I stared down in horror. The newcomer was no mangy animal but a great, grey wolf in all its prime, sharp in ferocity and, from the way it was glaring up at me, mad with hunger. One of those magnificent loping beasts from my blackest nightmare. The great ruff on its shoulders stood up. Its jaws were open, lips curled, tongue slavering at the prospect of a piece of Old Shallot for dinner. I screamed and tried to climb even as the wolf sprang, its teeth narrowly missing the heel of my boot. God knows how I did it. The rope burnt my hands, and it seemed like an age as I pulled myself up towards the rim. Again I glimpsed a flurry, a grey shape jumping up almost beside me, snaking its head, its jaws lashing at me. I screamed and climbed faster, ignoring the burning pain in the palms of my hands. The rope was beginning to fray where it hung over the rim of the pit. I heard a snap as strands began to break. The wolf howled and so did I. It lunged again; this time its teeth scored my boot. I closed my eyes and quietly vowed: no more claret, no more wenches, a life of prayer and fasting! The top of the pit seemed as far off as ever. I was terrified I would slip. I screamed and yelled. Suddenly Benjamin was leaning over and, with Agrippa's help, pulled me out. For a while I just crouched on the ground, sobbing for breath. I vomited out of sheer terror. I crawled back to the rim of the pit and shook my fist at the wolf which stood slavering up at me. ‘’You bastard!'
I fumbled for the hilt of my dagger but Benjamin pulled me away. "Roger, Roger, for the love of God, it's a dumb animal!' 'It will be a dead dumb animal!' I snarled.
Agrippa came forward. He kicked a long pole which lay near the door of an outhouse, and I realised by what means I'd been pushed into the pit. He thrust a wineskin at me.
‘You’ll not die here, Roger,' he whispered. Drink the wine. Go on,' he urged. 'It's Falernian, the wine of ancient emperors. Pilate drank it when he condemned Christ.'
I lifted the wineskin and let the fragrant juice lap into my mouth. I gave it back, smiled and promptly fainted.
When I revived, I was not in the Tower but in a small ale-house on a corner of an alleyway near Thames Street. Agrippa was pushing a piece of burnt cork under my nose. "Faugh!' I cursed, and drove it away. I blinked up at my master who was staring at me anxiously. 'Are you well, Roger?' he asked.
'Oh yes.' I straightened up and glared round the small taproom. 'It's not every day you are thrown to the wolves!' I tried to get up but my legs felt a little unsteady. ‘How did I get here?' I asked.
'Agrippa and I helped you down to the Lion Gate. We begged a ride from a carter and brought you here.' Benjamin leaned back against the wall. "Have something to 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 theory with him!' I exclaimed. 'Here we have blackmailing letters being delivered to the King bearing the seal of a prince who was supposed to have died forty years ago. Now, concedo, Master, anyone in the Tower – the hangmen, Kemble or his two associates – could have written them. However, if they did, they could not have sneaked out of the Tower to collect the thousand pounds at St Paul's. They were certainly not there when those two proclamations were posted in Westminster and Cheapside, or the second blackmailing letter which was left in the Abbey. So,' I sipped from my tankard, 'there is either a secret way of entering and leaving the Tower, which I doubt. Or the villain in the Tower has an accomplice outside. Now, we know Allardyce is dead, so it must be Undershaft, or his wife, or both.' 'And Hellbane's death?' Benjamin asked. 'Murdered to silence his tongue.' 'But why?' Benjamin asked.
'I don't know, Master.' I drained my tankard. 'As I don't know who tipped me over the edge of that pit to be devoured by that bloody wolf!'
Agrippa, who had been staring through a window overlooking the garden, abruptly got to his feet. 'It's best,' he warned, 'when we meet the King, that we say nothing of this. We have eaten and drunk enough. We should be gone.' We arrived at Windsor just as darkness fell. The journey up-river had been quiet and serene enough. Benjamin and I dozed as Agrippa's stalwarts cracked their backs, pulling lustily at the oars. Their master, sitting in the prow of the boat, chattered to himself or stared out across the river, carefully watching the sunset.
