The Gallows Murders

by Paul Doherty

  'It should be nonsense,' Benjamin declared slowly. 'On April the ninth, 1483, Edward the Fourth died here on the Thames whilst fishing.' He smiled and shrugged. 'Well, at least he collapsed and was taken back to one of his palaces, where he died. Now he left two sons: Edward, eleven years old, and Richard aged seven. The protectorate went to their uncle, Richard, Duke of York but, as you know, Richard usurped the throne and imprisoned his nephews in the Tower, from where they later disappeared. Two years later, in August 1485, Richard the Third was defeated and killed at Market Bosworth by the present King's father. Now all the evidence indicates that the two boy Princes were either poisoned or killed: their bodies were buried in the Tower or tied with sacks, loaded with stones, and dumped into the Thames.' Benjamin tapped the letter with his fingers. 'According to this, however, young Prince Edward survived. He possesses his own seals and is now threatening our King.'

  'But it's blackmail,' I said slowly. 'Idle threats to obtain gold.'

  'It may well be,' Agrippa replied, 'but listen awhile, Roger.' He leaned forward to emphasise his points. ‘First, Edward is supposed to have died forty years ago. True?'

  I nodded.

  'Secondly, when a king dies - and remember, Richard the Third didn't even allow Edward to be crowned - his seals are collected together and smashed. Richard the Third would certainly make sure those of his imprisoned nephew, the few that were made, would be thrown into a fire. If he didn't, Henry Tudor, our present King's father, certainly would.'

  'So, where did these two seals come from?' I asked. 'Couldn't they have been removed from some letter or proclamation?'

  Agrippa shook his head. 'No, they are freshly affixed. According to the lettering and insignia they are no forgery.'

  'But how are they dangerous?'

  Agrippa smiled and shook his head. 'Roger, Roger, examine the letter carefully. Our present King, Henry the Eighth, God bless him, is the son of a usurper. He will not tolerate anyone with Yorkist blood in their veins.'

  (Agrippa was right. In his reign, Henry VIII systematically, through a series of judicial executions, wiped out anyone who had Yorkist blood or a better claim to the throne than he. Edmund Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was one, whilst the de la Pole family, except for Cardinal Reginald who fled abroad, all saw the inside of the Tower. On this matter, Henry was as mad as a March hare.)

  Agrippa thrust the seals of the proclamation under my nose. 'Can you imagine, Roger, what happened when Henry saw this? He ranted for days. No one dared go near him. Not even Benjamin's dearest uncle. Henry was like an enraged bull: smashing furniture, issuing threats, cursing and kicking anyone who came near him.'

  Oh yes, I thought, that's the Great Beast! He's all sweetness and smiles when he is getting his own way. Yet, once he's threatened and thwarted, he's more dangerous than a madman out of Bedlam. (When he grew older, and the ulcer on his leg began to weep pus, and his great fat, gout-ridden body was wracked by pain, you could find yourself in the shadow of the axe just by sneezing in his presence.)

  'But the King didn't believe it?' I asked.

  'Oh yes, he did,' Benjamin replied. 'Remember, Roger, Edward and his brother Richard may have disappeared, but no one truly knows what happened to them. Even a hint, a faint suspicion that they might still be alive would send Henry into a paroxysm of rage. Moreover, the writer touched a raw nerve. The King is as superstitious as any country yokel. He really does believe that he has no son because of Divine displeasure.'

  ‘But the people wouldn't believe it,' I retorted.

  Wouldn't they?' Agrippa asked.

  He was about to continue, but the oarsmen shouted as they lifted the oars. We were now approaching London Bridge, being swept through the narrow arches by the gushing water. A chilling but exciting experience. I have made that journey many a time. Once the oars go up and the boat is left to the fury of the water, your heart drops and your stomach lurches.

  Once we were into calmer waters, Agrippa continued. 'Can you imagine what would happen if such a proclamation was posted in a London now plagued by the sweating sickness? People would begin to wonder and gossip. And the whisper would turn to chatter and, as it does, fable would become fact: the King must be cursed.'

  I leaned against the side of the boat and stared into the water. Agrippa spoke the truth. I had seen the sickness in London. I had experienced all the pain and the horror. I'd witnessed the hysteria and knew the anger bubbling beneath the surface. The people would want an answer, and Henry VIII would become their scapegoat.

