The Poisoned Chalice (11 page)

Oh, thank you very much, I thought.

'I have a chamber on the floor above. I saw Falconer go up to the top of the tower. He seemed cheerful enough, with a cup of wine in his hand. I bade him good evening and he smiled back. No one else went up the stairs after him and certainly no one went before.'

'Are there other witnesses?' Benjamin asked.

'Do you doubt my word?' Throgmorton bellowed.

'Tush, Tom!' Millet spoke up, slouching against the table and admiring the cheap, tawdry rings on his fingers. 'I, too, heard Falconer go up.' Millet smiled dazzlingly at Benjamin. 'My humble abode is a garret at the top of this benighted tower.'

Benjamin grinned. 'And you would confirm what the good physician has said?'

'Of course!'

'There's one other matter,' Dacourt boomed, refilling his goblet. 'The top of the tower is covered with a fine coat of sand and gravel. Millet and I were the first to check that tower, after Falconer's body was discovered by a guard. It bore only the mark of Falconer's boots.'

'And the body?' Benjamin asked.

Throgmorton slurped from his goblet. 'The head was smashed open and the face badly bruised. The neck was so twisted you could lay the chin on either shoulder. Of course, there was bruising throughout his whole body.'

'And the wine he drank?'

'Good claret,' Dacourt boomed. 'Old Falconer liked his tipple. On Easter Monday, as the season of Lent finished and we need no longer abstain from wine, we opened a new bottle. Millet and I were present. We each had a cup before we left.'

'It's a custom here,' Millet added. 'During Lent, we all, as good sons of the Church, abstain from wine. On Easter Monday, we broach the best Bordeaux.'

'So there was nothing strange?' Benjamin asked.

Dacourt looked at me under lowered brows as if recognising my existence for the first time. 'No. Falconer was quiet and secretive but seemed in very good humour, laughing and talking rather garrulously. I did wonder if he had been in his cups before we opened the wine but he assured me he had not.'

'I scrutinised the corpse most carefully,' Throgmorton intervened. 'There was no real smell of ale or wine fumes nor of any other substance.'

'And the cup he drank from?' Benjamin asked, turning his chair slightly to look down the table at Dacourt.

'A pity,' the ambassador replied. 'Smashed to pieces.'

'Why do you say it's a pity?'

'Well, it was one of a set, wondrously carved from pewter. Falconer had four; people call them liturgical cups. You know, each cup bears a picture of one of the Church's four great feasts: Advent, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.'

'And he was drinking from the Easter one?' I asked.

'Yes,' Dacourt replied. 'But now it's smashed to pieces.'

'Falconer was a very religious man,' Waldegrave slurred. 'Always talking about God. He was affected by the writings of that new teacher in Germany. You know, the monk who has jumped over his monastery wall, Martin Luther.'

(Oh, by the way, I once met Luther and his wife Katherine. He was strange! Brilliant, but still strange. Do you know, he was constipated? Oh, yes, there was nothing wrong with old Luther that a good bowel purge wouldn't have cured.)

'Did he discuss Luther?' Benjamin asked.

'No, not really,' Waldegrave slobbered. 'He was always talking about being saved. About whether he would go to heaven or hell. And if he wasn't talking about the after life, he was talking about birds.'

'Birds? What do you mean?' I asked.

Waldegrave leaned forward and stared blearily at me. 'I mean what I say. He was always watching bloody birds. Be it a duck, a sparrow, a linnet or a thrush. Mind you,' he tapped the side of his fleshy red nose, 'there were other matters.'

The rest of the company groaned in unison at having to listen to a well-known story.

'You see,' Waldegrave squirmed on his fat bottom, 'he came for confession to me. He said he thought he knew who Raphael was. When I asked him what he meant, all he replied was, "It is a grave matter".'

There were further moans and groans at the old toper's repetition of an apparently well-worn story.

'It's time for bed,' Dacourt snapped. 'Sir Robert, you must be tired.' He smiled. 'And the Lady Francesca waits. As for you, Sir Priest,' Dacourt glared at Waldegrave, 'I think you have drunk enough!'

The chaplain just stared back, open-mouthed, and belched like a thunder clap. Dacourt took a step nearer. The priest staggered to his feet and waddled off with an air of drunken disdain.