The small town built under the soaring keep of Windsor castle was dark and quiet. Agrippa led us up through the steep, narrow streets and across the moat into the Great Beast's favourite palace. Inside all was light and colour: lantern horns hung gleaming like fireflies in the yard. Rich, savoury smells from the kitchen mixed with those in the stables: servants, scurriers, messengers and chamberlains hurried about on this errand or that. The King was in residence and everybody knew it.
Now Windsor is a great sprawling palace: a mixture of fortress and stately manor house with its outer and inner keep, the long connecting galleries, chambers and halls decorated and developed by successive princes. The most beautiful is the Rose Chamber, a long hall or gallery with huge windows on either side. Agrippa led us along this. Outside it was dark, but burning torches and tall yellow beeswax candles turned night into day. Nobody noticed us as we passed; everyone was busy. Agrippa whispered how the King, after his day's hunting, would want his usual dancing and banqueting until the early hours. That was the Great Beast: during the day he'd pursue the fleet-footed stag, whilst at night he would go after the fast-living women of his Court. He'd then arise the next morning complaining about the labours of State and decide to relax with a day's hunting, and so it went on. Henry had a deep, abiding fear of illness; the very thought of it and he'd pull up sticks and race off to a place as far away as possible. During that hot, sweaty summer, with the sickness raging in London, he'd moved lock, stock and barrel to Windsor. The Exchequer, Chancery, and even the Court came with him. He also made sure his stay was as comfortable as possible. The walls of the palace were decorated with hangings to be replaced every week by yeomen and grooms of the wardrobe. Furniture from the London palaces filled every room. The royal kitchen, under the command of its French master-chef, worked morning to night roasting beef, mutton, lamb, chicken, pheasants and quails to feed the King and his vast concourse of courtiers.
Of course, poor Benjamin and I got nothing of that. Agrippa handed us over to a royal chamberlain whilst he slipped away. This snotty-nosed little varlet, waving his white wand as if he was king of the fairies, took us to a shabby little chamber in one of the towers: it contained two truckle-beds and a mouldy, worm-eaten chest into which we put our belongings. Thankfully we had not brought much. We never did on these journeys to Court. Henry was a great thief and loved to taunt me. Once I had a fine buckram jacket which disappeared from my chamber when I visited him at Sheen. He just shrugged and said, what could I expect in such a busy place? A few days later I saw it on the back of one of his great hunting dogs, cut and clipped to make the beast feel 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 had glimpsed in the royal menagerie. I am sure he almost bowed his head. The priest left the sanctuary. The Great Beast rose to his feet and walked along the stalls, patting each dog on its head. 'Lovely boys!' he whispered. 'Lovely, lovely lads!'
The dogs whimpered with pleasure. The King clapped his hands: they all climbed down and followed the huntsman out of the church as devoutly as a line of novices. The King turned his attention on us, indicating that we should come and kneel on the cushions in the sanctuary before him.
I glanced quickly at the Cardinal. He sat sprawled in the throne-like chair, a small purple silk skull-cap pushed on to the back of his black, oily hair. He looked the powerful prince; his features smooth and swarthy like an Italian: red sensuous lips, a slightly beaked nose and dark, lustrous eyes. He was dressed in scarlet trimmed with gold. He caught my eye, winked, and stared piously up at the crucifix in the apse of the church. He would not dare address us until the King had.
The Great Beast proved to be in fine fettle. He was dressed in a lincoln-green jerkin brocaded with silver, matching hose, soft leather boots with an ermine-lined cloak draped over his shoulders. Because he was in church, his head was bare; the only place Henry did not wear those bejewelled bonnets he was so fond of. Oh, but it was his face! Do you know, I have seen Holbein's painting, fat and square with those piggy, slanted eyes. Henry always reminded me more of a Tartar than an Englishman, yet you have to give the devil his due: he had a presence. If Henry had been married to the right woman; if he'd listened to honest men like Tom More instead of the crawlies which swarmed round his court, he could have been a great prince. If you ignored the eyes, his face had a nobility all of its own. A broad brow, powerful jaw, and those lips always clenched; when they opened to speak, everyone's heart skipped a beat. He glanced down at Benjamin and proffered his hand, his fingers shimmered with light from the precious jewels clustered there. Benjamin edged forward and kissed them, then Henry turned to me. I came forward. He patted me on the head as if I was one of his dogs, and Great Wolsey tittered at the joke.
