The Relic Murders

of the wine left, even cutting portions of the meat and bread but there was nothing amiss: no potion, no evidence that the garrison might have been poisoned. Benjamin sat, chin in hand.
    'Twenty-four hours ago,' he began, 'some time, about now, Roger, fifteen men were brutally murdered and the Orb stolen. But how?'
    'This place is haunted,' I replied. 'A gateway for demons. You saw the old woman's skeleton.'
    'Ghosts may walk,' Benjamin replied. 'But they don't cut throats nor do they carry arbalests.'
    'They walk silently,' I replied. 'Master, how could an assassin even walk round this place without being noticed? Every step he took would make a noise.'
    Benjamin got up and walked to where the blackjacks had been cleaned and put on a table.
    'One thing I did notice,' he mused. 'No food was left on the table. There were no dirty pots in the scullery.' 'Which means?' I asked.
    'Either they were killed before the evening meal or long after. However, if they were killed after, the remains of their dirty traunchers and blackjacks would have been left out for the cooks to wash the following day.' 'So they must have been killed before?'
    'But that can't be,' Benjamin replied. 'The cooks told us they set the tables for the evening meal, yet we found no trace of that.'
    'Unless Jonathan ordered it to be cleared himself?' I declared. 'I have another theory.'
    I explained about Lord Charon and my meeting with him: the initials 'I.M.' on the hangings in his chamber were identical to those on the locket buried with the remains of poor Lady Isabella. Benjamin, eyes closed, heard me out.
    'It's possible.' He opened his eyes. 'It's possible that in his own devilish way, Lord Charon had a hand in this business.' He tapped my hand. 'You didn't tell me about your meeting in the sewers?'
    'You never asked,' I retorted. 'And it's something I'd best soon forget.'
    Benjamin walked over towards where we had laid out our bedding for the night.
    'Ah, that is not a matter for us, Roger, but for the authorities. The capture of Lord Charon will need troops.' He took off his boots, lay down on the bedding and pulled a blanket up to his face. 'A house of secrets,' he murmured then fell asleep.
    I sat for a while listening to the house creak. I grew agitated as I realised the Great Beast would soon make his anger felt. I went out into the passageway, took a torch from its sconce and stood at the entrance to the cellar. Castor, who had been asleep in the corner of the kitchen, roused himself and followed me out. He stood silently beside me as I stared into the darkness.
    What had taken Castor down there in the first place? My master's questions about the setting out of the table and the cleaning of cups bothered me as well but I was too tired to think. I returned the torch, went back into the kitchen and lay down on the bedding with Castor sprawled beside me. I fell into an uneasy sleep thronged by nightmares, bloody-mouthed spectres in ghostly galleries and other terrors of the dark. (Oh, don't laugh at poor Shallot. I have seen ghosts! I have been at Hampton Court on the anniversary of Catherine Howard's arrest, and heard her scream as she did in life, as her ghost ran down to the royal chapel to beg the Great Beast's forgiveness for having slept with Thomas Culpepper. Once, following a wager with Master Walsingham, the Queen's master spy, I spent a night in the Bloody Tower. I was locked away in a cell – the result of some stupid remark or jest at court. I felt the ghosts throng around me: Thomas Cromwell, Henry's great minister who fell from power after taking lunch with the Duke of Norfolk. Or the poor Princes stifled in their beds. True, I never saw anything but, the next morning, when the captain of the guard came to open the cell and take me to the officers' quarters to break my fast, he stopped me on the stairs and said, 'Sir Roger, you will have to pay your wager.' 'Why?' I asked.
    'Well, sir,' the fellow replied. 'You said you would be alone, but when I looked through the grille at midnight you were asleep in your bed.’ 4Of course I was,' I scoffed. 'I was drunk.' 'But there was someone with you.' My blood ran cold. 'Who?' I asked.
    'I don't know,' the soldier replied. 'Just a cowled and hooded figure sitting on a chair beside your bed staring down at you.'
    Oh yes, I believe in ghosts and that's the last night I ever slept in the Tower!)
    The next morning the terrors of the living woke us: Doctor Agrippa, Kempe and Cornelius