  'Did he send the gold?' I asked.

  'Of course not,' Agrippa replied. 'Instead he ringed St Paul's with troops and had the great cross in the churchyard heavily guarded by archers and men-at-arms.'

  'And?' I asked.

  'Oh, no proclamation was posted there. The villain behind this was too astute. Instead the proclamation appeared on the door of St Mary Le Bow, another on the cross outside Westminster Abbey. Both carried the seal of Edward V. Both proclaimed Henry to be a usurper, deriding his lack of a son and the sickness raging in London as a sign of God's displeasure. The proclamations were torn down but the whispering has begun.' Agrippa hawked and spat into the river. 'And now another letter has arrived. This time the demand is for two thousand in gold as a punishment. The money is to be delivered in six days' time, on the feast of St Augustine, the twenty-eighth of August: two leather bags in a steel coffer are to be placed near St Paul's Cross as the cathedral bells toll for the midday Angelus.'

  'And the letter was dispatched from the Tower?' ‘Yes,' Benjamin replied. 'It's almost as if, for the last forty years, this forgotten prince has been sheltering in some secret room in the Tower—'

  'But you say arrived?' I interrupted. 'Arrived where?'

  The first one was delivered to the constable of the Tower, Sir Edward Kemble. The second was left in the Abbot's stall in Westminster Abbey.'

  'Which explains why we are going to the Tower now?' I asked.

  'Ah.' Agrippa pulled his black cloak around him as if the river breeze was cold.

  (That's one thing I noticed about Agrippa. He never liked the sunlight. Like some dark spider, he preferred the shadows. I never saw him eat or drink. Oh, he'd raise a cup to his lips, as he did in the garden at Charterhouse, but nothing ever seemed to pass his lips. He always seemed cold, too.) Agrippa pointed to a sandbank in the river on which stood a massive, three-branched gibbet bearing the rotting corpses of river pirates.

  The Tower is full of curiosities,' he murmured. 'A month ago the chief executioner's deputy, Andrew Undershaft, was, somehow, put in a cage at Smithfield and roasted alive over a roaring fire.'

  ‘I was there,' I exclaimed. Well, I saw his blackened corpse and helped remove it from the cage... What's that got to do with these letters?'

  'Perhaps nothing,' Benjamin replied. 'Undershaft died in Smithfield, God knows how. He was seen, the previous day, drinking in a tavern near Cock Lane, and then he disappeared. How anyone could take a burly man such as him, put him in a cage and roast him to death is a mystery. Now the city authorities thought it was revenge carried out by the friends or relatives of a man Undershaft may have executed. However, ten days ago, another member of the Guild of Executioners, Hellbane, was fished from the Thames. According to the surgeon who examined the corpse, Hellbane had been alive when he had been put in the sack. No mark or wound was found upon his corpse, but weights had been attached to his feet. You see, Roger, that's the mystery; two members of the Guild of Executioners suffered judicial murder. They were not knifed or clubbed to death. They were both killed in a way prescribed by law for certain felons. Undershaft died the death of a poisoner; Hellbane suffered the fate of a patricide, someone who has killed his father.'

  'And they were innocent?'

  Benjamin shrugged. 'As far as we know.'

  I gazed at the lonely gibbet. 'Hellbane,' I said. 'What sort of name is that?'

  The city executioners are a rare breed.' Benjamin explained. 'Surprisingly, Roge
r, despite all the barbarism, very few people want their job. They are marked men, hated and reviled by London's underworld. However, they do a job that has to be done, and business is always brisk.'

  (Oh, God bless my master for his truthful heart. During the Great Beast's reign the scaffold and gibbets were never empty. I know of one executioner, an axeman, who became so sickened by the dreadful sentences he had to carry out that he became quite mad and tried to cut his own head off. Poor fellow, he died in chains in Bedlam.)

  'Anyway,' Benjamin continued, 'the city hangmen are patronised by the King himself.'

  'Like is always attracted to like,' I remarked.

  They meet in a tavern called the Gallows, in the shadow of the Tower. They have their own guild. They wear a chain round their wrists and hold meetings in the nave of St Peter ad Vincula.'

  (Now, there's a dreadful place. Under St Peter ad Vincula, the Tower chapel, lies the headless corpses of all Henry's victims; all those who died on the execution block or perished in some desolate dungeon.)

