Paul Doherty: The Grail Murders

'Roger, you're my friend but you have the same penchant for mischief as a cat does for cream. You will either come home or I'll come for you. Do you understand?'

I did. To be perfectly honest Benjamin was the only person I was really frightened of and the only person I never lied to. Well, within reason. Yet, cats like cream and Shallot likes mischief.

I fell into bad company: some gentlemen of the road who skulked in the graveyard of St Paul's well beyond the sheriff's writ. They were led by a former cleric, a defrocked priest. I forget his name, we just called him Rat's Arse. He had the innocent face of an angel and one of the most eloquent mouths which ever drew breath. He could convince you black was white and night was day!

Rat's Arse persuaded me to raise money from our tight-fisted banker Waller so he could set up a molly house in an alleyway off Cock Lane. An exclusive brothel where gentlemen of leisure could take their ease. Of course he took the gold and I never saw him again. Well, alive that is. Two years later, whilst crossing Hampstead Heath, I passed the gallows and saw poor Rat's Arse tarred and gibbeted hanging by his neck. I said a little prayer. He was a villain but his heart was in the right place.

Anyway, old Waller came for me like a whippet after a rabbit. On the very afternoon I was fleeing the city he grabbed me by the arm in Paternoster Row. 'Shallot!' he screamed. 'Where's my money?'

(Have you noticed that about bankers? If you've got money, they'll lend it. If you haven't, they purse their lips and shake their heads.)

I was desperate. I gazed round looking for a way out and suddenly glimpsed old Tunstall, Bishop of London, who was riding down to St Paul's for his daily verbal assault on the Almighty. Now I had met Tunstall when I had been with Benjamin at court so I seized Waller by the wrist. 'You see over there?' I cried. 'Who?' the wretch replied.

'His Grace the Bishop of London. He agreed to stand surety for the money I have used to send the sick and the poor on a pilgrimage to St James Compostella!' Waller drew his sour face back like a viper about to strike. 'I don't believe you!' he snapped.

'Look.' I drew off my boots. 'Hold these and I'll go across and prove it to you.'

Waller held my boots and I tiptoed across the cobbles towards the bishop. 'My Lord Bishop!' I gasped. 'Your Grace!'

The bishop, surrounded by his flunkeys, reined in and looked down at me. 'Yes, my son?'

'A petition, My Lord Bishop. A petition. Your holiness may remember me?'

The old hypocrite stared sourly back, gathering his reins as if to move on.

'I am the manservant to Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to the great Cardinal.'

Well, that stopped the old bugger in his tracks. He forced a smile. (Have you noticed how priests do that? As if they were God Almighty and everyone else some poor benighted wretch?) 'What is it, my son?'

I pointed back to where Waller stood like an idiot, holding my boots.

'My Lord Bishop, I was in violent disputation with that man over the nature of the Trinity when you passed by. My Lord,' I lied, 'your reputation as a theologian is known to all. I offered you as an arbiter in our debate. My friend said he did not believe me so I left him with my boots as an assurance that you will grant him an audience and clarify the error of his ways.' Tunstall drew himself up and nodded wisely.

'My Lord, I know you are busy,' I continued breathlessly, 'but if you will just agree to fix a time and place where you can see him…?' Again the holy nod and Tunstall beckoned Waller over. He, the old fool, approached bobbing and curtseying.

Tunstall looked at him reprovingly. 'Give your friend his boots back,' he commanded. 'And be at my chambers tomorrow morning at ten o'clock and I will settle matters then.'

Waller was almost prostrate in his thanks. The bishop sketched a blessing in the air and moved on. I grabbed my boots and left London within the hour.

I returned to Ipswich sober-faced and assured Benjamin that my good work amongst the London poor had now reached an end and perhaps it was best if I helped him on the estates. He looked strangely at me, smiled with those innocent grey eyes and went back to the list of accounts he was studying.

I looked at that dark intelligent face, framed by long black hair, and desperately wondered if my master was the most cunning man I had ever met or the nearest thing to innocence in human flesh.

The days passed and then, just before All Saints, one of those last, beautiful golden days of the year when the sun burns hot and you think summer has returned, I was on top of a hayrick with some young girl from the village – a joyous, happy lass, pleasant-faced and warm-bodied. I was trying to persuade her that her bodice was too tightly tied and she, laughing, gently tapped away my probing fingers. Her resistance weakened as her laughter grew when suddenly I heard Benjamin shouting for me. 'Roger, Roger. Quickly, come here!'

I looked over the hayrick. My master stood in hose and a white shirt open at the neck, hopping from one foot to another as he tried to push his feet into his boots. 'Here I am, Master!' 'Roger, what are you doing?'

I hissed at the wench to be quiet whilst I clambered down and boldly declared I was trying to track the path of the sun.

'You are too curious, Roger,' he murmured. 'Your mind never ceases its probing.'

My master pushed me up the grassy knoll on which the manor house stood. 'What is it?' I asked.

Benjamin pointed along the dusty trackway which led down to the main gates. 'Riders, Roger. And I think they are from dear Uncle.'

I shaded my eyes with my hand and saw the puffs of white dust, a small pennant snapping in the breeze, the bright jerkins of the horsemen and the rider in front clothed all in black. My heart sank. Dear Uncle was making his hand felt. If he was sending his personal secretary and adviser, the magician Doctor Agrippa, some bloody business was afoot.

We met the visitors in our large hall, freshly painted and wood-panelled with shields bearing the arms of Shallot and Daunbey along the wall. The riders, a group of Wolsey's mercenaries, dressed in the scarlet livery of the Cardinal, were taken off to the buttery to quench their thirst and ogle the maids.

Doctor Agrippa, dressed from head to toe in black leather, tapped his broad-brimmed hat against his leg, waiting for the servants to serve chilled white wine and sweetmeats. All the time he smiled and indulged in tittle-tattle, studying me with those cold, colourless eyes.

A strange man, Agrippa. I have mentioned him before. He was always cold and, whatever the heat, I never saw him perspire. He was a true magus. Yet, superficially, he looked like some benevolent village parson with his round cheery face sweet as a cherub's, neatly cut black hair, and that smile which failed to reach his eyes. He never grew old and, after Wolsey died, had the gift of appearing in the strangest places.

Raleigh once told me – yes, that freebooter is still at sea, financed by my gold – that he had seen Agrippa near Jamestown in Virginia. How he got to the New World God only knows! A spy reported he was in Madrid and, years later, when I was fleeing from Suleiman's stranglers. I caught a glimpse of his face in the crowd as I was being pursued through the filthy streets and alleys of Constantinople. I saw him at court once and, only fifteen years ago, he turned up at Burpham looking as young and fresh as he had in my youth. I asked him what the matter was. He only smiled and gave me warning that Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned at Fotheringay, was plotting Elizabeth's death. Then he disappeared.

Agrippa was a magus with a gift for seeing the future and once told me I would die in a most unexpected way, which is one of the reasons I keep my eye on this little turd of a chaplain. A strange man. Perhaps Agrippa was the wandering Jew, condemned to wander the face of the earth for ever? I once asked a few Rabbis about this legend. They just looked askance and shook their heads.