We will talk in here.' The King spoke in a hoarse whisper. He glanced sideways at Wolsey. This is the one place I know there are no peepholes in the walls.' His eyes slid to Benjamin. 'Master Daunbey, our good Doctor Agrippa has told you everything?'
We have seen the letter, Your Grace. We also know about the proclamations the traitor has posted against you.'
Henry shuffled his feet, the fury blazed in his eyes. Traitor it is!' he rasped. 'And, as God be my witness, I want him seized, taken to Tower Hill, half-hanged, cut down, his body ripped open, his innards plucked out and burnt before his eyes.' Henry leaned back in his chair, breathing noisily.
What have you discovered, beloved Nephew?’ Wolsey tactfully intervened.
'Beloved Uncle,' Benjamin replied, kneeling back on his heels, 'nothing but a riddle. The first letter was delivered when the Tower was sealed. Moreover, that same place was locked, and everyone confined within, when the gold was supposed to have been collected from St Paul's and those two other proclamations appeared.' ‘I know that,' Henry snarled.
We think,' Benjamin continued hurriedly, 'that there are two, not one traitor involved. One inside the Tower, one without.' Who?' Henry rasped. ‘Your Grace, we do not know'
‘Your Grace, we do not know. Your Grace, we do not know,' Henry mimicked. He stretched out his boot and kicked me on the shoulder. 'And you, Shallot, with your cunning face and twisted eye?' 'I am Your Grace's most humble servant.'
'Oh piss off!' Henry snorted. 'Everyone's my humble servant – ' his voice was shot through with self pity -'until I need help and assistance.'
'Are the deaths amongst the hangmen connected with this villainy?' Wolsey asked.
'Beloved Uncle, we do not know. We can't even prove that it was Undershaft's corpse taken from the cage.'
'Do you suspect anyone?' the King asked, leaning forward.
Benjamin shook his head. ‘But, Your Grace,' he added hurriedly, and glanced quickly at his uncle, 'these letters and proclamations are issued in the name of a long-dead prince, Edward V.'
Henry bared his lips, reminding me of a mastiff. The very mention of the Yorkists could send him into a paroxysm of rage. 'Continue, beloved Nephew,' Wolsey said smoothly.
'Surely the Crown and its spies at the House of Secrets must know something about the fate of these two Princes?'
We have combed the records.' Wolsey stopped speaking and looked round the darkening church.
‘Your Grace, the door is sealed.' Agrippa, standing at the back, shouted from the darkness. 'No one can hear.'
The Cardinal leaned forward. "Then listen well, Nephew. I shall tell you about those two princes. They were last seen in the summer of 1484, then they disappeared. The King's illustrious father, after his great victory against the usurper Richard the Third at the battle of Bosworth, came into London and lodged at the Tower. He announced his betrothal to the Prince's sister, Elizabeth, our noble King's illustrious mother: at her insistence, he organised a most thorough search of the Tower and its precincts.'
'Who was constable under Richard the Third?' Benjamin asked.
'Sir Robert Brackenbury,' Wolsey replied. ‘But he, too, was killed at the battle of Bosworth and could not be questioned. Now the search organised by the King's father found nothing. The most industrious of his spies, both here and abroad, could elicit little more.' Wolsey paused. He glanced at the King but Henry had his eyes closed. ‘Now, our King's illustrious father and his good wife spent twenty-four years of his reign wondering what had happened to those two Princes. Matters were not helped by a succession of pretenders, the most serious being the Flemish boy Perkin Warbeck. He claimed to be the younger prince Richard. As you know, for a while Warbeck nourished. He was supported by both France and Scotland, who accepted his explanation that he had escaped from the Tower whilst his brother had been murdered. Now Warbeck was captured and executed.'
