Paul Doherty: The Grail Murders

'They deserved to die. Your master is most astute. Warnham and Calcraft were easy: two drunken agents full to the gills with ale as well as the evil they had committed. Cosmas and Damien?' she smiled. 'They were cleverer than you think. They were the ones who forged the letters which purportedly came from Buckingham.' 'And Mistress Hopkins?' She looked away. 'And the old witch?'

'She served her purpose. If I could buy her, then so could Mandeville. She had to be silenced.' Rachel giggled like a young girl who had carried out some childish prank. 'I tried to warn them. I really thought Mandeville would panic and leave. He didn't so Bowyer and Southgate came next.' 'And the Grail and Excalibur?'

She shook her head. 'God knows where they are.' She looked at me under lowered eyebrows. 'Perhaps your master will find them?' She grasped my hand. 'Whatever happens, Henry Tudor must not have them! Promise me that?'

What could I do? The girl looked so pleading, I forgot she was a malicious, cold-blooded killer and gave her my word that I would do what I could. 'What will happen to Templecombe?' Rachel murmured.

'Everything ends,' I replied. 'The King will seize the manor and give it to some favourite. Who knows? Sir John may return, buy himself a pardon.'

'I don't think so,' Rachel replied. 'They will not come back here.'

She swung her legs off the bed and sat so close to me our knees touched. I stared into those strange eyes and knew that, despite her cool demeanour, her feminine wiles and cloying beauty, Rachel wasn't sane. I was soon to find out why.

'Neither Santerre nor my mother will come back here.' She caught my hand. 'I am not playing games. You see, Roger, my father was a Templar. He loved Templecombe and passed his secrets on to me. Sir John was his friend. He often visited us here and my mother, who feared Father's mysterious ways and his close relationship with me, plotted his murder.' 'How?'

'My father was killed in a riding accident. Don't you remember when Bowyer's body was brought back my mother became hysterical because my father had been killed in the same way? All I did was copy what she had done. The horses made more fiery, the spurs tinged with mercury… Your Master suspected that. It was one of the things he whispered to me when he led me away from the rest in the hall. He said that if I confessed, he would ensure that Lady Beatrice and Santerre paid for their crime.' She laughed and rubbed her hands together. 'Exile in foreign parts is punishment enough.'

'One other thing,' I queried. 'What else did my master say?' 'Ah!' Rachel propped herself back on the bed. 'That's for Master Daunbey to tell you.' I rose and pushed the stool away. She looked up at me. 'What will they do with me in London?' 'Do you want the truth?' I asked harshly. 'The truth.'

'They will torture you to find out the names of the other Templars, to see if you have solved Hopkins's riddle, and above all to obtain the name of your Grand Master.' 'I don't know that. And after?' I crouched beside her and stroked her gently on the cheek. 'The King is a bully. You will be burnt at Smithfield.'

I saw the flicker of fear in her eyes but her gaze held mine.

'In which case I must pray,' she said. 'Please, Master Shallot, ask Sir Edmund if I may have my rosary beads? The soldiers will not have touched them. They are old and battered, a present from my father. Please, I must have them.' I agreed and walked to the door. 'Roger.'

I looked over my shoulder and forced back the tears which pricked my eyes: Rachel looked so beautiful, so vulnerable. I could hardly believe that she was responsible for so many terrible crimes. In a way her mother was responsible, guilty of tipping her mind into sudden madness. 'Adieu, Master Shallot.' I banged on the door and Mandeville let me out. 'What did she want?' he asked.

'Nothing,' I replied. 'She is reconciled to her fate. She wishes to pray and has asked for her rosary beads.' Mandeville looked as if he was going to refuse. 'Oh, come on, man!' I insisted. 'Give her that at least.'

Sir Edmund rapped out an order and a soldier went scurrying off to Rachel's chamber, returning a few minutes later with a set of rosary beads wrapped round his fingers. Mandeville examined them carefully. The beads were battered, the chain weak copper.

'What are you frightened of?' I scoffed. 'She can hardly hang herself with them!'

Mandeville crunched the beads together, weighed them in his hand and looked at the guard. 'You watch her all the time?'

The guard pointed to the small squint hole high in the door. 'All the time, Sir Edmund,' he replied.

Mandeville tossed the beads to him. 'Let her have them but watch her closely.'

I returned to my chamber. Benjamin was still asleep so I made myself comfortable in a chair, wrapped a rug round me and dozed fitfully until he shook me awake just after dawn. We did not bother to shave or wash. The room had grown cold because the flight of the servants meant no fresh logs had been brought up and the water in the lavarium was now covered with a film of dirty ice. We went downstairs and I marvelled at how Mandeville had brought everything under control. He had worked the soldiers all night. Every chamber except ours had been stripped. All clothes, possessions, anything which could be moved – chests, chairs, mattresses, bolsters, canopies, drapes, cups and plate – had been piled in the hall and the doors sealed. Mandeville, satisfied with what he had done, led us into the buttery where we managed to find some stale bread and a jug of watery ale.

'Everything's ready,' he informed us, snatching mouthfuls of bread. 'Southgate will stay here under a small guard until the other soldiers arrive. When he is able, he will be moved to the infirmary at Glastonbury and then to London. All the moveables of this manor are now piled in the hall and the door sealed against further thievery. The King's Commissioners will arrive and make sure everything due to the crown is seized.'

(Too bloody straight, I thought. Henry VIII's Commissioners were the most heartless set of bastards. They would snatch a crust of bread from a dying child!) 'And Mistress Rachel?' my master asked.

'She has breakfasted and been allowed to wash and change. She and I will be on the road to London within the hour.'

Mandeville was as good as his word: a short while later we heard him shouting his farewells and going down to the main courtyard where the dead sheriff's soldiers, much the worse for drink, were saddling their horses. We glimpsed Mistress Rachel in the centre of them, cloaked and hooded, her hands tied to the saddle horn, another rope under the horse's belly securing her ankles. Sir Edmund mounted and, after a great deal of clattering and shouting, the party made its way out of the manor. Never once did Rachel stir, never once look to left or right or back at Templecombe which had cost her so much. God rest her, I never saw her again.

For a while Benjamin and I went round the manor house, now empty and quiet as a tomb. Only two or three soldiers remained under the command of a burly sergeant. We visited Southgate but he still lay swathed in bandages attended by the old hags who seemed impervious to the tumult around them, being well paid by Mandeville to look after his lieutenant.

It was like visiting a house of ghosts. So difficult to imagine how, only a few days earlier, Lady Beatrice had swept round as grand as a duchess; Sir John had acted the benevolent lord; and Mistress Rachel had watched and plotted behind a demeanour as serene as a nun's.

Now, as I have said, it's hard for you young people to imagine such terrors but during Fat Henry's reign such occurrences became common. Time and again the King's agents would swoop on some great houses – Thomas Moore's, Wolsey's, Cromwell's, Boleyn's, Rochford's, Howard's – and the effect was always the same. One day it was all gaiety and dancing and the next despair and ruin.