The Relic Murders (6 page)

'On your knees before the Lord Charon.'

'Who in hell's name is he?' I snarled.

'He is Lord of the Underworld.'

I turned. 'And you?'

'I,' a red-haired, dog-faced man replied, 'am his faithful Cerberus.'

'Oh yes,' I sneered. 'And I'm Lucrezia Borgia.'

A kick to my legs sent me o'n my knees. My head was yanked back and I was forced to stare up into Charon's hideous face. Memories stirred, stories about a vagabond king, a Prince of Thieves who controlled the rogues and riffraff of London. He took his name from the Greek ferryman of the underworld who had a snarling dog called Cerberus. Charon had supposedly been a gunsmith, a master of the King's ordnance, until, at some siege on the Scottish March, powder had blown up in his face. Such a man now stared down at me. I couldn't decide which was the more horrible: the good eye glittering with malice or the ball of glass that gave him the look of a living corpse.

'Welcome to my court.' Charon's lips hardly moved. 'Who gave you licence to trade in the city? To harvest the fields of my manor? To reap where you have not sown?'

'Piss off!' I shouted back. 'Boscombe allowed me!'

(I am a born
coward but one with a hot temper. I don't like being threatened. I wish I had just given my true nature full rein, grasped the ruffian's ankles, kissed his feet and slobbered for mercy. I might have been spared that knock on the head which sent me unconscious and the horrible nightmare which followed.)

I returned to consciousness in a cavern lit by cresset torches and rushlights. The smell was strange, savoury roasting meat mixed with the more pungent, iron smell of dirty water. I picked myself up and saw that Charon was sitting on a throne-like chair, his feet resting on a gold-fringed, velvet footstool. On either side of the cavern his companions lounged at trestle tables covered with silver and pewter plates. Rugs of pure wool, at least three inches thick, covered parts of the floor. Tapestries of different colours and bearing various insignia, especially the letters 'I.M.', covered the walls. Behind Charon's chair I glimpsed chests, locked and padlocked, but one was open, a small moneybox filled to the brim with silver coins. Cerberus swaggered over. He pushed a cup of wine into my hands.

'Drink!' he growled. 'All of the Lord Charon's guests drink.'

'Where am I?'

Cerberus pulled a bodkin from his belt and jabbed it in my arm. I screamed with pain. 'Drink!' he ordered.

I did so: it was the best claret I had supped since I had left Ipswich.

'Do you know where you are?' Charon leaned forward. 'Master Shallot, do you know where you are?'

'Judging by the company, somewhere in hell.'

Charon snapped his fingers and the bodkin went in my arm again. I tried to grasp Cerberus but he danced away, then came back and stung me again. I crouched back on my heels, nursing my arm.

'Please,' I pleaded, 'I have done no wrong.'

Immediately all the ruffians grasped their own arms, swaying backwards and forwards.

'Please,' they mimicked,
‘I
have done no wrong.'

I kept a still tongue. My belly was beginning to bubble and cold sweat made itself felt.

'You are in the sewers of London,' Charon spoke up. He gestured airily at the vaulted roof. 'The Romans built these.' He got to his feet again, clapping his hands gently. 'I want to show you something, Shallot.' He tapped me on the nose.
‘I
should really cut your throat or place you face down in some filthy sewer. Or, even better, show you what happens to those who cross me. But you are Shallot, aren't you? Friend of Benjamin Daunbey, nephew to the great cardinal. What are you doing in London?'

'Selling relics.'

'The Orb of Charlemagne?'

I smiled ingratiatingly. 'Not that,' I replied. 'At least not yet.' 'Do you know about the Orb?' 'A little.'

Charon's glass eye bored down at me. 'I should kill you,' he whispered. 'But you've powerful friends and I have bigger game to hunt. You may prove useful.' He drew himself up. 'So, this time a warning, as well as confiscation of all your goods.'

He pointed to a pile of my possessions in the corner. I glimpsed my saddlebags, shirts, relics, even the small bag of coins I had hidden under the floorboard in my chamber at the Flickering Lamp.

'I want to show you something. Bring him forward.'

Hustled by two ruffians I followed Charon out. We entered a long gallery lit by torches with caverns off the walkway. To my right was the sewer water, black, glinting in the torchlight.

'The stench is not so bad,' Charon said over his shoulder. 'Hardly any offal comes this way.' He shrugged. 'My sense of smell I lost with my nose but cleanliness is next to Godliness, Shallot! My ruffians here have directed the offal elsewhere.'

We
walked further down the causeway then Charon stopped. He took a torch from the wall and held it out over the black, slopping water. Something was floating in the water, lazily, like an otter in a stream.

'Throw some food,' Charon ordered.

One of his henchmen cast some bread into the water as well as on to the opposite ledge. The water swirled. I moaned in terror at the black, slimy rat which crept out of the sewer and on to the far side. Now, you gentle readers know what I think of rats! I have been pursued by leopards, wolves, and savage hunting dogs but nothing terrifies me more than a rat. This was not one of your little brown gentlemen but a long, black, slimy bastard, at least a yard in length from the tip of its tail to that quivering snout. He grasped the scraps and gnawed at them. Looking up, the rodent stared across at me, as coolly as a man would inspect some juicy meat pie. Charon led us on. The air grew colder. We turned into a cavern. A corpse lay in an iron gibbet on the floor. It was beginning to decay and the air was rich with the stench. Rats were already moving amongst the iron bars. There's only so much my poor mind can take. I closed my eyes and, God forgive me, swooned like a maid.

Chapter 3

I awoke in an alleyway. At first I didn't know who, or indeed where, I was. My hands and feet were tied. I struggled to my knees. My head throbbed and my side ached where someone had kicked me. A beggar came out of a doorway and stared pityingly.