‘Not before he confessed to being a Fleming of low birth,' Henry snarled.
‘Precisely,' Wolsey continued, ‘but the mystery still remains. Some say the Princes were murdered by their uncle, Richard the Usurper. Others that they escaped.'
'Is there any truth in the latter theory?' Benjamin asked.
‘We do know,' Wolsey replied, 'that in January 1485, Sir James Tyrrell, one of Richard's henchmen, took three thousand pounds abroad. Some people say that this huge fortune was because Richard allowed his nephew to go abroad to live a life of wealthy but relative anonymity.' Wolsey shrugged his shoulders. ‘But, there again, there are other stories that, on the morning of Bosworth, the usurper Richard was seen in his tent conversing with a young, silver-haired boy whom many thought to be one of the Princes.' 'So they could be alive?' Benjamin asked.
Tom More doesn't believe that,' Henry declared, squirming in his chair. "He learnt a different story from Cardinal Morton, my father's principal minister. According to him, the three thousand pounds Sir James Tyrrell received in January 1485 was a reward for smothering both Princes in their beds.'
Wolsey took up the story. 'Sir Thomas More believes that the usurper Richard sent his agent John Greene with orders to the constable to kill the Princes. Brackenbury refused, so Richard dispatched Sir James Tyrrell together with two assassins, Dighton and Greene, into the Tower, where they smothered the Princes and buried them in a secret place.' Wolsey smiled bleakly. (He had little love for Sir Thomas More!) There's no evidence for such a story,' he continued. 'Sir James Tyrrell was arrested by the King's father in 1502 for conspiring with Yorkists abroad. Some say he confessed to the murder of the Princes, but that is more fanciful thinking than fact.'
The Tower grounds have been searched,' Henry declared. 'No remains were ever found.'
What about those servants who waited on the Princes?' Benjamin asked.
'All are long dead.' Wolsey replied. 'And they could tell the King's spies nothing…'
They are dead! The Princes are dead! They are dead!' Henry pounded his fists on the arm of the chair. He glared at the crucifix as if he expected confirmation from God Himself.
'My Lord King.' Wolsey turned and bowed. 'I fully agree with you, but where do those seals come from? If the Princes were killed, those seals would have been destroyed. If the Princes escaped, they might well have taken them with them.'
Henry glared at his first minister, his face mottled with fury.
‘Your Grace,' Wolsey whispered, I am as desperate as you are for this villainy to be unmasked.' 'Show them the second letter,' the King growled.
The Cardinal put his hand into his silken robes and drew out a roll of parchment which he handed to Benjamin, who studied it and, ignoring the King's hiss of anger, passed it to me. The letter was couched in the same kind of language as before: the writing beautifully elegant, the bottom of the letter bore two seals. It purported to be from Edward V, King of England: it called Henry a "usurper, fulminating against his perfidy. Imperious in its demand that two thousand pounds be left in front of St Paul's Cross on 28 August, the feast of St Augustine. It closed with the arrogant phrase, 'Given at our palace at the Tower during August in the fortieth year of our reign.' Will you pay? I asked. The words came out in a rush.
Henry leaned down. ‘Pay, little Shallot! You, my little pickle onion! My little dropping! You, a stain on my court! You will take the two thousand pounds at noon on that day, but you shall arrest the villain responsible.'
The threat seemed to sweeten Henry's mood. He smiled brilliantly at Wolsey, kicked me once again and rose to his feet. He patted his stomach.
"Did you like my Mass, Shallot? Asking God's blessing on my hunting dogs?’ He patted my head. Tomorrow you shall hunt with us, but tonight we will feast.'
He swept out of the chapel. Wolsey stopped to sketch a blessing in the air above his nephew's head. He followed in a billow of scarlet silk gowns. Agrippa opened the door for them, grinned at us, then slammed it behind him. ‘I’ll kill him!' I whispered, getting to my feet. 'Benjamin, he treats me like a dog.' "Roger! Roger!' Benjamin slipped his arm through mine as we walked down the church.
