded me of a cat's, pink and pointed, ever licking dry lips. Like Vetch and Sir Edward, he was clean-shaven. (The King had yet to grow his beard. Of course, what the King did, everyone hurriedly followed suit.)
Spurge was dressed like a dandy, a Court fop, with his tightly waisted jerkin puffed out at the shoulders and clasped round his waist by a narrow jewelled belt. He sported a codpiece a stallion would have been proud of, and tight hose which gave his legs a womanly look. Both Vetch and Spurge murmured their greetings as Kemble chattered on, drowning everyone else.
'I didn't know you were coming. I didn't know you were coming,' he protested. His hands beat the air like a trapped bird. 'Dr Agrippa, Master Benjamin -' Kemble dismissed me with one flick of his eyes – 'if ‘I’d known you were coming, I would have prepared something to eat and drink.'
At last Benjamin was able to placate him, saying we had already eaten and drunk our fill. Only then did Kemble usher us to chairs on either side of the table. He sat down wearily himself, mopping his face with a dirty napkin. He glanced sideways at his companions.
'Master Spurge is our surveyor,' he explained, leaning forward. 'He and Vetch are the principal officers of the garrison.'
Benjamin, sitting next to me, pressed the toe of his boot gently on my foot: I was beginning to snigger at this fussy little man's antics.
What Sir Edward means,' Francis Vetch spoke up, fighting hard to stifle his own smile at the constable's antics, 'is that Reginald and I, together with himself, are probably the only men in the Tower who could forge a letter claiming to be Edward V and dispatch it to the King.' 'Why on earth do you say that?' Benjamin asked.
Vetch laced his fingers together. 'Master Daunbey,' he replied slowly, 'I have heard of your reputation: you are no fool. I'd be grateful if you would reciprocate the courtesy. Everyone in this room knows a letter was drawn up, sealed, and dispatched from the Tower to the King. Moreover, the first letter was delivered here.' He scratched the tip of his pointed nose. 'Sir Edward Kemble opened the letter in my presence. I had to use smelling salts to bring him out of his faint. I then sent for Reginald and organised the letter's dispatch to Windsor.' He cocked his head to one side. ‘You are here, Master Daunbey, about the letter?' Benjamin smiled.
'Good,' Spurge declared in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. There can be no more pretence, can there?'
'Excuse me!' That's me, old Shallot. I was always tactful! The ever-faithful servant. Benjamin allowed me to question others as vigorously as himself, but Kemble didn't know this. He darted a look at me and sniffed as if I was something which had crawled out of his nose. He whispered into Spurge's ear, in that loud, insulting way, asking who I was.
Benjamin tapped the table with the rings on his fingers. 'Master Shallot is my trusted servant in these matters,' he said quietly. He is well known to the King and My Lord Cardinal.'
(My master, God bless him, never lied. What he didn't say was what I was known for!)
Kemble's manner changed in a twinkling of an eye. 'Continue with your question, Master Shallot.' He leaned against the back of his chair and stared up at the ceiling as if he secretly wished he or I were elsewhere.
'This letter,' I said. 'It claims to have been drawn up, signed and sealed at the Tower, but how do we know it was?'
Vetch leaned forward. 'Master Shallot, there's no debate about that. My lord constable found it on his desk on the morning of the twenty-ninth of July. You have heard of the sweating sickness in London?' 'I suffered from it and recovered.'
Then you are truly blessed,' Vetch answered kindly. "However, from the middle of July until two days ago, the twentieth of August, the Tower was sealed. All gates were closed and padlocked: the drawbridge raised and portcullis lowered. No man nor animal was allowed in. None of the garrison was allowed out: it was our only way of keeping the sickness out. Sir Edward commanded the Tower as if it was a castle under siege.' He shrugged. 'As it was, by Death itself.'
Kemble pointed to a desk in the far corner. 'I had been to Mass at St John's Chapel,' he explained. 'My chamber was always left open. When I returned, the letter was lying on that table.'
'If it was addressed to the King, why did you open it?' I asked. 'If you look at the reverse,' Kemble retorted, 'you'll notice one phrase: ude pars du Roi", "from the hands of the King". I thought it was a letter from Our Sovereign Lord, so I opened it. At first I thought it was some madcap nonsense, a jest, but when I finished reading it and examined the seals…' He shrugged. ‘You can imagine my terror. Thank God Vetch and Spurge were here to help!'