Dacourt watched him go. 'Bloody priest!' he muttered. 'Him and his jokes.'

'Lord save us!' Millet said languidly. 'If it's not his jokes, he is constantly relating how he fought as a moss trooper on the northern march.' Millet played with a lace cuff. 'The old drunk thinks he knows about horses, and is always trying to get to Sir John's destrier. Have you seen it?' The young man beamed at Benjamin, who shook his head. 'A beautiful horse. Pure air, fierce spirit, with the light tread of a dancer.'

Benjamin looked away and examined his finger nails.

'Sir John, where's Falconer buried?'

'At St Pierre,' Throgmorton the doctor interrupted. 'We couldn't send him back to England. He had no family and the body was a bloody pulp, so we bought a plot in the cemetery of St Pierre in the village of Maubisson.'

'The same church where Abbe Gerard was priest?'

'That's right,' Dacourt boomed. 'Though Abbe Gerard is no longer with us. He went for a swim in his own carp pond and drowned.'

'Strange,' Clinton mused. He leaned forward in his chair. So far he had been quiet, staring into the darkness, though keeping a careful eye on Sir John.

'What is?' Benjamin asked.

'Well,' Sir Robert also stood up, stretching himself carefully, 'on the Monday after Easter, Falconer dies from a mysterious fall from a tower. Two days later an old priest drowns in his own fish pond.'

'Are you saying there's a connection?' Peckle spoke up.

'No.' Sir Robert just shook his head. 'I just think it's strange.'

Sir John Dacourt gathered his cloak and made to leave.

'One last question?' Benjamin pleaded. 'Falconer's possessions, where are they?'

'His moveables are kept in the vaults below the hall here. What documents he had were handed over to Peckle.'

'You kept them well?' Clinton asked. 'Of course,' Dacourt snapped back. Oh, dear, I thought, not much love lost here! 'You've seen them already, Sir Robert. Was there anything amiss?'

'No, no, certainly not!' Sir Robert smiled falsely. 'But, as you say, Sir John, the hour is late and it's time for bed.'

Clinton put his goblet down on the table, bade us good night and walked softly away. Dacourt and Millet followed. Benjamin, however, sat staring down the hall. He shivered and pulled his cloak closer about him.

'Master?'

'Yes, Roger, I know, it's time to sleep. Perchance to dream.'

(Oh, by the way, I always remembered that line and later gave it to Will Shakespeare. You will find it in his play
Hamlet
which I helped to finance. It's about a Danish prince who finds out his mother is a murderess and spends his time lolling around, mooning about it. I am not too fond of it but go and judge for yourself. Old Will Shakespeare was forever asking about the murders I'd investigated. Strange, I never told him about the horrors of Maubisson.)

We wandered up the darkened staircase back to our chamber. I lit the candles and stared around curiously. From here, I thought, Falconer had left for his dreadful fall through the night. Benjamin went over to the open window, staring across at the darkened mass of the forest. He shivered at the 'yip, yip' of a fox carried by the cool night wind and jumped at the screech of the huge bats which flickered up and down the castle walls.

'This,' he murmured, 'is truly the valley of death.'

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared up at me.

'You should sleep, Roger. You are going to need your rest. We are in the company of a great assassin. Mark my words: Falconer and the Abbe Gerard were murdered, and things here are not as they appear to be.' He refused to be drawn any further.

I was young, tired, slightly drunk, and didn't give a rat's codpiece so I undressed and, within a few minutes, was lost in the sleep of the just.

Chapter 5

We rose late the next morning. Benjamin appeared to be in better humour and chattered about the history of the chateau as we broke our fast in the great hall. Afterwards, one of the servants led us down to a vaulted cellar.

'We must examine Falconer's possessions,' Benjamin explained. 'Perhaps the first key to this puzzle will be there.'

Venner was already in the cellar, standing over some coffers and trunks. He grinned in welcome.

'These are Falconer's goods,' he explained. 'But there's nothing much. We have been through them. You have just missed Sir Robert.'

'What will happen to them now?' I asked, my eyes on a cheap silver bracelet.

'Well, Falconer had no heirs so they go to the king.'

