The Gallows Murders

man I had spoken to worked on. We just licked our lips, feeling the juices in our mouths at the prospect of a loaf and a mouthful of wine. Now, being grilled to death is the most macabre of fates. I have only seen it done once since; that was to John de Rous, the Bishop of Rochester's cook: he had tried to kill his master and his entire household by mixing arsenic in the soup. (Oh, by the way, before you ask, my own cooks are hand-picked. The captain of my guard, the jolliest cut-throat you could meet, is always present in the kitchen when my meats are cooked and my bread baked. Half the rulers of Europe want me dead: the Luciferi of France, the Council of Eight in Florence, the Secretissimi of Venice, not to mention that mad bugger in Russia, the Prince of Muscovy! He still sends letters enquiring after my health. My chaplain, the little dropping, is smiling to himself. If he doesn't stop being insolent, I'll make him principal taster. As you know, there's many a slip between cup and lip!)
    Ah well, back to that hot summer morning. Eventually we cooled the cage off, opened it, and dragged out what remained of the cadaver. No one would be able to recognise it, but the principal bailiff a sturdy, open-faced man, came over. Despite all the horror and death around us, he was one of those honest officials who took his job seriously, and still believed in maintaining law and order in the city. He crouched down, studying the blackened remains. My eye caught something glinting where the wrist had been and I pointed it out. The bailiff picked this up: it was an iron bracelet, a chain with a small medal bearing a death's-head. The bailiff scrutinised it then whistled under his breath. He polished it against his cloak and held it up. 'Lord save us!' he whispered. 'What is it?' I asked curiously.
    The bailiff tossed the chain up and down in his hand. He gestured at the blackened, smoking remains. ‘Believe it or not, that was once Andrew Undershaft, the city executioner. A leading figure in the Guild of Hangmen which meets at the Gallows tavern just near the Tower.' ‘Was he convicted of any crime?' I asked.
    The bailiff shook his head. The courts haven't sat for weeks, and Andrew had committed no crime.' He stared up at the great stone pillar. 'Undershaft was murdered,' he continued quietly. 'Hard to believe but someone brought him down here late last night, put him in that cage, lowered the pulley and lit a fire under him.' 'And no one noticed that? Surely the fellow's screams would have been heard in Windsor?'
    The bailiff looked at me closely. ‘You speak well for a beggar.'
    That's because I'm not one,' I replied. 'Just another unfortunate down on his luck.'
    I was tempted to mention my master. How I once wore the livery of Cardinal Wolsey. But he wouldn't believe me: even when I am shaved, bathed, my hair cut and oiled, I still have the look of a born liar.
    'Well, whoever you are,' the bailiff popped the chain into his purse, 'who cares what happens in London now? The city has become a murky antechamber of Hell. Sorcery is celebrated in Cripplegate, wholesale murders in the Vintry. Entire families are dying of starvation in their locked houses. Who'd care about a man screaming to death in a cage over a fire at Smithfield? It's a sign of the times.' He pulled a face. 'If he was alive when he was put in the cage, and I don't think he was, he wouldn't have screamed long.' 'What about my bread and wine?' I asked.
    The bailiff rose and clapped me on the shoulder. 'You can break fast with me.'
    And he led me and the other helper across to the Bishop's Mitre tavern which overlooked Smithfield. We ate outside, squatting with our backs to the tavern wall because the landlord would not let us in. The bailiff kept his word. We had bread, wine, even some strips of greasy bacon. Now, I have eaten at the banquets and feasts from one end of Europe to another. I have sat beside dark-eyed, black-hearted Catherine de Medici and supped from golden chalices: I have picked at the best food the French royal kitchens could provide. (Mind you, I was careful. Catherine's main hobby was poisoning.) Nevertheless, I tell you this, nothing equalled that beggar's banquet outside the Bishop's Mitre in Smithfield so many, many years ago. I thought the bailiff had done with us, but he came back and threw a waxen seal bearing the arms of the city into each of our hands.
    'If you want a job,' he rasped, join the death-carts. It doesn't pay much, but at