The Grail Murders (24 page)

'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.

Ah, well, it was no different at Templecombe. Benjamin was lost in his thoughts. The only time he smiled was when I informed him about Rachel wanting her rosary beads. I also pressed him on how he had made the woman confess.

'Later,' he murmured. 'Everything in its due time, Roger.'

He seemed restless, wanting to make sure Mandeville had left. Then, about noon, when the soldiers were busy broaching a new cask of ale, he borrowed a huge mallet from the cellar and bustled me out of the house, down to the Templar chapel. Now he became excited, his face flushed, and once inside the church, locked and barred the door, making sure the windows were also closed. 'What's the matter, Benjamin?'

He turned to me, the mallet gripped tightly between his two hands.

'Don't you remember Hopkins's verse? "Beneath Jordan's water Christ's cup does rest, and above Moses' Ark the sword that's best"?'

'You think the relics are here?'

Benjamin put down the mallet and walked up the church, under the rood screen and into the sanctuary. He pointed out the old stalls where the Templars had stood to sing the divine office, and the misericords, the intricately wooden carving on each upraised seat.

'What do you see there, Roger?'

I walked along the stalls, giving him a description of each misericord; a bull, a wife, a rabbit, etc. Then I stopped. On one of the stalls, men dressed in flowing gowns were carrying a small casket between them.

'What is that?' I asked.

Benjamin joined me. 'It's the Ark of the Covenant, Roger. The small box built by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai to carry the tablets of stone on which the ten commandments were carved.'

'Moses' Ark!' I gasped. 'You mean the Sword Excalibur is there?'

'Well, Hopkins's verse says "the sword is above the Ark".' Benjamin looked up at the heavy beamed roof. 'At first I thought it might be there but I have been up into the choir loft and that's impossible. So let's look at the seat itself.'

He drew his dagger and walked along the stalls, tapping each with the hilt. A dull thud answered every knock but, when he reached the stall depicting the Ark of Moses, the wood sounded hollow. Benjamin carefully inspected it.

'This panel seems to be pegged together, I can trace the joining line.' He sighed. 'Ah, well, there's no other way.'

And, taking the heavy mallet, he dealt the top of the seat a resounding blow. The wood was old and weathered and immediately splintered. Benjamin cleared a space big enough to put his hand down but, when he did, the smile of triumph faded from his face.

'Nothing!' he exclaimed. 'Nothing at all.'

Benjamin took a lighted torch from the wall. We both looked down into the empty recess but there was nothing there.

'Once there might have been,' he remarked. 'But perhaps the Templars thought differently and moved it.' He banged the top of the heavily carved seat with his fist. 'I suspect there's a hidden lever which would open this recess.' He sighed and let the mallet drop. 'Perhaps they took Excalibur and threw it into the lake, its true resting place.'

'And the Grail?' I asked.

Benjamin sat in one of the choir stalls and pointed down the church. 'Do you remember, Roger, I remarked how the water of baptism is often called Jordan's river? Now, there's a baptismal font in every village church. But why here, in a Templar chapel where no women or children were allowed?' Benjamin got to his feet. 'At the risk of more destruction, I suspect that baptismal font has never been used but was built simply to guard the Grail.' He walked wearily over and I followed him. I sensed his disappointment for, if the Templars had removed Excalibur from its hiding place, why not Christ's chalice?

We carefully examined the paving stones on which the baptismal font had been erected, poking with our daggers around the edges. However, the stones had apparently never been moved since they had first been laid so we shifted our attention to the font itself. This was a simple, very large rounded bowl resting on a small, stout pillar. We looked for some hidden lever or crack but the stone held firm and, when we tapped it with our daggers, it sounded solid. Then I looked at the fine layer of cement between the baptismal bowl and the stone plinth supporting it. 'Pass me the mallet.'

Benjamin grew excited as he realised what I had found.

'No, let's do it differently,' he said.

We spent an hour chipping away at the layer of hard cement, using our knives and chisels, until it began to crumble and the bowl worked loose. The Templar mason had been very cunning. When we finally removed the bowl, we discovered the stone plinth was at least six inches thick but with a small hollow cavity in the centre. Benjamin pushed his hand in and drew out a stained, black leather bag bound at the neck. We both crouched as he cut the cord loose.

The bag, which had begun to rot, fell away and, I tell you this - Benjamin and I knelt in reverence before the Holy Grail, the very chalice from which Christ had drunk at the Last Supper. I, Roger Shallot, have seen this cup. I have held it in my hands, the greatest relic in all Christendom!

We did not hear any angels sing nor silver trumpets blast from heaven. All we saw was a simple wooden cup, shallow-bowled, with a crude stem and stand. The wood had been polished by the hands which had held it over the last one and a half thousand years and, when I smelt it, the cup gave off a resinous fragrance as if its guardian had smeared it with some substance as a protection against decay.

We sat and looked at it. Benjamin held it, then passed it to me. Now, you know Old Shallot is a scoffer. I have seen so many pieces of the true cross that if you put them together you could build a fleet. I have seen feathers which are supposed to have fallen off Angel Gabriel's wings. I have been asked to kiss a piece of Jesus's swaddling clothes; a scrap of Mary's veil; St Joseph's hammer; not to mention a handkerchief used by Moses. I have always laughed out loud at such trickeries but the Grail was different.

When I held it I felt warm, a sense of power and if I closed my eyes, I was no longer in that icy Templar church but in the warm, sweet-scented hills of Galilee. A truly mystical cup! No wonder Arthur searched for it, the Templars guarded it, and that fat bastard Henry VIII would have killed for it!

We paid the Grail reverence, Benjamin wrapped it in his cloak and left, telling me to wait. My master returned with a mixture of cement and plaster and we restored the baptismal font so that, at least to the untrained eye, it would look as if it had never been tampered with.

‘
What about the choir stall?' I asked.

'Leave it’
Benjamin answered. 'Let the soldiers take the blame.'

We returned to the manor house to pack our belongings. The next morning we saddled our horses and slipped away from Templecombe, that house of horrible murders. We reached Glastonbury later the same day for, though the countryside was still in winter's icy grip, no snow had fallen and at last the clouds were beginning to break. Benjamin and I had already agreed on what to do. We met Brother Eadred in the guest house. Benjamin quickly described what had happened at Templecombe. Though Eadred tried to hide his pain, Rachel's arrest, the flight of the Santerres and the destruction of the manor house obviously came as a body blow to him. He slumped on to a stool, wrapping his arms round his belly, bending forward almost as if he was in pain.