The Grail Murders

love with one of the horses before she took to any of us!'
    Benjamin laughed. 'I just hope we will be safe, Roger,' he murmured.
    'Oh, Lord save us, of course, Master! As bullocks on thin ice.'
    (Looking back, I wish I hadn't said that. Words uttered in haste often have a prophetic ring to them; within a month Benjamin and I would be fighting for our lives on icy waters in Somerset.)
    Soon we were ready. Mandeville, who saw himself as the King's own commissioner and therefore self-appointed leader, shouted orders; the great gates swung open, and he led us out. As we rode towards London, one of Mandeville's secretaries unfurled the pennant on a pole he carried bearing the royal arms of England, showing all and sundry that we carried the King's own warrant. As we passed people stood back on either side, loud-mouthed apprentices and washerwomen in leather clogs stopping their noisy clatter and waiting for us to pass. We reached the muddy cobbles of the city, going through Bowyers Row and up towards Cripplegate. On the corner of Carter Lane, with the mass of St Paul's cathedral towering above us, we had to pause whilst labourers using ward hooks pulled down the still smouldering, blackening timbers of a burnt-out tenement to ensure no spark ignited neighbouring houses.
    At last a city official, wearing the blue and mustard livery of the Corporation, decided the burnt-out tenement had been sufficiently destroyed and we were allowed to pass on. Now, as I have said, Mandeville led us, the Santerres behind with their small retinue whilst we were at the back just before the cart. I looked hungrily around, drinking in the sights of London: the beaver hats, lined with green velvet, of the wealthy merchants, the shabby caps of the artisans and, above all, the ornate head-dresses covered in clouds of gauze of the court ladies stepping out for a morning's shopping. We reached St Paul's, the great copper eagle on its weather vane dazzling in the weak sunlight. (I remember it well for the sun shortly afterwards disappeared and we did not see it for weeks.) We had to halt as cartloads of bones dug up from the cemetery were taken down Paternoster Row to the enamel house.
    As we did so, a ragged urchin slipped from the crowd and passed a piece of parchment to Sir John Santerre. I was about to tell my master when we heard the sounds of music coming from beyond the wall of St Paul's. Benjamin waved me over and we looked through the open gate. A group of musicians stood in the angle of one of the buttresses of the cathedral playing tambour and fife whilst the Dean and Chapter, garlands of roses on their heads, danced in solemn procession around the severed head of a buck which had been placed on a pole, its brown eyes staring glassily over those who now rejoiced at its death. At the foot of the pole the succulent body of the deer lay sprawled, blood still seeping from the severed arteries of its neck. I stared in astonishment at Benjamin.
    'It's a custom,' my master muttered out of the corner of his mouth. 'Every month the city verderers have to deliver a fat buck for the Dean's kitchen; in thanksgiving the Dean and Chapter perform this dance.' He cleared his throat. 'God knows why, when they call themselves churchmen.'
    I looked at the sleek, well-fed clerics performing their silly jigs.
    'It's hard to decide, Master, which are fatter, they or the buck.' 'Never mind that,' he murmured. 'Did you see that message being slipped to our bluff Sir John?' I nodded. 'I wonder what it said, Roger?'
    'God knows, Master. Your uncle weaves such tangled webs!'
    We heard Mandeville calling us and continued our journey up towards Cripplegate, forcing our way through the lawyers and Serjeants of the coif who were assembling outside the door of the Priory of St Elsing-Spital for their last mass of the Michaelmas term.
    We reached the old city walls and passed through the gates. Above us the decapitated heads of traitors, crowned with laurels or ivy, gazed down at us, their eyes and mouths turned black by the pecking of ravens. We had to pause awhile as the body of a suicide, dragged by the feet, was taken by city bailiffs to be dumped in the city ditch. This was followed by a cart full of putrid offal, heading for one of the brooks near the Barbican. A beggar ran alongside the cart and came whining towards us, hands extended. Mandeville drove him away so he passed further down the group and tugged at Benjamin's leg. 'Master, Master, a penny, a