The Gallows Murders

eat, man.'
    A slattern came up, bearing a tray of spiced beef, a pot of vegetables and tankards of ale. Now, one of the things about Old Shallot is that if you show me a pretty face or a good meal, danger is soon forgotten. I took my horn spoon out of my wallet and ate as ravenously as any wolf. Indeed, for a few seconds, I could appreciate that beast's disappointment.
    'Who did it?' Agrippa asked as I put my horn spoon down and sat back, rubbing my stomach.
    'I don't know.' I replied. 'One minute I was picking up silver coins, then a blow on my back with that pole tipped me over. One of those bastards at the Tower must have been hiding in an outhouse.'
    'Impossible,' Benjamin replied. ‘We were with Kemble, Vetch and Spurge. They never left us, so it couldn't have been one of them.' ‘What about the precious Guild of Hangmen?'
    Benjamin shook his head. 'As we left the Tower we met them coming in.'
    'And I suppose they laughed fit to burst?' I snapped. At me being tossed into some cart?'
    Agrippa grinned. 'No, they didn't. They declared that if you were being taken to a hanging, could they do it for us?' 'Bastards!' I muttered.
    Benjamin grasped my hand. 'Roger, you say someone tried to kill you. You are sure of that?'
    ‘No, Master, I just decided to go down and meet the wolves.' Benjamin picked up his tankard.
    'But if Spurge, Vetch and Sir Edward were talking to you,' I continued, 'and all five hangmen were outside the Lion Gate, who else could it have been?'
    A small, black cat appeared from nowhere and jumped into Agrippa's lap. He stroked it, softly talking to it in a language I could not understand. When he glanced up at me his eyes were like the animal's, amber-coloured. I glanced nervously away, taking comfort in the homely atmosphere of the taproom: the onions hanging in bunches from the rafters, the slatterns and scullions chattering near the kitchen door. Two men, leaning over a badger in a cage; a drunk in the far corner; a madcap chattering to himself, waving his hands at some invisible audience. I closed my eyes and thought of that wolf-pit. Who could possibly have followed me, intent on murder?
    'Mistress Undershaft was in the Tower,' Benjamin observed. 'As we left Sir Edward, we met her going across Tower Green with two of her children. Apparently, as Undershaft's widow, she still has the right to draw on provisions.' 'But why should she attack me?' I asked.
    ‘You visited Ragusa?' Agrippa asked. 'Could she have followed you?'
    I thought of that old woman's shuffling gait, her rheumatic hands and shook my head. Again Agrippa looked at me, his eyes that strange colour.
    ‘What are you thinking, good Doctor?’ I snapped. That some ghost or ghoul lurks in the Tower?'
    Agrippa blinked his eyes, then became bright and merry: as he shifted to put the cat back on the floor, I smelt that strange exotic perfume from his robes.
    'It could have been a ghoul or ghost,' he said softly, picking up his tankard. "What happens, Roger, if the Princes didn't die?' He laughed. ‘I am only teasing you, but I believe -' he lifted one black gloved hand – that the fate of those two Princes lies at the root of all this mystery. Did Ragusa tell you anything?’ he asked.
    'She claimed there were secret caverns and passageways beneath the royal menagerie.'
    ‘Yes,' Benjamin nodded. 'Spurge's maps told us the same; that's why we came to the wolf-pit. Kemble maintains that the caverns those beasts live in were once Roman sewers. However, they are now blocked off.' ‘I’ll take his word for it,' I replied.
    'One day we will have to see if that is true,' Benjamin warned. He patted me on the arm. 'But don't worry, Roger, we'll make sure the wolves are caged.' 'And the clerk, Allardyce?' Agrippa asked. 'According to Ragusa, dead as a doornail.' ‘Yes, that's what the hangmen told us. They were at the Lion Gate the morning his body was carried out. They say the soldiers almost dragged it along the cobbles and threw it in the death-cart. There was also a bailiff present.' Benjamin described the same man I had met in Smithfield. ‘He declared a proper scrutiny should be made. He climbed into the cart, lifted back the sheet, and pronounced the man dead.'
    I remembered my own days working with the death-carts. Usually corpses were dragged out and piled in, but if a city bailiff was present, one of those honest royal officials, this scrutiny was always made. I flung my hands up in the air.
    'So Allardyce is dead and my