Paul Doherty - The Gallows Murders

'Doesn't he trust me, Master?' I cried. 'Doesn't he think I'm good enough to be his envoy?'

Tush, tush, Roger! Dearest Uncle writes that he can spare one but not both of us. Someone has to look after the manor.' He touched me under the chin. 'And someone has to care for Miranda.' I put my face in my hands: the trap had closed.

Ah well, what does old Macbeth say? Time is a fool and all our dusty yesterdays…' My little chaplain is looking at me expectantly. Aren't I going to tell him about Miranda, my beloved first wife? How could I marry the betrothed of my great friend? Well, he'll have to wait, won't he? That's another story. The sun is beginning to dip. The shadows are becoming longer. Old Shallot grows cold but, back in my bedchamber, Margot and Phoebe are heating the wine.

Once again, Shallot may not be telling such exotic tales. In Thomas More's History of Richard III, he claims that the Princes' corpses were buried under certain steps near the Great Keep. However, an account published by L. A. Du Maurier in 1680, from a manuscript translation of the Delaval, said that Prince Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, had been told by Queen Elizabeth of a sealed, walled-up chamber in the Tower which contained the skeletons of the children of Edward IV. This story is repeated in Audrey Williamson's excellent book The Mystery of the Princes, published in 1990. Table of Contents 5/Paul Doherty (as Michael Clynes) – %5bSir Roger Shallot 05%5d – The Gallows Murders (v1.5) (html)/The_Gallows_Murders.html – filepos2760