Paul Doherty: The Grail Murders

At first I ignored them but last night when I awoke, one hand on Phoebe's tits, the other on Margot's, I stared through the oriel window at the shadows crawling across the thick-capped snow and knew I would have to continue my memoirs. If I didn't the dreams would grow worse. It was time to start again.

I had drunk three cups of rich red claret and snuggled up between Phoebe and Margot. (Lovely lasses but violently jealous of each other.) We played a little game and I fell asleep. I don't know whether it was a dream or a vision but I found myself, face pressed against the oriel window, staring out into the darkness.

An animal skull appeared, moving through the air, hovering just beyond the glass. Then a knight dressed in the robes of a Templar, black-faced with a scarlet helm, on its crown writhing snakes tearing into the rotting belly of a chicken. In the knight's hands was a decapitated grey head with bandaged eyes, covered with a seething mass of insects.

Other visions came. They crowded round, so intense, so pressing, I screamed myself awake. I couldn't go back to sleep until Phoebe and Margot had brought me a cup of sack and performed the dance they had learnt at last May Day's mummer's play.

So here we are. Because it's winter I am not sitting at the centre of my maze but in my secret chamber, wrapped in rugs in my high-backed throne. On one side a jug of claret and a deep-bowled cup, on the other my black ash rod just in case my chaplain mocks too much. You see, this little sod thinks that I dream it all up. He thinks I drink too much wine and that I am a consummate liar. If I am, I am no different from people of his ilk, as he knows to his cost. Oh, yes, I know my chaplain's little sins. I see him steal glances at young Phoebe's rounded thighs or Margot's generous tits. I have heard the stories about how he likes to take young ladies into the hay loft of one of my barns. He must think I am as stupid as he looks! After all, a hay loft on a warm summer's evening is not the ideal place to instruct some buxom wench. Or, on second thoughts, perhaps it depends on what the instruction's about!

I think my chaplain is jealous of me. He prides himself on being a fine orator, able to give a pithy sermon. Two years ago he was invited up to court to dispute certain theological matters before Her Majesty the Queen. I forget the details – something about the existence of angels.

A venerable bishop began the debate and did quite well. He kept me awake for at least five minutes. Apparently, the old boy chattered on for an hour. I awoke just as he left the pulpit then it was my chaplain's turn.

I was sitting next to Elizabeth. I nudged her and declared in a loud stage whisper for all to hear, 'Here comes counsel for the other side.' A subtle joke, only the Queen and I realised its true significance, and she couldn't stop laughing. My chaplain gave his oration whilst the rest of his brother clerics just glared at me. When it was all finished, some elderly, snivelling bishop came over to me.

'It's easy to mock, Sir Roger,' he cried. 'But could you give a sermon?' Well, you know old Shallot, in for a penny in for a pound! 'Of course I could!' I cried.

Her Majesty caught my eye, nodded, and the court reassembled. I was helped into the high pulpit. (I had drunk a little too much claret.) I leaned against the wooden rail and gazed blearily around.

'My text,' I began, 'is: Don't do to others as ye would have others do to you. After all, they may not like what you do to yourself.'

Well, gales of laughter greeted this. Up springs the red-nosed bishop who had sunk as much claret as I had.

'A proper sermon!' he screamed. 'Do not mock us, Sir Roger!'

Elizabeth nodded her red-wigged head and commanded me to continue. 'One with a moral!' a bishop shouted out.

'Yes,' another of his colleagues roared. 'Practise what you preach, Shallot! Something uplifting.'

I leaned drunkenly against the pulpit and looked at these two hypocrites, two cheeks on the same arse.

'All right,' I bellowed back, my mind racing through the possibilities.

The Queen, lovely girl, was biting her lower lip. Her face had gone puce-red and even her wig had slipped slightly askew as she tried to control herself. She clapped her hands and glared sternly at me.

'Sir Roger, you are commanded. Make your sermon short and give your gentle listeners at least three themes to reflect upon!' She winked quickly at me.

'Once upon a time,' I began, 'there was a little sparrow who started to fly south rather late in the winter.'

I stopped and stared round at my congregation gathered in the tapestry-hung chapel of Hampton Court. The clergy were glaring at me. Elizabeth had lowered her head, hiding her face behind her hand. I think she knew what was coming. Little Cecil, her secretary, stared fixedly at the ceiling.

'In a short time,' I continued, 'ice formed on this little sparrow's wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard. A cow passed by and crapped on this little sparrow. The sparrow thought he would die but the manure warmed him and thawed out his wings. Snug and happy, the little sparrow began to breathe and then to sing. A passing cat heard this, cleared away the manure, found the sparrow and promptly ate him.

'Your Majesty, brothers and sisters in Christ, that is my sermon!'

'What is the moral of this tale?' the bishop shrieked, jumping to his feet. 'Her Majesty commanded that there be three themes for us to reflect upon.'

'Can't you see them?' I bellowed back. 'First, my lord, anyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy. Secondly, anyone who gets you out of the shit is not necessarily your friend. Thirdly, if you are warm and happy, even in a pile of shit, keep your mouth firmly shut!'

Well, that was it. The Queen swept out of the chapel and I was placed under house arrest at my London home until I wrote the bishop a fulsome apology. I did so and was promptly fined a further hundred crowns for saying he was one of the nicest old ladies I had ever met.

Ah, well, if you can't take a joke you shouldn't be a Christian!

(I see my chaplain's shoulders shaking. He'd better not be laughing at me, I'd wring his neck if he bothered to wash it! Good, he has sobered up. He taps his quill on the edge of the manuscript and it's time to begin.)

We must go back into the past. Think of it as a corridor with many rooms and each chamber thronged with murderers. I must go back to those golden days when I was in the service of Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to the great Cardinal Wolsey. We were both the Cardinal's special agents working for his good and that of the crown. The good of the crown! Fat, murderous, syphilitic Henry VIII, The Dark Prince, The Mouldwarp who drenched his kingdom in torrents of blood and sent the best and noblest of his court to the scaffold…

I am ready. I have opened the leather casket with the year '1522' inscribed in faded gold letters. We have taken out the relics of that bygone, murderous age. They lie before me upon the desk. Some are tinged with purple where a wine cup spilt, others bear a deeper scarlet, the traces of some poor bastard's life blood. The ring given back to me is not important. My eyes are drawn to the scarlet threads, strips of tough silk, so light, so pathetic, yet in their time they concealed mysteries which stretch back to the time of Arthur.

I half-close my eyes, summoning up the past. I can almost catch Benjamin's voice and, in my mind's eye, glimpse his dark sardonic face, gentle eyes and lanky, stooped figure which masked so many subtle skills. Ah, I was so different then. No great lord but a mere commoner, a jumped-up jackanapes rescued by Wolsey's nephew to plumb the dark treacheries of Henry's court.

I look at a picture framed in gold which hangs on the wall on the other side of my room. A fair replica of me in my golden youth. Will Shakespeare once asked me to describe myself.