Paul Doherty: The Gallows Murders

The next Sunday, up he gets, straight as a pole in the pulpit. Why?’ he began lugubriously, 'do people call me a Christian?'

'Because they know sweet bugger-all about you!' I shouted back.

It made little difference, so I sat in my pew, arms crossed, glaring at him. An hour must have passed. I slept for a while, drank a little of the wine I always take with me, and suddenly saw a fresh opportunity.

'Dear Brethren,' my chaplain intoned, ‘I ask you solemnly: reflect on the Gospels and ask yourselves, would you be in the light with five wise virgins, or in the dark with five foolish virgins?'

'Ask a daft question,' I bawled back, 'and you'll get a daft answer!'

The congregation collapsed in laughter. Oh, my lovely, lovely chaplain. I hope he knows what he is doing by getting married. I once asked for forgiveness from one of my wives as she lay dying. I murmured, ‘You must have thought many a time, of asking for a divorce?'

The sweet woman turned to me and smiled. She weakly grasped my hand and whispered something to herself. 'What's that?' I asked.

She turned her face towards me. 'Roger, in all the time I have been married to you, divorce has never crossed my mind. Murder has, but never divorce.'

Ah well, the poor woman died. A happy relief. She was always ill with this complaint or that. You can see her tombstone in the church: her name, her age, her virtue. Underneath, I wrote her epitaph: 'I told you I was ill.'

My chaplain is now glaring at me, though I can see the laughter bubbling within him. He knows I lie. I loved all my wives more dearly than life itself. Old Roger can only deal with tragedy by turning it into a joke; that's how I survive, that's how I sleep when all those ghosts swarm round my bed. Henry, the Great Beast, glaring at me with his red, mad, piggy eyes. Beside him Wolsey with his olive, Italianate face. The men I have killed; the murderers I have trapped. I always close my eyes and summon up a face that's never there: long and dark, gentle-eyed and merry-mouthed, my eternal friend, Benjamin Daunbey. So, I go back, searching for his soul down the long, dusty corridors of the years when Henry the Great Beast terrorised England and Wolsey ruled both Church and State. When London was all a-bubble with sickness, and murder, in all its horror, made its bloody hand felt.

The year of 1523 was sharp and cruel. A violent, snarling time when princes dreamed of war; all of Europe teetered on the brink of a great precipice, ready to tear itself apart over divisions in religion. In Denmark, Christian II had been deposed for cruelty. In Switzerland, Zwingli attacked the Pope and called him the Antichrist, whilst in Brussels, two of Martin Luther's adherents were burnt alive in roaring flames. Across the Narrow Seas, Francis II dreamed of being another Charlemagne, whilst long-jawed Charles V, the Hapsburg Emperor, planned on finding rivers of gold in the distant Americas.

In England, however, little had changed… thus far. Henry VIII, the fat bastard, the mouldwarp of Merlin's prophecies, still clung to sanity. So far he had not shown, except to me, that cruel streak of venomous temper which would drench his kingdom in rivers of blood: that was still a few years off. Henry was more concerned about his pleasures. He wanted to be a great wrestler, the keenest of archers, the best dancer, the most ferocious j ouster. Henry believed he was a fairy-tale prince, and those who danced with him little suspected that the nightmare would soon begin. By 1523, the worms were eating their way into the marrow of his soul. Henry's wife – plump, sallow-faced Catherine of Aragon – had not produced a living male heir, and the gossips were beginning to titter and chatter behind their hands. Some said Henry's seed was rotten (they were probably right). Others uttered darker words, that Henry was a Tudor: his father might have been a Welsh prince but his grandfather was a Welsh farmer, so what right did he have to the Crown and Empire of England? Henry heard them and, worst of all, Henry was growing old. I suppose Bacon was right when he wrote, 'Golden boys and golden girls must, in their turn, turn to dust.' Henry's body was beginning to betray him. An open ulcer on his leg, a belly like a beer-barrel. Phlegm stuck in his throat and nose, so thick and hard it turned him deaf. Henry himself was growing concerned. Oh, he had a daughter, pale-faced Spanish Mary, as well as the bastard offspring of golden-haired Bessie Blount. Nevertheless, in his bed at night (or so the Beast later told me), Henry began to wonder if God had turned his hand against him.

Nobody in the palaces of Whitehall, Windsor, Hampton Court or Sheen could guess what was coming. It was like one of those masques, so beloved of Will Shakespeare nowadays, when all the players gather on the stage. (Like his most recent one, Othello, about the blackamoor general hired by Venice.) Everything is colour and light. Beautiful people sweeping backwards and forwards, glorious speeches about fame, honour, glory and love. Nonetheless, the audience holds its breath and waits for black-hearted Iago to slip amongst them and bring it all crashing down with rape and horrible murder.

Henry's Iago had yet to appear: Anne Boleyn, more bewitching than beautiful; petite Anne with her long dark hair and fiery eyes. Trained at the court of France, a consummate lover, she would ensnare Henry's heart. Of course, poor Anne did not survive long. One daughter (the great Elizabeth), three miscarriages, and one stillborn son and she was finished. They accused her of having three teats (and she did have). Men cursed Anne but I found her dark, fiery eyes irresistible. Do you know, when Anne was executed she refused to be blindfolded? The executioner found her eyes so disarming that he got someone to distract her whilst he took off his shoes and stole up behind her to cut off her head. I was there. He did a good job! Anne asked me to be present to make sure he did. She had hired an executioner specially from Calais and, on her last night in the Tower, asked me one favour. 'Roger, make sure the sword is sharp!'

Oh yes, the Tower. I will come to that by and by, and the horrid scenes enacted there, long before Anne Boleyn took her final morning walk to the execution block.

Now, as I said, old Tom Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop and Chancellor of England, ruled the kingdom. Everything in the garden was still rosy. Henry played Robin Hood, or King Arthur of the Round Table, whilst the real power lay in Wolsey's hands. The Cardinal's cronies whispered how Wolsey controlled the King through a witch Mathilda Brigge: they claimed Wolsey had hired her and, in return for gold, Brigge fasted from all food and drink for three days a week and summoned up demons to do her will.

Now there was little in life Wolsey really loved, except for his beloved nephew Benjamin Daunbey. However, in the summer of 1523, the Cardinal left us alone to enjoy our golden youth in the manor he had given us at Ipswich. Our youth might have been golden; we were not. Benjamin was tall, rather swarthy, a good-looking young man with a wise face and the heart of a lamb. And old Shallot? Well, I suppose I was comely enough: black, tousled hair, sunburnt skin, generous-mouthed (or so the ladies told me). Oh and a slight squint in one eye. You have probably seen my portrait. I am quite proud of it. I've heard others whisper they've seen better faces in the death-cart going to Tyburn. But who gives a toss about them? They have all gone and I am now Sir Roger Shallot, Lord of Burpham Manor, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Bath, Lord of the Golden Fleece, etc, etc.

Well, nonny no, back in the summer of 1523, we had just returned from Florence, where Benjamin and I had trapped the cruellest of murderers. Richly rewarded by the Cardinal, we had gone home to Ipswich. Benjamin once more became involved in his good works, particularly his school at our manor for those little imps of hell from the village. Now Benjamin, God bless his kind heart, tried to persuade me to participate in this.