'It's the only time we opened a Tower gate,' Vetch explained. We sent out our fastest rider to Windsor. On his return, he had to wait in St Catherine's Hospital until the Tower was re-opened.'
'So you see, Master Shallot,' Kemble spoke up, 'no one could have brought the letter into the Tower. Moreover, it stands to reason that only a man of some learning and education could buy the parchment and write in such a courtly hand.'
'And there's no one else who could be the writer?' I asked.
Vetch intervened. 'Well, as I said, there's Sir Edward, myself and Reginald. However, we also have a garrison of professional soldiers. We do not inquire too closely into their backgrounds: former priests, monks, clerks. Anyway -' he shrugged – 'all were locked in the Tower with us. It's quite possible one of them could have written the letter. Sir Edward's chamber is always open.' He grinned. 'What's the use of guarding galleries and passageways when you are protected by a moat, two curtain walls and a dozen towers, all protected by archers and men-at-arms?' 'Who else is here?' Benjamin asked.
'Well, the mint is empty. The clerks and treasurers follow the King to Windsor,' Kemble explained. We had a clerk of the stores, Philip Allardyce. He was our only victim of the sweating sickness. He came back one night after roistering in a tavern in Petty Wales. He fell ill and died: his body was collected by the death-cart for the lime pits.' He shook his head. 'But that was at the beginning of July.'
'Once Allardyce died,' Kemble explained, ‘I sent a letter to the King saying that I would seal the garrison in. He agreed, so the Tower was locked.'
'Oh,' Spurge tapped the table excitedly, 'and there's the Guild of Hangmen.'
'Ah yes.' Kemble wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He smacked his lips and gestured at Vetch to serve some wine. 'Ah yes, the Guild of Hangmen.' They stay in the Tower?' Benjamin inquired.
They are also the torturers,' Kemble explained. "They are paid from the garrison accounts. There's John Mallow, he's their principal, and his five apprentices: Snakeroot, Horehound, Toadflax, Wormwood and, until recently, Hellbane.' He shrugged. They were all bachelors or widowers. They would have to stay.'
'But Andrew Undershaft?' I asked. 'He was found burnt to death in a cage in Smithfield Market.'
'He was different,' Vetch replied. 'Undershaft was a married ma
n. He had his own house in the street of the Crutched Friars on the corner of Poor Jewry. We did not know about his death until the Tower was opened.' 'Hellbane?' Benjamin asked. 'How was he killed?'
'Once the Tower was opened,' Kemble explained, 'everyone was free to come and go as they wished, provided they were not drawn for duty for the day.'
'Let us see.' Agrippa, who had been sitting slouched in his chair, his black-brimmed hat over his eyes, abruptly sat up. He took his hat off, placing it on the stool beside him. 'Let us put things in order, Sir Edward. When did Allardyce the clerk in the store die?'
‘Well’ Kemble replied. 'He fell ill on the eighth but died on the tenth when his body was removed. Late in the afternoon, two of the guards took it down to the death-cart waiting near the Lion Gate.'
Agrippa nodded. 'And on the thirteenth of July you sealed the Tower?' That is correct.' 'A month passed and nothing untoward happened?'
'No,' Kemble replied. ‘We now know that on the sixteenth of July, Undershaft's corpse was found in Smithfield Market.'
‘Yes, yes.' Agrippa pressed a third finger. 'And on the twenty-ninth of July the first blackmailing letter was written, sealed and delivered?' Kemble and his two companions nodded.
Agrippa continued. It demanded that a thousand pounds in gold be left within the door of St Paul's on the feast of St Dominic?' 'So it said,' Spurge squeaked.
Agrippa closed his eyes. 'Now, if the gold was to be delivered on that date, the villain expected to collect it. Yes?' Again the heads nodded.
'Where were you all on the eighth of August, on the feast of St Dominic?' Agrippa asked quietly.
'In the Tower,' Sir Edward Kemble retorted quickly. 'My good doctor, the Tower gates were not opened until the twentieth of August. The same day a herald from the city claimed the contagion was dying and the infection had passed.'
'So you were not in the city?' Benjamin asked. 'Either on the day when the gold was supposed to be left, or on the eleventh, the feast of St Clare, when this spurious Edward V had two proclamations issued: one pinned to the door of Westminster Abbey, the other to that of St Mary Le Bow in Cheapside.'