The Gallows Murders

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, Roger, 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