'Faugh!' His hand went to his nose.

I looked down. I was naked and covered in thick, clammy mud from head to toe: I had been rolled in the contents of a midden heap.

'Help me!' I wailed.

'Piss off!' the beggar grated.

I crawled along the alley. I felt so miserable I started to pray: desperately, I swore great oaths that I would never touch another drop of wine or even think of lifting a girl's petticoat.

(You can see how low I must have fallen!)

Even the beggars stayed away from me whilst a drunk kicked me with his boot. The ropes around my ankles and wrists were tied tightly, the cord biting into the skin. At last I crawled to the steps of a church. I fainted and, when I regained consciousness, my hands and feet were freed and I was staring into the kind eyes of a friar, his weather-beaten face, greasy, straggly moustache and beard framed by his cowl.

'Help me!' I begged.

'I can do no more,' the friar replied. 'I've cut your cords.' He lifted a battered, tin cup to my lips. The wine was watered but it tasted like nectar. He pointed to some sacking on the ground beside me. 'Put this on.' He got me to my feet, helped me put the sacking over my head, and fastened it round my middle with a piece of cord. He then gave me a staff and thrust a piece of bread into my other hand. 'God have mercy on you, Brother!'

And he was gone. Ever since I have always had affection for the little brothers of St Francis. Even now, in my secret chamber, I have that piece of sacking. Moreover, on the walls of my chapel, despite the fact that my chaplain is of the reformed faith, I have had the words of St Francis boldly painted: 'GO OUT AND PREACH THE GOSPEL. PREACH! PREACH! PREACH! SOMETIMES YOU CAN EVEN USE WORDS!'

After the friar left me, I realised I was in Grubb Street to the north of Cripplegate. The sky was already scored with the red gashes of sunrise. I slipped through a postern gate into the city and made my way along an alleyway near Mugwell Street, As I walked my confidence returned. My throat was parched, the bread had long disappeared, and my belly ached for food. I thought how splendid it would be to stretch out between crisp sheets with young Lucy.

'Penny for a beggar!' I cried outside a church. 'Penny for a poor man!'

The early morning worshippers ignored me. I moved to the church of St Ursula and tried again.

'Penny for a poor Christian!' I wailed. 'On pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I was taken prisoner by the Turks, and ransomed by the Holy Father himself.'

Within an hour I had collected a shilling and, after a beef pie and two cups of wine at an alehouse, I was striding back along the alleyways towards the Flickering Lamp. Boscombe greeted me as if I was the prodigal son.

'Master Shallot.' He put his arm round me and brought me into the taproom. 'Roger, my dear.' Boscombe wrinkled his nose. 'What's that smell?'

I looked down and realised that though the kindly friar had removed some of the mud, most of it still remained. I immediately stripped and went to the pump in the yard and had the most thorough bath I've had for many a day. Boscombe provided me with new clothes, loaned me a shilling as well as half a roast chicken, some bread and a bottle of ale. Boscombe watched me eat. When I had finished, he beamed across the table.

'No more trickery for you, Roger my boy,' he declared. 'The Lord Charon has paid visits before to deliver an invitation to his underworld. No one has ever returned. If he sees you begging on the streets again, your torso will be found in the Fleet and your head in the Thames.'

'Master Boscombe.' I leaned back and patted my stomach. 'Your kindness I won't forget. As for Charon, the Lord be my witness,
‘I
will repay him in kind.'

'Shush!' Boscombe waved his hand, begging me to lower my voice.

'However," I continued, 'discretion is the better part of valour and revenge is a dish best served cold.' Boscombe nodded. 'So, what do you suggest?'

Boscombe shrugged. 'You are personable, Master Shallot, you have friends in high places. Why not go to them?' I shook my head.

'I just couldn't do that. I've told you about the Poppletons and I'm convinced they would follow me. Although I am lower than a worm, I couldn't crawl to great Tom Wolsey to beg for his protection.'

(Of course that was not true: I can beg with the best of them but the problem was that the sly bastard might not favour me. But years later, when old Tom Wolsey was in disgrace, dying in his bed at Leicester and the servants had fled, taking everything that could move with them, old Tom grasped my hand.

'You should have come to me, Roger,' he whined, tears streaming down his face. 'All those times you were in danger, you should have come to old Tom Wolsey. I would have helped!'

'If you'd served me,' I retorted, 'as I have served you, you wouldn't have to say that!'

Wolsey let go of my hand and turned his face to the wall.

'If I had served my God,' he murmured, 'as well as I have served my King, he would not leave me to die like this.' And die he did.)

However, on that autumn day so long ago, Wolsey was my last refuge. Boscombe was staring at me, picking at his teeth.

'You owe me money,' he grated. 'And I've a few possessions of yours.' He was referring to the few items I'd given him as surety. 'But you need money,' he continued. 'You should go to St Paul's and hire yourself out.'

Boscombe was right, or so I thought at the time; I couldn't beg, my relics were all gone and I daren't go back to Ipswich. So I took his advice and decided to try my chances with the rest of the masterless men walking up and down the main aisle of St Paul's Cathedral, waiting to be hired near the
Si Quis
door. But who would want to hire me? I had no letters or accreditation, no references from a previous employer. And what could I do? Bawl out that I had done special work for his Eminence Cardinal Wolsey? I walked round and round that bloody church till I was exhausted, before Fortune intervened.

I was sitting with my back to Duke Humphrey's tomb when I saw a pair of laced shoes and, just above them, a cream satin petticoat under a blue satin dress. I looked up and smiled. The woman who was standing over me was plump and comely but, I could tell from one glance at those hot eyes and wet lips, she was a lecher born and bred. She had a false, sweet smile and looked me up and down as hungrily as a fox would a chicken.