Paul Doherty - The Grail Murders

‘I was a hungry, lean-faced villain,' I replied. ‘A mountebank, a threadbare juggler, a hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch.'

Will thanked me for it and, as always, used it in one of his plays. You'll find the same description in his Comedy of Errors, a subtle humorous piece which I sponsored with my gold.

Ah, well, no more dalliance or asides. The curtains are drawn so let the bloody drama begin. I will exorcise the ghosts in my mind. Purge the demons from my soul and order them to go back to hell and tell the Lord Satan I sent them there. (Oh, by the way, you'll find this same phrase in one of Will Shakespeare's plays. He borrowed that as well!)

After we returned from France in the summer of 1521, my master Benjamin Daunbey was left untroubled by his uncle, the great Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Old Tom had other things on his mind as we later discovered. You see, the fat Cardinal had one great nightmare: how to control the King. He used a magic ring, so they say, to call up demons, and hired the chief of witches, a harlot known as Mabel Brigge, to go on a Satanic fast in order to keep the King's mind firmly in his grasp.

Old Wolsey was a fool. I told him so when he lay dying in Leicester Abbey, cursing all princes and Henry in particular.

Now Henry VIII, that limb of Satan, had his brains firmly in his codpiece whilst his soul was a storm of emotions. He was a great Catholic yet he attacked the Mass. A learned scholar but he killed poor Tom More. A fervent friend until he tired of you. And, above all, a loving husband until someone more young and buxom caught his eye.

You may have read how Henry wanted a male heir and rejected both his daughters. First, poor Mary. (That was her problem, you know. Mary was always looking for her father in other men, including me. And that shows you how desperate she was!) Secondly, of course, the great Elizabeth, Boleyn's daughter. And wasn't that funny? Satan must be laughing in hell. Old Henry searching for a boy whilst his poor, rejected daughter, Elizabeth, turns out to be the greatest monarch England has ever seen. Mind you, that's not the full truth. Elizabeth was his heir, ostensibly his daughter, only I know the truth… but that's a story for another time and another place.

What is important is to realise that Henry was ruled by his lusts. Oh, he had his passing fancies: Bessie Blount, Lucy Rose, but in the summer of 1522 he was reverting to type. He liked the Howard women: Elizabeth Howard, Anne Boleyn's mother, had already graced his bed. So had Anne's eldest sister, Mary. Now Anne herself, that dark sensuous witch, had returned from France full of coquetry, with her satin dresses, thick lace petticoats, crimson high-heeled shoes, dark sloe eyes, and those beautiful hands which fluttered like the wings of a butterfly.

Henry lusted for her but this time it was different. Anne had been trained at the court of the greatest lecher the world had ever seen, Francis I of France, where seduction, love-making and affairs of the heart were treated with as much attention as matters of state. Anne had seen her elder sister pursued, wooed, seduced – only to be rejected as the 'English mare', a hackney whom anyone could ride. Anne was different. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to be Henry's wife.

Wolsey, lost in his intricate game of human chess against Boleyn, left us alone. So we trotted back to our manor house outside Ipswich.

Now Benjamin was a strange fellow. We had gone to school together. Afterwards he had become a lawyer's clerk and, in doing so, saved me from an undeserved hanging. He was astute, cunning, an expert swordsman, but at times could be infuriatingly naive; not childish but very childlike. He was not your usual landowner who exploits the peasants and seduces their daughters. Oh, no! Benjamin really believed in the milk of human kindness. Despite my protests, he cancelled all levies, tolls and dues owing to him as the Lord of the Manor. His tenants became freeholders, allowed to till their own soil and grow their own crops. He set up a small hospital in the village and hired an old physician, a gentle, caring man who knew the art of physic.

(A rarity indeed! I wouldn't trust any doctor as far as I can spit. They call me a rogue, but you watch any quack! He will grab your wrist, stare at your urine, poke about your stools, shake his head and stroke his beard. Do you think he's concerned about you? Like hell he is! All he is doing is calculating the bill.

I discovered this recently when the rogue who calls himself a doctor came up to visit me. He brought a jar of physic distilled from the dry skin of a newt and the head of a frog with a touch of batwing. I drew my dagger and said that he must drink it first. Do you know what the bastard did? He coughed, looked narrowly at me, and said on second thoughts perhaps a little more claret and a good night's sleep would put me right. Take old Shallot's advice, never trust a doctor or a lawyer! Well, the only good one I have seen was hanging by his neck from a scaffold.)

Ah, well. Benjamin had set up his small hospital as well as a school in the manor hall where all the scruffy little villains from the nearby villages could attend free of charge. Benjamin hired a schoolmaster – a proper teacher, not one of those sadistic bastards who enter the profession so they can inflict as much damage as possible on every child who comes into their care. No, this man was a scholar who had studied with Colet and Erasmus. He could teach Mathematics, Geography, and was fluent in Latin, Classical Greek, French and Italian. Soft as dough was old Benjamin. He never had a business head. Mind you, out of respect to his memory, I have started similar schemes on my own estates.

The administration of the manor was left to a thrifty steward called Barker, the grandfather of my present captain of the guard. (Oh, yes, I believe in keeping everything in the family. Even my little turd of a chaplain, on whom I lavish so much love and affection, is the great-nephew of the teacher Benjamin hired.) Suffice to say that with my master looking after his fellow man and others more capable looking after the estate, I grew bored. I drifted back to London, ostensibly to take lessons with a duelling master, a Portuguese who had taught Benjamin, having left his country one step ahead of the Inquisition.

'You have a good eye and a quick wrist,' the fellow remarked one day. 'You are swift in your parry, cunning in your lunge – but there's something lacking.'

'Too bloody straight there is!' I answered. 'I don't like being killed and I have no desire to kill anyone!'

The sword-master, leaning elegantly on his fencing foil, stroked his short goatee beard.

'Good!' he murmured. 'The mark of a true swordsman.' He wagged a finger at me. 'One day you will understand. When the blood runs hot, you'll know it. A wild unselfish desire, something which comes from the very marrow of your soul: to kill or be killed. All your life, all your existence, channelled to that one end.'

Of course I thought this was nonsense and the fellow short of a king's full shilling. Yet he was right. Years later, on a golden sea-shore, Benjamin and I fought sword against sword, dagger against dagger, over a woman with a face as beautiful as Helen of Troy and a heart and soul as black as the deepest pit in hell. However, that's another story and doesn't concern us here.

Soon I had learnt enough of duelling and began to drift around the capital. London is such a wonderful place! It harbours every type of villain under the sun: gamblers, foists, footpads, cut-throats and cut-purses, sturdy beggars, palliards and counterfeit men… I really felt at home. Naturally, Benjamin kept a wary eye on me and insisted that I spend no longer than three nights in succession in London. He would sit behind his desk in the great solar of our country manor and waggle his bony finger at me.