  'So,' I insisted. Two hangmen have been murdered.

  They are not the most popular of men.'

  'Somehow,' Benjamin replied, 'My Lord Cardinal believes the murders of these two hangmen and the blackmail letters to the King are connected.' He paused as the boat swung in towards the quayside. 'You see, Roger, no one really knows what happened to the Princes in the Tower. They might have been poisoned, strangled or starved.'

  The Cardinal,' Agrippa explained, has studied the fate of these princes closely. He has also spoken to Sir Thomas More who is writing a study of King Richard the Third's life. Now More believes that the Guild of Hangmen must have known what happened to the two Princes.'

  ‘You mean a secret passed on from one generation to another?' I asked.

  'Precisely,' Benjamin replied. 'John Mallow, the chief hangman, has sworn a great oath that no such secret exists, but, "dearest Uncle" is not convinced. He believes that if the Princes were killed and their bodies removed, someone from the Guild of Hangmen must have been involved.'

  'But this is just dearest Uncle's feeling?' I asked.

  Benjamin sighed and put his hands together. 'Well, if this villain writing the blackmailing letters is a charlatan, the only way the King could silence him, or so dearest Uncle reasons, is by finding out what really happened to the Princes and proclaiming this to the city and the kingdom. Henry would give his eye-teeth just to find their corpses.'

  'And so this same charlatan,' I added, 'is murdering the hangmen just in case one of them has inherited the secret and could reveal the truth?'

  'Exactly,' Benjamin replied, peering over his shoulder at the approaching quayside.

  'And how many are in the Guild of Hangmen?' I asked.

  There should be seven,' Benjamin replied. 'John Mallow, he's old and about to retire. Andrew Undershaft, lately deceased. Hellbane, who's also been called to his maker, and four other assistants: Snakeroot, Horehound, Toadflax and Wormwood. And, before you ask your question, Roger, the chief hangman's apprentices are never called by their real names.' He smiled thinly. This is to protect them; sometimes they change their minds and decide to take up another profession.'

  I looked up at the jutting towers and turrets of the Tower.

  'If I had my way, Master,' I grumbled, 'I'd do the same.'

  Chapter 4

  How can I describe the Tower? A narrow, cruel place. Yet, in 1523, it had yet to acquire its reputation as the Great Beast's slaughter ground. Oh, Edmund Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, had lost his head on the hill outside, but to me it was still a double shield of walls beyond a wide moat; a fortress, strengthened by at least a dozen towers which ringed the great Norman keep that dominated all. It stored the King's arms and artillery, his jewel house, his mint as well as his menagerie, with its lions, apes, pelicans, elephants, bears and other unfortunate animals, sent as gifts by foreign princes. When we approached it after leaving Charterhouse, my overriding concern was about the stench from the moat slimed with green, and the occasional corpse of some animal bobbing on the surface. We entered by the Lion Gate, passing guards who snapped to attention as Agrippa showed his warrant carrying the King's personal seal.

  The Tower is like a maze. It draws you in: you become lost, as well as over-awed, by the winding paths along high brick walls, the tower doors, closely guarded, the shutters on the windows firmly bolted. Then, as in a maze, you reach the centre, a great, open, green expanse surrounding the Norman keep: the playground of children of the Tower garrison, who hopped and jumped amongst the mangonels, catapults and other impedimenta of war. Soldiers' wives had put up lines to dry their clothes, whilst the men lazed in the shadows, drinking, dicing, sleeping or gossiping. A homely scene - and that's part of the trap. Around the green are entrances to the different towers. Each of them contains its own mysteries: twisting, mildewed steps which stretch up to cells, or worse, go down to the cavernous pits where the torturers with their instruments wait to search out the truth.

  In one far corner, just near the church of St Peter ad Vincula, is a stretch of ground where the grass struggles to grow. Some say it's cursed because that's where the scaffold's erected. I believe this. In my long and troubled life I came to know the Tower well. Sometimes as a visitor, other times as a guest of the King, his prisoner. I have been stretched out on Exeter's Daughter, the great rack which pulls your limbs from their sockets. If you survive and confess, the executioners fix steel plates so your body is in one piece when they cart it out for execution. However, I babble on. On that fine August day, with the sun beaming down, I had no knowledge of the Tower's future. Believe me, if I had, I would have turned and run like a whippet for the nearest gate.

