Paul Doherty: The White Rose murders

We travelled down through Eastcheap and into Petty Wales, the area around the Tower. God save us, London is a dirty place, but after that infection it was reeking filthy: fleas and lice swarmed everywhere, and the unpaved streets were coated with leavings of every kind. Mounds of refuse were piled high, full of the rushes thrown out of houses and taverns, thick with dirt and stinking of spit, vomit and dog turds. The Tower had been effectively sealed off against this miasma of filth and we were only allowed through its great darkened archways after Doctor Agrippa gave Wolsey's name and showed the necessary letters and warrants.

It was the first time I entered that bloody fortress with its soaring curtain walls, huge towers, drawbridges and moats, embrasures, sally ports and fortified gateways.

Once you were through these concentric rings of defences, the broad expanse of Tower Green, the half-timbered royal apartments and the sheer beauty of the great White Tower, caught the eye and pleased the mind with the cunning of their architecture. You see, in my youth the Tower was still a palace, old Bluff King Hal had not yet turned it into his own private killing ground where all his opponents would meet a grisly death: Sir Thomas More, joking with the executioner; John Fisher, too old to climb the gallows steps; Anne Boleyn, who died at the hands of a special executioner hired from Calais after she spent the evening before her death talking to me and practising how to lay her head on the block; Catherine Howard, a little figure in black who tripped through Traitor's Gate and bravely met her end on the scaffold in the half-light of a winter's morning. Yet, even then, I suppose the Tower had its secrets: deep, dark dungeons, ill-lit passageways and torture chambers full of grisly mechanisms such as the rack, the strappado and the thumbscrew, all of which would break a man's body and shatter his soul. A narrow, evil place, I did not relish staying in it for long.

Benjamin and I were given a small, musty chamber high in Bayward Tower which overlooked the north bastion and the deep, green-slimed moat. The narrow arrow-slit window was boarded up, with peep-holes pushed through to give some view out as well as to let the air circulate. We each had a pallet bed, a chest with its locks broken, bowls of water and a peg driven into the wall on which to hang our clothes. I felt as if we were prisoners and constantly checked the door to ensure it had not been bolted and locked.

We arrived late in the afternoon as the sun set and a damp mist swirled in from the river, so Benjamin insisted on a heated brazier and logs for the fire. The burly, thickset Constable, John Farringdon, surlily agreed and stamped off, muttering that he was not a taverner and had too many guests in the Tower. That same evening we met these, the retainers of Queen Margaret's household, as they gathered in the huge hall for supper. A cold, benighted place with bare walls and dirty rushes on the floor, its only consolations were a roaring fire in the great hearth and the food which, though simple, was plentiful and hot.

Doctor Agrippa introduced us to Queen Margaret and I groaned inwardly when I met her. She looked what she was: trouble to any man who came within a mile of her. She sat behind her separate table staring at us as she sipped a little too quickly from a huge goblet of wine. Her blonde hair was covered by a fine veil of white gossamer, and she had a strong Tudor likeness with her fleshy nose and gimlet eyes. Her face was broad and fleshy, the lips full and sensual, and despite the heavy jewel-encrusted dress, her podgy body exuded a hungry sexuality. Oh, a lewd one, Margaret. She gave many a man a good time but they always paid for it. She was hot as a poker and liked the pleasures of the boudoir beyond all others. Her husband had scarcely been killed at Flodden and she enceinte with his child, when she raised her skirts to please the Earl of Angus. The Queen frightened me by the way she was studying Benjamin, her mouth half-open, the tip of her tongue slightly moistening her lips as if she was looking at some Twelfth Night gift and was eager to shed the wrapping.

'Master Benjamin,' she said softly, her voice sweet and cultured.

'Your Grace.'

Queen Margaret extended a podgy hand for him to kiss. Benjamin approached, leaned over the table and raised her jewelled fingers to his lips. Of course, she ignored me.

'Master Benjamin,' she murmured, 'I am a queen driven from my country, exiled from my child, cut off from my people. I beg you to use all your skill and wit in this matter. If you do, you shall have my heart as well as my gold.'

Of course, the fat royal bitch didn't utter one word about murder, assassination or ambush! Oh, no, the bloody liar! My master, like the chivalrous fool he was, mumbled a solemn promise. I dismissed her as a hypocrite and I wasn't too keen either on her maid-in-waiting, Lady Carey, who sat nearby, her greying hair stuffed under a ridiculous-looking bonnet, her beanpole figure encased in dark heavy velvet. She had the sanctimonious, bitter face of a kill-joy. Oh, a precious pair, Queen Margaret and Lady Carey, believe me, Gog and Magog in petticoats! Anyway, after the introductions, the Queen simpered at Benjamin and snapped her thick white fingers for us to withdraw. Lady Carey bestowed one last sour smile and we walked down the hall to meet the rest of the company.

This merry gang of exiles sat round the wooden table and barely spared a glance for us until Doctor Agrippa, sitting at the head, rose and rapped on the bare boards with his knuckles. The introductions were made: Sir William Carey, the Queen's treasurer, was a tall, sinister-looking man with close-cropped hair and a beetling brow. With one eye covered by a patch, the other glared furiously around as if he was constantly expecting attack. A redoubtable soldier now past his fiftieth summer, Carey had been a friend of the dead King James, one of the few who had managed to survive Flodden and fight his way out of the bloody mess. Mind you, having seen his wife, if I'd been in his shoes, I would either have stayed there or taken ship for foreign parts.

Simon Moodie was next, chaplain and almoner to the Queen. He was small and nervous with mousey hair, a thin pallid face, and the scrawniest beard and moustache I've ever clapped eyes on.

John Ruthven, the steward, was red-haired with a bloated drinker's face. He had ice-blue, goggling eyes and a nose which beaked like a hook over thick, red lips. A man who would know every penny he had and could tell you at a minute's notice what he and everyone else around him was worth. He constantly stroked a black and white cat, feeding it tidbits from the table, even talking to the bloody thing. Where Ruthven went, so did his cat and I privately wondered if he was a secret warlock and his pet a demoniac familiar.

Then there was Captain Melford, a burly individual with hair cropped close to his head, which seemed as round as a cannon ball. Melford's pale blue eyes were milky like those of Ruthven's cat and his tawny-skinned face was made all the more fearsome by a small pointed beard and a scar which ran across one cheek. A man of indeterminate age and questionable morals, Melford wore the royal tabard of Scotland over his shirt; unlike the rest of us he did not wear hose but black, woollen leggings pushed into high-heeled leather riding boots. What caught my attention was his codpiece which jutted out as monstrous as a stallion's.

Melford was lean, sallow, and undoubtedly vicious. He sat at the table with an arrogant slouch. The naked dagger pushed through an iron ring on his belt proclaimed him a mercenary, one of those professional killers who see murder as an everyday occurrence and the anguish it causes as merely an occupational hazard. Like the rest, his reception of Benjamin and myself was cool and distant, hardly looking up when Doctor Agrippa spoke.