I decided to leave the silver bracelet where it was; Fat Harry would skin you alive for taking a crumb of bread from his plate. Venner wandered off and we went through the pathetic pile of possessions: a counter-pane, three dirty bolsters, hose, jerkins, battered boots, more cheap jewellery, a collection of quills and a bar of Castilian soap. As far as I was concerned, the Great Killer was welcome to them. What attracted our attention was the box of pewter cups, each of the three remaining in their small, red-baized compartment. We examined these carefully, especially the deep bowls ornately carved with the appropriate scene: a large dove for Pentecost, the Virgin Mary on the Advent cup, and a child in a manger for Christmas. (You know the sort, they were quite common in England before the Great Killer smashed the monasteries. You drank from each goblet according to the season.) Benjamin sniffed each cup, then the box. 'Nothing,' he exclaimed. 'There's nothing here.'

We went out to take the air in the inner bailey and stood fascinated as four ostlers struggled with the ropes tied to the bridle of a splendid, black war horse. They were trying to back it into a stable but the magnificent beast was all set to charge. The horse stood sixteen hands high, its jet black coat gleaming in the sunlight. Its ears were back in anger, its eyes rolled, and the horse curled its lips, revealing the foam on sharp, yellow teeth. Every so often the animal would rear, lashing out with his sharpened hooves, as the men struggled with a stream of oaths to back it into the stable. Eventually they succeeded, quickly securing both the bottom door and the top flap and, even then, we could hear the horse pounding the thick oaken panels. The ostlers, covered in sweat, walked away, still muttering curses.

'That must be Vulcan, Sir John Dacourt's destrier,' Benjamin remarked. 'Waldegrave must be mad if he thinks he can control such a beast.' He stared across at the wing built to the right of the chateau. 'I wonder if we should visit the priest? Perhaps he can explain Falconer's macabre joke about graves?' Benjamin grasped me by the arm. 'On second thoughts, let us finish the business in hand.'

We went back, past the hall down a long, stone passageway to Peckle's chamber. The chief clerk was working there, surrounded by a veritable sea of paper; memoranda, notes, bills, letters and indentures. He sat with his back to the door, crouched over his desk. The room smelt stale and musty with the pungent odour of the fat tallow candles placed on the desk. All the windows were shuttered as if we were in the depths of winter. Peckle hardly moved but continued to peer at a document covered in strange cipher markings.

'Good morning, Walter,' Benjamin said, a little too loudly.

The clerk looked round testily. 'Can I help?'

'Well, yes. Do you have Falconer's documents?'

The fellow, sighing dramatically, rose wearily from his chair like an exasperated parent dealing with two naughty children. He dug amongst some papers in the corner and tossed us a canvas bag tied at the top. Benjamin turned and made to leave.

'No! No!' Peckle announced pompously. 'You cannot take them away. You must study them here.'

Benjamin stuck his tongue out at Peckle's back, cleared a space on the floor and squatted there for at least half an hour sifting through the contents of the sack. There wasn't much; a few drawings of birds, quite well done but not of the calibre of the great da Vinci's notebook. (I met the great sculptor once, you know, when I was hiding from the Doge of Venice's assassins. But that's another story.) One strange discovery we did make -scraps of paper bearing the word Raphael. Falconer had apparently been playing with the letters of the name, breaking them up, distancing each from the other. Benjamin studied these carefully, shook his head and tossed them back. We thanked Peckle but he never stirred a hair.

'What do you think, master?' I asked as soon as we were out of the chamber. 'Falconer was murdered.'

'But how? He was alone on the tower and he wasn't drunk.'

Benjamin chewed his lip. 'Falconer was a man who liked birds,' he replied slowly. 'So he goes to the top of the tower to study them.'

'Do you think he discovered who Raphael was?'

'I don't think so but he did believe the word Raphael contained the name of the traitor.'

Benjamin wandered off, saying he wished to speak to Waldegrave, so I decided to take the air in the garden behind the chateau. I was even more eager when I glimpsed Lady Francesca, magnificent in her dark green velvet dress, with a small hat of the same texture and colour, ornamented with trailing peacock feathers set rakishly on her head. I strolled amongst the boxwood as if I was the keenest of gardeners, taking special interest in the herb banks, the ever-green boxwood, and the multi-coloured flowers where hungry bees searched for honey. The lady was humming a madrigal. She turned quickly at the sound of my footsteps on the gravel.