The Grail Murders

agreed and walked to the door. 'Roger.'
    I looked over my shoulder and forced back the tears which pricked my eyes: Rachel looked so beautiful, so vulnerable. I could hardly believe that she was responsible for so many terrible crimes. In a way her mother was responsible, guilty of tipping her mind into sudden madness. 'Adieu, Master Shallot.' I banged on the door and Mandeville let me out. 'What did she want?' he asked.
    'Nothing,' I replied. 'She is reconciled to her fate. She wishes to pray and has asked for her rosary beads.' Mandeville looked as if he was going to refuse. 'Oh, come on, man!' I insisted. 'Give her that at least.'
    Sir Edmund rapped out an order and a soldier went scurrying off to Rachel's chamber, returning a few minutes later with a set of rosary beads wrapped round his fingers. Mandeville examined them carefully. The beads were battered, the chain weak copper.
    'What are you frightened of?' I scoffed. 'She can hardly hang herself with them!'
    Mandeville crunched the beads together, weighed them in his hand and looked at the guard. 'You watch her all the time?'
    The guard pointed to the small squint hole high in the door. 'All the time, Sir Edmund,' he replied.
    Mandeville tossed the beads to him. 'Let her have them but watch her closely.'
    I returned to my chamber. Benjamin was still asleep so I made myself comfortable in a chair, wrapped a rug round me and dozed fitfully until he shook me awake just after dawn. We did not bother to shave or wash. The room had grown cold because the flight of the servants meant no fresh logs had been brought up and the water in the lavarium was now covered with a film of dirty ice. We went downstairs and I marvelled at how Mandeville had brought everything under control. He had worked the soldiers all night. Every chamber except ours had been stripped. All clothes, possessions, anything which could be moved – chests, chairs, mattresses, bolsters, canopies, drapes, cups and plate – had been piled in the hall and the doors sealed. Mandeville, satisfied with what he had done, led us into the buttery where we managed to find some stale bread and a jug of watery ale.
    'Everything's ready,' he informed us, snatching mouthfuls of bread. 'Southgate will stay here under a small guard until the other soldiers arrive. When he is able, he will be moved to the infirmary at Glastonbury and then to London. All the moveables of this manor are now piled in the hall and the door sealed against further thievery. The King's Commissioners will arrive and make sure everything due to the crown is seized.'
    (Too bloody straight, I thought. Henry VIII's Commissioners were the most heartless set of bastards. They would snatch a crust of bread from a dying child!) 'And Mistress Rachel?' my master asked.
    'She has breakfasted and been allowed to wash and change. She and I will be on the road to London within the hour.'
    Mandeville was as good as his word: a short while later we heard him shouting his farewells and going down to the main courtyard where the dead sheriff's soldiers, much the worse for drink, were saddling their horses. We glimpsed Mistress Rachel in the centre of them, cloaked and hooded, her hands tied to the saddle horn, another rope under the horse's belly securing her ankles. Sir Edmund mounted and, after a great deal of clattering and shouting, the party made its way out of the manor. Never once did Rachel stir, never once look to left or right or back at Templecombe which had cost her so much. God rest her, I never saw her again.
    For a while Benjamin and I went round the manor house, now empty and quiet as a tomb. Only two or three soldiers remained under the command of a burly sergeant. We visited Southgate but he still lay swathed in bandages attended by the old hags who seemed impervious to the tumult around them, being well paid by Mandeville to look after his lieutenant.
    It was like visiting a house of ghosts. So difficult to imagine how, only a few days earlier, Lady Beatrice had swept round as grand as a duchess; Sir John had acted the benevolent lord; and Mistress Rachel had watched and plotted behind a demeanour as serene as a nun's.
    Now, as I have said, it's hard for you young people to imagine such terrors but during Fat Henry's reign such occurrences became common. Time and again the King's agents would swoop on some great houses – Thomas Moore's, Wolsey's, Cromwell's, Boleyn's, Rochford's, Howard's – and the effect was always the same. One day