Paul Doherty - The Gallows Murders

"Possible,' Benjamin replied, 'but how would they communicate?'

'We have still to study Spurge's maps,' I replied. ‘Undershaft could still be alive and the villain of the piece. He might have written that letter before he left the Tower and given it to his accomplice to deliver when the fortress was closed and shuttered. He could then have arranged for the proclamations to be posted after falsifying his own death.'

‘I agree,' Agrippa declared. Whilst the other hangman, Hellbane, could have been murdered because he knew something? Mistress Undershaft is not what she appears to be, I can see that: her grief is not as deep as it should be. No one identified that corpse as her husband's. We also learnt that Master Undershaft had little liking for Sir Edward Kemble. Moreover, if Undershaft is supposed to be dead, then that's the best disguise, if you are sending letters of blackmail against the King and leaving them at Westminster or elsewhere. But who the accomplice is and how they communicate is a mystery. And those seals, Roger, are no forgeries. In truth they once belonged to Edward the Fifth. If your theory is correct, how did Undershaft or his accomplice get their hands on them?' He looked up at the sky. ‘We must go,' he murmured. The King has gone hunting today, as he will tomorrow' He smiled grimly. 'But he expects to see you at supper tonight, Roger. Moreover, we still have business to do with Snakeroot, Wormwood and the rest.'

We walked back into Petty Wales. Agrippa led us directly to the Gallows tavern which, despite its grisly sign, was a clean, spacious ale-house. The taproom inside was high-vaulted. Bunches of herbs hung in baskets from the rafters, shedding the fragrance of a summer day through the ale fumes and rather greasy odours from the kitchen. The landlord apparently took the sign of his tavern very seriously: the place was decorated with blocks of wood from this gibbet or that. On one wall hung a rope which was supposedly used to kill the great imposter Perkin Warbeck. Above the fireplace a wooden box held – so the notice scrawled below proclaimed – part of the skin flayed from Richard Puddlicott who had tried to raid the King's treasury at Westminster Abbey. A cheerful though gruesome place: skulls had been painted on the floorboards, whilst the wooden pillar in the centre of the room was decorated with knives and daubed with red paint so it looked like a whipping post.

Do you know, over the years I have grown fascinated by human nature. Why do people find the most gruesome things in society so interesting? If I stood up in Cheapside and said I owned the skull of a dog, people would just pass by. However, if I said I was the proud owner of the skull of some bloody-handed murderer, who was also a chaplain in this or that church, everyone would gather round to stare: that's one thing I learnt from my relic-selling days. I sold more skulls, reputedly those of Barabbas or Pontius Pilate, than I did anything else!

Ah well, that's human nature and, little did I know it, my arrival at the Gallows tavern was an introduction to the deep, murderous passions which lurk in the human heart. The Guild of Hangmen were there, seated in a corner beneath a crudely drawn painting of a scaffold. I took one look and thought, oh aye nonny no, here goes Old Shallot again! They were all dressed in black, white shirts peeping beneath the leather jerkins and doublets. (I am always wary of people who dress in the most sombre colours, as if they are in love with death.) John Mallow, the chief hangman, was a grisly-looking soul: small and fat with wizened features, a scrawny beard, smiling mouth, with yellow-gapped teeth and eyes like two piss-holes in the snow. He was the most handsome of them all! Mallow, in turn, introduced his four so-called apprentices: Snakeroot, tall and thin with shift eyes and a slack mouth, a man who'd lurk behind the arras or in the shadows and listen to what you said. Horehound was a tippler; he had a fat, greasy face, greasy spiked hair, a body like a ball of fat with no neck or waist. His chin seemed to rest on his chest. Like me, he had a cast in one eye: not the sort of face to wish you well as you were turned off the ladder at Tyburn or Smithfield! Toadflax was different. He was tall, clean-shaven, bronze-faced. His dyed yellow hair framed his face like that of a girl; his eyes were strange. When he looked at you his mind was elsewhere, as if he lived in a dark world all of his own. Wormwood – well, if I had to choose one of them to go on a journey with, I would have selected him. He at least looked human, with sharp-etched features and cool grey eyes. A man who took meticulous care with his appearance. I wondered why such a man was working as a hangman. One thing I did notice (and I nudged Benjamin) was that Wormwood was writing what he claimed to be a sonnet. Although I couldn't make out the words, I could tell from the script that Wormwood was an educated man who could have secured a benefice in any great nobleman's Chancery.

They all made us welcome enough. Benjamin ordered fresh stoups of ale. Agrippa sat as if he was a shadow. I shivered a little, for Mallow and his four apprentices all concentrated on me. They studied Old Shallot from head to toe as if assessing how much I weighed, how broad my shroud would be, and how long it would take for me to choke on the end of a rope. (Perhaps that was my guilty conscience. During my long and convoluted life I have been condemned to death either in England or abroad at least eighteen times. Sorry, nineteen, I forgot that madcap bugger, the Prince of Muscovy. I've been, no less than eight times, on the scaffold with a rope round my neck.)

Nevertheless, I remained merry-faced. For a while we discussed the sweating sickness, though the conversation was desultory. Mallow and his apprentices seemed highly nervous of Dr Agrippa, and even more so when Benjamin introduced himself as the Cardinal's nephew. I could understand their fear. Hangmen always have a shadowy past. They hide just beneath the skirts of the law and take cold comfort in the fact that, if they are its servants, they are safe. Mallow abruptly made that point.

‘We have done nothing wrong, sirs.' He sipped from his tankard.

'No one has said you have,' Benjamin coolly replied. 'But, as St Augustine says, "Quis custodiet custodes?" "Who will guard the guards?"' He beat his tankard gently on the table. ‘What we do have are villains threatening His Grace the rung.'

‘We know nothing of that,' Wormwood whispered, his voice no more than a hiss, 'though we heard tittle-tattle about the letters.' 'And the deaths of Hellbane and Undershaft?'

'Again innocent,' Toadflax sneered. 'Master Daunbey.' The hangman leaned forward, I noticed how ink-stained his fingers were. ‘We, too, are officers of the Crown. We execute the villains of London. One in three go to the scaffold screaming their innocence: around the hanging tree, their friends and relatives shake their fists and spit at us!' 'Anyone in particular?' I asked innocently.

Toadflax drew his head back, studying me from under heavy-lidded eyes. If he could, he would have spat at me.

Mallow, sniffing and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, called for more ale before continuing. ‘Undershaft and Hellbane were young, powerful men. They would not have given up their lives easily.'

'Hellbane was fished from the Thames,' I replied. 'It's easy to knock a man on the head, put weights on a sack and tip him into the water.'

'If that's the case,' Mallow snapped, 'the list of suspects is endless.'

'Indeed,' Wormwood whispered, 'it could happen to any of us.'

'So, you know nothing?' Benjamin asked, pushing back his stool as if to rise. That is the answer we shall give His Grace the Cardinal.' ‘No.' Mallow shrugged. ‘No quarrel between you, within the guild?'