The Gallows Murders

warm!
    Naturally I protested at our quarters, but Benjamin shrugged, murmuring that this was not Uncle's doing; he doubted anyway that we'd stay in Windsor for long. It I had known what the Great Beast had planned, I would have opened the window and dived straight into the moat. It always surprised me that, busy and frenetic though the Court was, Henry always knew when I had arrived. He told me when he grew old, when no one would go near him except old Will Somers, his jester, and myself, that he always longed to see my face. The great turd of a liar! But that's Fortune's fickle wheel, isn't it? In my youth Henry despised me. He baited me and taunted me. The fat bugger even tried to kill me; but when Henry grew old and became imprisoned in his mobile chair, it was Old Shallot who had to push him about. I'd sit with him in the sun-washed tilt-yard at Whitehall. He'd grab my jerkin, those piggy eyes blazing with madness, and push his slobbering lips next to my ear.
    ‘We are so alike, Roger,' he whispered. 'Rogues, but good men underneath.'
    (Oh, the gift of self-deception! He'd then go on and list all those he'd once loved who'd failed him: Wolsey, Cromwell, Boleyn, Norris, Howard. Good Lord, my stomach would clench at the long list of men and women he'd used and discarded. Well, Henry's at Windsor for good now. The fat slob is buried there. I personally helped stuff his bloated corpse into the coffin. And it's true, like Pope Alexander VI’s, the corpse later blew up and exploded, though by then I was gone, riding for my life from black-garbed assassins. However, that's for the future because, though many don't know it, Henry VIII did not die in his sleep; he was murdered!)
    However, on that summer evening so many years ago, my master and I were locked in our little garret, thinking we would have to wait for days before the King summoned us, when a messenger arrived. A royal huntsman, dressed in green velvet with a cap upon his head, adorned with a pheasant plume. (Oh yes, when Henry went hunting he dressed like Robin Hood, silly bugger!) This huntsman, a surly brown-faced fellow, said the King was in his chapel attending a Mass for his dogs. I thought I had misheard him, but as the fellow took us down the stairs and along the gallery, Benjamin grasped my sleeve and whispered that, whatever happened, I was not to laugh. The huntsman took us into the chapel of St George, a beautiful miniature jewel of a church. Its walls and richly decorated stalls were brightly caparisoned with the banners and pennants of the Knights of the Garter. The sanctuary was bathed in light. A priest stood on the altar, ready to say Mass. I glimpsed the back of the King where he sprawled in his throne-like chair, on his right the great Cardinal himself However, what caught my attention and took my breath away was that the stalls on either side of the sanctuary – two rows, about twenty-eight seats in all -were full, not with chaplains or the King's royal choir, but with bloody great mastiffs and hunting dogs. I just stopped and gaped! The buggers sat there more devout than many a priest, legs together, heads up, ears cocked. You think I joke? I tell you, I half-expected them to burst into the Te Deum.
    The chief huntsman turned and glared at me. Benjamin grasped me by the arm and pushed me forward. We went to kneel on the steps before the sanctuary. The King turned to his right, glimpsed me kneeling behind him, snapped his fingers and the Mass began.
    It was the strangest ceremony I have ever attended! A simple Low Mass, the priest from the chapel royal devoutly reciting it. The King sat as if he was God himself, whilst Wolsey… well, only the good Lord knows where his subtle mind was wandering. Nevertheless, it was those dogs which fascinated me. I couldn't take my eyes off them. They sat watching the priest as intently as if he were a rabbit hole. Naturally, during the epistle, a couple of them got down to wander off. The King stretched out his hand, clicked his fingers, and back they went. Now the Great Beast loved his dogs. Mind you, I have noticed that about bloodthirsty tyrants. Catherine de Medici was no different. She'd kill people in batches, only to sit on the floor and weep because her pet lap-dog's paw had been injured.
    At last the Mass ended and the priest, before the final benediction, picked up an asperges rod and bucket and blessed each of the animals. I looked at the leader, a great mastiff, almost as big as the lion I