‘Mind you,' I scoffed, He's frightened, isn't he? Terrified of the Yorkist ghosts? Do you think it could be a plot?' I added. ‘Remember, Master, years ago, the Brotherhood of the White Rose? Yorkists plotting against the Tudors?'
Benjamin pulled a face. Time has passed, Roger. The House of York is a withered root. No flower, no fruit grows there. The fate of the two Princes,' he added quietly, stopping to admire a tapestry hanging on the wall just above the door, 'that is of interest, but only because of those seals. Where a king is, so are the insignia of office. However, what we are hunting here, Roger, is a blackmailer and a murderer, and a very clever one at that. But come, the trumpets will bray and Uncle wishes to see us at supper.'
We scurried back to our chambers. Like good little boys, we changed and went down to the hall or, should I say, one of the halls in the inner keep. A magnificent occasion. The room was lit by so many candles you'd think it was daytime: their flames dazzled the gold and silver plate stacked high on shelves and chests around the room. Pure woollen carpets with silk fringes covered the floor. The best Flemish tapestries hung on the walls. Silver and gilt vases full of blooming red roses filled the air with their perfume. (Another sign of Henry's madness. He was so determined to stamp out the White Rose of York, every bloody building had red roses carved in the ceilings or walls. Henry had six craftsmen skilled in carving them. Mind you, one of the funny things about the Great Beast's palaces were his changing wives. He would be carried away in such a flood of affection, he'd insist that the initials of himself and his current queen be placed everywhere. He had six queens! So many he became tired of changing initials. I thought it was particularly amusing that his last queen, sharp-faced Catherine Parr, had the same name as his first. If he had chosen a line of queens with the same name, he would have saved himself a lot of money.)
The supper party that night was not one of Henry's great banquets but a small, intimate affair. The King, of course, had his table on a dais, with a large, throne-like chair in the centre, under a white silk canopy adorned with red roses. Wolsey and some of his cronies sat alongside him. Benjamin and I sat at one of the two tables just below this. Nonetheless, Henry liked his feasting and this occasion was as glorious as any. The plate was of heavy gold or silver, the tablecloths white satin. The meats – venison, boar, swan – were all professionally cooked in tasty, rich sauces, and followed by delicious confectionery, cakes, custards and trifles, whilst the wine flowed like water.
I confess I was in a foul mood. I don't like being treated like a dog. I was also still trembling after my escape from that wolf, so I drank deeply. After Henry's interminable banquets, there was always singing, dancing and card-playing. Sometimes the King liked to regale us all with stories. On that particular night he had the past in his mind. He talked tearfully of his mother and even spoke eloquently of his own father. He patted the hand of his dumpy wife Catherine and recalled his elder brother Arthur who had died so young. The fat Beast lolled in his chair, playing with the gold tassels on the arm.
'So long ago,' he crowed self-pityingly. 'So many shadows, so many regrets.'
A chilling silence greeted his words. A few guests looked sly-eyed at poor Catherine of Aragon, who'd failed to produce a living son.
'Fourteen years,' the beast went on. 'Since my glorious father's death and my accession.'
'Yet many more to come,' a brown-nosed flatterer cried out. 'Sire, you are only in your thirty-first year!'
The King's fat face creased into a smile. He nodded imperceptibly, acknowledging the plaudits of his flattering courtiers. "The sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of your father's reign.' Norris, one of the King's oldest cronies, was shouting, dramatically extolling the date of the Great Beast's birth.
Now the good Lord knows what got into me: wherever the Great Beast was concerned, I always put a foot wrong. Perhaps his treatment of me in the chapel had violated Shallot's one and only virtue: I don't like being bullied.
'Aye,' I cried, my belly full of wine, the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year. Six, six, six; the sign of the Great Beast in the Book of the Apocalypse!'
The banqueting chamber fell so quiet, you could have heard a fly fart. Henry glowered down the hall. My master put his face in his hands; even Wolsey raised his napkin to his mouth and gazed fearfully at me.
The King lifted a hand. "Music, let the dancing begin: tomorrow we hunt!' He glared murderously at me: the Great Beast was about to strike.