The Grail Murders

by Paul Doherty

  'Master Shallot! Master Shallot! For the love of God!'

  I looked round. No soldiers were present so I moved into the shadows to meet Mathilda.

  'It is all over?' she asked.

  'Yes. The Santerres have fled. Mistress Rachel is Mandeville's prisoner.'

  The girl bit back a sob. I remembered the icy waters of the lake and seized her by the shoulders.

  'You could have killed us!' I hissed.

  She looked up fearfully. I could tell by her white face and staring eyes that she did not know what had happened.

  'What do you mean?' she whispered.

  'Nothing,' I replied. My hands fell away. 'Did you know that Rachel Santerre was the leader of the Templar coven?'

  The girl shrugged.

  'We suspected but nothing was proved. Sometimes we met on the island but the master was always hooded and cowled. Orders would be issued, instructions about what we had to do.' She licked her lips and stared fearfully over my shoulder towards the house.

  'We were told you were not really our enemy, Master Shallot. I was asked to know you better.' She moved a little closer. 'What will happen to us?' she pleaded.

  'By now,' I replied, 'Sir John and Lady Beatrice should be on board ship bound for foreign parts. Mistress Rachel is to be taken to London.'

  'And us?'

  Tell your people to flee. Put as much distance between themselves and Templecombe as possible, your father especially.'

  'Where can we go?' she wailed.

  I glimpsed the terror in the poor girl's face and realised she had simply been a tool. They had all been used by Rachel Santerre for her ancient order. I loosened my money belt (oh, yes, where I went, it went) and counted out ten gold coins, a veritable fortune, then slipped a small jewelled ring off my finger and pushed it all into her hands.

  Take your child,' I said, 'and your father, and within a week follow Sir John and Lady Beatrice abroad. I cannot do more for you.'

  I walked back to the house, feeling as brave and courageous as Hector.

  'Roger!'

  I turned and glimpsed Mathilda's white face in the shadows. 'You should go,' I repeated.

  They said you were a rogue but you have more honour than any of them. Goodbye, Roger Shallot!'

  I saw the shadows move, Mathilda disappeared and I walked back into the house. Now, naturally, with so many light-fingered bastards about, I decided that the best course of action was to recoup my losses with Mathilda. I grabbed whatever took my fancy and walked back to my chamber with a jewel-encrusted cup plucked from the fingers of a drunken soldier. After all, the labourer deserves payment and I wanted to show a little profit.

  Benjamin was lying on my bed snoring like a child so I walked back along the galleries. Mandeville was frenetically trying to re-impose order whilst at the same time preparing for a quick departure to London the following morning.

  'Are you and Daunbey returning with us?' he snapped.

  'Must we?' I asked.

  He shrugged. 'That is a matter for you. It is important that I take my prisoner to London and report direct to the King.'

  'May I see Mistress Rachel?' 'Why?'

  'I wish to take my farewells.'

  Mandeville looked at me suspiciously.

  'My master has ordered me to,' I lied glibly.

  (Do you know, when I was young, I looked my most innocent when I was lying through my teeth?)

  'She has been moved from her own chamber,' Mandeville retorted, 'to one of the cellars beneath the hall. She is being well looked after.'

  'My master is the Cardinal's nephew,' I added.

  Mandeville pulled a face and shrugged. 'Come! I will take you there.'

  The passageways beneath the hall were lit by torches and guarded by Bowyer's soldiers. We stopped before an iron-studded door.

  'Open it!' Mandeville ordered.

  Inside the cellar smelt musty though, even in that dark forbidding place, I still caught the tang of Rachel's perfume. The woman herself sat on a trestle bed: she looked composed, even serene, and smiled as I entered.

  'Good evening, Master Shallot. You have come to gloat?'

  Mandeville slammed the door behind me and turned the key.

  'A place for a princess, eh, Shallot?'

  I looked round the gaunt chamber. A cresset torch flickered high on the wall and tallow candles dripped their smelly wax on a shabby table.

  'Stolen from the stables,' Rachel explained, catching my glance.

  I took a stool from beneath the table and sat opposite her. Though pale and tired, she quickly assured me that she was being well looked after. She had been fed and was free from molestation. Mandeville had even withdrawn the guard from sitting in the cell with her.

