Paul Doherty - The Relic Murders

'I'm different from the rest.' Cornelius smiled wryly. 'I am the Emperor's man in peace and war: his personal emissary. The rest are Egremont's men. Why do you ask?'

'There's no chance,' I volunteered, grasping the drift of my master's questions, 'that Egremont would give separate orders to Jonathan?'

'Why should he?' Cornelius retorted. 'How could Jonathan be part of anything which led to his own death and those of his companions, not to mention the theft of the Orb. Whatever you are thinking, Master Benjamin, Lord Egremont has a great deal of explaining to do when he returns to the Imperial Court. No, no.' Cornelius shook his head. 'The real problem is how fifteen men, armed and dangerous, were all executed one after the other with no sign of resistance or any form of struggle. No one raised the alarm. No one saw anyone enter or leave.' Cornelius got to his feet.

He walked to the window. Castor padded up and began to lick at his hand. 'This is a cursed place,' Cornelius muttered, staring out at the manor. 'I need to think, reflect.' He opened his pouch and tossed two keys on a ring at Benjamin. 'Malevel Manor is now yours.' 'The Orb could still be there,' Benjamin offered.

Cornelius shook his head. 'I doubt it.' He picked up his cloak. 'I have to return to the city, to take counsel with Lord Theodosius. Will you see to the removal of the corpses?'

Benjamin agreed. Cornelius went back up to his chamber and, a few minutes later, we heard him leaving.

The next few hours were confusing. Benjamin ordered the soldiers into the manor. A cart had been hired and the corpses, including that of the old lady Isabella, were piled on, and hidden beneath a canvas sheet. Already the camp outside was beginning to break up, the soldiers going back to the Tower or Baynards Castle. By sunset all were gone: only Benjamin, myself and Castor remained. We closed the gates and, at Benjamin's insistence, locked ourselves in Malevel Manor. We were armed, and Castor was with us. Nevertheless, I'll never forget that night. Malevel in the daylight was grim enough but, when darkness fell and the wind drove against the shutters, I believe I walked with, ghosts. The galleries and passageways were narrow and gloomy. The air became stale and every step we took made the floorboards creak. Both Benjamin and I were apprehensive, as if someone was watching us. Time and again, as we searched that house from cellar to garret, I would whirl round and look back down a shadow-filled gallery only to find there was nothing there. Even Castor lost his aggression. Now and again he would stop and whimper as if the animal could see things we did not. Nevertheless, Benjamin was thorough. We carried torches and searched every room, every fireplace. We found nothing! At last, long after midnight, we returned to the kitchen. We sat at the table, drinking some of the wine left, even cutting portions of the meat and bread but there was nothing amiss: no potion, no evidence that the garrison might have been poisoned. Benjamin sat, chin in hand.

'Twenty-four hours ago,' he began, 'some time, about now, Roger, fifteen men were brutally murdered and the Orb stolen. But how?'

'This place is haunted,' I replied. 'A gateway for demons. You saw the old woman's skeleton.'

'Ghosts may walk,' Benjamin replied. 'But they don't cut throats nor do they carry arbalests.'

'They walk silently,' I replied. 'Master, how could an assassin even walk round this place without being noticed? Every step he took would make a noise.'

Benjamin got up and walked to where the blackjacks had been cleaned and put on a table.

'One thing I did notice,' he mused. 'No food was left on the table. There were no dirty pots in the scullery.' 'Which means?' I asked.

'Either they were killed before the evening meal or long after. However, if they were killed after, the remains of their dirty traunchers and blackjacks would have been left out for the cooks to wash the following day.' 'So they must have been killed before?'

'But that can't be,' Benjamin replied. 'The cooks told us they set the tables for the evening meal, yet we found no trace of that.'

'Unless Jonathan ordered it to be cleared himself?' I declared. 'I have another theory.'

I explained about Lord Charon and my meeting with him: the initials 'I.M.' on the hangings in his chamber were identical to those on the locket buried with the remains of poor Lady Isabella. Benjamin, eyes closed, heard me out.

'It's possible.' He opened his eyes. 'It's possible that in his own devilish way, Lord Charon had a hand in this business.' He tapped my hand. 'You didn't tell me about your meeting in the sewers?'

'You never asked,' I retorted. 'And it's something I'd best soon forget.'

Benjamin walked over towards where we had laid out our bedding for the night.

'Ah, that is not a matter for us, Roger, but for the authorities. The capture of Lord Charon will need troops.' He took off his boots, lay down on the bedding and pulled a blanket up to his face. 'A house of secrets,' he murmured then fell asleep.

I sat for a while listening to the house creak. I grew agitated as I realised the Great Beast would soon make his anger felt. I went out into the passageway, took a torch from its sconce and stood at the entrance to the cellar. Castor, who had been asleep in the corner of the kitchen, roused himself and followed me out. He stood silently beside me as I stared into the darkness.

What had taken Castor down there in the first place? My master's questions about the setting out of the table and the cleaning of cups bothered me as well but I was too tired to think. I returned the torch, went back into the kitchen and lay down on the bedding with Castor sprawled beside me. I fell into an uneasy sleep thronged by nightmares, bloody-mouthed spectres in ghostly galleries and other terrors of the dark. (Oh, don't laugh at poor Shallot. I have seen ghosts! I have been at Hampton Court on the anniversary of Catherine Howard's arrest, and heard her scream as she did in life, as her ghost ran down to the royal chapel to beg the Great Beast's forgiveness for having slept with Thomas Culpepper. Once, following a wager with Master Walsingham, the Queen's master spy, I spent a night in the Bloody Tower. I was locked away in a cell – the result of some stupid remark or jest at court. I felt the ghosts throng around me: Thomas Cromwell, Henry's great minister who fell from power after taking lunch with the Duke of Norfolk. Or the poor Princes stifled in their beds. True, I never saw anything but, the next morning, when the captain of the guard came to open the cell and take me to the officers' quarters to break my fast, he stopped me on the stairs and said, 'Sir Roger, you will have to pay your wager.' 'Why?' I asked.

'Well, sir,' the fellow replied. 'You said you would be alone, but when I looked through the grille at midnight you were asleep in your bed.’ 4Of course I was,' I scoffed. 'I was drunk.' 'But there was someone with you.' My blood ran cold. 'Who?' I asked.

'I don't know,' the soldier replied. 'Just a cowled and hooded figure sitting on a chair beside your bed staring down at you.'

Oh yes, I believe in ghosts and that's the last night I ever slept in the Tower!)

The next morning the terrors of the living woke us: Doctor Agrippa, Kempe and Cornelius pounding on the door. I have never seen the Doctor so agitated. He brushed by me and swept into the kitchen: clutching his broad-brimmed hat, he looked like a country parson ready to pray, except for those eyes, which had turned pebble-black.

'The King wants your heads.' He glared at Benjamin. 'Either that or his Orb back.' 'I didn't steal it!'

(Always the same old Shallot! Make sure you whine and protest your innocence!) 'He doesn't give a fig for that,' Kempe intervened. He looked dreadful; unshaven, with black shadows under red-rimmed eyes. 'His Grace,' he continued, 'held a banquet last night in Lord Egremont's honour. He drank deeply to restore his good humour but, beforehand, his rage can only be believed.' Kempe pointed to his ear which was red and swollen. 'He hit everyone he could!'