  Now, across the green, facing the Norman tower, are the royal apartments, housed in a long, ramshackle building, three storeys high, with a red slated roof, cornices, buttresses and jutting bay windows. A manor house, with black timber and white plaster walls on a red brick foundation. These were the royal quarters where the King's officers lodged.

  We went through a bustling entrance and up a broad, sweeping staircase. A guard at the top took our names. He told us to wait on a bench in a small recess, marched down the gallery and knocked at the door. I heard a bell ring, and the guard beckoned at us to approach. We entered a chamber where three men were hurriedly seating themselves around a long, polished table which ran down the centre of the room. They rose as we entered. The man at the top introduced himself as Sir Edward Kemble: fussy, grey-haired, grey-eyed, grey-faced. He was dressed richly in a dark-blue gown lined with dyed black lambswool: however, the jerkin beneath was rather soiled, and the shirt collar which peeped out above looked as if it had missed wash-day. Kemble was one of those worried officials, narrow-eyed from peering over manuscripts. He had an unhealthy pallor and hands which could never stay still. He introduced the gentleman on his right as Master Francis Vetch, his lieutenant or deputy, a bright-faced young man with close-cropped black hair, wide-spaced blue eyes and a pleasant smiling mouth. Vetch was dressed soberly in a dark yellow gown which fell just below the knee. A warbelt was strapped round his middle, but he'd left his sword and dagger lying on a stool just within the door. The man on Kemble's left was Reginald Spurge: a frightened squirrel of a man, with nostrils like a horse, ever sniffing the wind, little darting eyes, and a tongue which reminded me of a cat's, pink and pointed, ever licking dry lips. Like Vetch and Sir Edward, he was clean-shaven. (The King had yet to grow his beard. Of course, what the King did, everyone hurriedly followed suit.)

  Spurge was dressed like a dandy, a Court fop, with his tightly waisted jerkin puffed out at the shoulders and clasped round his waist by a narrow jewelled belt. He sported a codpiece a stallion would have been proud of, and tight hose which gave his legs a womanly look. Both Vetch and Spurge murmured their greetings as Kemble chattered on, drowning everyone else.

  'I didn't know you were coming. I didn't know you were coming,' he protested. His hands beat the air like a trapped
bird. 'Dr Agrippa, Master Benjamin -' Kemble dismissed me with one flick of his eyes - 'if ‘I’d known you were coming, I would have prepared something to eat and drink.'

  At last Benjamin was able to placate him, saying we had already eaten and drunk our fill. Only then did Kemble usher us to chairs on either side of the table. He sat down wearily himself, mopping his face with a dirty napkin. He glanced sideways at his companions.

  'Master Spurge is our surveyor,' he explained, leaning forward. 'He and Vetch are the principal officers of the garrison.'

  Benjamin, sitting next to me, pressed the toe of his boot gently on my foot: I was beginning to snigger at this fussy little man's antics.

  What Sir Edward means,' Francis Vetch spoke up, fighting hard to stifle his own smile at the constable's antics, 'is that Reginald and I, together with himself, are probably the only men in the Tower who could forge a letter claiming to be Edward V and dispatch it to the King.'

  'Why on earth do you say that?' Benjamin asked.

  Vetch laced his fingers together. 'Master Daunbey,' he replied slowly, 'I have heard of your reputation: you are no fool. I'd be grateful if you would reciprocate the courtesy. Everyone in this room knows a letter was drawn up, sealed, and dispatched from the Tower to the King. Moreover, the first letter was delivered here.' He scratched the tip of his pointed nose. 'Sir Edward Kemble opened the letter in my presence. I had to use smelling salts to bring him out of his faint. I then sent for Reginald and organised the letter's dispatch to Windsor.' He cocked his head to one side. ‘You are here, Master Daunbey, about the letter?'

  Benjamin smiled.

  'Good,' Spurge declared in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. There can be no more pretence, can there?'

  'Excuse me!' That's me, old Shallot. I was always tactful! The ever-faithful servant. Benjamin allowed me to question others as vigorously as himself, but Kemble didn't know this. He darted a look at me and sniffed as if I was something which had crawled out of his nose. He whispered into Spurge's ear, in that loud, insulting way, asking who I was.