  They check me every so often.' She laughed. 'But there is nothing I can do. The only embarrassment is when I go to the latrines but I think the soldiers are more concerned about their plunder than they are about me. I suppose Mother and Sir John have fled?'

  I nodded.

  'I thought as much.'

  'Why did you do it?' I asked.

  She shrugged and looked over my shoulder at the candle flame.

  'The Templars have always existed,' she replied. 'And Templecombe is their home. In here now, Roger, I feel their ghosts pressing around me, applauding what I did.

  Mandeville and those bastards murdered Buckingham, and that fat slob in Westminster wishes to put his greedy fingers on the most precious relics in Christendom.' She shrugged. 'It was just a matter of planning.' 'But all those murders?'

  'They deserved to die. Your master is most astute. Warnham and Calcraft were easy: two drunken agents full to the gills with ale as well as the evil they had committed. Cosmas and Damien?' she smiled. 'They were cleverer than you think. They were the ones who forged the letters which purportedly came from Buckingham.'

  'And Mistress Hopkins?'

  She looked away.

  'And the old witch?'

  'She served her purpose. If I could buy her, then so could Mandeville. She had to be silenced.' Rachel giggled like a young girl who had carried out some childish prank. 'I tried to warn them. I really thought Mandeville would panic and leave. He didn't so Bowyer and Southgate came next.'

  'And the Grail and Excalibur?'

  She shook her head. 'God knows where they are.' She looked at me under lowered eyebrows. 'Perhaps your master will find them?' She grasped my hand. 'Whatever happens, Henry Tudor must not have them! Promise me that?'

  What could I do? The girl looked so pleading, I forgot she was a malicious, cold-blooded killer and gave her my word that I would do what I could.

  'What will happen to Templecombe?' Rachel murmured.

  'Everything ends,' I replied. 'The King will seize the manor and give it to some favourite. Who knows? Sir John may return, buy himself a pardon.'

  'I don't think so,' Rachel replied. 'They will not come back here.'

  She swung her legs off the bed and sat so close to me our knees touched. I stared into those strange eyes and knew that, despite her cool demeanour, her feminine wiles and cloying beauty, Rachel wasn't sane. I was soon to find out why.

  'Neither Santerre nor my mother will come back here.' She caught my hand. 'I am not playing games. You see, Roger, my father was a Templar. He loved Templecombe and passed his secrets on to me. Sir John was his friend. He often visited us here and my mother, who feared Father's mysterious ways and his close relationship with me, plotted his murder.'

  'How?'

  'My father was killed in a riding accident. Don't you remember when Bowyer's body was brought back my mother became hysterical because my father had been killed in the same way? All I did was copy what she had done. The horses made more fiery, the spurs tinged with mercury . . . Your Master suspected that. It was one of the things he whispered to me when he led me away from the rest in the hall. He said that if I confessed, he would ensure that Lady Beatrice and Santerre paid for their crime.' She laughed and rubbed her hands together. 'Exile in
foreign parts is punishment enough.'

  'One other thing,' I queried. 'What else did my master say?'

  'Ah!' Rachel propped herself back on the bed. 'That's for Master Daunbey to tell you.' I rose and pushed the stool away. She looked up at me. 'What will they do with me in London?' 'Do you want the truth?' I asked harshly. 'The truth.'

  'They will torture you to find out the names of the other Templars, to see if you have solved Hopkins's riddle, and above all to obtain the name of your Grand Master.'

  'I don't know that. And after?'

  I crouched beside her and stroked her gently on the cheek. 'The King is a bully. You will be burnt at Smithfield.'

  I saw the flicker of fear in her eyes but her gaze held mine.

  'In which case I must pray,' she said. 'Please, Master Shallot, ask Sir Edmund if I may have my rosary beads? The soldiers will not have touched them. They are old and battered, a present from my father. Please, I must have them.'

  I agreed and walked to the door. 'Roger.'

  I looked over my shoulder and forced back the tears which pricked my eyes: Rachel looked so beautiful, so vulnerable. I could hardly believe that she was responsible for so many terrible crimes. In a way her mother was responsible, guilty of tipping her mind into sudden madness.

  'Adieu, Master Shallot.'

  I banged on the door and Mandeville let me out. 'What did she want?' he asked.

  'Nothing,' I replied. 'She is reconciled to her fate. She wishes to pray and has asked for her rosary beads.'

  Mandeville looked as if he was going to refuse.

  'Oh, come on, man!' I insisted. 'Give her that at least.'

  Sir Edmund rapped out an order and a soldier went scurrying off to Rachel's chamber, returning a few minutes later with a set of rosary beads wrapped round his fingers. Mandeville examined them carefully. The beads were battered, the chain weak copper.

  'What are you frightened of?' I scoffed. 'She can hardly hang herself with them!'

  Mandeville crunched the beads together, weighed them in his hand and looked at the guard.

  'You watch her all the time?'

  The guard pointed to the small squint hole high in the door.

  'All the time, Sir Edmund,' he replied.

  Mandeville tossed the beads to him. 'Let her have them but watch her closely.'

  I returned to my chamber. Benjamin was still asleep so I made myself comfortable in a chair, wrapped a rug round me and dozed fitfully until he shook me awake just after dawn. We did not bother to shave or wash. The room had grown cold because the flight of the servants meant no fresh logs had been brought up and the water in the lavarium was now covered with a film of dirty ice. We went downstairs and I marvelled at how Mandeville had brought everything under control. He had worked the soldiers all night. Every chamber except ours had been stripped. All clothes, possessions, anything which could be moved - chests, chairs, mattresses, bolsters, canopies, drapes, cups and plate - had been piled in the hall and the doors sealed. Mandeville, satisfied with what he had done, led us into the buttery where we managed to find some stale bread and a jug of watery ale.

  'Everything's ready,' he informed us, snatching mouthfuls of bread. 'Southgate will stay here under a small guard until the other soldiers arrive. When he is able, he will be moved to the infirmary at Glastonbury and then to London. All the moveables of this manor are now piled in the hall and the door sealed against further thievery. The King's Commissioners will arrive and make sure everything due to the crown is seized.'

  (Too bloody straight, I thought. Henry VIII's Commissioners were the most heartless set of bastards. They would snatch a crust of bread from a dying child!)

  'And Mistress Rachel?' my master asked.

  'She has breakfasted and been allowed to wash and change. She and I will be on the road to London within the hour.'

  Mandeville was as good as his word: a short while later we heard him shouting his farewells and going down to the main courtyard where the dead sheriff's soldiers, much the worse for drink, were saddling their horses. We glimpsed Mistress Rachel in the centre of them, cloaked and hooded, her hands tied to the saddle horn, another rope under the horse's belly securing her ankles. Sir Edmund mounted and, after a great deal of clattering and shouting, the party made its way out of the manor. Never once did Rachel stir, never once look to left or right or back at Templecombe which had cost her so much. God rest her, I never saw her again.

  For a while Benjamin and I went round the manor house, now empty and quiet as a tomb. Only two or three soldiers remained under the command of a burly sergeant. We visited Southgate but he still lay swathed in bandages attended by the old hags who seemed impervious to the tumult around them, being well paid by Mandeville to look after his lieutenant.

  It was like visiting a house of ghosts. So difficult to imagine how, only a few days earlier, Lady Beatrice had swept round as grand as a duchess; Sir John had acted the benevolent lord; and Mistress Rachel had watched and plotted behind a demeanour as serene as a nun's.

  Now, as I have said, it's hard for you young people to imagine such terrors but during Fat Henry's reign such occurrences became common. Time and again the King's agents would swoop on some great houses - Thomas Moore's, Wolsey's, Cromwell's, Boleyn's, Rochford's, Howard's - and the effect was always the same. One day it was all gaiety and dancing and the next despair and ruin.

  Ah, well, it was no different at Templecombe. Benjamin was lost in his thoughts. The only time he smiled was when I informed him about Rachel wanting her rosary beads. I also pressed him on how he had made the woman confess.

  'Later,' he murmured. 'Everything in its due time, Roger.'

  He seemed restless, wanting to make sure Mandeville had left. Then, about noon, when the soldiers were busy broaching a new cask of ale, he borrowed a huge mallet from the cellar and bustled me out of the house, down to the Templar chapel. Now he became excited, his face flushed, and once inside the church, locked and barred the door, making sure the windows were also closed. 'What's the matter, Benjamin?'

  He turned to me, the mallet gripped tightly between his two hands.

  'Don't you remember Hopkins's verse? "Beneath Jordan's water Christ's cup does rest, and above Moses' Ark the sword that's best"?'

  'You think the relics are here?'

  Benjamin put down the mallet and walked up the church, under the rood screen and into the sanctuary. He pointed out the old stalls where the Templars had stood to sing the divine office, and the misericords, the intricately wooden carving on each upraised seat.

  'What do you see there, Roger?'

  I walked along the stalls, giving him a description of each misericord; a bull, a wife, a rabbit, etc. Then I stopped. On one of the stalls, men dressed in flowing gowns were carrying a small casket between them.

  'What is that?' I asked.

  Benjamin joined me. 'It's the Ark of the Covenant, Roger. The small box built by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai to carry the tablets of stone on which the ten commandments were carved.'

  'Moses' Ark!' I gasped. 'You mean the Sword Excalibur is there?'

  'Well, Hopkins's verse says "the sword is above the Ark".' Benjamin looked up at the heavy beamed roof. 'At first I thought it might be there but I have been up into the choir loft and that's impossible. So let's look at the seat itself.'

  He drew his dagger and walked along the stalls, tapping each with the hilt. A dull thud answered every knock but, when he reached the stall depicting the Ark of Moses, the wood sounded hollow. Benjamin carefully inspected it.

  'This panel seems to be pegged together, I can trace the joining line.' He sighed. 'Ah, well, there's no other way.'

  And, taking the heavy mallet, he dealt the top of the seat a resounding blow. The wood was old and weathered and immediately splintered. Benjamin cleared a space big enough to put his hand down but, when he did, the smile of triumph faded from his face.

  'Nothing!' he exclaimed. 'Nothing at all.'

  Benjamin took a
lighted torch from the wall. We both looked down into the empty recess but there was nothing there.

  'Once there might have been,' he remarked. 'But perhaps the Templars thought differently and moved it.' He banged the top of the heavily carved seat with his fist. 'I suspect there's a hidden lever which would open this recess.' He sighed and let the mallet drop. 'Perhaps they took Excalibur and threw it into the lake, its true resting place.'

  'And the Grail?' I asked.

  Benjamin sat in one of the choir stalls and pointed down the church. 'Do you remember, Roger, I remarked how the water of baptism is often called Jordan's river? Now, there's a baptismal font in every village church. But why here, in a Templar chapel where no women or children were allowed?' Benjamin got to his feet. 'At the risk of more destruction, I suspect that baptismal font has never been used but was built simply to guard the Grail.' He walked wearily over and I followed him. I sensed his disappointment for, if the Templars had removed Excalibur from its hiding place, why not Christ's chalice?

  We carefully examined the paving stones on which the baptismal font had been erected, poking with our daggers around the edges. However, the stones had apparently never been moved since they had first been laid so we shifted our attention to the font itself. This was a simple, very large rounded bowl resting on a small, stout pillar. We looked for some hidden lever or crack but the stone held firm and, when we tapped it with our daggers, it sounded solid. Then I looked at the fine layer of cement between the baptismal bowl and the stone plinth supporting it. 'Pass me the mallet.'

  Benjamin grew excited as he realised what I had found.

  'No, let's do it differently,' he said.

  We spent an hour chipping away at the layer of hard cement, using our knives and chisels, until it began to crumble and the bowl worked loose. The Templar mason had been very cunning. When we finally removed the bowl, we discovered the stone plinth was at least six inches thick but with a small hollow cavity in the centre. Benjamin pushed his hand in and drew out a stained, black leather bag bound at the neck. We both crouched as he cut the cord loose.

  The bag, which had begun to rot, fell away and, I tell you this - Benjamin and I knelt in reverence before the Holy Grail, the very chalice from which Christ had drunk at the Last Supper. I, Roger Shallot, have seen this cup. I have held it in my hands, the greatest relic in all Christendom!